Here's the official press release from the FairPlay group...

To FairPlay's eyes, the games industry resembles a terrified cat stuck in the high branches of a tree, but which lashes out at you with its claws when you try to help it down to safety.

The gist of the astounding hate-burst from the videogames industry on October 2nd appears to centre around the frankly surprising view that, in the industry's eyes, FairPlay apparently thinks that videogames fall fully-formed out of the sky. The organisers of the FairPlay campaign have more than 50 years' experience in the videogames industry between them. We are already aware, it may surprise and astonish the industry to learn, that videogames cost money to develop.

Nevertheless, the FairPlay campaign rests on a couple of extremely easy-to-understand principles. The PHYSICAL MANUFACTURE of videogames is a very, very low-cost procedure. The development costs of games have already been incurred before the manufacturing process begins. Therefore, ANY retail price which allows the sale of games to generate a gross, per-unit profit is potentially a viable route by which to recoup those development costs and then generate overall profit. The only question is whether a sufficient userbase exists to make a sufficient number of the gross per-unit profits to overtake the development cost. With games machines such as the Playstation 2 having a userbase in excess of 40 million consoles, it is obviously clear that this is so.

The second principle is the industry's circular, self- fulfilling argument that games have a comparatively small audience so prices must remain high. This is, amazingly obviously, bunk. Quite aside from the fact that the most successful hit games actually HAVE historically sold comparable amounts to successful albums, if music CDs cost �45 for one album, it's a fairly safe assumption that they'd have a dramatically smaller audience too. Lowering the price of games would, beyond any reasonable doubt, increase the size of the potential audience significantly. This is hardly a contentious or outrageous claim.

The simple truth is that it's fear of failure which motivates most of the objections to the FairPlay campaign. Until now, developers and publishers alike have been able to blame poor sales of their games, and huge financial losses of their companies, on an unbalanced, franchise-dominated market in which 95% of games released lose money. Failure is the comforting norm rather than the exception. With games pitched at widely-accessible impulse prices, though, that comfort blanket would be withdrawn. There would be no excuse for failure. Good games (and companies) would make profits, bad ones would not. To FairPlay's mind, this is obviously a desirable state of affairs. But to an industry weaned on failure and desperate for Government subsidies - rather than, for example, better management or better games - to bail out its 95% of uneconomic and unsuccessful products, it represents the dawn of a new, unfamiliar and frightening future.

FairPlay gently urges the games industry: Don't be afraid. Step into the light.

Some good points made, but the sarcastic overtones will only serve to anger the industry more. How will the industry respond? We have yet to hear from the other two big console manufacturers, will they respond?