This is like when the music industry said CD's should cost 40 to 50 dollars instead of 12 dollars. There was only one good song on most CD's. Look where CD's are now. I don't see how they can justify 80 dollars a game when they don't even make a physical copy anymore. It's now just an SD card with a key on it. They're still downloading the game itself from the internet.
this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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"In terms of actual price of $70 or $80, for really great games, I think it will still be a steal in terms of the amount of entertainment that the top games, top quality games bring to people compared to other form of entertainment."
I actually don't entirely disagree, problem is that I've yet to play a game that was actually good enough to be worth $70-80.
Even the highest rated games of all time have flaws that every video game has. The tech simply isn't advanced enough yet to justify the cost, not until we have games that are designed so well that you can do practically anything in them that you could do in real life. That means we have to move past things like invisible walls, awkward conversations with NPCs that don't flow like a real conversation would, buildings that can't be entered, short walls that can't be climbed over, etc. (e: I've been around since the 3rd gen of consoles, and I can't believe that we still don't have the kind of games that I've been dreaming of since childhood.)
Furthermore, if your game has microtransactions, you can shut the fuck up. They generate so much income, that Free to Play is a sustainable business model. I am of the opinion that any game that has loot box mechanics, gambling, etc. should always be free.
I would say something like elden ring might be worth that price point given the breadth of the experience. Thing is, Elden ring is actually kinda too big. I like it, but a run through is like a multi week commitment, and I definitely don't want that to be the norm, especially for fromsoft.
people used to lift game cartridges from the chains before they starte dlocking them up.
Considering the at least 100+ hours I invested in give or take ten* games throughout my childhood / adolescence / young adult past, then even €100 would've been a steal.
*Age of Empires 2, MU Online, Unreal Tournament 1999, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1/2/3, Battlefield 1942, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, R.O.S.E. Online, Counter-Strike 1.6, Counter-Strike: Source, Battlefield 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, Insurgency.
Does this mean less expectations for sales numbers too?
I'm carefully spending my money by buying less games, mostly DRM-free indie games.
Not wrong. You and other AAA studios are not making games worth that price tag though.
Why sell multiple games and make more money collectively when you can just sell one and alienate your loyal customers? Art of the deal.
yup, "a steal" is a good word for that, but not in the direction they mean
They're referring to hours of entertainment. People pay $20 to see a 2 hour film. Games give us 50+ hours at times.
That's not to say games should cost the same as movies in terms of "entertainment hours".
Quantifying the value of your media in "hours spent consuming it" is an intrinsically poor way to do things
We know they were an exec of one of the shittest companies around by the way they talk.
I do choose carefully, I buy half a dozen indie games on sale instead, and I have nothing to complain about.
This is the way.
Oh I will be choosing very carefully.
I'll be going back and playing all the super Nintendo games I missed out on as a kid I think
You'd be better off getting an Anbernic for that.
He's not wrong, Baldur's Gate 3 is a steal for the price it is. "Really great games" do exist and they're worth their price tag, the problem is the number of AAA games of that caliber are like 1 in 30. We're lucky to get one in any given year. Meanwhile, there are consistently high quality indie games coming out for less than $40.
but like... if your entire customer base is saying you're wrong, aren't you then wrong by definition? the buyers set the prices, in a way.
If the customers still buy it in the end, the publisher was right. We will see over time. Maybe there will be a drop in sales but then GTA6 comes along and no one can resist, opening the path for other games.
Someone on lemmy recently put this into perspective for me. Even like 1% of the population of the USA is 3 million people. If you increase the cost of a product and don't care about long-term sales, the immediate gain in profit can outweigh the loss of total customers down the line.
I still think cutting off customers and burning good will isn't a good business model, but I'm not stupid wealthy, so what do I know.
Translation: The executives who don't do anything deserve to get lots of money and you should be happy to pay them for it.
Fuck you.
$80? How much is that, like 4 bananas?
80$ is a steal, yeah right…
(Screenshot from isthereanydeal just for simplicity, avoid grey market when possible)
There is an argument to be made that Expedition 33 was essentially created by a studio with 30 people (though once you add everyone that worked on it the credits do balloon to over 400) with a rather small budget, and meanwhile companies like Rockstar, Sony and Activision have thousands working for years and spending hundreds of millions creating games like GTA 6, CoD and Concord, so naturally they should be a lot more expensive to buy too.
They just shouldn't be surprised if people don't buy all the $500 Waguy steak on offer and are perfectly happy with way cheaper options.
There’s also the argument whether games really need that high of a budget. It feels like there’s little correlation between the budget of a game, and its success (or quality).
Sony could’ve invested in five or ten more Helldivers 2 scaled games, instead of wasting it all on the Concord flop.
I would be so excited if more games were made in an n64 or ps1 style. Maybe I'm just huffing nostalgia, but I still enjoy some of those classics. Games don't have to have amazing graphics or be massive to be fun.
Over 400 seems a bit high to me but the size vs cost argument remains. Those external voice actors, animators, QA testers etc were all paid. Kepler Interactive even gave them money to have known actors for VA (they probably aren't cheap).
So that's very probably a several million budget (rumored to be between 5 and 25 mil according to non reliable source, thanks to Kepler and the early Gamepass contract).
Ok that's not a 500 million budget, rather a 50 mil one (to be very large), but it's definitely not a 500k budget.
And yet they sell it 45$.
Anyway, it just prove that you can build a Waguy steak alternative for cheaper while keeping the taste and without abusing your workforce.
"412 people (403 professional roles, 9 thanks) with 502 credits." https://www.mobygames.com/game/241065/clair-obscur-expedition-33/credits/windows/?autoplatform=true
As for those compared budgets, CoD Black Ops Cold War cost $700 million and GTA 6 has already surpassed a billion.
It's really absurd where budget of those games went to... Big corpo gaming is wasteful as fuck.
Ah thanks for the link! I was looking for that information but could not find it.
Nobody rightfully complains when Lamborghini sells their luxury car for hundreds of thousands. Gamers have been conditioned for far too long that indie games cost less than 60 and everything else costs 60. This was the fault of the industry to be sure, but it’s clear the barrier is being broken by necessity and expensive-to-make games are going to climb the price ladder and prices for games overall will stratify like many other markets.
Interestingly, that’s all Shuhei is saying here. Pay for the games you think are worth it. Games still provide a significant amount of value for their cost, even at higher price points. This is obviously true as we’ve had a decade of base game $60 and ultimate edition $90-100 with people purchasing ultimate editions and such.
Stealing from the consumer
If you look at inflation adjusted pricing, it really is a deal. IIRC we should be at like 90 or 100+ dollar games at this point.
We are already are, look at season passes, dlc etc, 90+ is the de facto price of a lot of AAA games. They'll claim going even higher is to support developers or whatever when laying people off en masse and posting even larger quarterly results, it's pure avarice.
They also tend to sell more copies vs decades ago, which is partly why the $70cad game was so normal for so long IMO.
As usual, the problem isn’t so much that the cost of everything is rising; It’s that wages aren’t keeping pace.
Sure, but that doesn't mean the game developers don't need to be paid. It's still a bargain for the work that's being done.
Developers have been underpaid for years. These increases are not going to them.
this would make sense if the game developers were being paid properly to begin with, rather than the leeches that are the c-suite taking more than they should
point to the wage increases for those developers
That's not inflation works. Inflation shouldn't apply to everything at the same rate.
My first computer costed the equivalent to 1000 euros. Do you think the average desktop should cost 3000?
That is how inflation works... when costs go up prices go up.
Yeah, your computer probably should cost a lot more in "today dollars" but because performance of components gets more efficient over time, you can likely get a better computer for less money.
It's the same reason you have a computer more powerful than multiple thousands of dollar super computers. The technology has improved enough you don't have to pay as much.
Do you think prices should just be locked in place for eternity at $60?
You can't just scale game prices linearly with inflation, sure costs of development have increased, not just because of inflation but also because games are much more complex now. But the gaming market has grown a lot and games are infinitely reproducible so that hugely increases profits.
I don't know how much we should pay for games, but just comparing it to inflation is useless
Games were $60 for so long everyone things it should be like that forever
"as long as people spend less money on games overall things will be fine!" Easy to say when you're retired from the industry. I don't think anyone in the industry would appreciate the implications of that...
Nintendo... not even pirated. Stop supporting their bullshit.
But every time I pirate one of their games they lose $80. So they say.
According to Nintendo my legitimate backed up software is causing them to loose money. At this point even if the legal way is wrong, then why not go full sail.
Playing Nintendo games, even when pirated, maintains their popularity.