I spent a few days with the free saints row and it was… Fine, but I didn’t finish it. There’s not much challenge or depth to the game, and the writing is just okay at best.
Maybe I’m old but I’ll never buy a live service game, I mean I don’t like to play with people anyway, but there are multiple solo games with a bunch of MTX in the top of AAA price and they can shut down servers any time, and that’s stupid
I spent many years on World of Warcraft. I am a solo gamer too so it didn’t make much sense, but every now and then I’d bump into someone and we’d form a lasting memory.
I met a college professor 30 years older than me and we became very close friends entirely by accident. Hell, as silly as it is I had a very deep love for her.
She seen me jumping into a wall one evening (glitch in Stormwind) and she asked me what I was doing. I took her under the city and showed her my spot. I thought that was that, but a few nights later I was down there and she popped in and said, “I thought I might find you here.”
For months I did nothing but sit under Stormwind and talk to her. She was one of the most incredible people I had ever met. We came from completely different worlds. I was an uneducated, white, hillbilly junkie. She was a very educated black college professor and activist who was in a totally different place in her life.
In no other reality would we have connected like we did. She was legit my best friend in the whole world for a time. We went from text to ventrilo and in my mind, I don’t remember it as staring at a screen and talking through a microphone. I remember it like I was there. (Edit: I remember her actual face in my memories too, because we connected on social media and talked there as well. Crazy how memory works.)
Ignoring the high quality cinematics, the gameplay felt cheap. Especially since the blueprint they were following was a set of games from almost a decade ago that did it hundreds of times better.
Baldur’s Gate 3 10% off historically (10%, gog, Dec 21 2023)
These are just the ones I’m familiar with off the top of my head. Of them, only Baldur’s Gate 3’s discount levels are what I would call “healthy”. 10% for Christmas and no discount since means it’s doing well.
I’d say anything under 30% is simply a reflection of how high the profit margins are for sellers. Seeing as 30% is the industry fee tacked onto titles by storefronts.
Star Wars, Starfield (Not a good game at all), Resi, and Persona are all ‘free’ on GamePass. So they’ve most likely already made their expected profit from sales if going that route was the more profitable decision. That really just leaves SF6, which these days isn’t that strong a franchise and fighting games are niche.
Videogames are the largest entertainment industry in the world, dwarfing books, film, and music. The industry is seeing record profits year-on-year. Add to that gaming being one of the most resilient entertainment forms during economic downturns due to its price-to-hour ratio, I don’t see these discounts being a reflection of market difficulties.
Didn’t DLC and MTX come about because consumers wouldn’t accept a rise in sticker price for games?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, either, you may very well have a point. I’m just having a hard time reconciling “We added DLC in order to make more money since we can’t raise the sticker price” with “30% discounts are a reflection of how high the profit margins are for sellers”
Lots of those games are nearly a year old, were way overhyped vs their actual reviews, or had technical issues that may or may not have been resolved.
The Baldurs gate discount is only 10% because its still very popular but the sales have dipped a bit because their initial fan base already bought it.
Those are just bog standard game discounts that have been going on forever for common reasons. They have nothing at all to do with the industry, which is making record profits, laying off people to make even more record profits.
I literally googled “recent aaa titles” and picked the first 6~ off of the list. I don’t hold any personal opinions of any of them except for Starfield, which I have seen my roommate play.
Regarding Starfield: it seemed to me that it was a 6/10 game.
Discounts over time are a perfectly standard part of their pricing strategy. It’s not even mildly unhealthy. Resellers don’t count at all, because that’s always their strategy.
The unusual part of suicide squad and skull and bones is that they’re brand new games. The discounts are not huge because there’s a problem with the market. They’re huge because they’re dogshit excuses for products and nobody is stupid enough to buy them.
A game having a significant sale 6 months or a year later is perfectly normal behavior. It tells you absolutely nothing about the industry. It’s worked that way for decades. It’s not the tiniest bit unusual.
Anthem? Immortals of Avuem? Starfield? Forspoken? Pretty much every bad game discounts early, because word of mouth spreads, independent reviewers review, amd sales plummet. Even Starfield had a 25% discount about a month after release once people realized the magic was missing.
Diablo 4 got 40% off within a few months
I find AAA games are increasingly starting with a high price point to capitalize on the hype and advertising campaign, and once that peters out they quickly reduce the price.
It is trash, and Last Epoch launched at half the price being twice as good if not more this year, and with an offline mode. Diablo 4 was my biggest disappointment last year. Blizzard is a husk of its former self, amazing how mask off greedy they have become.
No, this is a sign they made a shit game, and are trying as hard as they can to break even.
I suppose that one could make the argument about it being market difficulties, if one meant the difficulty that “AAA” devs have understanding that a shit game cannot just be pushed out the door and make literally all the money, when it is in fact absolute shit.
I didn’t mean to be that vague. And you’re right. I think part of the problem is that some studios have lost touch with what their customers want in even the broadest sense.
It’s amazing that a game with 2 unknown D tier characters on a 4 man roster is charging AAA prices for a live service game. No way that soulless cash grab is ever going to see 3 years old.
Lethal company, Pacific Drive, Helldivers 2, balatro… so many good indie* games for $10 to $40 while these $70 games are burning in. All of them overwhelmingly positive too. Really makes you think about the games market and the ones who are actually taking risks and innovating.
*Helldivers isn’t indie, but I also wouldn’t describe them as AAA either.
If they’re getting money through micro transactions they can charge absolutely precisely £0. I can’t be bothered paying for a game that isn’t complete.
Nowadays it’s $70 pricetag + paid battlepass + micro transactions + paid expansions. All this money yet every triple A game is getting shittier and shitter.
My rule of thumb is to avoid all F2Ps like the plague. If it’s free, you are the product. I learned that lesson the hard way when I was younger, and the F2P market was still in its infancy.
Here’s what’s great about “Live service”. In the old days, they had to make the original game great to get your money. Then, if they wanted more of your money, they had to release “expansion packs” and make them similarly great to convince you to give them more money. With “Live Service”, you’re giving them your money ahead of time, for nothing, and they can decide what scraps of shit they give you in return - such as a single new character being added after months of payments. /s
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Cool, I may try in the future when Epic offers it for free.
I said that about the new Saints Row. Then when it was free, I still didn’t.
I spent a few days with the free saints row and it was… Fine, but I didn’t finish it. There’s not much challenge or depth to the game, and the writing is just okay at best.
20 minutes on twitch showed immediately it was a soul-less game for me.
Maybe I’m old but I’ll never buy a live service game, I mean I don’t like to play with people anyway, but there are multiple solo games with a bunch of MTX in the top of AAA price and they can shut down servers any time, and that’s stupid
I spent many years on World of Warcraft. I am a solo gamer too so it didn’t make much sense, but every now and then I’d bump into someone and we’d form a lasting memory.
I met a college professor 30 years older than me and we became very close friends entirely by accident. Hell, as silly as it is I had a very deep love for her.
She seen me jumping into a wall one evening (glitch in Stormwind) and she asked me what I was doing. I took her under the city and showed her my spot. I thought that was that, but a few nights later I was down there and she popped in and said, “I thought I might find you here.”
For months I did nothing but sit under Stormwind and talk to her. She was one of the most incredible people I had ever met. We came from completely different worlds. I was an uneducated, white, hillbilly junkie. She was a very educated black college professor and activist who was in a totally different place in her life.
In no other reality would we have connected like we did. She was legit my best friend in the whole world for a time. We went from text to ventrilo and in my mind, I don’t remember it as staring at a screen and talking through a microphone. I remember it like I was there. (Edit: I remember her actual face in my memories too, because we connected on social media and talked there as well. Crazy how memory works.)
That alone made the service game worth it haha.
We live in an interesting time. That’s for sure.
Didn’t this just happen with WB last Batman game that didn’t have Batman in it?
Like just a year or so ago?
Gotham Knights
Got it for free. Didn’t play it much.
Ignoring the high quality cinematics, the gameplay felt cheap. Especially since the blueprint they were following was a set of games from almost a decade ago that did it hundreds of times better.
Same thing happened to D4 and starfield.
First the AAAA pirate game gets a price cut, then this.
Apprently the AAAA stood for “Ass All Actual Activities” as the game has basically nothing to do in it.
If this isn’t a sign of market difficulties, I’m not sure what would be.
A sign of a bad game?
This game is hardly the only one being discounted heavily and early on in it’s life cycle, it’s just the most egregious example that I’m aware of.
Any massively popular titles being discontinued heavily and early that you can think of?
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor 55% off right now (Steam)
Street Fighter 6 44% off right now (Fanatical)
Starfield 33% off right now (40%, microsoft store, Feb 8 2024)
Fairing a little bit better than the above:
Resident Evil 4 Remake 25% off right now (Steam)
Persona 3 Reload 15% off right now GameBillet
Baldur’s Gate 3 10% off historically (10%, gog, Dec 21 2023)
These are just the ones I’m familiar with off the top of my head. Of them, only Baldur’s Gate 3’s discount levels are what I would call “healthy”. 10% for Christmas and no discount since means it’s doing well.
I’d say anything under 30% is simply a reflection of how high the profit margins are for sellers. Seeing as 30% is the industry fee tacked onto titles by storefronts.
Star Wars, Starfield (Not a good game at all), Resi, and Persona are all ‘free’ on GamePass. So they’ve most likely already made their expected profit from sales if going that route was the more profitable decision. That really just leaves SF6, which these days isn’t that strong a franchise and fighting games are niche.
Videogames are the largest entertainment industry in the world, dwarfing books, film, and music. The industry is seeing record profits year-on-year. Add to that gaming being one of the most resilient entertainment forms during economic downturns due to its price-to-hour ratio, I don’t see these discounts being a reflection of market difficulties.
Didn’t DLC and MTX come about because consumers wouldn’t accept a rise in sticker price for games?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, either, you may very well have a point. I’m just having a hard time reconciling “We added DLC in order to make more money since we can’t raise the sticker price” with “30% discounts are a reflection of how high the profit margins are for sellers”
They came out because the rise of the Internet made it possible and companies found new ways to make more money.
Horse armour wasn’t about recouping costs.
Lots of those games are nearly a year old, were way overhyped vs their actual reviews, or had technical issues that may or may not have been resolved.
The Baldurs gate discount is only 10% because its still very popular but the sales have dipped a bit because their initial fan base already bought it.
Those are just bog standard game discounts that have been going on forever for common reasons. They have nothing at all to do with the industry, which is making record profits, laying off people to make even more record profits.
I literally googled “recent aaa titles” and picked the first 6~ off of the list. I don’t hold any personal opinions of any of them except for Starfield, which I have seen my roommate play.
Regarding Starfield: it seemed to me that it was a 6/10 game.
None of those games are that recent.
Discounts over time are a perfectly standard part of their pricing strategy. It’s not even mildly unhealthy. Resellers don’t count at all, because that’s always their strategy.
The unusual part of suicide squad and skull and bones is that they’re brand new games. The discounts are not huge because there’s a problem with the market. They’re huge because they’re dogshit excuses for products and nobody is stupid enough to buy them.
every game on that list was released after Jan 1, 2023. If that is not “recent” then I have no idea what is.
3 months is recent.
A game having a significant sale 6 months or a year later is perfectly normal behavior. It tells you absolutely nothing about the industry. It’s worked that way for decades. It’s not the tiniest bit unusual.
Anthem? Immortals of Avuem? Starfield? Forspoken? Pretty much every bad game discounts early, because word of mouth spreads, independent reviewers review, amd sales plummet. Even Starfield had a 25% discount about a month after release once people realized the magic was missing.
Did you just call anthem a “massively popular title”
It was popular… Before it released
Ah shit, youre right. Must of misread it.
Then Just Starfield I think.
We’re saying the same thing. Bad games drop in price early.
Diablo 4 got 40% off within a few months I find AAA games are increasingly starting with a high price point to capitalize on the hype and advertising campaign, and once that peters out they quickly reduce the price.
Wasn’t Diablo 4 kinda trash as well? Just looking on steam and it’s rated mixed, with people complaining about the monetisation of the game.
It’s a shame what Blizzard has become, because they used to make amazing games.
Gotta distinguish popularity from ratings.
Diablo 4 is maybe a mediocre game, but it sold truckloads.
It is trash, and Last Epoch launched at half the price being twice as good if not more this year, and with an offline mode. Diablo 4 was my biggest disappointment last year. Blizzard is a husk of its former self, amazing how mask off greedy they have become.
No, this is a sign they made a shit game, and are trying as hard as they can to break even.
I suppose that one could make the argument about it being market difficulties, if one meant the difficulty that “AAA” devs have understanding that a shit game cannot just be pushed out the door and make literally all the money, when it is in fact absolute shit.
I didn’t mean to be that vague. And you’re right. I think part of the problem is that some studios have lost touch with what their customers want in even the broadest sense.
It’s amazing that a game with 2 unknown D tier characters on a 4 man roster is charging AAA prices for a live service game. No way that soulless cash grab is ever going to see 3 years old.
I don’t even trust that they will leave the servers up so people can play online so 40% off is still to high. Even 70%.
Make it 90% and I’ll start considering it.
Make it 100% and I’ll start considering it.
Yarrr
Not enough of a discount to care
literally couldn’t pay me to play it
I’d like to see them try, though…
Lethal company, Pacific Drive, Helldivers 2, balatro… so many good indie* games for $10 to $40 while these $70 games are burning in. All of them overwhelmingly positive too. Really makes you think about the games market and the ones who are actually taking risks and innovating.
*Helldivers isn’t indie, but I also wouldn’t describe them as AAA either.
Helldivers studio is about 100 people, they’re closer to indie than AAA.
If they’re getting money through micro transactions they can charge absolutely precisely £0. I can’t be bothered paying for a game that isn’t complete.
I’m also not paying for a game that might be unplayable in a few months due to lack of players.
Nowadays it’s $70 pricetag + paid battlepass + micro transactions + paid expansions. All this money yet every triple A game is getting shittier and shitter.
My rule of thumb is to avoid all F2Ps like the plague. If it’s free, you are the product. I learned that lesson the hard way when I was younger, and the F2P market was still in its infancy.
Here’s what’s great about “Live service”. In the old days, they had to make the original game great to get your money. Then, if they wanted more of your money, they had to release “expansion packs” and make them similarly great to convince you to give them more money. With “Live Service”, you’re giving them your money ahead of time, for nothing, and they can decide what scraps of shit they give you in return - such as a single new character being added after months of payments. /s