Modern Warfare 2 will wound your wallet

A few days ago we brought you the news that the eagerly awaited Modern Warfare 2 would be getting two rather cool special editions, the hardened edition and the prestige edition. The geek in all of us was especially exicted that the prestige edition would be coming with fully functioning night vision goggles. Well that excitement was short lived, infact the excitement has now turned into disgust.

Today Activision have announced the following prices for Modern Warfare 2:

• The standard edition will have an RRP of £54.99
• The hardened edition will have an RRP of £69.99
• The prestige edition will have an RRP of £119.99 and will be only available from HMV

I’m sure your jaws are still touching the floor as you try to recover from the shock of these amazingly high prices revealed today by Activision. The standard edition has an RRP of £54.99, we thought the days of paying over £40 for a bog standard copy of a game were gone but clearly the fat cats up in the gold towers at Activision disgaree. Their reason for this sudden price boost is down to the pound being weak and the only way to be competitive in the UK market is to raise the prices of their games. They also think that more publishers will follow suit and the £54.99 RRP will become the norm.

We know that most online retailers do not have the standard edition up for pre-order at £54.99 but the average price is still around the £44.99 mark which in this day and age is still very high. Fact is that most gamers are now used to paying on average about £37.99 for a new release which is not great but widely regarded as a decent enough price for what is regarded as a luxury item.

Moving onto the two special editions, well overpriced doesn’t begin to explain what we think about them. The hardened edition which comes with a steelbook case, artbook and a token to download the original Call of Duty is priced at £69.99. It is priced £15-£20 more than the standard edition depending on where you choose to buy it from. Steelbook editions of games are no rare thing nowadays and are usually £5-£10 more than the standard edition, infact sometimes they are even the same price. If the hardened edition was priced at £54.99 or even £59.99 we could deal with that because after all it does come with the token to download the original Call of Duty but no, Activision are insistent on charging us high prices.

Now finally we come to the prestige edition which is priced at £119.99, yet again this is amazingly overpriced. The same edition is priced at $149.99 in America which works out to be around £90, a huge difference of £29.99 against the actual UK price. Once again, as has been the norm over the years, UK gamers get absolutely ripped off. Now we know that the prestige edition comes with actual fully working night vision goggles but how much did actually cost to make?! £50? Maybe £60? At most probably even £70 which still would not explain the £119.99 price tag.

Bottom line here is that Activision are fleecing all of us, taking us for a very expensive ride. They know that Modern Warfare 2 is the most anticipated game of this year and that it will sell millions of copies worldwide. They know that we don’t necessarily need it but being gamers we most definitely want it. They see all this and want to absolutely maximise their profits in anyway they can. It makes great business sense but it will end up pissing off alot of gamers and leave a severly bitter taste in their mouths. We have no doubt the game will be fantastic and will give us hours of gaming joy but this has really lowered our opinion of Activision as a gaming publisher/developer.