fronzelneekburm: I love the fact that Activision keeps up releasing their Sierra titles here, and at mostly reasonable prices, too. But in this particular case, I'll have to pass for now. $6 for an EGA title from the late Eighties is pushing it a bit too hard. Wishlisted it, I'll wait for a discount.
I think the game industry knows by now that people basically fall into two categories with pricing of old titles like this.
1) Those who must have it immediately and will pay almost any price within reason even on the high side and can't wait.
2) The majority - who probably will only pay a much lower price.
So they set the prices not based on what the majority will pay, but what the impatient will pay, knowing they'll pick up both the high rollers and thrifty between launch and the first or second sale where they put the game at its more accurate price.
There might have been a time historically where games were sold at a reasonable regular price and then had a discounted price that was fair, but like many other markets out there as well now a lot of games are sold at an inflated price for the impatient to create artificial scarcity, and then discounted to their fair price to stimulate interest and whimsical purchase.
I don't think this practice will ever end, but rather I think the tendency is not "what is a fair price for this" but rather "what can we get people to accept as a price to maximize profit on the bell curve", and that they gradually are inching those prices upward as time passes on. There are ancient games sold on GOG and Steam in present day both at regular and discounted prices far exceeding what the prices were that the games were sold at a decade or two ago in the bargain bin when stores couldn't get rid of them. I've got several games I bought at Walmart or Zellers on DVD for $1-2 eons ago which are regular price $10-15 or more on GOG and/or Steam, and might go on sale for $3-5 or more occasionally.
I don't see it so much as fair/unfair as I see it as reasonable versus disappointing. :) For each given game I decide on a dollar value I'd pay to throw it on my collection pile and wishlist it, and later on if it goes on sale for that price or lower I pick it up, otherwise they just remain wishlisted forever more or less. isthereanydeal.com lets me set up notifications based on dollar value to get alerted when a game hits my target price also which is nice.
Sadly, many ancient games never go on sale for a price I'm willing to pay for them whimsically, so I'd only pay more if I were extremely eager to play them right away. Sometimes happens (ie: Star Wars X-Wing series), but not often. Still, it's nice to see games available at all rather than extinct, and if it took marketing them at higher prices in order to fund bringing them back from the dead to have them available on modern distribution services then I'm ok with that too, even if I hold off on personally buying them. :)
