lol same! I remember this conversation back in the day, its crazy we're still having it, you'd think people would realize $70 game is bad (I for the longest time even said 60 was too much) but nope! :P
I mean, governments are still following a policy of maintaining currency devaluation (inflation) for the benefit of the wealthy 1%. Devs have to buy their groceries at the same stores you do.
@@mups4016 How is raising your price to match inflation "price gouging"? You're being charged more for everything you need to buy. So why wouldn't you raise the price of your product in order to afford necessities? Is it price gouging when workers negotiate a higher wage (i.e. price of their services)? Blame governments devaluing currency, not workers.
"We need loot boxes and microtransactions because the price of video games is too low." [Price of Video Games Increases] "Well let's not be hasty, there's no reason to throw out a perfectly good monetization scheme."
i can never pay that much for a game (im poor as heck) but I'm happy that there are a lot of developers out there that still push through and make games for limited / low power hardware for people to enjoy.
Exactly, I only play games if they’re less than half the original price and even then i still hesitate to buy. I just don’t have faith in any games today to commit to that much of an investment
Extra Credit implying that games will have to be more expensive to necessitate not having microtransactions baffles me because it's a plain example of a false dilemma they're trying to argue as fact; You can have cheap games with no microtransactions and you can have expensive games with very aggressive monetization. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Sadly, they were kinda right. You CAN have both, but we're in the future. We know how many "small games" studio shuttered because companies wanted to funnel in on trying to capture the Fortnite kids. We saw Microsoft shutting a GOTY studio less than a year because they want more people in the COD mines. Just this week we saw the most gigantic flop of a shooter from Sony since the Vita (and honestly, that's an insult to the vita. Even in the west it lasted a year lmao). But you know they gonna make 3 more GaaS anyway. They still make good single player games, but the writings been on the wall for a while. As some other comment said, "we don't make games anymore. We make services".
@@raze2012_Who was "kinda right"? Certainly not extra credit, because their argument assumes, if price rise, less microtransaction. Well, price rise, still microtransaction everywhere. It's just, the logic behind the reasoning is inconsistent with the reality in front of us. Also, concord is kind of irrelevant, First off pretty sure it was a 40$ game, so it's not really very comparable in the first place, but it did NOT fail because of it's price point, at least not mainly. We KNOW that it didn't fail because of price because nobody bought it, EVEN THO it's price barrier to entry is actually lower than full price, and while it's not the FREE many people thought it should have been due to the monetization model of other team shooters, we have seen MORE expensive games succeed without scaring off potential buyers, and we've seen less expensive games succeed by like, people playing them and being interested in them? The problem with Concord isn't 40$, the problem with Concord is that nobody wanted to play concord, it would have failed at literally ANY price point. Maybe making it literally free would have helped the low player count on some level, but that doesn't automatically mean you're going to sell 1$billion in microtransactions for a game that generated almost all of it's interest by virtue of it dieing spectacularly, Free is not going to fix the issue that basically nobody wanted that game in the first place.
That entire argument is ridiculous, when you can have large AAA games made for as "little" as 50 million and have big bloated nothing burgers for nearly ten times that budget the problem isn't the price it's the ridiculous and pointless spending of big budget studios. And the fact that games for 60 buckaroos flat can and absolutely do make insane profits, with no MTX involved. Selling for 70 with an ingame shop is an insult to you as a customer.
@@pptemplar5840 No I think, Extra Credit's point was to do a satire on the idea of "price X goes up, Y means MTX is either less or none existent" and how dishonest that mentality can be mainly by executives and CEO/COOs, hence the "oh well"; this shows that predicitably nobody in a CEO/executive position will never not be some disconnected fool. As the idea is of them not caring what consumers want, the rammifications from the developer being laid off/studio being shutdown. Even Luke Stephens said that it's entirely impossible to get fools like this out of high positions the same ones glazing 70 usd (even an independent artist I knew off Twitter was foolish enough to argue for this in this case as in like with the video) -- we simply just have to really vote with our wallets, say no, don't pre-order, just buy indie games and that's it. Yes I know that the "don't preorder" clause can be taking not seriously but again, it does to show how easily it is to not follow through with this and why many things won't change.
It's funny cause never ever want to spend a lot on big budget AAA games( games in my country are expensive), but i ended up buying all the dlc for deep rock just cause the game is that good and i wanted to support the devs
There is unironically an inversely proportional relationship between how much a game in my library costs and how much time I spent playing it. Pretty graphics and celebrity voice actors aren't high on my list when it comes to entertainment value. Unique and interesting gameplay is. Not a lot of that going around in AAA these days.
Depends on the game, I'd say. But to put a number on it? Maybe 1-2% of games priced that way would be acceptable. Even then, wouldn't expect folks to bite at that line.
No regrets for Demon Souls in giving Sony an extra $10 tip. Their whole upcoming roadmap of future $70 games is a gigantic NO FRICKING THANKS. In waiting for a sale I know I’m just going to get more upset and actually dive into my backlog. Sony doesn’t want me to do that because I won’t emerge until that game I had wanted is now $15 instead of the reasonable $39-$55 range
@@captaincrunch1707 I've got a LOAD of games from a second hand videogame store they literally have everything. I've bought bundled used PS4 games 5 for $15
@@toastytoad8154 At the end of The Secret of Monkey Island, after defeating LeChuck, you have a conversation with Elaine Marley and this is one of the dialogue options.
@@toastytoad8154 Right at the end, after defeating Lechuck. The only thing after that conversation is the end credits roll and the message "Turn your computer off and go to sleep".
Diablo 4 is 70 bucks and has a 3 tied battle pass. Games shouldn’t be 70, 60, or 50. They should all be 40 and lower specially when they’re dropping millions in advertising and not the game. It doesn’t take 200 million to make cyberpunk. It takes 50 million and then 150 million for advertising
Of which, a MUCH more efficient and cheaper on scale, modern-day advertising system is to allow content creators to make relatively early videos to DISPLAY the product. If a gamer SEES a game that actually looks good, they WILL buy it. If all that they've seen is a generic collage of "game-like" moments, followed by the confirmation that it's gonna have 5 tiers of pre-order, they won't be buying into it.
I agree with the video. And it is just disheartening that the fact 69.99 was "accepted" by the casual market, now they are pushing upwards of 79.99 to 99.99 for the "deluxe" edition xD. IN JUST 3 YEARS TIME (2024 atm)!
You do realise that’s literally just adjusting for inflation, right? 70$ today is equivalent to 60.34 dollars in 2021. But I guess “games are staying he’s some price” isn’t as catchy a headline… you know this video is unironically unethical game journalism, right?
@azlanadil3646 ah, someone didn't watch the vid huh? Scrolling to fight people for the boots you lick? Inflation is a factor, and it's affected EVERYTHING and not just gaming. It's not sustainable as people can wait for sales or not buy as other things are far more important. I suppose calling the vid unethical is so much easier than countering the points made. It's not sustainable and that's a fact. Use some critical thinking instead of repeating the catch all terms you read about to validate your purchases.
@@dychostarr Ok, I guess I have nothing better to do. He said that movie tickets can’t be compared to video games because movie tickets are a one time experience, whereas video games are something you buy to own. This is a really good point. For raising the price of video games. Movie tickets are a one time purchase of two-three hours for nine dollars. That comes out to 3$ per hour of entertainment. Compare that to a game like Elden ring which cost 75$ where I live. That comes out to around 2$ per hour since most people tend to not finish games. If you do compete Elden ring that’s easily a third to a quarter of the cost of a movie ticket per hour of entertainment. Now you might say, well not every game is Elden ring. Well fair enough. Not every movie is Oppenheimer. There’s plenty of bid studio films that need their over bloated budgets trimmed and can’t turn profits. Just like there’s many over bloated video games that should have their budgets trimmed. Executives and shareholders should not have this much influence over the industry, I agree, but unless you’re planning a communist revelation I don’t see that happening… ever. I would also disagree with your idea of “over bloated”, particularly RDR2. All those tiny details he mentioned could be removed, and sure it would probably save money. Most people probably didn’t notice them anyways. If you think about it, did the horse grooming mechanics really need to be there? Did the mechanics for Arthur’s hair? I’d be willing to bet most players didn’t engage with gambling to a serious extent whither,so you could probably remove that too. I mean, most side quests and side characters were probably not noticed my most people either, so those can go to. I mean, only 20% of players even finished the game on Steam. That’s so few, might as well cut out the ending entirely for the PC port. That’d probably save a ton of money. You know it’s funny. People argue that most video games are assembly made soulless projects that aren’t worth the increased price. Then they complain that game studios spend too much time focusing on the little details, and should just try to make a product as cheaply and quickly as possible. You complain that you want less studio involvement in games. I agree, but you do realise that if you let the artists and the devs make the decisions they will spend more time on tiny details, right? I promise you no executive asked for horse balls mechanics. That came from the devs. It will result in better games. It will not result in cheaper games. Sorry for the essay post, but you’re the one who said I’m not engaging enough with the arguments. I know there’s a good chance you won’t read all that. That’s fine.
As well as the rest of upper management who do nothing all day but snort snow and work out more ways to appeal to investors while stepping on the consumer and developers.
@@plebisMaximus the investors are the biggest issue here. They want a return on investment and they don't care how they get it, so long as it happens. The second a company becomes publically traded ,the quality of product is pretty much guaranteed to drop, whether that's bit by bit or all at once.
@@Weldedhodag The worst part is they don't even care to get that return by selling products. Tech is just one huge Ponzi scheme now where investors pay investors to get more investors in.
If we were guaranteed that the extra 10 bucks was 100% going toward developer salaries (or at least the development studio itself), rather than to execs/publishers, I'd be fine with the price increase. But it isn't, so I'm not.
It actually is, in the case of your pfp. Nintendo increased salaries, and still has the industry standard for compensation. Besides that, you dont live in timeless bubble, 70usd today is like 30 usd 20 years ago.
It literally is going towards salaries because that’s how these companies work, they raise end user prices to try and keep up with increased wage demands. They also waste it on marketing and layers of consulting firms which only stifle creativity
"A product is worth exactly the amount that the consumer is willing to pay for it" Except for the fact that you can't buy a cheaper incarnation of, say, Ass-Cred - like you could buy cheaper sausages. Entertainment is by design an exclusive product and if a game is too expensive for you - you buy a different game. On the other hand - there are plenty of stupid whales that are willing to support an extortion scheme like this with their wallets. I am one too - I'm just very particular about the nature of the game. Specifically: I'd pay even 100$ for a Cyan game on day1 if it's on GoG - just because I am a simp for both those companies.
@@SGresponse You could wait for a discount or buy used or simply not buy the game and get your entertainment elsewhere. Point is it's still dictated by the customer
10 bucks more is not the outrageous part. Sure, our money is steadily becoming worthless. The problem is that 60 bucks is already insane for what you’re getting in return.
yes, so games have been cheaper and cheaper since inflation exists, even at 70 dollars, it is still cheaper than 20 years ago, but now we have steam sales and can pirate almost any game without risking our computers exploading, what are you even complaining about? talking about economics but not figuring this out is funny to me.
@@totidoki05 honestly, I’m surprised YOU haven’t figured it out. Videogames used to me a niche hobby that maybe 1 in 100 people played on a regular basis. People owned maybe one or two games. Because of this, to make up for development costs and to make a profit, they needed to charge a LOT for a game. Very few people are going to buy it, so it’s hard to make your money back without this price tag Fast forward to today, 40% of the GLOBAL population play videogames, a majority of all Americans play videogames on a regular basis, the gaming industry is a multi hundred billion dollar global industry. Suddenly, because so many people are buying games (3.4 billion) you don’t need to sell them at the equivalent of 120 USD in modern money. This is called the economics of scale. Demand is high, supply has reached a point where it is perfectly saturated. Increase prices demand goes down, too much supply, price has to go down, of you will have to make less games. In the games industry, everyone can make a game. You, me, your dog. It’s limitless. Games are being made regardless, at prices that are fair. So the only way to be competitive and fully utilize the market and make the most money is sell games at a competitive price (60 USD in this case) Games are a cheap disposable goods. You are not expected to play a game for hundreds of hours (though there are exceptions) many people don’t even complete their games. As a form of entertainment they are somewhat good value, and fit a niche in the entertainment industry that movies used to but no longer. If games are truly unprofitable why is it such a massive industry with such big figures such as tech giants Microsoft and Samsung investing sickening amounts of money in it? They ARE profitable as is, actually one of the most profitable entertainment products you can make compared to films. They sell for longer, and have higher audience retention. Defending massive megacorps for trying to greedily extract every last penny from the consumer is not the big win you are looking for.
I’ve also heard people unironically say that if a game is 70 hours, it’s worth it since you’re paying $1 per hour. Can you imagine if Game Pass charged you $1 for every hour you played? Everyone would riot.
@@princeCustos324 Who’s to say their next history vids aren’t going to get tainted and made completely incorrect? They’ve set the precedent that they want video games to stop accurately depicting WWII in multiplayer matches since half of the lobby automatically is German soldiers for a match or two
I feel like Square Enix, Paradox and Capcom and the only good AAA publishers remaining. I really miss THQ. THQ Nordic is really good also, but don't make many AAA games, I think the only AAA game they make is the Darksiders.
@@napa5235i remember there being a controversy surrounding Capcom at some point, think it had something to do with treatment of employees or something? edit: forgot to add this: i don’t entirely remember if that’s true or not, if you want you can obviously just go look yourself, honestly it could’ve been one of the many other companies being exposed for crap like that too
@@dreamareakoso3791 pretty sure it was true but unfortunately it wasn't a huge thing because it's so common, Japanese office work (or just work in general I guess) culture is actually just horrible
Let's also not forget that a lot of these development budgets are insanely bloated. A lot of money goes to waste, and they would rather charge you more than make development more efficient.
And advertisement has become less and less effective, thus making budgets balloon further. It's so unsustainable but these companies find ways to ruin everything but thenselves.
I hate this discussion. I hate it hate it hate it. Seriously take a look at the increase in customers from 2005 to nowadays in the digital, but especially video-game market. They increased by 4 digit percentages. Take a look at the profit of AAA games back then compared to now. The discrepancy in between expense and gain is growing even more insane with each year. For fucks sake, we could go back to 50$ for AAA games and the math would still make those games more profitable than in 2005. Also, GTA 5 Online. Just saying. Still milking that game 8 years later while having no customer support at all, having it overrun with hackers on PC and mediocre updates every once in 8 months. Lets be honest, the current development on the market is mostly rigged for the companies already, at least when we talk about AAA games. This whole debate has been started by exactly those companies with extremely limited evidence provided, while the existing evidence forms a clear case against their proclaimed "necessity" of a higher price. The only area where I am pretty much agreeing on that agenda, is when we talk about indie games. I feel it is unfair when a fresh, well designed and ultimately ambitious Hollow Knight is priced at 10$ while we get that 60$ reskin for our next Ubisoft game or the next EA title, with the whole development for it basically being a cinematic trailer and massive asset shifts from earlier games. Nice video though, like and subscribe!
"But hallways are bad, linearity is bad for undisclosed and undefined reasons. We need to make _everything_ open world. Otherwise we might be insulting akira Snowflake toriyama..." -Typical "videogame" company ceo
HK is one of my favorite games but the devs priced it that way in order for it to get more attention and for more people to say "oh that's cheap I can buy that." It's like the subway $5 footlong thing, it's not about the value itself, it's about getting people to actually buy it (which makes them more money in the end). But now, they could price silksong at $60 and it would still sell millions. If I was them I would make a point to make silksong full priced so that it sets a precedent that indie games can go for that much. No reason indie devs should be charging 5 times less for superior products.
playing and talking about the games is still conformism. you are not challenging the system and those companies will get bailed out even if they do poorly
All the big corporations know how big gaming is going to be. And they're just trying to capitalise and double down on $70 games now so when the new customers arrive they are going to think $70 is the normal standard. But the hardcore gamers will know what they are trying to pull and wait for massive sales.
We’re now nearly four years in and call of duty has a $70 yearly price tag with a premium battle pass and cod points that make music packs cost $15 and skins/bundles like $20-$25. To be fair they do have the freemium Warzone but that doesn’t stop these bundles from also being a part of the paid multiplayer.
Dunno why a 3 year old video was recommended to me, but yeah, the price increase is unnecessary. The costs of game distribution has only gone down thanks to the rise of digital distribution, so if anything it should cost LESS to sell them. Thank goodness I don't bother with new releases.
The funniest company to do the 70$ price increase are Nintendo with TLOZ tears of the kingdom, Cuz they basically reused BOTW assets, on the same hardware with NO graphical enhancements whatsoever, and STILL demander 70$ for the game lol, it just shows that the 70$ increase has nothing to do with the quality of the game, graphical fidelity or the game development costs
I don't know about the price but as someone who learned coding and learned some stuff about game development you are utterly wrong about the assets and graphics part that is not how reusing assets work.
"Like all Americans, I think my country is the only one" that sort of down-to-earth God-fearing correct on all counts statement earned you a place in Valhalla
Hey! Quick note to address a handful of comments I've received about comparing game sales to home video DVD/Blu-ray sales. The criticism I've received is that I failed to bring up streaming being a much larger factor now than it was in 2005, hence the lower costs today. Some responses to this: I agree that the comparison and the data I gathered wasn't perfect, I even mentioned that I knew it wasn't perfect in the video. Streaming existed in 2005 but not nearly to the scale it is now. But something that did exist in 2005 on a much grander scale than today is movie rentals. Blockbuster served a comparable function to streaming today, letting people legally watch a movie very cheaply without buying it. And don't forget, Netflix was also very much a huge thing in 2005, primarily renting DVDs out by mail at the time. I think these factors more or less even out, especially when considering that Blu-ray's are simply a much higher quality physical product than DVD's. So I think the fact that the price didn't obviously go up over 15 years is a real, significant thing to bring up. But if you still disagree, that's fair, they're not perfectly comparable, and I should have factored in streaming more heavily, I agree. My main reason for drawing the comparison was that I think they are MORE comparable than movie tickets, and THAT is the argument so many people and articles made. But also, at 6:32, I compared games to movie tickets anyway. So, even though I stand by my arguments about home video, they can be completely ignored and I still think I make my point, albeit a more subjective point. My point with movie tickets is: I think the difference between game prices (+$10 overnight) and movie ticket prices (+$2.75 average over 15 years) is huge, and a very real financial consideration for most people who already have to budget what entertainment they can afford to pay for, especially when the base price of games is so much higher already. Buying power is buying power, and ten bucks isn't meaningless for most of us. If full price games went to $62.75, then I wouldn't have nearly the issue with it. So anyway, these are not the only arguments I've gotten, and by all means, send em in, but I wanted to write this out to say that I believe I do address most of this particular criticism in the video already, except for the rentals/streaming thing. I should have addressed a lot more and I could have certainly ironed my points out a little nicer, but that segment was particularly brutal to edit and I could feel the video getting WAY too long already. Anyway that's all, thank you all for the responses! lol godfall flopped, i knew it would
A dying monkey is better than extra credits. This is unfortunate, they made a lot of good history videos. But when they started censoring uncomfortable parts of history, it hurt. And their video on playing a nazi makes you a nazi in a video game just fully did it for me. And in case you're wondering, they censored the swastika and replaced it with the typical iron cross. I have issues with this because the swastika was a fairly IMPORTANT part of nazism, it's iconography, but more importantly, the mental image we have should not be of a war medal, but a symbol of the holocaust. So while I get why some would argue for it, I'd argue that censoring an important symbol of one of the two worst acts ever committed by humans, is a dangerous road to revisonitism, and gives too many openings to twist what nazi Germany was. So for a history channel to sensor the history because it'll make some uncomfortable is just...Wrong. You're SUPPOSED to feel uncomfortable when you see that flag flying over german troops. it's SUPPOSED to make you remember what they did, and why they did it. The iron cross just doesn't have that. And never will. So you're right, anyone is better than extra credit these days, and it sucks.
@@NeiasaurusCreations "And their video on playing a nazi makes you a nazi in a video game just fully did it for me." That was not the message of the video. They never claimed that playing as the Nazis made you into a Nazi. This is a huge strawman. "And in case you're wondering, they censored the swastika and replaced it with the typical iron cross." That's probably for the benefit of their German audience because of German censorship. Read this from Reddit: Good symbol to use in the place of the swastika for RUclips videos about history?
@@shadowmaydawn Or you could just not censor history and use the proper flag in the context of accurately recording and teaching. Because if we're too afraid to even teach the real history, we're going to end up making the same mistakes of the past. It's a slippery slope to censor and change history because it offends us. If anything BECAUSE what the Germans did in world war 2 is so horrible, is all the more reason to properly record and teach it. And yes, that WAS their message. It isn't a strawman. At best it's slightly hyperbolic, but even then I'd argue it isn't. The entire video was so broken and flawed that I have no idea why they thought it was a good idea to record and release it. Practically no one agreed with them on it. The old argument of 'video games makes you x' has been constantly used to bash video games. And it's always been wrong. No one is going to start the second holocaust by playing call of duty. That's not how things work.
@@NeiasaurusCreations Dude you are being ridiculous. Your logic is based on a slippery slope fallacy. No one is suddenly going to forget what the swastika represents just because some videos on youtube didn't display it. Do you even know why they did it? Do you even have proof that that was their reason? Have you never thought to consider that perhaps they did so in order to allow their German audience to see the video, i.e. teach the history? "And yes, that WAS their message. It isn't a strawman." Yeah, it is. All they said is that normalising Nazi imagery desensitise you to Nazism, not convert you to Nazism. They are not the same thing.
@@shadowmaydawn Except it is a problem when people are stupid enough to think the iron cross is a nazi symbol. Instead of being one that was used before the nazis even came to power. I don't care WHY they censored and altered history, just that they did. They chose to not stand on the principle of being accurate with their history. And that is a big problem because it taints every other piece of work. How many more liberties did they take to change what they didn't like? When your credibility is based on the accuracy of your history, and you intentionally alter and censor history, then your credibility falls apart. That's what happened here. Yes, humans will absolutely forget what that symbol meant. For example, in Japan, they have schools that teach stuff like they were the US' ally in world war 2. We're at the point where there is a growing number of people who don't even remotely understand world war 2. And this will only get worse with time, and people like extra credit deciding that historical accuracy doesn't matter when teaching history. They're part of the problem. It's not a fallacy when it's true. And it's true that altering and censoring history is a slippery slope that will lead to terrible consequences. That's one of my biggest issues with censoring and altering history we don't like because it upsets us. Well here's a thought, it SHOULD upset you, and make you feel bad to know this happened. Again, I firmly disagree. The message was pretty clear implying playing video games will make you nazis. But even your take is still a bad argument. It isn't normalizing it. No one is going to suddenly go 'yeah maybe those Germans weren't so bad because I play this video game'. There's literally nothing to support this argument in terms of evidence. It's just more fear-mongering about video games making people this or that. We've heard this forever now. Remember when the media said playing GTA would make you a killer? It's the same argument, and it's even worse. I'd love to see an example or evidence that video game normalizes being a nazi, but I know they do not have any actual evidence to back it up. It's a bad claim made with no evidence. And a further sign that they really missed the plot. (To clarify I'd like evidence that someone became a nazi or nazi sympathizer after playing call of duty world war 2 for example. ) Video games will not make you into a nazi. History should be recorded as accurately, and without censorship as possible. Especially when you're attempting to teach other people about history. The more painful an event is, the more the need to accurately preserve it, so we can learn from the past, and avoid making these same mistakes. Extra credit has become everything I dislike. And are actively helping misinform people on more than one topic. It's unfortunate they went down this path. I used to be a big supporter. But now I just find myself sighing wondering how it got this way. We're going in circles, so unless you bring something new, I suspect I won't bother to give a real answer.
That argument is just plain stupid, physical movie prices have gone down because the demand for them is non existent because of streaming services, meanwhile the demand for games has only gone up and so have expectations of graphical fidelity. If you really want cheaper games stop whining and play some indie games.
@tazah101 movies and even tv have always always had better graphics than literal video games and almost always been more expensive. It wasn't until 1999 or 2004 until we saw AAA games. Unless were gonna get technical. Theres no reason modern video games should be 70 bucks or 100 bucks!
@@redfoxbennaton first of all, movie visuals and game graphics aren't even remotely comparable. And while it is true that aaa movie budgets have historically been bigger than those of aaa games, if you had put the slightest bit of thought into your argument you would've realized that movies make the majority of their money from the theatrical release and streaming service deals rather than physical releases. If you do want to use that as an argument then it would make even more sense for games to cost more because the average game budget has increased way more over the years than that of the average movie. And even if everything you said was true (it isn't) that still wouldn't account for the fact that demand plays a much larger role in the pricing of non essential products than inflation
That's true no one ever wanted to own movies anyway. (Except maybe for one or two to shut up the kids and that guy who watches Jurassic Park all the time) and video games just sell a whole lot more. Supply and demand.
Considering the fact that video games are infinitely-reproducible at next to zero cost (literal copies), the current prices are unconscionable. Raising them is straight immoral.
3 years late to respond but I gotta say I remember when people said "we need to go digital only so that prices drop since they won't need to print discs!" and now we got some games as digital only STILL at $70 and companies pushing for BOTH to be a if not THE standard 😞
@@poppyalt7427what’s even more ironic is how physical games can end up cheaper because the retailer just wants to move inventory. Not usually the case with newer games, but still not too uncommon. Little side rant: Even then, discs were never the issue, whether that be for games or movies. A stack of 100 Blu-rays costs like 6€ retail, probably way less on the industrial side. Boxes are standardised (aside from Nintendo) and probably also cost like
It's so weird how companies like Supergiant can do just fine on a fraction of that money, but supposed "leaders" in the industry are begging endlessly for more and more money. $70 isn't even the maximum, it's the minimum buy-in for these games. Then there's a bunch of special editions and microtransactions. Maybe these companies need to fire their executives if they're this bad at turning a profit.
oh, but the industry is more profitable than ever. it just needs to grow exponentially each quarter or investors will panic! and all the money is sucked up by aforementioned executives anyway, while the customers (and devs alike, with the worst working conditions and gigantic mass layoffs) get squeezed dry for yet more profit!
THANK YOU for actually displaying the music currently playing in the lower left corner of the video. You're probably the only RUclipsr I've seen so far that does this!
great video, but i personally wish you'd have talked a bit about distribution costs. i read a few arguments that games used to cost $60 to offset physical distribution, but now that physical game stores are closing rapidly, that doesn't really make sense anymore, especially since the charge the same for both digital and physical.
What also doesn't make sense is that the high price of gaming (before $50) was set back in the N64 days at $50. And this was mostly justified by it being an expensive technical hobby with a small and niche market. Gaming is now, and has been for the last couple decades, the fastest growing entertainment medium, and is _the_ largest, grossing more income than movies and music combined. If $50 was justified by it being a small niche hobby with a small customer base, how do they justify high prices for the largest entertainment industry in the world?
It's amazing watching a video that looks like it just came out be completely limited to examples from 3 years ago and actually overestimated the hellscape we're in now. The fact that I don't even remember half of the AAA games shown here is also a sign that the quality drop started way earlier than I thought.
$30 is the max my broke ass will EVER pay for a game. Perfect considering that's the max most indie games are priced and those studios usually don't waste millions of dollars on lining the pockets of CEOs
You're onto something here. How many millions would be saved if upper management actually respected and valued their developers? Or if they had any understanding of the development process? They're using us to subsidize their abuse of their employees. The worst part is that if a studio makes a game that doesn't sell or is poorly received, it's not seen as a bad move by executives, it's seen a failure by the studio.
Yearly game development spending by each of the major Triple A publishers peaked in 2012 and has been going down each year since, in fact save for the year Activision bought King total expenditure has been down year on year since then. It's simple economics, they do what they can to maximise income, so if they increase games to 70$, it's solely because they think they can get away with it and for no other reason. And they probably will, because most gamers aren't particularly bright in their spending habits, that's why microtransactions went from outrage in MW2 charging 15$ for a map pack to everyone accepting it in everything for worthless cosmetics.
Also worth noting, that $60-$70 is just the price upfront. Increasingly, games are paywalling their stuff behind additional purchases on day one. This isn't truly all you're paying for, you want the full experience then it could easily go upwards of $100 just for the special editions on launch, not to mention microtransactions.
If I had any criticism at all about your videos, it would be that the editing and the visual gags are so damn good they always end up distracting me from the main takeaway. The Todd and Star Citizen bits had me in stitches.
clearly these game devs dont acknowledge that when ONE furry in his basement makes a 10 dollar game with soul and heart, and then it outsells their newest call of duty, that mayyybeeee charging more for stuff isnt a great idea.
@@frenchtoast.mp4 Love the guy, don't know a lot of him but what I saw from his history of starting in roblox and all, and spending some time on his twitter, the guy looks like a lot of fun and super passionate for his work. Am glad he has made it big time.
@@frenchtoast.mp4 well it's not that they don't learn really. Zeekers did gargantuan amounts of money... For a single dev. All the money he made throughout his entire life would probably only pay a single month of wage + bonus to the CEO of any AAA studio. The amounts of money this studios aim for is something beyond our comprehension. As long as they have such unreasonable targets, the predatory practices of the AAA industry will not change
This is one of the best videos I’ve ever seen and I was shocked to see the view count. I feel like people always act like I’m crazy for being against this $70 game thing. It was already so hard to get friends on board with 60 dollar games and a to of smaller budget and smaller team releases are a third of the price and triple the quality. It’s so unbelievable to me that Nintendo even charged 70 for a game on hardware that is barely even in the HD era while all there other releases are 60 an sometimes even 50. These companies are being so openly greedy and testing people on this price point and getting away with it
The only thing this video didn't predict is 3-day early access if you pay $110, but it sounded too brazen to actually work until someone actually tried and it did. Now wondering if people will be coming back to this video with nostalgia after GTA 6 drops for $80.
More and more I agree with this. You’re telling me I can play BotW, RDR2, Black Myth Wukong, P5R, etc. - some very prestigious games for $60 or less, but you expect me to pay $70 for an anual sports game for example? Some games can justify the $70 price tag, like BG3, but most that charge it really can’t.
@@TheDraconicBard A funnier thing is, BG3 is currently one of the few remaining AAA games that put on regional pricing. It's being sold at 35 dollars in Turkey, if it was the usual 60 dollar price tag I NEVER could've afforded it. I have infinite respect for Larian for this. Even 35 dollars is somewhat hefty for us but way more manageable, I pirated the game first and I loved it so much that I put off my second playthrough until the time I could afford the game.
Ultimately what is making the push towards 70 dollar games unfeasible is that there are too many factors working against it. Inflation is a thing, but wages have been stagnant. WHenever someone tries to raise game costs, another studio offers a simillar game, at the 60 dollar price point or less, while also providing a better product. And lastly outside of Tears of the Kingdom, I can't think of a game that cost 70 dollars that pushed units. Rockstar could pull it off, some are facetiously saying GTA6 will cost 90 dollars. But even that will likley just be seen as a fluke. The 60 dollar game is here to stay and many games are now experimenting with price tags below that.
18:58 adds IN A VIDEO GAME?!?! AN THEY AR UNSKIPABLE? THIS IS UNACEPTABLE! *insert futurama clip where guy from the 90s complains about advertisements in dreams!*
This video changed NOTHING,, the argument did NOTHING, the people did NOTHING. No matter how hard we try the normies will always be more and their opinion is the company's opinion.
I almost exclusively buy games on sale these days. Your game has to be something really special, that I’m really excited to play, for me to pay full price to get it day one. Elden Ring and its DLC are the only games that have achieved that in the past few years.
The problem with games getting more and more expensive, is that in less fortunate countries (like in brazil, my country) the price tends to not be localized, so the price of a 70~80 dollars AAA game here translates to R$300, for comparisson, the MINIMUM salary tends to be R$1300, so... yeah... thats why we have so many pirates here
I live in Canada, where I open my favourite video game distribution platform, and look onto my screen to see a NINETY DOLLAR game, and at this point, im just like, "Damn, inflation must be crazy. Surely, this game must be no more than like, $50 USD, right? It's gotta just be this currency that's displaying this deranged number. CAD must've just fallen off!"
I actually understand where Strauss Zelnick is coming from. See, this cuts to the heart of a huge divide in gaming: game quality vs hardware quality. Strauss conflates improved hardware with better games, and since technology marches on it's pretty easy to accept that hardware has improved since any point in the past. Consumers do this too, whether they're graphics snobs or console rabble arguing over specs for their glorified BluRay players. Major developers are more inclined to embrace this because it's easy to see technological advancements as an investment but not so easy to see creative properties as something stable and worth putting money into. But I'm over here hoping consoles and triple-A developers crash and burn, and if this price inflation brings them one step closer to ruin, I'm all for it.
@Space Jew So they're justifying by the price and quality of the hardware instead of the time frame and man power it takes to make these games? Do I have to explain what's wrong with that...?
@@DemonicRemption well I'm from the future. I know exactly how much they value manpower. Completely unsurprised they skipped over thr devs, again. Even thought that is not only the objective reason (labor is almost always the biggest cost for a company) but a great moral argument.
The phrase “I have no qualms that [loot boxes] are implemented in an unethical way” cannot even be satirised. You cannot make a sentence more tone-deaf than this, even intentionally.
Man, this video aged like fine wine. It's even more relevant in 2024. Too bad that some gamers are enough of shills to be willing to pay $70. *facepalm*
Great video, pretty much said everything I was thinking and more. I can't remember the last time I paid full price for a video game honestly, my backlog is so long already I don't often buy a game for more than 20 bucks CAD.
I think I have an Idea Instead of pressuring people to make a game a certain price, the board room or creatives should ask themselves "What kind of game on a $X budget in Y genre can we make with a final retail price of $Z?" I.e. what kind of game can we make with a budget of $50k in the RPG genre that will have a retail price of $40?
3 years later, nearly adecade of development hell later and Ubislop tried to sell us a 80$ "QUADRUPLE A" always online, offbrand, inferior, feature devoid version of Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag, and it rightfully got scorned into irrelevance.
Feels kinda funny given my tendency to buy these new games after 4-6 years has passed, when the value has dropped over half if even more by then. Oh, and also for still playing games from 2010. It's just that raising the price just turns off people and when you do that enough, you don't have customers to sustain the prices you have put out.
It's common for people in the US and such to forget how it is in other countries. Everywhere in the US says $70 is expensive (and it is) but probably has no idea that games in Brazil cost like legit $200 💀💀💀
My jaw dropped when I realized this video is 3 years old. I guess we're still going through it.
lol same! I remember this conversation back in the day, its crazy we're still having it, you'd think people would realize $70 game is bad (I for the longest time even said 60 was too much) but nope! :P
I mean, governments are still following a policy of maintaining currency devaluation (inflation) for the benefit of the wealthy 1%. Devs have to buy their groceries at the same stores you do.
@@ZahrDalsk bro devs dont even get min wage a lot of the time
@@ZahrDalskit's funny how you defend price gouging while using prople who don't see benefit from price gouging as a shield.
@@mups4016 How is raising your price to match inflation "price gouging"? You're being charged more for everything you need to buy. So why wouldn't you raise the price of your product in order to afford necessities? Is it price gouging when workers negotiate a higher wage (i.e. price of their services)?
Blame governments devaluing currency, not workers.
"We need loot boxes and microtransactions because the price of video games is too low."
[Price of Video Games Increases]
"Well let's not be hasty, there's no reason to throw out a perfectly good monetization scheme."
Sex
You can charge whatever you want, but the list of games I'm going to blindly shell out $70 for is very small.
i can never pay that much for a game (im poor as heck) but I'm happy that there are a lot of developers out there that still push through and make games for limited / low power hardware for people to enjoy.
0 is a very small amount
Exactly, I only play games if they’re less than half the original price and even then i still hesitate to buy. I just don’t have faith in any games today to commit to that much of an investment
Heck, Most of the time it's digital. No interest to spend so much money for items that can be revoked from me.
I'll wait until GTA6 inevitably falls to $5 in 3rd party stores, like it did for GTA5.
$70 is not inevitable. What is inevitable is the collapse of the AAA graphics budget.
Indie games stay winning and with games like Bodycam existing the "realistic graphics" selling point gets much weaker
It's inevitable that someone will charge it, it's not inevitable that most people will accept it
fr i hate these hyper realistic games like i dont care that i can see my characters pores and freckles i gonna be focusing on the game
Trying to explain inflation to a Gamer challenge: impossible
@@azlanadil3646 cutting out the mandatory factory service means companies are paying less on physical production
We don't even get 1990s style thick instruction booklets anymore!
Or even a disc.
Or even a complete game.
Yeah, adjusting for inflation games in the 90’s cost twice as much as a game today, right?
Or even a disc, or a complete game, or sexy female characters, and the company can erase the game if they want
Extra Credit implying that games will have to be more expensive to necessitate not having microtransactions baffles me because it's a plain example of a false dilemma they're trying to argue as fact; You can have cheap games with no microtransactions and you can have expensive games with very aggressive monetization. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Sadly, they were kinda right. You CAN have both, but we're in the future. We know how many "small games" studio shuttered because companies wanted to funnel in on trying to capture the Fortnite kids. We saw Microsoft shutting a GOTY studio less than a year because they want more people in the COD mines. Just this week we saw the most gigantic flop of a shooter from Sony since the Vita (and honestly, that's an insult to the vita. Even in the west it lasted a year lmao). But you know they gonna make 3 more GaaS anyway.
They still make good single player games, but the writings been on the wall for a while. As some other comment said, "we don't make games anymore. We make services".
@@raze2012_Who was "kinda right"? Certainly not extra credit, because their argument assumes, if price rise, less microtransaction.
Well, price rise, still microtransaction everywhere. It's just, the logic behind the reasoning is inconsistent with the reality in front of us.
Also, concord is kind of irrelevant,
First off pretty sure it was a 40$ game, so it's not really very comparable in the first place, but it did NOT fail because of it's price point, at least not mainly. We KNOW that it didn't fail because of price because nobody bought it, EVEN THO it's price barrier to entry is actually lower than full price, and while it's not the FREE many people thought it should have been due to the monetization model of other team shooters, we have seen MORE expensive games succeed without scaring off potential buyers, and we've seen less expensive games succeed by like, people playing them and being interested in them?
The problem with Concord isn't 40$, the problem with Concord is that nobody wanted to play concord, it would have failed at literally ANY price point. Maybe making it literally free would have helped the low player count on some level, but that doesn't automatically mean you're going to sell 1$billion in microtransactions for a game that generated almost all of it's interest by virtue of it dieing spectacularly, Free is not going to fix the issue that basically nobody wanted that game in the first place.
That entire argument is ridiculous, when you can have large AAA games made for as "little" as 50 million and have big bloated nothing burgers for nearly ten times that budget the problem isn't the price it's the ridiculous and pointless spending of big budget studios. And the fact that games for 60 buckaroos flat can and absolutely do make insane profits, with no MTX involved. Selling for 70 with an ingame shop is an insult to you as a customer.
@@pptemplar5840 No I think, Extra Credit's point was to do a satire on the idea of "price X goes up, Y means MTX is either less or none existent" and how dishonest that mentality can be mainly by executives and CEO/COOs, hence the "oh well"; this shows that predicitably nobody in a CEO/executive position will never not be some disconnected fool. As the idea is of them not caring what consumers want, the rammifications from the developer being laid off/studio being shutdown.
Even Luke Stephens said that it's entirely impossible to get fools like this out of high positions the same ones glazing 70 usd (even an independent artist I knew off Twitter was foolish enough to argue for this in this case as in like with the video) -- we simply just have to really vote with our wallets, say no, don't pre-order, just buy indie games and that's it. Yes I know that the "don't preorder" clause can be taking not seriously but again, it does to show how easily it is to not follow through with this and why many things won't change.
Extra Credits is an anti-white shill anyway, so I expect nothing less from him.
The irony of "the higher the price, the more likely it is to be bad" and how games like Deep Rock are at most 20, is so, SO FUNNY TO ME
passion does not have a price
greed has
ROCK AND STONE
It's funny cause never ever want to spend a lot on big budget AAA games( games in my country are expensive), but i ended up buying all the dlc for deep rock just cause the game is that good and i wanted to support the devs
There is unironically an inversely proportional relationship between how much a game in my library costs and how much time I spent playing it. Pretty graphics and celebrity voice actors aren't high on my list when it comes to entertainment value. Unique and interesting gameplay is. Not a lot of that going around in AAA these days.
Celeste was like 5 dollars a month ago and I have 40 hours on it already. Peak game 🔥
And now they're trying to get away with 80 buck games.
If that happens I'm putting on the pirate hat
@@endcaps1917 it is really taking you this long? I did it the moment I had the power of piracy in my hands.
Depends on the game, I'd say. But to put a number on it? Maybe 1-2% of games priced that way would be acceptable. Even then, wouldn't expect folks to bite at that line.
@@endcaps1917 they put denuvo in the games and there is nobody cracking denuvo games, you will pay or have to wait 2 years to play.
@@endcaps1917 unless on indies and fromsoft and mabey bethsoft and the trusted companies
I'm not paying $70 for a game that's gonna be average at best
Not much of an issue for me, tbh. I usually buy games when they're around $20.
Best thing to do is just wait until the games are on sale that's what I do screw paying $70+ for one game
No regrets for Demon Souls in giving Sony an extra $10 tip. Their whole upcoming roadmap of future $70 games is a gigantic NO FRICKING THANKS. In waiting for a sale I know I’m just going to get more upset and actually dive into my backlog. Sony doesn’t want me to do that because I won’t emerge until that game I had wanted is now $15 instead of the reasonable $39-$55 range
@@captaincrunch1707 I've got a LOAD of games from a second hand videogame store they literally have everything. I've bought bundled used PS4 games 5 for $15
Would you pirate game that's average at best?
They dont seem to factor in how many more players are buying the games.
this aged well
"Never pay more than 47 bucks and 7 cents for a computer game. (adjusted for inflation)" - Guybrush Threepwood
When was this said?
@@toastytoad8154 1990, in _The Secret of Monkey Island_
@@toastytoad8154 At the end of The Secret of Monkey Island, after defeating LeChuck, you have a conversation with Elaine Marley and this is one of the dialogue options.
@@BaddeJimme But when?
@@toastytoad8154 Right at the end, after defeating Lechuck. The only thing after that conversation is the end credits roll and the message "Turn your computer off and go to sleep".
Diablo 4 is 70 bucks and has a 3 tied battle pass. Games shouldn’t be 70, 60, or 50. They should all be 40 and lower specially when they’re dropping millions in advertising and not the game. It doesn’t take 200 million to make cyberpunk. It takes 50 million and then 150 million for advertising
3 tiered????
@@lacytheespeon517 yes my dear compadre. 3 TIERED
@@notlegitkoolaid4911 nahhhh
Of which, a MUCH more efficient and cheaper on scale, modern-day advertising system is to allow content creators to make relatively early videos to DISPLAY the product. If a gamer SEES a game that actually looks good, they WILL buy it. If all that they've seen is a generic collage of "game-like" moments, followed by the confirmation that it's gonna have 5 tiers of pre-order, they won't be buying into it.
Never paying 70 for any game.
i dont think ill be able to in the next few years with this many indie games
Hollow Knight?
@@spudsbuchlaw hollow knight is cheap as hell, and silksong will probably be too
Baldur’s gate 3?
@@thegreninjagal6808 bg3 is one of the very few worth $70
I agree with the video. And it is just disheartening that the fact 69.99 was "accepted" by the casual market, now they are pushing upwards of 79.99 to 99.99 for the "deluxe" edition xD. IN JUST 3 YEARS TIME (2024 atm)!
Gotta love capitalism 😊
you used to get a figure and an art book when you spent 100$ on a game
You do realise that’s literally just adjusting for inflation, right? 70$ today is equivalent to 60.34 dollars in 2021. But I guess “games are staying he’s some price” isn’t as catchy a headline… you know this video is unironically unethical game journalism, right?
@azlanadil3646 ah, someone didn't watch the vid huh? Scrolling to fight people for the boots you lick? Inflation is a factor, and it's affected EVERYTHING and not just gaming. It's not sustainable as people can wait for sales or not buy as other things are far more important.
I suppose calling the vid unethical is so much easier than countering the points made. It's not sustainable and that's a fact. Use some critical thinking instead of repeating the catch all terms you read about to validate your purchases.
@@dychostarr Ok, I guess I have nothing better to do.
He said that movie tickets can’t be compared to video games because movie tickets are a one time experience, whereas video games are something you buy to own. This is a really good point. For raising the price of video games.
Movie tickets are a one time purchase of two-three hours for nine dollars. That comes out to 3$ per hour of entertainment.
Compare that to a game like Elden ring which cost 75$ where I live. That comes out to around 2$ per hour since most people tend to not finish games. If you do compete Elden ring that’s easily a third to a quarter of the cost of a movie ticket per hour of entertainment.
Now you might say, well not every game is Elden ring. Well fair enough. Not every movie is Oppenheimer. There’s plenty of bid studio films that need their over bloated budgets trimmed and can’t turn profits. Just like there’s many over bloated video games that should have their budgets trimmed. Executives and shareholders should not have this much influence over the industry, I agree, but unless you’re planning a communist revelation I don’t see that happening… ever.
I would also disagree with your idea of “over bloated”, particularly RDR2. All those tiny details he mentioned could be removed, and sure it would probably save money. Most people probably didn’t notice them anyways. If you think about it, did the horse grooming mechanics really need to be there? Did the mechanics for Arthur’s hair? I’d be willing to bet most players didn’t engage with gambling to a serious extent whither,so you could probably remove that too. I mean, most side quests and side characters were probably not noticed my most people either, so those can go to. I mean, only 20% of players even finished the game on Steam. That’s so few, might as well cut out the ending entirely for the PC port. That’d probably save a ton of money.
You know it’s funny. People argue that most video games are assembly made soulless projects that aren’t worth the increased price. Then they complain that game studios spend too much time focusing on the little details, and should just try to make a product as cheaply and quickly as possible.
You complain that you want less studio involvement in games. I agree, but you do realise that if you let the artists and the devs make the decisions they will spend more time on tiny details, right? I promise you no executive asked for horse balls mechanics. That came from the devs. It will result in better games. It will not result in cheaper games.
Sorry for the essay post, but you’re the one who said I’m not engaging enough with the arguments. I know there’s a good chance you won’t read all that. That’s fine.
"there's not a lot of space to shave things down"
yes, it's called your CEO's exorbitant salary
As well as the rest of upper management who do nothing all day but snort snow and work out more ways to appeal to investors while stepping on the consumer and developers.
@@plebisMaximus the investors are the biggest issue here. They want a return on investment and they don't care how they get it, so long as it happens. The second a company becomes publically traded ,the quality of product is pretty much guaranteed to drop, whether that's bit by bit or all at once.
@@Weldedhodag The worst part is they don't even care to get that return by selling products. Tech is just one huge Ponzi scheme now where investors pay investors to get more investors in.
bruh they increased the price of games but the quality just kept getting worse
If we were guaranteed that the extra 10 bucks was 100% going toward developer salaries (or at least the development studio itself), rather than to execs/publishers, I'd be fine with the price increase.
But it isn't, so I'm not.
It actually is, in the case of your pfp. Nintendo increased salaries, and still has the industry standard for compensation.
Besides that, you dont live in timeless bubble, 70usd today is like 30 usd 20 years ago.
It literally is going towards salaries because that’s how these companies work, they raise end user prices to try and keep up with increased wage demands. They also waste it on marketing and layers of consulting firms which only stifle creativity
The consumer dictates the cost of a product not the producer.
Yep! And I'm just trying to provide some valuable consumer feedback.
This is incorrect. Price is dictated by a myriad of factors, with consumers being one piece of the puzzle.
"A product is worth exactly the amount that the consumer is willing to pay for it"
Except for the fact that you can't buy a cheaper incarnation of, say, Ass-Cred - like you could buy cheaper sausages. Entertainment is by design an exclusive product and if a game is too expensive for you - you buy a different game. On the other hand - there are plenty of stupid whales that are willing to support an extortion scheme like this with their wallets. I am one too - I'm just very particular about the nature of the game. Specifically: I'd pay even 100$ for a Cyan game on day1 if it's on GoG - just because I am a simp for both those companies.
@@SGresponse You could wait for a discount or buy used or simply not buy the game and get your entertainment elsewhere. Point is it's still dictated by the customer
The producer dictates if a product exists.
10 bucks more is not the outrageous part. Sure, our money is steadily becoming worthless. The problem is that 60 bucks is already insane for what you’re getting in return.
THIS. I don't even remember there being a gradual increase from $20 to $60.
“B-but they have been 60 dollars since the NES”
And the amount of people buying games has gone up 100x
The economics of scale at work here
also physical games are a rarity now so there is less cost there
@@jrar7113no
Yeah and there are more game companies, the gaming industry may earn but individual companies can't guarantee that for every game
yes, so games have been cheaper and cheaper since inflation exists, even at 70 dollars, it is still cheaper than 20 years ago, but now we have steam sales and can pirate almost any game without risking our computers exploading, what are you even complaining about? talking about economics but not figuring this out is funny to me.
@@totidoki05 honestly, I’m surprised YOU haven’t figured it out.
Videogames used to me a niche hobby that maybe 1 in 100 people played on a regular basis. People owned maybe one or two games. Because of this, to make up for development costs and to make a profit, they needed to charge a LOT for a game. Very few people are going to buy it, so it’s hard to make your money back without this price tag
Fast forward to today, 40% of the GLOBAL population play videogames, a majority of all Americans play videogames on a regular basis, the gaming industry is a multi hundred billion dollar global industry. Suddenly, because so many people are buying games (3.4 billion) you don’t need to sell them at the equivalent of 120 USD in modern money.
This is called the economics of scale. Demand is high, supply has reached a point where it is perfectly saturated. Increase prices demand goes down, too much supply, price has to go down, of you will have to make less games.
In the games industry, everyone can make a game. You, me, your dog. It’s limitless. Games are being made regardless, at prices that are fair. So the only way to be competitive and fully utilize the market and make the most money is sell games at a competitive price (60 USD in this case)
Games are a cheap disposable goods. You are not expected to play a game for hundreds of hours (though there are exceptions) many people don’t even complete their games. As a form of entertainment they are somewhat good value, and fit a niche in the entertainment industry that movies used to but no longer.
If games are truly unprofitable why is it such a massive industry with such big figures such as tech giants Microsoft and Samsung investing sickening amounts of money in it?
They ARE profitable as is, actually one of the most profitable entertainment products you can make compared to films. They sell for longer, and have higher audience retention.
Defending massive megacorps for trying to greedily extract every last penny from the consumer is not the big win you are looking for.
I’ve also heard people unironically say that if a game is 70 hours, it’s worth it since you’re paying $1 per hour.
Can you imagine if Game Pass charged you $1 for every hour you played? Everyone would riot.
Most modern games have play times between 20-50 hours. The games that I’ve put the most hours into are all games under $30
can you imagine paying for Gamepass?
@@kintustis what? Literally the best subscription ever.
@@imcool2931 nice bait.
@@kintustis yeah sure thing buddy
If Extra Credits is ever defending something, I know it’s terrible.
They should shut up and stick to their history videos every opinion that hasn't been fact has been terrible.
@@princeCustos324 Who’s to say their next history vids aren’t going to get tainted and made completely incorrect? They’ve set the precedent that they want video games to stop accurately depicting WWII in multiplayer matches since half of the lobby automatically is German soldiers for a match or two
@@princeCustos324 their history videos are inaccurate just because they made them. any fact they post automatically becomes false.
@@princeCustos324they have been thoroughly slandered by history RUclips as a Wikipedia summariser and one who does a inconsistent job at best
B-but Orcs = black people!1!1
the death of the AA game market has been devastating
EA had killed so many good company's
I feel like Square Enix, Paradox and Capcom and the only good AAA publishers remaining.
I really miss THQ. THQ Nordic is really good also, but don't make many AAA games, I think the only AAA game they make is the Darksiders.
@@napa5235i remember there being a controversy surrounding Capcom at some point, think it had something to do with treatment of employees or something?
edit: forgot to add this: i don’t entirely remember if that’s true or not, if you want you can obviously just go look yourself, honestly it could’ve been one of the many other companies being exposed for crap like that too
@@napa5235 Capcom and Square are AIDS. Paradox is turbo DLC-AIDS.
@@dreamareakoso3791 pretty sure it was true but unfortunately it wasn't a huge thing because it's so common, Japanese office work (or just work in general I guess) culture is actually just horrible
When publishers say "Games cost 20 million to make" they should really be saying "Games cost 20 million to advertise"
Exactly these idiotic companies trying to make us think there entire budget went into the game while in reality they advert the shit out of it
Let's also not forget that a lot of these development budgets are insanely bloated. A lot of money goes to waste, and they would rather charge you more than make development more efficient.
@@funguy398Battlefield 2042 apparently cost $2 billion and came out buggy as hell at launch.
And advertisement has become less and less effective, thus making budgets balloon further. It's so unsustainable but these companies find ways to ruin everything but thenselves.
10 million to advertise 10 million to develop
I hate this discussion. I hate it hate it hate it.
Seriously take a look at the increase in customers from 2005 to nowadays in the digital, but especially video-game market. They increased by 4 digit percentages. Take a look at the profit of AAA games back then compared to now. The discrepancy in between expense and gain is growing even more insane with each year.
For fucks sake, we could go back to 50$ for AAA games and the math would still make those games more profitable than in 2005.
Also, GTA 5 Online. Just saying. Still milking that game 8 years later while having no customer support at all, having it overrun with hackers on PC and mediocre updates every once in 8 months.
Lets be honest, the current development on the market is mostly rigged for the companies already, at least when we talk about AAA games. This whole debate has been started by exactly those companies with extremely limited evidence provided, while the existing evidence forms a clear case against their proclaimed "necessity" of a higher price.
The only area where I am pretty much agreeing on that agenda, is when we talk about indie games. I feel it is unfair when a fresh, well designed and ultimately ambitious Hollow Knight is priced at 10$ while we get that 60$ reskin for our next Ubisoft game or the next EA title, with the whole development for it basically being a cinematic trailer and massive asset shifts from earlier games.
Nice video though, like and subscribe!
"But hallways are bad, linearity is bad for undisclosed and undefined reasons. We need to make _everything_ open world. Otherwise we might be insulting akira Snowflake toriyama..."
-Typical "videogame" company ceo
They're also digital only sometimes with 1 game mode.
Quality of life, good pay, fair hours.
HK is one of my favorite games but the devs priced it that way in order for it to get more attention and for more people to say "oh that's cheap I can buy that."
It's like the subway $5 footlong thing, it's not about the value itself, it's about getting people to actually buy it (which makes them more money in the end).
But now, they could price silksong at $60 and it would still sell millions. If I was them I would make a point to make silksong full priced so that it sets a precedent that indie games can go for that much. No reason indie devs should be charging 5 times less for superior products.
im gonna continue acquiring games for 0,00$
🏴☠️ yer' right matey
playing and talking about the games is still conformism. you are not challenging the system and those companies will get bailed out even if they do poorly
Europoid outing himself using a , instead of a . as a decimal
💪🏴☠️
@@umticYes, but I want to feel distracted while it's happening. Escapism 👍
Ah, I see that this video has aged beautifully once again.
Dude your editing is on point
All the big corporations know how big gaming is going to be. And they're just trying to capitalise and double down on $70 games now so when the new customers arrive they are going to think $70 is the normal standard. But the hardcore gamers will know what they are trying to pull and wait for massive sales.
Pretty soon, you'll see people defend 80 dollar games, then 90 dollars, then at that point what's stopping them from charging 100?
sh*lling has no limits
@@Sketchy_2 why did you censor shilling?
well, funny you said that, because I already seen couple people defending that on this very video.
@@legotavi1320 RUclips hides my comment for seemingly no reason alot so i'm covering bases here.
I think the algo censors and sends to manual review
We’re now nearly four years in and call of duty has a $70 yearly price tag with a premium battle pass and cod points that make music packs cost $15 and skins/bundles like $20-$25. To be fair they do have the freemium Warzone but that doesn’t stop these bundles from also being a part of the paid multiplayer.
Dunno why a 3 year old video was recommended to me, but yeah, the price increase is unnecessary. The costs of game distribution has only gone down thanks to the rise of digital distribution, so if anything it should cost LESS to sell them. Thank goodness I don't bother with new releases.
The funniest company to do the 70$ price increase are Nintendo with TLOZ tears of the kingdom, Cuz they basically reused BOTW assets, on the same hardware with NO graphical enhancements whatsoever, and STILL demander 70$ for the game lol, it just shows that the 70$ increase has nothing to do with the quality of the game, graphical fidelity or the game development costs
I don't know about the price but as someone who learned coding and learned some stuff about game development you are utterly wrong about the assets and graphics part that is not how reusing assets work.
For now, dont pay 70 dollars for any game! Pay as little mony for anything as possible! Quality and Price have zero correlation!
I wouldn't say 0 correlation (esp. with physical goods!), but the point stands.
Why is this video 3 years old and why is it so actual than ever now
that part at the end really got me.
"what's the difference?"
NOTHING
Paying 70 bucks for games at the worst they’ve ever been is nuts.
"Like all Americans, I think my country is the only one" that sort of down-to-earth God-fearing correct on all counts statement earned you a place in Valhalla
“Dynamic 4K Horse Balls” is going to be my new go-to when trying to quickly demonstrate the frivolity of modern graphics.
“Our new game has Dynamic 4K RAYTRACED horse balls” - some future game exec (perchance)
Hey! Quick note to address a handful of comments I've received about comparing game sales to home video DVD/Blu-ray sales. The criticism I've received is that I failed to bring up streaming being a much larger factor now than it was in 2005, hence the lower costs today. Some responses to this:
I agree that the comparison and the data I gathered wasn't perfect, I even mentioned that I knew it wasn't perfect in the video. Streaming existed in 2005 but not nearly to the scale it is now. But something that did exist in 2005 on a much grander scale than today is movie rentals. Blockbuster served a comparable function to streaming today, letting people legally watch a movie very cheaply without buying it. And don't forget, Netflix was also very much a huge thing in 2005, primarily renting DVDs out by mail at the time. I think these factors more or less even out, especially when considering that Blu-ray's are simply a much higher quality physical product than DVD's. So I think the fact that the price didn't obviously go up over 15 years is a real, significant thing to bring up. But if you still disagree, that's fair, they're not perfectly comparable, and I should have factored in streaming more heavily, I agree. My main reason for drawing the comparison was that I think they are MORE comparable than movie tickets, and THAT is the argument so many people and articles made.
But also, at 6:32, I compared games to movie tickets anyway. So, even though I stand by my arguments about home video, they can be completely ignored and I still think I make my point, albeit a more subjective point. My point with movie tickets is: I think the difference between game prices (+$10 overnight) and movie ticket prices (+$2.75 average over 15 years) is huge, and a very real financial consideration for most people who already have to budget what entertainment they can afford to pay for, especially when the base price of games is so much higher already. Buying power is buying power, and ten bucks isn't meaningless for most of us. If full price games went to $62.75, then I wouldn't have nearly the issue with it.
So anyway, these are not the only arguments I've gotten, and by all means, send em in, but I wanted to write this out to say that I believe I do address most of this particular criticism in the video already, except for the rentals/streaming thing. I should have addressed a lot more and I could have certainly ironed my points out a little nicer, but that segment was particularly brutal to edit and I could feel the video getting WAY too long already. Anyway that's all, thank you all for the responses! lol godfall flopped, i knew it would
Perhaps pin this?
don't compare yourself to Extra Credits, you're better than that lmao
A dying monkey is better than extra credits. This is unfortunate, they made a lot of good history videos. But when they started censoring uncomfortable parts of history, it hurt. And their video on playing a nazi makes you a nazi in a video game just fully did it for me.
And in case you're wondering, they censored the swastika and replaced it with the typical iron cross. I have issues with this because the swastika was a fairly IMPORTANT part of nazism, it's iconography, but more importantly, the mental image we have should not be of a war medal, but a symbol of the holocaust. So while I get why some would argue for it, I'd argue that censoring an important symbol of one of the two worst acts ever committed by humans, is a dangerous road to revisonitism, and gives too many openings to twist what nazi Germany was. So for a history channel to sensor the history because it'll make some uncomfortable is just...Wrong. You're SUPPOSED to feel uncomfortable when you see that flag flying over german troops. it's SUPPOSED to make you remember what they did, and why they did it. The iron cross just doesn't have that. And never will.
So you're right, anyone is better than extra credit these days, and it sucks.
@@NeiasaurusCreations "And their video on playing a nazi makes you a nazi in a video game just fully did it for me."
That was not the message of the video. They never claimed that playing as the Nazis made you into a Nazi. This is a huge strawman.
"And in case you're wondering, they censored the swastika and replaced it with the typical iron cross."
That's probably for the benefit of their German audience because of German censorship.
Read this from Reddit: Good symbol to use in the place of the swastika for RUclips videos about history?
@@shadowmaydawn Or you could just not censor history and use the proper flag in the context of accurately recording and teaching. Because if we're too afraid to even teach the real history, we're going to end up making the same mistakes of the past. It's a slippery slope to censor and change history because it offends us. If anything BECAUSE what the Germans did in world war 2 is so horrible, is all the more reason to properly record and teach it.
And yes, that WAS their message. It isn't a strawman. At best it's slightly hyperbolic, but even then I'd argue it isn't. The entire video was so broken and flawed that I have no idea why they thought it was a good idea to record and release it. Practically no one agreed with them on it. The old argument of 'video games makes you x' has been constantly used to bash video games. And it's always been wrong. No one is going to start the second holocaust by playing call of duty. That's not how things work.
@@NeiasaurusCreations Dude you are being ridiculous. Your logic is based on a slippery slope fallacy. No one is suddenly going to forget what the swastika represents just because some videos on youtube didn't display it. Do you even know why they did it? Do you even have proof that that was their reason? Have you never thought to consider that perhaps they did so in order to allow their German audience to see the video, i.e. teach the history?
"And yes, that WAS their message. It isn't a strawman."
Yeah, it is. All they said is that normalising Nazi imagery desensitise you to Nazism, not convert you to Nazism. They are not the same thing.
@@shadowmaydawn
Except it is a problem when people are stupid enough to think the iron cross is a nazi symbol. Instead of being one that was used before the nazis even came to power. I don't care WHY they censored and altered history, just that they did. They chose to not stand on the principle of being accurate with their history. And that is a big problem because it taints every other piece of work. How many more liberties did they take to change what they didn't like? When your credibility is based on the accuracy of your history, and you intentionally alter and censor history, then your credibility falls apart. That's what happened here.
Yes, humans will absolutely forget what that symbol meant. For example, in Japan, they have schools that teach stuff like they were the US' ally in world war 2. We're at the point where there is a growing number of people who don't even remotely understand world war 2. And this will only get worse with time, and people like extra credit deciding that historical accuracy doesn't matter when teaching history. They're part of the problem. It's not a fallacy when it's true. And it's true that altering and censoring history is a slippery slope that will lead to terrible consequences. That's one of my biggest issues with censoring and altering history we don't like because it upsets us. Well here's a thought, it SHOULD upset you, and make you feel bad to know this happened.
Again, I firmly disagree. The message was pretty clear implying playing video games will make you nazis. But even your take is still a bad argument. It isn't normalizing it. No one is going to suddenly go 'yeah maybe those Germans weren't so bad because I play this video game'. There's literally nothing to support this argument in terms of evidence. It's just more fear-mongering about video games making people this or that. We've heard this forever now. Remember when the media said playing GTA would make you a killer? It's the same argument, and it's even worse. I'd love to see an example or evidence that video game normalizes being a nazi, but I know they do not have any actual evidence to back it up. It's a bad claim made with no evidence. And a further sign that they really missed the plot. (To clarify I'd like evidence that someone became a nazi or nazi sympathizer after playing call of duty world war 2 for example. )
Video games will not make you into a nazi. History should be recorded as accurately, and without censorship as possible. Especially when you're attempting to teach other people about history. The more painful an event is, the more the need to accurately preserve it, so we can learn from the past, and avoid making these same mistakes. Extra credit has become everything I dislike. And are actively helping misinform people on more than one topic. It's unfortunate they went down this path. I used to be a big supporter. But now I just find myself sighing wondering how it got this way.
We're going in circles, so unless you bring something new, I suspect I won't bother to give a real answer.
Crazy how its been 3 years from the original post of this video and i still dont recognized half the games said here
Up to 7:37 makes you realize, more and more, that price gouging is a thing. Video game companies aren't the only ones.
"B-buh it costs so much to make a video game!😢" it costs so much to make a movie and movies are dirt cheap. The argument is pointless
That argument is just plain stupid, physical movie prices have gone down because the demand for them is non existent because of streaming services, meanwhile the demand for games has only gone up and so have expectations of graphical fidelity. If you really want cheaper games stop whining and play some indie games.
@tazah101 movies and even tv have always always had better graphics than literal video games and almost always been more expensive. It wasn't until 1999 or 2004 until we saw AAA games. Unless were gonna get technical. Theres no reason modern video games should be 70 bucks or 100 bucks!
@@redfoxbennaton first of all, movie visuals and game graphics aren't even remotely comparable. And while it is true that aaa movie budgets have historically been bigger than those of aaa games, if you had put the slightest bit of thought into your argument you would've realized that movies make the majority of their money from the theatrical release and streaming service deals rather than physical releases. If you do want to use that as an argument then it would make even more sense for games to cost more because the average game budget has increased way more over the years than that of the average movie.
And even if everything you said was true (it isn't) that still wouldn't account for the fact that demand plays a much larger role in the pricing of non essential products than inflation
That's true no one ever wanted to own movies anyway. (Except maybe for one or two to shut up the kids and that guy who watches Jurassic Park all the time) and video games just sell a whole lot more. Supply and demand.
@@tazah101 >do NOT say bad things about corporations. STOP SAYING BAD THINGS STOPPP STOPPP
Considering the fact that video games are infinitely-reproducible at next to zero cost (literal copies), the current prices are unconscionable. Raising them is straight immoral.
3 years late to respond but I gotta say I remember when people said "we need to go digital only so that prices drop since they won't need to print discs!" and now we got some games as digital only STILL at $70 and companies pushing for BOTH to be a if not THE standard 😞
@@poppyalt7427what’s even more ironic is how physical games can end up cheaper because the retailer just wants to move inventory. Not usually the case with newer games, but still not too uncommon.
Little side rant:
Even then, discs were never the issue, whether that be for games or movies. A stack of 100 Blu-rays costs like 6€ retail, probably way less on the industrial side. Boxes are standardised (aside from Nintendo) and probably also cost like
It's so weird how companies like Supergiant can do just fine on a fraction of that money, but supposed "leaders" in the industry are begging endlessly for more and more money. $70 isn't even the maximum, it's the minimum buy-in for these games. Then there's a bunch of special editions and microtransactions. Maybe these companies need to fire their executives if they're this bad at turning a profit.
oh, but the industry is more profitable than ever. it just needs to grow exponentially each quarter or investors will panic! and all the money is sucked up by aforementioned executives anyway, while the customers (and devs alike, with the worst working conditions and gigantic mass layoffs) get squeezed dry for yet more profit!
THANK YOU for actually displaying the music currently playing in the lower left corner of the video. You're probably the only RUclipsr I've seen so far that does this!
great video, but i personally wish you'd have talked a bit about distribution costs. i read a few arguments that games used to cost $60 to offset physical distribution, but now that physical game stores are closing rapidly, that doesn't really make sense anymore, especially since the charge the same for both digital and physical.
What also doesn't make sense is that the high price of gaming (before $50) was set back in the N64 days at $50.
And this was mostly justified by it being an expensive technical hobby with a small and niche market.
Gaming is now, and has been for the last couple decades, the fastest growing entertainment medium, and is _the_ largest, grossing more income than movies and music combined.
If $50 was justified by it being a small niche hobby with a small customer base, how do they justify high prices for the largest entertainment industry in the world?
distribution is literally FREE now
Well, my argument is the 7 seas.
I think there are alot of games now that are making the case for the 50 and 40 dollar game. 70 is insane for a base price, honestly.
And indie developers, with less capital, are making games for half the price
It's amazing watching a video that looks like it just came out be completely limited to examples from 3 years ago and actually overestimated the hellscape we're in now. The fact that I don't even remember half of the AAA games shown here is also a sign that the quality drop started way earlier than I thought.
3 years have passed and sony didn't make shit with that 70$ increase
$30 is the max my broke ass will EVER pay for a game.
Perfect considering that's the max most indie games are priced and those studios usually don't waste millions of dollars on lining the pockets of CEOs
You're onto something here. How many millions would be saved if upper management actually respected and valued their developers? Or if they had any understanding of the development process? They're using us to subsidize their abuse of their employees. The worst part is that if a studio makes a game that doesn't sell or is poorly received, it's not seen as a bad move by executives, it's seen a failure by the studio.
Yearly game development spending by each of the major Triple A publishers peaked in 2012 and has been going down each year since, in fact save for the year Activision bought King total expenditure has been down year on year since then. It's simple economics, they do what they can to maximise income, so if they increase games to 70$, it's solely because they think they can get away with it and for no other reason. And they probably will, because most gamers aren't particularly bright in their spending habits, that's why microtransactions went from outrage in MW2 charging 15$ for a map pack to everyone accepting it in everything for worthless cosmetics.
Diablo 4 proves that rising the price to 70€ did not stop acti-blizzard from adding both an ingame shop and battlepasses.
And that's just in the US, in Canada, it's 100$+ just to get a game new..
Also worth noting, that $60-$70 is just the price upfront. Increasingly, games are paywalling their stuff behind additional purchases on day one. This isn't truly all you're paying for, you want the full experience then it could easily go upwards of $100 just for the special editions on launch, not to mention microtransactions.
If I had any criticism at all about your videos, it would be that the editing and the visual gags are so damn good they always end up distracting me from the main takeaway. The Todd and Star Citizen bits had me in stitches.
This video is amazingly high quality. I can't believe you only have 1k subs. Going to share this around. Thank you for posting.
I was NOT expecting an Extra Credits team member to basically get doxxed in this vid
clearly these game devs dont acknowledge that when ONE furry in his basement makes a 10 dollar game with soul and heart, and then it outsells their newest call of duty, that mayyybeeee charging more for stuff isnt a great idea.
The sheer pride with which you are saying this statement, I love it. We talking about Zeekers right?
@@icecold1805 of course! zeekers the MVP
@@frenchtoast.mp4 Love the guy, don't know a lot of him but what I saw from his history of starting in roblox and all, and spending some time on his twitter, the guy looks like a lot of fun and super passionate for his work. Am glad he has made it big time.
@@icecold1805 yeah. but its sad that companies never learn…
@@frenchtoast.mp4 well it's not that they don't learn really. Zeekers did gargantuan amounts of money... For a single dev.
All the money he made throughout his entire life would probably only pay a single month of wage + bonus to the CEO of any AAA studio. The amounts of money this studios aim for is something beyond our comprehension. As long as they have such unreasonable targets, the predatory practices of the AAA industry will not change
This is one of the best videos I’ve ever seen and I was shocked to see the view count. I feel like people always act like I’m crazy for being against this $70 game thing. It was already so hard to get friends on board with 60 dollar games and a to of smaller budget and smaller team releases are a third of the price and triple the quality. It’s so unbelievable to me that Nintendo even charged 70 for a game on hardware that is barely even in the HD era while all there other releases are 60 an sometimes even 50. These companies are being so openly greedy and testing people on this price point and getting away with it
Gigabudget games really do have that "stop buying candles" energy.
The only thing this video didn't predict is 3-day early access if you pay $110, but it sounded too brazen to actually work until someone actually tried and it did. Now wondering if people will be coming back to this video with nostalgia after GTA 6 drops for $80.
@@vytah I hope so much GTA VI flops. It would be amazing to see it and it's devs fail.
"Why do we have to pay for that?" Is the wrong question. We cant pay for that. Unsustainable means unsustainable.
More and more I agree with this. You’re telling me I can play BotW, RDR2, Black Myth Wukong, P5R, etc. - some very prestigious games for $60 or less, but you expect me to pay $70 for an anual sports game for example?
Some games can justify the $70 price tag, like BG3, but most that charge it really can’t.
And the funny thing is BG3 is $60 :)
@@TheDraconicBard A funnier thing is, BG3 is currently one of the few remaining AAA games that put on regional pricing. It's being sold at 35 dollars in Turkey, if it was the usual 60 dollar price tag I NEVER could've afforded it. I have infinite respect for Larian for this.
Even 35 dollars is somewhat hefty for us but way more manageable, I pirated the game first and I loved it so much that I put off my second playthrough until the time I could afford the game.
Totk was recycled dlc ideas for botw and sold for $70
The venn diagram for "shitty games that were made as cheaply and quickly as possible for greed and profit," and "$70 games" is a circle
Finally a good essay about $70.
Ultimately what is making the push towards 70 dollar games unfeasible is that there are too many factors working against it.
Inflation is a thing, but wages have been stagnant. WHenever someone tries to raise game costs, another studio offers a simillar game, at the 60 dollar price point or less, while also providing a better product. And lastly outside of Tears of the Kingdom, I can't think of a game that cost 70 dollars that pushed units. Rockstar could pull it off, some are facetiously saying GTA6 will cost 90 dollars. But even that will likley just be seen as a fluke.
The 60 dollar game is here to stay and many games are now experimenting with price tags below that.
This is almost a non-issue for indie gamers. There are so many good ones that I'm happy to recommend to anyone interested
24:36 Meanwhile the PS5 Pro... 💀
18:58 adds IN A VIDEO GAME?!?! AN THEY AR UNSKIPABLE? THIS IS UNACEPTABLE! *insert futurama clip where guy from the 90s complains about advertisements in dreams!*
This video changed NOTHING,, the argument did NOTHING, the people did NOTHING. No matter how hard we try the normies will always be more and their opinion is the company's opinion.
"Better wait 12 days on that one"
Mic drop
I almost exclusively buy games on sale these days. Your game has to be something really special, that I’m really excited to play, for me to pay full price to get it day one. Elden Ring and its DLC are the only games that have achieved that in the past few years.
The problem with games getting more and more expensive, is that in less fortunate countries (like in brazil, my country) the price tends to not be localized, so the price of a 70~80 dollars AAA game here translates to R$300, for comparisson, the MINIMUM salary tends to be R$1300, so... yeah... thats why we have so many pirates here
I can't believe that they increased the price to $0
sad to see this was 3 years ago, thought i found a new based essay youtuber. great vid
I could return ANY TIME, WHO KNOOOWS
Thanks!!
please do man @@gustoxward3913
I live in Canada, where I open my favourite video game distribution platform, and look onto my screen to see a NINETY DOLLAR game, and at this point, im just like, "Damn, inflation must be crazy. Surely, this game must be no more than like, $50 USD, right? It's gotta just be this currency that's displaying this deranged number. CAD must've just fallen off!"
I actually understand where Strauss Zelnick is coming from. See, this cuts to the heart of a huge divide in gaming: game quality vs hardware quality. Strauss conflates improved hardware with better games, and since technology marches on it's pretty easy to accept that hardware has improved since any point in the past. Consumers do this too, whether they're graphics snobs or console rabble arguing over specs for their glorified BluRay players. Major developers are more inclined to embrace this because it's easy to see technological advancements as an investment but not so easy to see creative properties as something stable and worth putting money into. But I'm over here hoping consoles and triple-A developers crash and burn, and if this price inflation brings them one step closer to ruin, I'm all for it.
@Space Jew
So they're justifying by the price and quality of the hardware instead of the time frame and man power it takes to make these games?
Do I have to explain what's wrong with that...?
@@DemonicRemption well I'm from the future. I know exactly how much they value manpower. Completely unsurprised they skipped over thr devs, again. Even thought that is not only the objective reason (labor is almost always the biggest cost for a company) but a great moral argument.
i hope this video gets a resurgence and get near 500k+ views, great arguements!
"The $70 game is inevitable"
And so is me pirating them so who's really laughing?
The phrase “I have no qualms that [loot boxes] are implemented in an unethical way” cannot even be satirised. You cannot make a sentence more tone-deaf than this, even intentionally.
Man, this video aged like fine wine. It's even more relevant in 2024. Too bad that some gamers are enough of shills to be willing to pay $70. *facepalm*
Extra credits forgetting to credit their sources is hilarious and their entire brand is based on opinion
Video good.
Extra Credits bad.
Had this just recommended to me...i was shocked to see the upload date. Truth doesnt age.
Great video, pretty much said everything I was thinking and more.
I can't remember the last time I paid full price for a video game honestly, my backlog is so long already I don't often buy a game for more than 20 bucks CAD.
Hahaha Oh God.
The Star Citizen money laundering scheme bit had me laughing like an idiot. Mostly because it's true.
Bravo, sir.
Good shit.
I think I have an Idea
Instead of pressuring people to make a game a certain price, the board room or creatives should ask themselves
"What kind of game on a $X budget in Y genre can we make with a final retail price of $Z?"
I.e. what kind of game can we make with a budget of $50k in the RPG genre that will have a retail price of $40?
50k won’t even cover the salary of one developer for the year 💀💀
@@itzanpupo8695 i was just throwing a random number out there that seemed like a plausible budget for a game
3 years later, nearly adecade of development hell later and Ubislop tried to sell us a 80$ "QUADRUPLE A"
always online, offbrand, inferior, feature devoid version of Assassins Creed 4 Black Flag, and it rightfully got scorned into irrelevance.
The irony of part 2 titled after something in red dead when red dead is less than 70 dollars kills me
THANK YOU
I've been saying its a huge budget problem for YEARS and I've rarely ever seen ppl make it topic
Feels kinda funny given my tendency to buy these new games after 4-6 years has passed, when the value has dropped over half if even more by then.
Oh, and also for still playing games from 2010. It's just that raising the price just turns off people and when you do that enough, you don't have customers to sustain the prices you have put out.
extra credits is the worst thing.
That was the end of the sentence yes.
Yes
Stopping by from the future to say this video has aged like wine.
1:16 what did he mean by this.
It's common for people in the US and such to forget how it is in other countries. Everywhere in the US says $70 is expensive (and it is) but probably has no idea that games in Brazil cost like legit $200 💀💀💀
BRA7-1L