Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, when the "normal" price of a new computer game was £6-£10, games were frequently sold, by companies such as Mastertronic, Codemasters and British Telecom, for under £2 (no, that isn't a typing error), yet still made profits. The industry will try to tell you that such a strategy couldn't work now, because the developments costs of games are so much higher that the market isn't big enough for games sold cheaply to make their costs back. However, this view doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

Let's assume that a company decides to make new PS2 games and sell them not for £40, but for £10. The games will be developed to the same standard and costs as "normal" games, the only difference will be the selling price. The figures break down something like this:

X
Let's assume the game costs £3 million to develop (the current average is actually considerably less than £3m, but we'll add a million or so for marketing etc).

This means, to recoup development costs, the publisher has to sell 1.15million copies of the game. (Which is selling at just £10, remember.)

The current userbase of the PS2 is 40 million, and growing rapidly.

To recoup even above-average development costs, then, the publisher has to sell a copy of the game to just one PS2 owner in every 34 - hardly an impossible task.

The only obstacle in the path of this business model is that that hardware licence fee charged by Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo is currently a flat fee rather than a percentage. That one simple change would make it perfectly viable to sell new console games at £10 rather than £40, yet with everyone still getting the same size of cut they do now. That change, from a flat-rate licence fee to a percentage one, is the change that Fair Play aims to bring about.