The idea behind Hasbro’s Family Game Night was a good one. I can see most PS2 owners honestly considering whether they want to buy it or not at twenty dollars for the whole set of games on one disc, and maybe someone out there would want the Wii version.

But when you do the math on the 360 version, you’re paying more for less. You don’t get a box or disc, and no printed manual comes with your purchase. The only way you save money is if you buy just one game. Assuming you buy the whole set, you’re looking at about $60 to $70. This is of course the height of insanity, but it raises a few questions.

Particularly, who in the world thought this was a good idea? You have to understand that EA, Hasbro, and Microsoft all sat down and talked about this. Human beings spoke with one another and decided ten bucks a game was a smart price point. Multiple people had to be in agreement about this plan, and there had to be so little meaningful opposition that said plan was carried out. I try to visualize the board room meetings where this happened, and I keep seeing the Shinra Corporation from Final Fantasy VII. Particularly the part where Palmer begins singing “tra-la-la-la, rate hike, rate hike!”

My strongest advice to anyone from each company involved is this: Spend less time using trap-doors to drop your interns into a lava pit, and focus on finding ways to justify the cost of your products. Yes, the bad economy means even you have to raise prices to get by, but that doesn’t excuse this kind of failure. The demos don’t help; they’re all so short that there’s really no point to them. And when I can find alternatives for ten percent of the price you want, that’s pretty ridiculous.

Hopefully the rest of this “Summer of Arcade” will be better.