It’s surprising that games are getting cheaper compared to the cost of living. If you take into consideration the fact that games are becoming more expensive to produce, I really don’t understand it.
Gaming is way cheaper for me than it was during the ps2 or ps3 era.
We still have a ways to go before reaching the inflation-adjusted, $150-per-game peak of mass market games in the 1990’s. A key difference is games back then had way higher marginal cost (it’s near zero now).
The interesting thing is that the market is becoming a lot more like it was back then, full of people that only buy one or two games a year and only play those. Of course now, the model is retaining players with DLC and MTX, whereas in 1995 it was more because people could only afford one or two games a year.
Sorta kinda. We moved to 69.99 for major releases a while ago. Late 2000s in some territories, later in others.
In the US it was 59.99 for the CD era, but it was higher before when cart costs were a massive chunk of the retail price. I bought games that launched at 100 (or its local equivalent) in the 90s, particularly on SNES and N64.
But it’s true that prices have been super stable while moving from expensive carts to cheap CDs and then trivially expensive digital releases. Now there’s no way to cut costs on distribution (you’re already subsidizing storage, it’s just down to bandwidth, which is paid by the retailer anyway). So now inflation is catching up, since none of the money is going to making boxes, stamping CDs or shipping games in trucks. Now when inflation hits there’s no longer a way to hide the pricing impact, so it goes to sticker price.
And people are so used to that stability that they immediately rage on the Internet, if this thread is anything to go by, so the only answer is to hide more of the cost in MTX and dump the sticker price altogether.
Kinda argued against myself there. The real answer isn’t prices will “evenutally” go up, it’s that they will go down to zero and traditional gaming will become mobile gaming. That’s probably more likely.
Word of mouth provided by pirates is still great for the AAA games industry, regardless of what they’ll tell you, and only helps perpetuate these bad practices you’re pirating to get away from. 99.9% of users are unwilling to pirate games, and thus when you reference them, say you played or enjoyed them, talk about pirating them, etc., it’s essentially just free advertising for those games to people who would in all likelihood just purchase them if they wanted them.
Meanwhile, playing indie games gives those devs some cash flow to keep developing and gives free, word of mouth advertising to other people through references, recommendations, etc. The more successful indie games with good practices are, the better the games industry as a whole. It’s not a zero-sum game, but there is some tradeoff involved.
That’s not true. I’ve been a developer for 18 years on big AAA and small indie games. Most people I’ve worked with very much cared about pricing. When you work on a game and put years of hard work into it, you want it to be a success. If the game is not profitable, you might lose your job so of course you care when management shows up with a pricing strategy that doesn’t make sense to you. Sure, passion is a big part of making games but it’s also our job and we’re not oblivious to what the game we’re working on is worth.
Oh and yes, we do get bonuses based on the performance of the game.
I think there is maybe 1 game that I would consider spending 100 for the base game. And that’s because I love the series and it is very much a long term game for me, Street Fighter.
But that would be a very tough sell, it would have to be something really special to part with that much, even though I know I would get 1000s of hours out of it
You already spend more than 100 for Street Fighter and always have. The full roster for SF6 is currently 100/110 bucks. Not counting MTX and extra cosmetics.
Sure, you didn’t pay it all at once, but that’s no different than me buying SF2 and then Super SF2 the following year, each for seventy-ish bucks.
And the natural conclusion of that is why have the up front charge at all. You do the 2XKO thing or the Multiversus thing and just let people play and charge for the characters. Of course that may mean being online for purchase authentication, right?
I don’t like where that goes.
I think SF in particular is pretty sure it can pull a decent chunk of cash up front and not impact sales too much, so that’s better for them, since they’re monetizing all the casual players, but sitll. It’s a dynamic that’s in play and I don’t like it.
I think that’s missing a lot of the content. If SF6 was free to play, if wouldn’t have the single player portion. And would have had a couple of free characters.
2XKO is going to launch with something like 9 characters(might be missing remembering the number), Maybe they add more before release but it is a tiny roster for a tag game.
There is also massive changes between games, and they don’t disappear, so you can still have those tournaments. If it goes free to play, I feel like they kinda get stuck with the game and systems and no easy way to move onwards, with a bit of a PR nightmare(abandoning the game and all that).
I feel like there is pros and cons to both methods, but don’t really think f2p Street Fighter is a good move. I do think sf7 whenever that is released will be another paid game, and will be more expensive upfront.
Yeah, I have a love(like… tolerate)/hate relationship with the battle pass. I don’t mind it, cause it is cheap, pointless and you get your money back, and it is super easy to complete it.
But also, it can fuck off, battle passes suck in their timed implementation, it is pointless, you have to get premium currency to get it which is obviously not purchasable at the exact amount.
Only thing I think was good is that it bought in the emulated game catalogue.
in fact, if the online is as ridden with issues as 5’s online has been, I’ll probably just pirate it. Why would I want to pay $60+ just so I can get squeezed for even more money via microtransactions; and having to pay even more for a mod menu, just to exist in a server without being hassled? Fuck that with a rusty fork.
I’m not paying if its not below $30, why would i pay for $100? GTA 5 is already disappointing i’m pretty sure they chop even more thing up and make most content online only. $100 is already rm450 in my country and that’s almost 1/3 of minimum wages, I’ll continue to be stingy and spend my money on better stuff.
This is my ideology as well, not the piracy part but the I refuse to buy a game for more than $30 and that game better have rocked the internet in terms of how amazing it was. For prospective the last game that I purchased for $30 was Elden ring when it went on sale a few months back and the last one prior to that was satisfactory when it launched on epic games
How is GTA5 disappointing? I remember playing it a couple of years after release and it still is one of the best open world games I ever played. Even now, more than 10 years since I played it, I remember the main characters and even some secondary ones and part of the story (even though I only played it once). If anything, I think the GTA5 model is what all “service” games should be – excellent story and single player campaign and…whatever that online thing is. Frankly, I’ve never touched the online part in GTA5 but I hear it’s quite successful.
Regarding the price, I would personally probably pay a bit more for a really really good game. I don’t think the very good games selling for a premium are the problem, but the unfinished, reskinned and shitty games selling for 60-70. Like, how is Elden Ring released at the same price as Skull and Bones or FIFA <current-year>? Those should be 10-20 bucks, not the good games (assuming GTA6 will keep the quality bar up).
I’m glad you enjoy it and my opinion of it doesn’t negate your feeling, however i should say i find the middle part of the story to be very bland and the ending is forgettable. We’re also sold on the idea of heist but we only have the grand total of 5, which again, i find it very forgettable and bland.
In fact i still can remember a lot of San Andreas, but i can’t remember much about gta5.
Not a big fan of the idea of spreading the story focus amongst the trio too, i think i’d enjoy more if it’s just focus on Franklin.
The post game is also pretty empty, not much side story to do because they put their effort on online mode.
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AAA games can go suck my cock and balls. I’m not playing games anymore. I got no time. No energy. No money.
What? Don’t you want to make it your second job? The live service game experience? /s
If they do it, it would unfortunately still sell like hotcakes, being one of the most anticipated games of the past decade.
GTA players are genuinely dumbasses & just insane (but then so are most gamers)
GTA players haven’t spent any money since 2013
Well, someone’s paying half a billion in microtransactions in GTA Online every year.
Except the hundreds of millions they have spent year after year since then.
It’s surprising that games are getting cheaper compared to the cost of living. If you take into consideration the fact that games are becoming more expensive to produce, I really don’t understand it.
Gaming is way cheaper for me than it was during the ps2 or ps3 era.
We still have a ways to go before reaching the inflation-adjusted, $150-per-game peak of mass market games in the 1990’s. A key difference is games back then had way higher marginal cost (it’s near zero now).
The interesting thing is that the market is becoming a lot more like it was back then, full of people that only buy one or two games a year and only play those. Of course now, the model is retaining players with DLC and MTX, whereas in 1995 it was more because people could only afford one or two games a year.
They can price them at €200 for all I care. I’ll only will buy them when they are at €20 anyway.
Remember when Apple released the $1000 phone and it was a big thing?
Eventually this will be the normal.
Game budgets are crazy. In order to get the profits shareholders want they’ll charge as much as they can get away with.
Indies are actually performing well, so we might see a shift like we saw with film in the 90s.
I mean… yeah, give it a long enough time and it will be. Kinda how inflation works. “Eventually” is a pretty expansive word.
I’m pretty sure most major games have MSRPd for $60 since the 90s
Sorta kinda. We moved to 69.99 for major releases a while ago. Late 2000s in some territories, later in others.
In the US it was 59.99 for the CD era, but it was higher before when cart costs were a massive chunk of the retail price. I bought games that launched at 100 (or its local equivalent) in the 90s, particularly on SNES and N64.
But it’s true that prices have been super stable while moving from expensive carts to cheap CDs and then trivially expensive digital releases. Now there’s no way to cut costs on distribution (you’re already subsidizing storage, it’s just down to bandwidth, which is paid by the retailer anyway). So now inflation is catching up, since none of the money is going to making boxes, stamping CDs or shipping games in trucks. Now when inflation hits there’s no longer a way to hide the pricing impact, so it goes to sticker price.
And people are so used to that stability that they immediately rage on the Internet, if this thread is anything to go by, so the only answer is to hide more of the cost in MTX and dump the sticker price altogether.
Kinda argued against myself there. The real answer isn’t prices will “evenutally” go up, it’s that they will go down to zero and traditional gaming will become mobile gaming. That’s probably more likely.
deleted by creator
Why pirate shitty AAA games when you can spend your time getting a better experience by supporting indie devs financially and in word of mouth?
deleted by creator
Word of mouth provided by pirates is still great for the AAA games industry, regardless of what they’ll tell you, and only helps perpetuate these bad practices you’re pirating to get away from. 99.9% of users are unwilling to pirate games, and thus when you reference them, say you played or enjoyed them, talk about pirating them, etc., it’s essentially just free advertising for those games to people who would in all likelihood just purchase them if they wanted them.
Meanwhile, playing indie games gives those devs some cash flow to keep developing and gives free, word of mouth advertising to other people through references, recommendations, etc. The more successful indie games with good practices are, the better the games industry as a whole. It’s not a zero-sum game, but there is some tradeoff involved.
Fuck you.
Looks like PatientGamers’ membership numbers will be on the rise soon.
I never pay full price for a game.
Isthereanydeal.com
Humblebundle.com
Gog.com
Always running sales. If they aren’t just check history or set an alert on isthereanydeal and wait a bit.
This is the way.
Thank you for the first link, kind stranger.
Management are NOT DEVELOPERS.
Executives are NOT DEVELOPERS.
Shareholders are NOT DEVELOPERS.
Yeah, I guarantee you not a single developer gives two shits about how much the game costs. It’s not going into their pockets regardless.
That’s not true. I’ve been a developer for 18 years on big AAA and small indie games. Most people I’ve worked with very much cared about pricing. When you work on a game and put years of hard work into it, you want it to be a success. If the game is not profitable, you might lose your job so of course you care when management shows up with a pricing strategy that doesn’t make sense to you. Sure, passion is a big part of making games but it’s also our job and we’re not oblivious to what the game we’re working on is worth.
Oh and yes, we do get bonuses based on the performance of the game.
It might inspire me to continue not wasting my money, and buying everything on sale, if it’s worth it at all
For $100, it better have a strip club achievement that comes with a coupon for a free actual lap dance.
I have paid full price for a game in 10 years and GTA6 will be late to the PC party anyway. Looks like I won’t be playing it until 2035.
I don’t even buy a game when it’s 70…
At 80 there is no fucking way…
90, are they crazy? Never!
100? Lulz, go fuck yourself lunatic
I think there is maybe 1 game that I would consider spending 100 for the base game. And that’s because I love the series and it is very much a long term game for me, Street Fighter.
But that would be a very tough sell, it would have to be something really special to part with that much, even though I know I would get 1000s of hours out of it
You already spend more than 100 for Street Fighter and always have. The full roster for SF6 is currently 100/110 bucks. Not counting MTX and extra cosmetics.
Sure, you didn’t pay it all at once, but that’s no different than me buying SF2 and then Super SF2 the following year, each for seventy-ish bucks.
While true, the base game is still only 60.
If I had to spend an additional 40 for just the base game(not the 2 seasons of characters), that would be a much harder sell.
Sure.
And the natural conclusion of that is why have the up front charge at all. You do the 2XKO thing or the Multiversus thing and just let people play and charge for the characters. Of course that may mean being online for purchase authentication, right?
I don’t like where that goes.
I think SF in particular is pretty sure it can pull a decent chunk of cash up front and not impact sales too much, so that’s better for them, since they’re monetizing all the casual players, but sitll. It’s a dynamic that’s in play and I don’t like it.
I think that’s missing a lot of the content. If SF6 was free to play, if wouldn’t have the single player portion. And would have had a couple of free characters.
2XKO is going to launch with something like 9 characters(might be missing remembering the number), Maybe they add more before release but it is a tiny roster for a tag game.
There is also massive changes between games, and they don’t disappear, so you can still have those tournaments. If it goes free to play, I feel like they kinda get stuck with the game and systems and no easy way to move onwards, with a bit of a PR nightmare(abandoning the game and all that).
I feel like there is pros and cons to both methods, but don’t really think f2p Street Fighter is a good move. I do think sf7 whenever that is released will be another paid game, and will be more expensive upfront.
I do think fighting games are a special case because the DLC is so obvious that the seasonal microtransaction stuff is not as much of a focus.
But hey, SF6 did add a battlepass, so… it’s moving in that direction. We’ll see.
Yeah, I have a love(like… tolerate)/hate relationship with the battle pass. I don’t mind it, cause it is cheap, pointless and you get your money back, and it is super easy to complete it.
But also, it can fuck off, battle passes suck in their timed implementation, it is pointless, you have to get premium currency to get it which is obviously not purchasable at the exact amount.
Only thing I think was good is that it bought in the emulated game catalogue.
if it’s higher than $60, R* can lick my taint.
in fact, if the online is as ridden with issues as 5’s online has been, I’ll probably just pirate it. Why would I want to pay $60+ just so I can get squeezed for even more money via microtransactions; and having to pay even more for a mod menu, just to exist in a server without being hassled? Fuck that with a rusty fork.
FTFY
I’m not paying if its not below $30, why would i pay for $100? GTA 5 is already disappointing i’m pretty sure they chop even more thing up and make most content online only. $100 is already rm450 in my country and that’s almost 1/3 of minimum wages, I’ll continue to be stingy and spend my money on better stuff.
They deserve piracy.
This is my ideology as well, not the piracy part but the I refuse to buy a game for more than $30 and that game better have rocked the internet in terms of how amazing it was. For prospective the last game that I purchased for $30 was Elden ring when it went on sale a few months back and the last one prior to that was satisfactory when it launched on epic games
How is GTA5 disappointing? I remember playing it a couple of years after release and it still is one of the best open world games I ever played. Even now, more than 10 years since I played it, I remember the main characters and even some secondary ones and part of the story (even though I only played it once). If anything, I think the GTA5 model is what all “service” games should be – excellent story and single player campaign and…whatever that online thing is. Frankly, I’ve never touched the online part in GTA5 but I hear it’s quite successful.
Regarding the price, I would personally probably pay a bit more for a really really good game. I don’t think the very good games selling for a premium are the problem, but the unfinished, reskinned and shitty games selling for 60-70. Like, how is Elden Ring released at the same price as Skull and Bones or FIFA <current-year>? Those should be 10-20 bucks, not the good games (assuming GTA6 will keep the quality bar up).
The microtransactions kept a very steady flow of hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter to Rockstar, so yeah, it’s absurdly successful
can’t play online without hacks unfortunately. sad state of affairs. but overall, game wasn’t bad except for the money grab with sharkbucks
I’m glad you enjoy it and my opinion of it doesn’t negate your feeling, however i should say i find the middle part of the story to be very bland and the ending is forgettable. We’re also sold on the idea of heist but we only have the grand total of 5, which again, i find it very forgettable and bland.
In fact i still can remember a lot of San Andreas, but i can’t remember much about gta5.
Not a big fan of the idea of spreading the story focus amongst the trio too, i think i’d enjoy more if it’s just focus on Franklin.
The post game is also pretty empty, not much side story to do because they put their effort on online mode.
Overall it’s a pretty mid game to me.
Thats a no from me dawg