gaming Games might cost $70 next gen.

[EpicEnergy 22,074]

20 hours ago, Pentium100 said:

The supply of copies of a game is infinite. This is not the same as some physical object where you have a limited amount of it. A new copy can be created for free and there is no maximum limit of copies (like there is a fixed amount of, say, oil in the ground).

There are still physical copies of games being manufactured that consumers buy, specifically discs. However, the amount of physical copies being bought are sharply declining, whereas the amount of digital copies being bought are sharply growing (more info). Therefore, your argument is still valid and reasonable.

20 hours ago, Pentium100 said:

So, no. Increasing the price AND having microtransactions is greed, pure and simple.

Greed is in human nature, but that does not mean greed is the motive behind every price increase. Perhaps it is the cost to create video games that is the cause behind their price increase. The cost varies considerably, but AAA games cost a significant amount of money to develop and costs are rising (more information).

[Ixrec 86]

Personally, AAA gaming has been steadily moving away from my interests for several years now, so this doesn't really change what I'll be doing. I was always unlikely to get a next gen console anyway (maaaaaaybe if Metroid Prime 4 or Halo Infinite come out). Pretty much every game I want to play any more is indie, or somewhere in that gray area between indie and AAA, and available on Steam and runs fine on my laptop. Plus, even AAA games that look interesting tend to be far better when you play them a while after release, partially because of patches and updates, partially because the price goes way down, but also because hype and anti-hype have died down enough that you can finally tell whether it was any good before paying for it yourself.

I do think that "those greedy bastards!" is an oversimplistic reaction to this, but back when I was paying attention there was a huge problem with game development costs rising out of control despite consumers not wanting to spend more, and with the used games market causing a huge portion of sales to effectively go to game stores instead of game developers/publishers/etc. Last I heard, one of the big reasons for the rise of paid DLC was actually to give people an incentive to buy new. Although now that physical discs are little more than a glorified DRM key, it sure seems like they could solve that by pushing everyone towards fully digital game distribution and cutting out all the middlemen to reduce costs (sorry Gamestop, but... you kinda are getting obsolete).

Either way, this does feel like a sign that not much has changed since I stopped paying attention, and the mismatch between dev costs and consumer willingness to spend has only gotten worse, which I can only assume means even more people will do more of the things I've been doing (play behind the curve, play more small/indie games, ignore console exclusives so you only need the PC you already own, etc).

Edited July 4, 2020 by Ixrec

[Pentium100 2,056]

4 hours ago, EpicEnergy said:

The cost varies considerably, but AAA games cost a significant amount of money to develop and costs are rising (more information).

And part of the cost is the insistence of publishers to do things the hard way and to create more and more costly games that are not necessarily better.

 

[Will Guide 21,325]

If you ask me, simply saying that they're doing it out of pure greed is an oversimplification. The cost of money has to be able to make a profit in order to pay everybody who made or works in the gaming industry a living and to make up for the cost of materials. It doesn't just apply to the gaming industry; itapplies to any kind of business. Including film and even the book industry. That's economy 101.

[EpicEnergy 22,074]

1 hour ago, Pentium100 said:

And part of the cost is the insistence of publishers to do things the hard way and to create more and more costly games that are not necessarily better.

 

It does not matter who caused the cost of developing video games to rise, the point is that the AAA video games are costly to develop and therefore one of the motives for the $70 cost for video games.

I would like to state, however, that even though I would argue that greed is not the major motive behind the $70 cost for video games, I still think that many AAA video game publishers are greedy due to the presence of microtransactions such as lootboxes in their video games.

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 40,278]

1 hour ago, Will Guide said:

If you ask me, simply saying that they're doing it out of pure greed is an oversimplification. The cost of money has to be able to make a profit in order to pay everybody who made or works in the gaming industry a living and to make up for the cost of materials. It doesn't just apply to the gaming industry; itapplies to any kind of business. Including film and even the book industry. That's economy 101.

The largest publishers, like 2K, make hundreds of millions in profit from games and the greedy practices they do within them, if not billions. 2K is under the Take-Two umbrella, of which Rockstar is also under. GTA V alone makes an insane amount of money in micro transaction sales. That's not even counting the amount it has made from game copy sales alone. 

Raising the price is greed in terms of these massive companies. They make more than enough money from everything else they do. Making us pay more for the cost of entry is nothing more than icing on the cake for them.

And "they have to pay for employees" makes me think of when Activision fired 800 people, around the exact same time they were reporting record revenue. These companies don't care in the slightest about people.

[CastletonSnob 3,025]

38 minutes ago, Kyoshi said:

The largest publishers, like 2K, make hundreds of millions in profit from games and the greedy practices they do within them, if not billions. 2K is under the Take-Two umbrella, of which Rockstar is also under. GTA V alone makes an insane amount of money in micro transaction sales. That's not even counting the amount it has made from game copy sales alone. 

Raising the price is greed in terms of these massive companies. They make more than enough money from everything else they do. Making us pay more for the cost of entry is nothing more than icing on the cake for them.

And "they have to pay for employees" makes me think of when Activision fired 800 people, around the exact same time they were reporting record revenue. These companies don't care in the slightest about people.

Companies like Activision don't even pay taxes. They put microtransactions in their games so they can get even MORE money.

Edited July 5, 2020 by VG_Addict

[Megas 27,063]

I'll go ahead and say this, some games I would be perfectly be content paying $70 for. But an annual franchise game as devious, deceptive and predatory as NBA 2K21 has no business charging itself $70

[joanro 247]

I wouldn’t have a problem with paying $70 for game as long as I know there isn’t going to be DLC or micro transactions in said game. That being said, I don’t think it would be worth it if the game has a bunch of DLC and micro transactions in it. For the record, I rarely buy games for $60 because I am cheap. I usually wait for price drops.

[Brony Number 42 9,927]

On 7/4/2020 at 9:16 AM, Justin_Case001 said:

Game prices are absolutely despicable.  I mean, why does a AAA movie cost a third of what a AAA game does?  You're telling me that games cost more to make than LOTR or f*ckin Avengers Endgame or whatever? 

You have a low bar for despicable. The answer to "why" is "because they can." Comparing games to movies is not that simple. I did a simple search, and I found that Call of Duty Black Ops sold 31M units. At $60 each that is $1.9G. That assumes every unit was sold at the max price, which they were not.

Marvel Endgame made $2.5G. That puts them in the same range. But that does not count all the money made from relicensing for toys and stuff.

Games are not a public good, nor a necessity. You are not entitled to them.

[Vefka 1,499]

I'm a loyal console gamer, but I swear if they rise games price and leave subscription for multiplayer, I'll go back to PC because of Steam. Gaben is pretty greedy, but even he knows that if I buy the full-price game, I can access to ALL functions of that game and I surely can play multiplayer without any additional subscription. He also knows that people around the world make different amount of money and Steam adapts to the region (fresh AAA game more than twice as expensive on PS Store than on Steam here!)

[Yakamaru 3,074]

Game companies want to have infinite expansion inside a finite market. It's one of the reasons prices for games are being jacked up and completely unfinished games are being released way too early. That and sheer corporate greed. 

It's one of the reasons I outright refuse to buy ANY game, because my money, time and attention are all very limited. Vote with your wallet, as it were. 

Another problem is brand loyalty. Stop blindly following a brand just because they made X game, or games, years ago. If they as companies don't deliver a bare minimum in terms of game quality people will be pissed, and for good reason.

Perfect more recent example would be Monster Hunter: World. On release it had very little graphics options, couldn't turn off bloom, UI was clunky and slow, +++. This is supposed to be a AAA game. You have DECADES of market research to take from. You have decades to know and understand what gamers/consumers want. Instead they deliver a ported mess. 

Though then again AAA markets and companies have slowly been losing traction and support for about a decade. Will only be a matter of time before they either realize their mistakes or end up dying as a game company.

[Evil Pink One 12,974]

Time to change hobbies then! Trixie! Lets ride!!!(my bike trinx)

[Pandora 38,004]

Most games are already 60$ so 10$ more wouldnt make a big deal considering most consoles give a huge discount

[Stardust 640]

Games are going up and up and up in price haha. I guess the cost of development. I guess that's why all the lootboxes and dlc and that.

And worse for you guys in certain countries in terms of pricing.

Apparently with nintendo switch games the cartridges cost so much to produce compared to something like a cd. 

Pc games especially indie stuff can often be very cheap though there is a big overflow of games, as well as older titles. In fact too many really. Is there gonna be another game industry collapse? 

On 7/4/2020 at 4:01 AM, ExplosionMare said:

I already paid $60 for Animal Crossing and I have to say, the whole price was not worth it due to not having free internet access on the game. They should go back to the 30-40 dollar price.

I get what you mean lol. I didn't buy one of the reasons I enjoyed animal crossing before is the time forwarding lol. I dislike nook and the whole debt thing rather than playing. Also I wanted pokemon instead haha. I also dislike the pay for online since you don't usually do that for pc games i'd pay if it was like a dollar or something but meh. At least include a month of internet with each game or something. I know animal crossing though has it's good points like customisability but I cba anymore and the price especially. I do want to play the doraemon seasons game eventually though. I might still be tempted to pay for online eventually if someone decides they want to battle with me in pokemon lol. 

Edited July 29, 2020 by flurry

[RDDash 18,864]

Games are never going to be 70$, no one is going to buy this shit. Keep in mind that nowadays people are buying a digital copies that's going to be outdated within a week because everything is online.

[Lord Valtasar 12,685]

big games already cost that much and more here, at least at launch, i didn't pay that much for it because i bought it used, but my Breath of the wild had a receipt in it's case for 65euro (76$)
and no, it was not a special edition of any kind, just the game

[Vefka 1,499]

48 minutes ago, flurry said:

Games are going up and up and up in price haha. I guess the cost of development. I guess that's why all the lootboxes and dlc and that.

As an amateur developer and a guy who loves and follows all that technical stuff, I tell you that with every generation it becomes easier to develop a game. Raytracing saves a lot of time because there's no need for various graphics tricks, new Unreal Engine 5 eliminates polycount limit (so you don't have to pay modellers for additional optimization), etc

But yeah, price only goes up and up

31 minutes ago, Lord Valtasar said:

but my Breath of the wild had a receipt in it's case for 65euro (76$)

Nintendo games are generally more expensive, Breath of the Wild costed ~90$ here on start

[Evil Pink One 12,974]

1 hour ago, flurry said:

Games are going up and up and up in price haha. I guess the cost of development. I guess that's why all the lootboxes and dlc and that.

And worse for you guys in certain countries in terms of pricing.

Apparently with nintendo switch games the cartridges cost so much to produce compared to something like a cd. 

Pc games especially indie stuff can often be very cheap though there is a big overflow of games, as well as older titles. In fact too many really. Is there gonna be another game industry collapse? 

I get what you mean lol. I didn't buy one of the reasons I enjoyed animal crossing before is the time forwarding lol. I dislike nook and the whole debt thing rather than playing. Also I wanted pokemon instead haha. I also dislike the pay for online since you don't usually do that for pc games i'd pay if it was like a dollar or something but meh. At least include a month of internet with each game or something. I know animal crossing though has it's good points like customisability but I cba anymore and the price especially. I do want to play the doraemon seasons game eventually though. I might still be tempted to pay for online eventually if someone decides they want to battle with me in pokemon lol. 

Actually the soft copy is more expenciyve than the cartridged ones...so its a lie by saying the cartridge is expensive... its nintendo thats expensive

[Stardust 640]

20 minutes ago, Kujamih said:

Actually the soft copy is more expenciyve than the cartridged ones...so its a lie by saying the cartridge is expensive... its nintendo thats expensive

It's more expensive to them but not to the consumer lol

Third party developers have to charge the same price for their digital copies as their cartridge also.

 

I prefer cartridge games though by far

Edited July 29, 2020 by flurry

[Splashee 28,537]

I'll by anything that isn't developed on Unity for $70, but it needs to be a physical release as well.

[Stone Cold Steve Jobs 22,410]

I miss when you could get a completed game for just $20.

[Cash In 21,509]

The US dollar is a bit different than the Australian dollar, but I can already tell you that it's been happening here for a while. 10 years ago, most new games would be about 69 or 79 AUD at maximum. These days, I see games that are 89 AUD and even 99 AUD. 

[Venomous 18,813]

If I really want the game, $70 out of my pocket is fine. I wouldn’t spend it if I didn’t feel the game was worth it.

[The Historian 515]

On 7/3/2020 at 10:57 AM, VG_Addict said:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/2/21311250/nba-2k21-playstation-5-xbox-series-x-versions-70-dollars-next-gen-price-increase-games

This might set a new trend of games costing $70. AAA developers might charge more for games that have less content so they can cram them with microtransactions, because that's how the industry works now; they try to see how much they can get away with. At what point do gamers say, "Enough is enough."?

You might say I'm jumping to conclusions or overreacting, but the game industry has done nothing to deserve the benefit of the doubt in recent years. I fully expect games to cost $70 next gen.

Games should already be at $70 or $75 but have remained at $60 despite that being the worse business choice. Why? So you'll continue to buy them. Then they supplement the initial revenue, which can easily result in a loss at the lower price point so they can keep the books in the black. Inflation has already made it so the investment cost for the consumer should already be higher but prices have remained lower.

Your opinion mirrors those who cannot look beyond their world to see the business need for the additional revenue. The games that will potentially be priced at $70 are not cheap productions and have a massive investment to them that companies need to recoup so they can continue, you know, making games. At the end of the day, they're business and anything that keeps them in black with enough leftover to survive through a flop or two is always good for them. You're free to dislike it but don't act like it's only about "making us pay more."