Hope you guys enjoyed the video! Like I said i've started a second channel www.youtube.com/@LiveExiled and check out the Patreon if you want to support and some extra bits! www.patreon.com/Exiled7
What the F was the point in this video if you have no solution?? Just complain about it?? God man this is what's wrong with gamers we need to make a stand rather in talk about how things will get worse and worse..
Pirates actually have a pretty heavy influence on gaming overall so mass pirating could make a huge difference especially with how easy cracking teams are able to break through the DRMs nowadays
Games like cod, new fifa, 2k, and madden releasing every year aren’t worth 70 dollars to anyone and that’s the issue. Those games shouldn’t be listed at 70 in the first place. Pirate is the move
I usually buy on steam sales 80% off, or G2A. But there are games that I'm just unwilling to buy, so I just buy them on pirate bay. Sims 4 costs hundreds of dollars. How do you even buy that?
I’ve always hated the “lets make game look realistic” thing. Sure the game looks nice now but if I wanted to look at something nice I’d go to an art museum. It’s like we’ve decided that the gameplay of a game isn’t the priority
I like realistic to a point on games like enough details where I can actually tell the difference between what is what and who is who though I do appreciate it when they look like ff7 remake and they originally wanted it to look that 3D but couldn't back on PlayStation one era
i noticed this a long time ago. Why is Battlefield 1942 so much more appealing to me than everything that got released after 2142? G, i don't know, maybe because the pure gameplay kept a certain charme even 20 years after the debut? because it didn't try to be "Ultra realistic" and "bloody brutal" to begin with? or maybe it's the fact that driving in a jeep in third person while moving the mouse up and down makes your soldier headbanging? i don't know. Or maybe it's because everyone is using the same loadout in classes and the game was ballanced for maximum enjoyment in the first place? huh.
Oh please get over yourselves guys. That's why the gaming community is looked down upon. After a year with a crazy amount of great games. Tekken, Persona, Mario, Zelda, Alan Wake, Final Fantasy, Starfield(even if it wasn't "the greatest game of all time' it was by all means a good game. Armored Core, Elden Ring etc. Stop b#@$!in like this guy
@@enginerunsable Nintendo is one of the only few game studios that doesn’t often release buggy messes at seventy bucks USD and expects me to be a free Beta tester for them? Even though I like all the consoles? I still notice a vast majority of games releasing are still broken at launch.
Same with spider-man 2 where tf did that (basically half billion , apparently 3 really IS 500M) but nowhere in that game is that cost appropriate or apparent
@@eddiebernays514 yep. I got a buddy who openly admits the game isnt good but he will buy every release anyway because it's all his wife and he plays together. They both say the game is trash
One of the most annoying things about game prices is that , they talk about how much games cost to make but they always continue to make the worlds bigger ,and the games longer ,
Hell no, quality over quantity. Besides, scale is no excuse for lazy ass filler. It's this mentality that allowed Todd to milk Skyrim for a decade and shit out a sub par RPG after@@dennisbeaman958
which is their own decision to make. they COULD make the games smaller and cheaper, but than a certsin Wow-Effect (which is used to impress the kids) would end up making the game sell less well and the shareholders would go for a month lasting riot couz they would not get their annual increase of profit margins. seriously, every cancer that will lead to the collaps of the industry some day is bound to one thing: Greed. capitalism and the never ending hunt for more and more money.
The most important element that is missing is the following one. These days, big game companies, hire psychologists to trick the consumers to spend their money. There is also a lot of bias towards newer releases and a bubble by ignoring successful small and cheap games. Consumers are drilled to the "new=good" mentality. There is an insane amount of awesome games, yet their brain is getting turned off by the next commercial.
"Sure some of the games from the early 2000's are cool but fundamentally a lot of them unless you are playing them back then are very hard to play them now" ...are they really? I swear I see people playing old games with no problem.
I’d say that’s a super casual take. Only casual gamers would say it’s hard to go back to old games. Most who are deep in the HOBBY have no problem going back to older games.
Yeah that comment told me the youtuber themselves is probably young. I can easily go back and not only play games I played a ton like Halo, but discover new games like Otagi which I have owned forever and just now started playing. Controls are a little different but not hard to figure out after about 10 minutes. This instant gratification and every game feeling the same is a major issue with games these days.
I’m so thankful that I’m frugal af and virtually immune to hype. I’ll wait them out… they will be sub 30€ someday and I’ve got a hell of a backlog to catch up on.
I've been gaming for 20 years, I've also been watching content on gaming for well over a decade. General rule was always about $5 profit for retailers like GameStop. An analysis from 2009 have GameStop's profit per new game at about 6¢ (1¢ per $10) [physical games] Publishers and developers chose to make games cost this much, that's not on the customer. I'll continue to wait for games to be $40 or less to deny this industry as much profit as I can.
We definitely can't expect a change when the industry is dominated by these publicly traded companies with shareholders to answer to. I think the best answer to this question is the same with most other industries: Employee owned and operated Co-Ops. Have the industry be run by the people actually making the games and love making them, not out of touch tech moguls. Indies can also make up the lack of resources by allowing players to mod their games into what they want it to be. Our society also really needs to embrace niche interests and markets again. Play what is interesting to you, not what everyone else is playing.
I have so many games I never need to buy a new game, that’s why I never pre-order or buy day one. I wait a year or so after the game is finished and on sale, win win.
A public company absolutely can't break this trend. They are, as you said/implied, their main responsibility is to serve their share holders business interest, which is expensive games with lots of opportunities for post launch monetization rather and make a barely more than passable, but as addictive as possible game for their customers.
I agree that games should be $40 to $50 nowadays and I do wish that all games now would have a 2 hour trial for everyone on consoles and pc. Being able to test a game out before you buy is such an important thing that nobody does now because it would lose them a lot of money since the main thing now is deceptive marketing
That would definitely be a step in the right direction! If that becomes the standard though, then I'm not looking forward to companies front-loading their games with 2 hours of great content and 100 hours of filler!
At the end of the day, they only charge these prices because enough people are willing to pay for them. If people stopped buying $70 games they would be forced to drop them to $60, it's as simple as that - same goes for micro transactions. And for those who'd say this wouldn't be viable from a business POV, just remember these cooperations are reporting record profits every single year... It's even mentioned in this video. So we have the power to change this but way too many people are just too weak-willed and feel like they've got to own these games no matter the cost.
That's why I buy FFXIV expansions honestly. The prices are affordable at $40 and the story and content that comes with it will keep me playing and enjoying myself. Recently, I looked at the price of Final Shape. $60, for an "expansion" that will at best have 6-7 story missions and then nothing to do afterwards until the raid drops a week or two later. Obviously, Bungie will still have their greedy practices working in overdrive and not deliver on the promises they've been making since Shadowkeep
We should do the following as clients: - Set our sights in AA/indie developments - Allowing indies/AAs to be mainstream, become skeptical if they go public in the stock market - Turn modding into a mainstream choice - Avoid getting too invested into massive multiplayer games, specially economically, to avoid losing money and/or time to a now unplayable videogame - Play on PC, even if that means lower graphical fidelity - Never play a free to play game, instead pirate AAAs if possible - Inform yourself about the game before buying, test if it runs, if it's enjoyable, if it isn't a outright spam - Boycott DRMs such as Denuvo
@@Zero77.1 50/50. Should have mentioned "Games owned by AAA companies", which extends to the games they created when they were AA or even indie, along bought studios that most likely will unavoidably turn into just another soulless AAA studio. Also, it's better to encourage piracy of AAA games rather than dropping them, because well, unfortunately most of the AAA sagas used to have soul and people want to try them out, specially in genres where everything else isn't really that on-pair anyway (The Sims, FIFA and Pokémon are good examples of that)
Games today have a habit of falling into the work ethic mindset. Too many games feel that content is basically "kill X players with this gun" Or "use X item 100 times". Basic tasks on the same map over and over doesn't make it content, it makes it tedious. Most people use COD as the worst of this, but a more egregious AAA game is anything fighting game related. In the past characters were unlocked by playing the game, now they are on the disc but locked behind a payment which should be illegal. If the content is on the disc why do I have to pay more to unlock it. Lazy by developers and of course they still sell constantly because people have FOMO so nothing will change.
Agreed on the pricing I mean I saw a game on the App Store $139 now I understand that was the deluxe version with all DLC but I’m seeing newer games upwards if not 100 so yeah it’s crazy but once all games are $100 more. I’m done I can’t do that do I remember when I was a kid we were considered geeks and this was just an immature waste of time. How has it become a rich man’s hobby now?
too big to fail is why I hover around studios like Marvelous, Exceed, Idea Factory, ect. Big enough to make a decent production, not big enough to tank fucking around and finding out. Oh hi Wizards of the Coast
"Why does Sony make more money from a 1st party game than a 3rd party game?" My brother in Christ, THEY MADE THE GAME. They spent money to make a 1st party game, but none on a 3rd party game. Every penny Sony/MS make off, say, Cyberpunk is pure profit. Meanwhile, at $50 per copy sold, Sony would have to sell 6.54 MILLION copies at $70 to break even.
@Exiled7 While Sony, MS and Nintendo don't have to pay a licensing fee to release on their own hardware, they are having to recoup two costs; 1. The price of the game's development. 2. The price of the hardware's manufacture. Third parties only have to do the former, while the 30% cut goes to the hardware manufacturers to recoup the latter. Think of it like this, for all money Sony makes from each copy of Spider-Man 2, 30% is to offset the cost of making the console. Remember, these consoles are sold at a loss.
@@Exiled7 Ur video is bad and trys to justify the raise of prices in video games to help the companies out but forget the people who buy those games are going thru the same problems.
Geez have an opinion, you can’t say micro transactions in Fortnite are done right when kids have gone into debt getting skins that are pumped at kids, creepy as fuck.
The indie scene in the sense of music and doing the work in more private studios, or even on a laptop came up. Hell they're doing filming of some interesting bits with phones now. Sooner or later that tech level and people able to make things happen easier is going to catch up. These companies can learn now, or fall into collapse later.
Wtf happened to demos? Playing a shortened version of a game for free was always a great way to determine whether or not you wanted more. Granted, there were plenty of times where the full product would still disappoint you…but surely demos would help
YOU MISS THE FACT THAT games DONT WANT TO BE THIS EXPENSIVE its the SHARE HOLDERS AND THE LEADERS PUSHING THE MARKED INTO UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS.. they dont WANT TO INCREASE THE PRICE THEY HAVE TO. its ridiculous
Fortnite, despite its criticisms prior, the reason why i appreciate it is because the fact that it's free and sometimes offer free items that doesnt affect gameplay and the fact that it offers a lot to the player. Kind of like how Team Fortress 2 is still alive to this day
priced games with mts never sat right with me. its either your game is f2p w/ mts or paid w/o mts. having both paid + mts is just greedy af, especially if its $70. note: by mts I'm referring to in-game cash shops and not necessarily dlc's or expansions.
@@Zacian2.0The only games I'd say should be realistic are GTA games, because it's basically a real life simulation, but you can do pretty much anything.
You said 6:00 a game can be worth 100$ because it was that good, but should still probably be 60$, well I say, the company should then just make more merchandise which you can purchase instead of making the game more expensive. 10:00 realistic graphics will never age as well as stylized graphics. Also you didn't actually mention anything about Developers being employees and not the CEO nor shareholders(usually) who in the end rake in the majority of the money and the devs get a paycheck, and MAYBE just maybe a bonus depending on how well the game does, but I doubt it.
This is why I NEVER bought or will buy a game at full price. I always wait until a 20$ - 40$ discount. The only game which I paid full price was Elden Ring. And that's because Elden Ring is a masterpiece, with mods and replayability.
10:41 "It's a tradeoff we can't really argue against" i will. Some of the best selling/most played titles of all time have average graphics from a technlogogical standpoint. Minecraft, tetris, fortnite... The reason AAA spend all this money on graphics is because they are afraid of taking risks and creating new and original ideas. Because of that, they put themselves into the position of having to stick to formula that they know and so the only way forward to them is to do bigger and better. So it's their fault if now they have to spend millions on ultra realistic graphics and gigantic maps. If they kept on creating new concepts, they wouldn't need to spend that much money on graphics and wouldn't need to sell game and microtransaction at a high price to recoupe cost. And i disagree. Games from the 2000 are highly playable. I'd even argue that with emulation/remake/remaster being capable of pushing old games to 60fps and hd resolution, they feel better than ever and still have the superior game design. EDIT : finished the video. In the end you sort of agree with my points!; Great work nonetheless.
If all of your last point was true the answer to peoples issues would just be "go play older games" which people don't want to do because of the dated look and feel of them. Once you're use to something it's hard to conisder going down a few pegs. Also to your first point, I agree that SOME of the best selling games have average graphics but if you look at the top 50 games ever sold you'll notice that outside of Pokemon most are games that aimed to be as realisitc as possible as that is viewed as an automatic more immersive expirence. Also Minecraft and Tetris as examples aren't really far when you consider that the price point and times they are made play a massive role in there popularity. Also fortnite is free to play and makes a lot of money as I mention within the video but that doesn't mean it's a cheap game by any means to make.
@@Exiled7 "people don't want to do because of the dated look and feel of them" who are those people? I mean you say this like there is actual proof. The fact that emulation is as big as ever and that this generation is by far the one with the most remake says otherwise to me. Game like shovelknight, hotline miami or celeste would not succeed at all if that was true. I believe you mistake your own tastes with the general opinion. Indies thrives on 8 bit/ps1 era nostalgia. My point is that minecraft, tetris, fortnite would not sell better with better graphics, they sell because of their unique and solid game design. Something AAA are afraid to try because of unpredictability, so they fallback on graphic to sell their games. Top 10 : most player on steam right now 1. Counter-Strike 2 2. Dota 2 3. Palworld 4. PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS 5. Apex Legends 6. NARAKA: BLADEPOINT 7. Grand Theft Auto V 8. Wallpaper Engine 9. Rust 10. Granblue Fantasy: Relink Except for GTA5 and wallpaper engine(which isn't a game) they all have average graphics at best, but incredible gameplay. And i haven't argue about overall price but only about the necessity of having top notch graphics, that was the part of the video i was refering to. I'm not arguing about the other cost of todays game (cinematic, mo cap animation, music, marketing...). EDIT : dude have you actually check the top 50 best selling video game of all time? I just did and there are like 5 that have actual great hyper realistic graphics.
I think you're not reading what I'm saying, I never said games need or have ultra realisitc graphcis. I said they want to be. In an ideal world they want to be so they get to it as much as possible. CS2 showed that CS would like to be as realistic as possible without ruining what already works. Also Yes I did, you can look up the top 50. Steam isn't the top 50.
i dont care about paying for games, but what we've been given by triple a devs for the last 5+ years has barely been games. i have bought many indie and early access games for $10-$20 that ive spent hundreds to thousands of hours playing then i buy a triple a game, play for an hour and 45 mins then get a refund because its not worth losing that money. at this point i hope all triple a devs go bankrupt and all of that talent go to other indie devs to actually make great games.
indies and AA games have been my go too with gaming as of late, indie especially, because more often than not because they’re not tied to release goals and such, they generally have more creative freedom over their projects, and in most cases because they don’t have the same budgets as major game studios, they don’t have charge a great heap in return. Plus sometimes I just prefer the smaller bite sized experiences
5:00 that's why I'm glad I mainly play Jrpgs. Most of the ones I've played are over 100 hours long and have little to no errors. They're complete games
I can't remember the last time I've ever paid more than $40 for a game, and even that's rare. I usually wait awhile after the release so that they can finish the game if it's a high-priced game, or I just buy a console game pass card for a month and play the $70 game for $15, case in point, Starfield.
Not only you get scammed by paying for unfinished games, you get scammed cause the graphics are focusing on fuckin dust particles so you also have to pay for the increased hardware. Pc gets hit the hardest with that though
I remember when game studios were talking about how new games coming out on CDs would be selling for $20 to $30. Never happened. Games on CD still sold for $30 to $90. Then one day I bought a new game, and it REQUIRED registration on STEAM. That was the day when I realized boxed games were effectively dead. Made no sense (to me) to buy a boxed game just to be forced to put it on STEAM anyways. What amazes me is when a small studio puts out a good game and huge AAA studios often put out crap games costing mega-bucks when you get hit with the loot boxes and in-game stores (pay to win).
I like how Hollow Knight devs went completely insane with how that game was cheap and it spread like wild fire. They released content updates, like new quests, bosses for free and it got to the point that people actually felt guilty for buying it for such low price and that any other Metroidvania coming after didnt even dare to ask more for an inferior product.
You guys have to realize (like I myself had to as well) that these new lot of devs/pubs aren't really passionate about video games or making them. They're passionate about money and making IT! Support smaller studios and indie devs. I myself have started my game development journey and am making my dream games that I've always wanted since I was a kid. 👌🏾
Same bro, im also learning animation because there was a lot of cartoons that were amazing but had terrible animation. My first goal is to give every action cartoon developed by “man of action” the studio mappa treatment and reanimate every scene in that style. Danny phantom, and generator rex are the first on the chopping block. Im also developing a souls-like game myself. Hope you actually make it big and showthese posers how it’s done ik i will
@@Nimble.ninja910 Hey thank you so much! That sounds very interesting! I loved those shows growing up. I also am into drawing, story writing, etc. I'm rooting for you and wishing you luck my friend! 😃👍🏾
The worse part is before games were physical, so now all games are digital so the companies don’t have to spend money in manufacturing so even with the increase their pocketing hella profit at our expense. Since everything is digital games should be cheaper!
Most of the money that AAA games make goes to executives and shareholders. Devs are getting screwed over just as much as consumers, sometimes more since despite record profits every year the layoffs are constant. D4 used dark patterns to screw people out of their preorder bonuses, most AAA games release broken, they also rely on predatory system mechanics/design to leech as much money as they can from each player.
@@grandmarquee AAA games are also filled with clones, they don’t take risks because they’re beholden to shareholders and prioritise profit over all else. So many AAA games are rpgs, looter shooters and/or live service games. Indie devs are different, while there are a lot of similar indie games, they take more risks in terms of gameplay and story.
Another issue that usually people don't mention is regional pricing, or the lack of it. Back when GTA V released on Steam, it was $60, but on Brazil it was around R$100 BRL. Which was around $30-$35 at the time, that made the game very accessible for us. Now let's look at most new $70 releases, and they cost... R$ 350! Which is around... R$ 350 in today's exchange rate, sometimes the game is even cheaper by a few cents if we pay in USD depending on the day's exchange rate, it's a complete absurd. While there are some publishers who still employ some decent regional pricing (Larian Games, CD Projekt, THQ Nordic...), most of the large AAA publishers like Sony, Take Two, Sega and others, do not.
With these call of duty games cost. Did they calculate all the previous releases they copy/pasted from into the cost as well? It's practically the same game every single year. How does that cost so much?
Fortnite does it perfectly fine for me, I don’t feel scammed out of spending money like I do with apex because I know that money is going to passionate developers and an ever lasting game that has been in my playstation Home Screen since it came out. But no other game can do microtransactions like Fortnite especially destiny 2 which I already have to spend 100 dollars every year for the next expansion and “episodes” now and then having an egregiously overpriced cash shop just pisses me off.
The game is not out but I heard from an insider that Transformers Reactivate is a game made by passionate developers that make a game they want to play, and that’s what I like and there’s gonna be battle pass and all however like you said I know my money is going to passionate developers.
I'll go with an "indie" now any day. THEY seem to have a ...passion to make a...game. A FUN game, a WORKING game. Yeah they want my money buuuttt not ALL of it annddd after I buy their game they don't just stand there with their ...handS out, more money, more money. I got a couple that are "early access", if I didn't know it, I wouldn't KNOW it. Also what's this $70 you're talking about? In Canada, on Steam they want 93.00 for Slopfield. They can dreeeaammm on about that one. Maybe, maaayyybbeeee when it's on sale for 4.99 the...maybe...maybe.
A lot of these modern releases aren’t even worth the $70 price tag. The studios and companies are simply bloated and have too many hands on deck for their own good. If the games were great, it would be justified but they’re trash, have political topics shoved into them and are made with pretentious writers thinking the fans of these franchises and genres don’t know what they want and their degrees and positions mean they know what’s best for the consumer when it’s obviously not the case. $70 will only be the standard if morons continue to feel obligated to buy the overpriced product. If they can’t help themselves and they for some reason NEED the product at launch because they have issues and can’t seem to wait and do research or send a signal to greedy companies that the product is subpar, the quality isn’t there and their teams are too large... Ubisoft is a perfect example of this.
"First we need to look at the company that I think does microtransactions the best", then proceeds to mention patient 0 for the most vile and predatory practices in the industry. 🙃 Look, if you like Fortnite you like Fortnite, that's fine, but let's not pretend they did it WELL. The quality of the skins isn't the only thing that needs to be considered. Sure, if a game has to have microtransactions I at least expect them to be worth it, but I also expect them to respect me enough not to try and wring my wallet dry with the most scummy tactics out there.
Regarding the last section of your video, CDPR used to be precisely that company, until the Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco. As for the rest of it, it's not a gaming issue but rather a consumer culture issue, or more precisely a late stage capitalism issue. Your comparison between gaming and big oil was spot on and is precisely what I'm talking about here, only it's a much larger issue. You did mention the heart of the issue, however you kind of brushed it aside rather than focus on it, this issue being investors, or more precisely how companies, across all industries, stopped caring about their customers and instead only care about their shareholders. I'm of course only talking about publicly traded companies here, but that includes the absolute majority of triple A studios and publishers(the only one I can think of that, off the tip of my head, isn't there is Valve). You can see it very egregiously in the entertainment industry, with giants like Disney and Amazon engaging in an extreme race to the absolute bottom, but that's just 1 example of many throughout the corporate world. The power dynamic simply shifted away from the consumer and into the shareholders' hands. It's being helped by the law, with 2 magical words: 'fiducial responsibility' that all C-level executives use to defend their scummy business practices and the business culture as a whole. Legally it makes perfect sense, if shareholders can sue a CEO for 'leaving money on the table' than said CEO will do everything within his/her power to not do so in order to avoid getting sued. Makes perfect sense right? The only problem is how to define and measure this concept of 'leaving money on the table' which has no clear answer which makes it such a catch-all excuse. Companies like Disney have been suffering negative growth for several years now yet investors have yet to successfully sue Disney's upper management on the basis of violating their fiduciary responsibility to them. Why? Because Disney seemingly did everything within their power to avoid 'leaving money on the table' in the eyes and with their own(and lets face it, industry wide as well) data and research supporting their claim. Now these data points and researches are obviously flat out wrong, because the people analyzing the data and conducting the research are utterly clueless about what's actually going on, so they let their own biases lead their conclusions rather than allow the research to neutralize their biases. It's the same with gaming companies. Employing all these anti consumer practices are being done in order to be deemed as fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders, even if it costs them customer good will and eventually sales. Sometimes they make up for the drop in sales with their anti consumer practices, sometimes they don't. The point is that they appear to be doing so and are therefore safe from potential lawsuits against them. Moreover since their own shareholders are clueless as well, they don't realize just how bad those anti consumer practices hurt these companies, especially in the medium and long run, which ultimately costs these very shareholders money, they just don't know nor understand it. Since this is the driving force behind the vast majority of the evils within the gaming industry the solution is as simple as it is complicated. Simple because all it requires is changing the American legal culture of being so trigger happy with lawsuits and also removing, or at the very least heavily modifying this concept of 'fiduciary responsibility' as in its current form it's basically a license to kill for any C-level executive. Complicated because the US is so used to using their court system and the concept of civil lawsuits as a means of punishing wrong doers, whether it's suing for malpractice, wrongful whatever, damages for whatever, etc. There are of course other, better, ways of dealing with all of those issues, but those other ways aren't part of the American culture and this culture is so engrained at this point that it's extremely complicated if not outright impossible to change. As for the law change, we all know how complicated that aspect is as well, and that's on top of the inherent built in issues of properly defining this term to the satisfaction of the public, while it's the shareholders who hold all the power due to their deep pockets which lead to campaign contributions, lobbying efforts, etc.
It was a good video to watch and the price for some games is understandable but others I do agree with you that a good amount don't deserve the price increase and the companies are just trying to get more money out of people
Of all the years and all the games I've played, I have only ever bought two microtransactions, the Bacon customization pack in Black Ops 2 and the Captain Price pack from CoD Ghosts. If everyone was like me we would have better games because developers would put more time into a good game and less on an optimized in-game store.
I, personally, wouldn't neccessarily be against games costing $70 dollars purely because games do cost an absolute fuckton of money to make. However, when we're talking about games costing 100 dollars if you want to play 3 days early, 120 if you want those 3 extra missions/quests and the 5 skins packed into the bundle to fluff the price, 150 dollars if you want a season pass as well - and THEN be bombarded with battle passes, microtransactions and the most obnoxious of them all - XP BOOSTS FOR SINGLEPLAYER EXPERIENCES (that have obviously been balanced around people buying the boosts) to then paying ~180 dollars for a game that'll then get some sort of spin-off DLC that isn't included in the season pass because "it's not a DLC it's an expansion pack" or it gets released as a standalone game.... now THAT I do have a problem with. I'm looking at you, Ubisoft.
A simple example of why $70 to "cover development costs" is a lie are fighting games where you're basically strongarmed into getting the $100 deluxe edition to get all the characters in the first season
We could probably solve this issue if more people just stopped Pre-ordering products that haven't released yet as that lowers the incentive to do a good job the more pre-orders a game gets. Gotta make them work for the money.
Reason why older games end up feeling better to play was cause of hardware limitations and how developers would need to be clever to work around them. But newer games can get away with more cause developers lack any real hinderances and dont need to try be as clever anymore during development. Thus, modern games feel lackluster.
That's not how it works I'm affraid. Companies want to earn a profit as living by a world of just trying to break even would lead to companies being less and less willing to push the needle.
Rockstar hasn't JUST "broken even" with gta online. With ALL this money WHAT "needles" are they pushing? NOTHING for single player buutttt a ...CASINO for online. TAKE AWAY vehicles that have been in the game EVER SICE it's inception. Theeennn turn around and want to SELL a "new " vehicle. Listen they DO make great games AND DO deserve to be rewarded but HOW MUCH is ENOUGH? THEIR "answer"? NEVER, it's neevvveerrr enough. Hell they couldn't even be bothered to remaster their OWN games. Games that practically BUILT their "empire". They handed it off to some nobody ever heard of "company". Annnddddd they want to charge FULL PRICE for that? All of them are the BIGGEST money makers on the PLANET, I cry NO tears for them. @@Exiled7
I actually have fun with Skull and Bones. But I'm still the one to admit Black Flag was better in a lot of ways. And I agree that the pricing is pretty terrible. That and though i find the game fun and rather kind of engaging in some ways, it does kind of feel like what a lot of today's games really are. Something that could've been done even on less butch hardware, and a game that would've been interesting to have in a way to play on, on the go. Want a cheaper option too Skull N Bones? Go check out a little game called Under The Black Flag if you'd like a solo venture. And on the Nintendo Switch of Steam to play on a Steam Deck or something like that for quite the game of that experience on the go.
Something I don't believe is talked about nearly as much as it should be, is how these prices affect markets outside of America. Most games today are 60 or 70 American Dollars. Unfortunately I do not live in the USA. I live in Australia, a 1st world country with relatively good income. Yet, Games are regularly 90 to 120 Australian dollars new. It is getting increasingly hard to justify buying games digitally, as with digital purchases there are no sales, GTA V has even increased in price. At least physically we have plenty of competition, sales are regular. This likely at least partially explains why outside of America Digital purchases still are not the main way to get games, physical tends to ironically be much cheaper in markets where digital is absurdly expensive. However, buying physical new at launch costs is certainly still expensive. Pretty much every game at 70 USD is 120 AUD down here. There are already places in this world where the costs of gaming are so scarily high that the choice between buying groceries or video games is a real one.
that's why i NEVER EVER EVER buy a game: on launch or if it doesnt have AT LEAST 50% discount... meaning for it to have a 50% discount it has to be out at least 2 or 3 years. plenty of time for any bugs and glitches or fuck ups are fixed.
Skyrim's DLC was a mockery compared to the major expansion of Oblivion, 'The Shivering Isles'; And yes, I'm also taking into consideration 'Dragonborn'. And also, all of this "higher cost to make games", only applies to 'AAA' games. 'AA' and 'Indie' games, are made relatively cheaply, with very small teams.
One thing that i've noticed with a lot of games is that they (the games) look, graphically, all the same... Nothing makes me go "Wow, these graphics are amazing" anymore, last game that actually did this to me was RDR2 and i think we can all agree that it blows away so many games, not just with its graphics. I, personally, don't need a game that looks 1 to 1 like real life, i dont need the 4K textures (this just makes the game bigger and companies don't know how to compress nor optimize these textures) Give me something that looks like, at max, GTA 5 and, at minimum, BF3. These 2 games can look real, at times, and at other times look like a game, which is a good thing. On the topic of people buying games. I won't hate on people buying their favourite games, if they like CoD, Battlefield, or HALO, then buy those guys, you enjoy them, go for it. The people that DO hate the games however... Why are they still buying it? I'm 100% sure that the same people that crap on the top titles, everyday, are still buying those games and spending a tonne of money on the games cosmetics and such. Is it FOMO? Did something in the back of their brains say "It'll be different"?, they play it, its still the same. But now...its a problem, you played it, you're addicted to it, because NO OTHER GAME/S have that same feeling... Sadly
We need more price variety. I've gotten more time & fun out of cheaper games like Battlebit, Trepang², Insurgency & Helldivers 2 instead of $70+ games like FF16, MWIII, & 2042
Also, from my quick research, Sony and MS charge the standard 30% commission for digital sales. So the money that would go to physical distribution and unsold copies of games? That's saved by the publisher.
Yes which is why in this part of the conversation i'm not saying the platform should be lowering the price of the games. As the companies making the game are in charge of the price of the game.
@Exiled7 I agree that no game should cost $70, as budgets do not need to be as high aa they are. Nothing need ever look better than games do right now. Graphics are basically perfect. Publishers should look into making things cheaper to produce, via efficiency. They should spend less on billboard and TV marketing and more on cheaper RUclipsr/Streamer advertising. But 1st party games can't be sold at a discount, due to the cost that goes into making them.
id love a video about how epic is treating their games and playerbases and comunities besides fortnite because they are just try to milk all the money out of games like fall guys and rocket league to make it into a fortnite mingame for they're fortnite multiverse or something like that and for the players of these Games its just frustrating to see them not comunicating with anyone about it and then just killing of a big comunity part of the comunity for it and make people loose their job because of it. youre video is great btw I love it keep up the good work
Thank you for talking about this subject and PS. Sorry about the long message. So around the 20 min mark you hit the nail on the head with fomo. Let's look at Destiny for example, I used to play Destiny all the time even played Destiny 2 ended up stopping but got back into it during Forsaken dlc. Long story short I have spent a lot on in game micro transactions just for gear that would be unlockable in games of the past. Between all three characters. Close to 3k maybe more and that is just in one season all around you are looking maybe close to 20k. Could be more could be less idk however I am proud to say I am no longer playing Destiny and I am avoiding games with micro transactions. Do you know how difficult that is in this day in age of gaming? The fomo is real, do not be tempted by an item that should be obtainable while playing the game, not from a stupid in game shop that is designed to keep you buying because that one item you really want well it will be gone soon so you should buy it now before it's gone for good. You don't want to be the only one not looking cool right? It's a sick method game companies have been using for years.
I will make my own before I ever pay another subscription, play "free to play or invest in another game that can be taken away, in any way. I'll be publishing free as well, only taking donations for income. These corporations can jump.
I just want to add to the indie game scene section. Even when you have indie titles like the $24 distance, which surpass AAA racing and challenge oriented games by a mile, they're not even known. Or talked about. Thats just the one I know. I'm sure there's MANY others. There's another issue too. Fanbase. When game companies like fromsoftware have a fanbase who are basically like a cult that will defend their every flaw, they can get away with releasing a heavily flawed product rife with serious problems and still be guaranteed to make money like elden ring. This game did not need to be such a massive open world. Yet it was. Why? They could've very well done away with a much smaller open world and kept costs down or better yet, use that same budget to improve the quality of the game. Why do games need to keep getting bigger? These companies also don't seem to be budgeting properly or spending way too much in marketing. You constantly hear about large portions of the game being scrapped due to change in vision or other reasons. I'm sure those cost quite a lot. On top of letting go of talent, these companies then have to spend even more time preparing the newcomers on the work of the previous, experienced folks. Surely, if companies adopted better practices and budgeted properly they could cut costs down. I'm not saying only one is at fault, but this AAA scam is a work of everyone involved. Including the customers/fanbase.
I’m not working an entire day at a minimum wage job to get a game like MW3 trash. It’s so ridiculous. I don’t mind genuinely good games but these have been disgraceful
Hope you guys enjoyed the video! Like I said i've started a second channel www.youtube.com/@LiveExiled and check out the Patreon if you want to support and some extra bits! www.patreon.com/Exiled7
What the F was the point in this video if you have no solution?? Just complain about it?? God man this is what's wrong with gamers we need to make a stand rather in talk about how things will get worse and worse..
Complains about price structure... stops to plug pay-tree-ohn.
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
Why are you using dollars as a metric? You are British, i am also. I wish it was $70 as you know here it is £70, (£>$).
Buy the games that are worth $70 TO YOU or simply wait for sales, pirate, or skip out on games entirely
I usually wait for a sale.
Pirate all carry on.
Pirates actually have a pretty heavy influence on gaming overall so mass pirating could make a huge difference especially with how easy cracking teams are able to break through the DRMs nowadays
Games like cod, new fifa, 2k, and madden releasing every year aren’t worth 70 dollars to anyone and that’s the issue. Those games shouldn’t be listed at 70 in the first place. Pirate is the move
I usually buy on steam sales 80% off, or G2A. But there are games that I'm just unwilling to buy, so I just buy them on pirate bay. Sims 4 costs hundreds of dollars. How do you even buy that?
I’ve always hated the “lets make game look realistic” thing. Sure the game looks nice now but if I wanted to look at something nice I’d go to an art museum. It’s like we’ve decided that the gameplay of a game isn’t the priority
I like realistic to a point on games like enough details where I can actually tell the difference between what is what and who is who though I do appreciate it when they look like ff7 remake and they originally wanted it to look that 3D but couldn't back on PlayStation one era
i noticed this a long time ago. Why is Battlefield 1942 so much more appealing to me than everything that got released after 2142? G, i don't know, maybe because the pure gameplay kept a certain charme even 20 years after the debut? because it didn't try to be "Ultra realistic" and "bloody brutal" to begin with? or maybe it's the fact that driving in a jeep in third person while moving the mouse up and down makes your soldier headbanging? i don't know. Or maybe it's because everyone is using the same loadout in classes and the game was ballanced for maximum enjoyment in the first place? huh.
None of the games released today have earned the right to seventy dollar games. Since most of the games releasing today are broken anyway. Lol
Like?
Oh please get over yourselves guys. That's why the gaming community is looked down upon. After a year with a crazy amount of great games. Tekken, Persona, Mario, Zelda, Alan Wake, Final Fantasy, Starfield(even if it wasn't "the greatest game of all time' it was by all means a good game. Armored Core, Elden Ring etc.
Stop b#@$!in like this guy
@@enginerunsable Nintendo is one of the only few game studios that doesn’t often release buggy messes at seventy bucks USD and expects me to be a free Beta tester for them? Even though I like all the consoles? I still notice a vast majority of games releasing are still broken at launch.
@@enginerunsable I agree
@@enginerunsablehow can you lick the boots of corporations so hard without your tongue falling off?
MW3 was 1 billion? LMAO it must be a money laundering scheme or they spend it all on marketing
Same with spider-man 2 where tf did that (basically half billion , apparently 3 really IS 500M) but nowhere in that game is that cost appropriate or apparent
COD doesnt need to pay for marketing. COD players are so hypnotized that they will continue throwing money at them without getting anything new.
@@eddiebernays514 Then it's a tax writeoff lmao somebody is lawndering mafia money
@@eddiebernays514 yep. I got a buddy who openly admits the game isnt good but he will buy every release anyway because it's all his wife and he plays together. They both say the game is trash
Why not both?
One of the most annoying things about game prices is that , they talk about how much games cost to make but they always continue to make the worlds bigger ,and the games longer ,
Which would be fine if most of it wasn't filler
@@MrJemoederopeenstokjfiller is ok in some kinds of games like Skyrim
Hell no, quality over quantity. Besides, scale is no excuse for lazy ass filler. It's this mentality that allowed Todd to milk Skyrim for a decade and shit out a sub par RPG after@@dennisbeaman958
@dennisbeaman958 Skyrims shitty combat certainly wasn't ok though.
which is their own decision to make. they COULD make the games smaller and cheaper, but than a certsin Wow-Effect (which is used to impress the kids) would end up making the game sell less well and the shareholders would go for a month lasting riot couz they would not get their annual increase of profit margins. seriously, every cancer that will lead to the collaps of the industry some day is bound to one thing: Greed. capitalism and the never ending hunt for more and more money.
The most important element that is missing is the following one.
These days, big game companies, hire psychologists to trick the consumers to spend their money.
There is also a lot of bias towards newer releases and a bubble by ignoring successful small and cheap games.
Consumers are drilled to the "new=good" mentality. There is an insane amount of awesome games, yet their brain is getting turned off by the next commercial.
That Red Letter Media quote has aged like fine wine.
@@darksidegryphon5393what happened? He edited the comment
100% sometimes everyone buys cod because the sheeps support and enable this kind of crap to gaslight other players outside the us
"Sure some of the games from the early 2000's are cool but fundamentally a lot of them unless you are playing them back then are very hard to play them now" ...are they really? I swear I see people playing old games with no problem.
The fact that Morrowind still attracts new players says enough
I’d say that’s a super casual take. Only casual gamers would say it’s hard to go back to old games. Most who are deep in the HOBBY have no problem going back to older games.
Yeah that comment told me the youtuber themselves is probably young. I can easily go back and not only play games I played a ton like Halo, but discover new games like Otagi which I have owned forever and just now started playing. Controls are a little different but not hard to figure out after about 10 minutes. This instant gratification and every game feeling the same is a major issue with games these days.
Doom released over 30 years ago and people are still playing it.
Perfect example
@@davidolvera1031
I’m so thankful that I’m frugal af and virtually immune to hype. I’ll wait them out… they will be sub 30€ someday and I’ve got a hell of a backlog to catch up on.
I've been gaming for 20 years, I've also been watching content on gaming for well over a decade.
General rule was always about $5 profit for retailers like GameStop. An analysis from 2009 have GameStop's profit per new game at about 6¢ (1¢ per $10) [physical games]
Publishers and developers chose to make games cost this much, that's not on the customer.
I'll continue to wait for games to be $40 or less to deny this industry as much profit as I can.
If your goal is to deny them as much profit as you can then sailing the high seas would be the most effective option, or even buying used copies.
We definitely can't expect a change when the industry is dominated by these publicly traded companies with shareholders to answer to. I think the best answer to this question is the same with most other industries: Employee owned and operated Co-Ops. Have the industry be run by the people actually making the games and love making them, not out of touch tech moguls. Indies can also make up the lack of resources by allowing players to mod their games into what they want it to be. Our society also really needs to embrace niche interests and markets again. Play what is interesting to you, not what everyone else is playing.
Well said, brother.
Well said
I feel the same
And, how do you propose that this solution be implemented?
Uh...legislation?
I have so many games I never need to buy a new game, that’s why I never pre-order or buy day one. I wait a year or so after the game is finished and on sale, win win.
A public company absolutely can't break this trend. They are, as you said/implied, their main responsibility is to serve their share holders business interest, which is expensive games with lots of opportunities for post launch monetization rather and make a barely more than passable, but as addictive as possible game for their customers.
1 billion for mw3!?!? There is some money laundering or something going on
I agree that games should be $40 to $50 nowadays and I do wish that all games now would have a 2 hour trial for everyone on consoles and pc. Being able to test a game out before you buy is such an important thing that nobody does now because it would lose them a lot of money since the main thing now is deceptive marketing
That would definitely be a step in the right direction! If that becomes the standard though, then I'm not looking forward to companies front-loading their games with 2 hours of great content and 100 hours of filler!
At the end of the day, they only charge these prices because enough people are willing to pay for them.
If people stopped buying $70 games they would be forced to drop them to $60, it's as simple as that - same goes for micro transactions.
And for those who'd say this wouldn't be viable from a business POV, just remember these cooperations are reporting record profits every single year... It's even mentioned in this video.
So we have the power to change this but way too many people are just too weak-willed and feel like they've got to own these games no matter the cost.
Unfortunately, you're right.
The same idiots complaining are the ones feeding their pockets
tl;dr: stop whining because whales will still buy them
That's why I buy FFXIV expansions honestly. The prices are affordable at $40 and the story and content that comes with it will keep me playing and enjoying myself.
Recently, I looked at the price of Final Shape. $60, for an "expansion" that will at best have 6-7 story missions and then nothing to do afterwards until the raid drops a week or two later. Obviously, Bungie will still have their greedy practices working in overdrive and not deliver on the promises they've been making since Shadowkeep
I dont mind $70 games, but when its $70 + $50 yearly battle pass + Loot Boxes + Cosmetics......its just TOOO FUGGIN MUCHHHHH!!!!
We should do the following as clients:
- Set our sights in AA/indie developments
- Allowing indies/AAs to be mainstream, become skeptical if they go public in the stock market
- Turn modding into a mainstream choice
- Avoid getting too invested into massive multiplayer games, specially economically, to avoid losing money and/or time to a now unplayable videogame
- Play on PC, even if that means lower graphical fidelity
- Never play a free to play game, instead pirate AAAs if possible
- Inform yourself about the game before buying, test if it runs, if it's enjoyable, if it isn't a outright spam
- Boycott DRMs such as Denuvo
Pirate AAA games? Why do I need to pirate it to play it, they steal time and the games suck
@@Zero77.1 50/50. Should have mentioned "Games owned by AAA companies", which extends to the games they created when they were AA or even indie, along bought studios that most likely will unavoidably turn into just another soulless AAA studio.
Also, it's better to encourage piracy of AAA games rather than dropping them, because well, unfortunately most of the AAA sagas used to have soul and people want to try them out, specially in genres where everything else isn't really that on-pair anyway (The Sims, FIFA and Pokémon are good examples of that)
What happens to the actual developers when all the income got divided into Publishers, Retailers, Liscence, Pysical copies and unsold inventory ?
Games today have a habit of falling into the work ethic mindset. Too many games feel that content is basically "kill X players with this gun" Or "use X item 100 times". Basic tasks on the same map over and over doesn't make it content, it makes it tedious. Most people use COD as the worst of this, but a more egregious AAA game is anything fighting game related. In the past characters were unlocked by playing the game, now they are on the disc but locked behind a payment which should be illegal. If the content is on the disc why do I have to pay more to unlock it. Lazy by developers and of course they still sell constantly because people have FOMO so nothing will change.
Agreed on the pricing I mean I saw a game on the App Store $139 now I understand that was the deluxe version with all DLC but I’m seeing newer games upwards if not 100 so yeah it’s crazy but once all games are $100 more. I’m done I can’t do that do I remember when I was a kid we were considered geeks and this was just an immature waste of time. How has it become a rich man’s hobby now?
too big to fail is why I hover around studios like Marvelous, Exceed, Idea Factory, ect. Big enough to make a decent production, not big enough to tank fucking around and finding out. Oh hi Wizards of the Coast
"Why does Sony make more money from a 1st party game than a 3rd party game?"
My brother in Christ, THEY MADE THE GAME. They spent money to make a 1st party game, but none on a 3rd party game.
Every penny Sony/MS make off, say, Cyberpunk is pure profit. Meanwhile, at $50 per copy sold, Sony would have to sell 6.54 MILLION copies at $70 to break even.
So you believe one rule for them and another for companies that'll lose that 30%?
@Exiled7 While Sony, MS and Nintendo don't have to pay a licensing fee to release on their own hardware, they are having to recoup two costs;
1. The price of the game's development.
2. The price of the hardware's manufacture.
Third parties only have to do the former, while the 30% cut goes to the hardware manufacturers to recoup the latter.
Think of it like this, for all money Sony makes from each copy of Spider-Man 2, 30% is to offset the cost of making the console. Remember, these consoles are sold at a loss.
@@Exiled7 Ur video is bad and trys to justify the raise of prices in video games to help the companies out but forget the people who buy those games are going thru the same problems.
I Hate F2P Games, the live service system is one of the greatest symptoms in the ill gaming industry
i 100% agree with every point in this video, i love how you try to be un-biased as possible, and you got a great commentary voice, keep it up
Geez have an opinion, you can’t say micro transactions in Fortnite are done right when kids have gone into debt getting skins that are pumped at kids, creepy as fuck.
@@gloomyvale3671 thats the idiot kids/parents fault, not the games fault, your just whiny cuz your nephew maxed out your card lmao
Companies will ask for money. If users will pay what companies ask, then they are doing something right.
The indie scene in the sense of music and doing the work in more private studios, or even on a laptop came up. Hell they're doing filming of some interesting bits with phones now.
Sooner or later that tech level and people able to make things happen easier is going to catch up. These companies can learn now, or fall into collapse later.
Wtf happened to demos? Playing a shortened version of a game for free was always a great way to determine whether or not you wanted more. Granted, there were plenty of times where the full product would still disappoint you…but surely demos would help
YOU MISS THE FACT THAT games DONT WANT TO BE THIS EXPENSIVE its the SHARE HOLDERS AND THE LEADERS PUSHING THE MARKED INTO UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS.. they dont WANT TO INCREASE THE PRICE THEY HAVE TO. its ridiculous
Fortnite, despite its criticisms prior, the reason why i appreciate it is because the fact that it's free and sometimes offer free items that doesnt affect gameplay and the fact that it offers a lot to the player. Kind of like how Team Fortress 2 is still alive to this day
priced games with mts never sat right with me. its either your game is f2p w/ mts or paid w/o mts. having both paid + mts is just greedy af, especially if its $70.
note: by mts I'm referring to in-game cash shops and not necessarily dlc's or expansions.
10 people made palworld. AAA companies are paying thousands of people, and this does factor into what the game is going to cost to make.
Also. Fuck realism. I hate the art style, its shit. I dont play games to look at reality. I play games to have fun being not in reality.
@@Zacian2.0The only games I'd say should be realistic are GTA games, because it's basically a real life simulation, but you can do pretty much anything.
If we get charged for the hour I’ll just go back to playing 360 games
completly understandable.
You said 6:00 a game can be worth 100$ because it was that good, but should still probably be 60$, well I say, the company should then just make more merchandise which you can purchase instead of making the game more expensive.
10:00 realistic graphics will never age as well as stylized graphics.
Also you didn't actually mention anything about Developers being employees and not the CEO nor shareholders(usually) who in the end rake in the majority of the money and the devs get a paycheck, and MAYBE just maybe a bonus depending on how well the game does, but I doubt it.
I want to blame Sony because they're the ones who started the whole trend for $70 games.
This is why I NEVER bought or will buy a game at full price. I always wait until a 20$ - 40$ discount. The only game which I paid full price was Elden Ring. And that's because Elden Ring is a masterpiece, with mods and replayability.
10:41 "It's a tradeoff we can't really argue against" i will. Some of the best selling/most played titles of all time have average graphics from a technlogogical standpoint. Minecraft, tetris, fortnite... The reason AAA spend all this money on graphics is because they are afraid of taking risks and creating new and original ideas. Because of that, they put themselves into the position of having to stick to formula that they know and so the only way forward to them is to do bigger and better.
So it's their fault if now they have to spend millions on ultra realistic graphics and gigantic maps. If they kept on creating new concepts, they wouldn't need to spend that much money on graphics and wouldn't need to sell game and microtransaction at a high price to recoupe cost.
And i disagree. Games from the 2000 are highly playable. I'd even argue that with emulation/remake/remaster being capable of pushing old games to 60fps and hd resolution, they feel better than ever and still have the superior game design.
EDIT : finished the video. In the end you sort of agree with my points!; Great work nonetheless.
If all of your last point was true the answer to peoples issues would just be "go play older games" which people don't want to do because of the dated look and feel of them. Once you're use to something it's hard to conisder going down a few pegs.
Also to your first point, I agree that SOME of the best selling games have average graphics but if you look at the top 50 games ever sold you'll notice that outside of Pokemon most are games that aimed to be as realisitc as possible as that is viewed as an automatic more immersive expirence.
Also Minecraft and Tetris as examples aren't really far when you consider that the price point and times they are made play a massive role in there popularity. Also fortnite is free to play and makes a lot of money as I mention within the video but that doesn't mean it's a cheap game by any means to make.
@@Exiled7 "people don't want to do because of the dated look and feel of them" who are those people? I mean you say this like there is actual proof. The fact that emulation is as big as ever and that this generation is by far the one with the most remake says otherwise to me. Game like shovelknight, hotline miami or celeste would not succeed at all if that was true. I believe you mistake your own tastes with the general opinion. Indies thrives on 8 bit/ps1 era nostalgia.
My point is that minecraft, tetris, fortnite would not sell better with better graphics, they sell because of their unique and solid game design. Something AAA are afraid to try because of unpredictability, so they fallback on graphic to sell their games.
Top 10 : most player on steam right now
1. Counter-Strike 2
2. Dota 2
3. Palworld
4. PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS
5. Apex Legends
6. NARAKA: BLADEPOINT
7. Grand Theft Auto V
8. Wallpaper Engine
9. Rust
10. Granblue Fantasy: Relink
Except for GTA5 and wallpaper engine(which isn't a game) they all have average graphics at best, but incredible gameplay.
And i haven't argue about overall price but only about the necessity of having top notch graphics, that was the part of the video i was refering to. I'm not arguing about the other cost of todays game (cinematic, mo cap animation, music, marketing...).
EDIT : dude have you actually check the top 50 best selling video game of all time? I just did and there are like 5 that have actual great hyper realistic graphics.
I think you're not reading what I'm saying, I never said games need or have ultra realisitc graphcis. I said they want to be. In an ideal world they want to be so they get to it as much as possible. CS2 showed that CS would like to be as realistic as possible without ruining what already works.
Also Yes I did, you can look up the top 50. Steam isn't the top 50.
10:22 with the exception of most Valve Titles
i dont care about paying for games, but what we've been given by triple a devs for the last 5+ years has barely been games. i have bought many indie and early access games for $10-$20 that ive spent hundreds to thousands of hours playing then i buy a triple a game, play for an hour and 45 mins then get a refund because its not worth losing that money.
at this point i hope all triple a devs go bankrupt and all of that talent go to other indie devs to actually make great games.
indies and AA games have been my go too with gaming as of late, indie especially, because more often than not because they’re not tied to release goals and such, they generally have more creative freedom over their projects, and in most cases because they don’t have the same budgets as major game studios, they don’t have charge a great heap in return. Plus sometimes I just prefer the smaller bite sized experiences
5:00 that's why I'm glad I mainly play Jrpgs. Most of the ones I've played are over 100 hours long and have little to no errors. They're complete games
Thing is
I get games that are available physically because my game shop sells them for a bit cheaper than it would to purchase it digitally
I can't remember the last time I've ever paid more than $40 for a game, and even that's rare. I usually wait awhile after the release so that they can finish the game if it's a high-priced game, or I just buy a console game pass card for a month and play the $70 game for $15, case in point, Starfield.
Not only you get scammed by paying for unfinished games, you get scammed cause the graphics are focusing on fuckin dust particles so you also have to pay for the increased hardware. Pc gets hit the hardest with that though
I remember when game studios were talking about how new games coming out on CDs would be selling for $20 to $30. Never happened. Games on CD still sold for $30 to $90. Then one day I bought a new game, and it REQUIRED registration on STEAM. That was the day when I realized boxed games were effectively dead. Made no sense (to me) to buy a boxed game just to be forced to put it on STEAM anyways. What amazes me is when a small studio puts out a good game and huge AAA studios often put out crap games costing mega-bucks when you get hit with the loot boxes and in-game stores (pay to win).
I like how Hollow Knight devs went completely insane with how that game was cheap and it spread like wild fire. They released content updates, like new quests, bosses for free and it got to the point that people actually felt guilty for buying it for such low price and that any other Metroidvania coming after didnt even dare to ask more for an inferior product.
And players also have to purchase a PS Plus subscription in order to experience these video games at their fullest. It's ridiculous.
You guys have to realize (like I myself had to as well) that these new lot of devs/pubs aren't really passionate about video games or making them. They're passionate about money and making IT! Support smaller studios and indie devs. I myself have started my game development journey and am making my dream games that I've always wanted since I was a kid. 👌🏾
Same bro, im also learning animation because there was a lot of cartoons that were amazing but had terrible animation. My first goal is to give every action cartoon developed by “man of action” the studio mappa treatment and reanimate every scene in that style. Danny phantom, and generator rex are the first on the chopping block. Im also developing a souls-like game myself. Hope you actually make it big and showthese posers how it’s done ik i will
@@Nimble.ninja910 Hey thank you so much! That sounds very interesting! I loved those shows growing up. I also am into drawing, story writing, etc. I'm rooting for you and wishing you luck my friend! 😃👍🏾
Preach on brother... when I become overseer of the entire games industry, I'll mention you.
The worse part is before games were physical, so now all games are digital so the companies don’t have to spend money in manufacturing so even with the increase their pocketing hella profit at our expense. Since everything is digital games should be cheaper!
Most of the money that AAA games make goes to executives and shareholders. Devs are getting screwed over just as much as consumers, sometimes more since despite record profits every year the layoffs are constant.
D4 used dark patterns to screw people out of their preorder bonuses, most AAA games release broken, they also rely on predatory system mechanics/design to leech as much money as they can from each player.
Saturation and bloat, due for a crash and a need for shake up. I'm so bored of games at the moment, they all feel the same, gameplay is stale.
Indies are where the true innovation lives.
@@Captain-J-Amadaeus Like what? It seems these days even indies are saturated with clones.
@@grandmarquee AAA games are also filled with clones, they don’t take risks because they’re beholden to shareholders and prioritise profit over all else. So many AAA games are rpgs, looter shooters and/or live service games.
Indie devs are different, while there are a lot of similar indie games, they take more risks in terms of gameplay and story.
Another issue that usually people don't mention is regional pricing, or the lack of it.
Back when GTA V released on Steam, it was $60, but on Brazil it was around R$100 BRL. Which was around $30-$35 at the time, that made the game very accessible for us.
Now let's look at most new $70 releases, and they cost... R$ 350! Which is around... R$ 350 in today's exchange rate, sometimes the game is even cheaper by a few cents if we pay in USD depending on the day's exchange rate, it's a complete absurd. While there are some publishers who still employ some decent regional pricing (Larian Games, CD Projekt, THQ Nordic...), most of the large AAA publishers like Sony, Take Two, Sega and others, do not.
With these call of duty games cost. Did they calculate all the previous releases they copy/pasted from into the cost as well?
It's practically the same game every single year. How does that cost so much?
Thank you for getting into this mess because you did all right with a good points
Fortnite does it perfectly fine for me, I don’t feel scammed out of spending money like I do with apex because I know that money is going to passionate developers and an ever lasting game that has been in my playstation Home Screen since it came out.
But no other game can do microtransactions like Fortnite especially destiny 2 which I already have to spend 100 dollars every year for the next expansion and “episodes” now and then having an egregiously overpriced cash shop just pisses me off.
The game is not out but I heard from an insider that Transformers Reactivate is a game made by passionate developers that make a game they want to play, and that’s what I like and there’s gonna be battle pass and all however like you said I know my money is going to passionate developers.
Can't wait for the vid on exposing Quadruple A games!
CoD essentially doubling dipping and charging full price, plus getting by with free to play style microtransactions every year is crazy.
I'll go with an "indie" now any day. THEY seem to have a ...passion to make a...game. A FUN game, a WORKING game. Yeah they want my money buuuttt not ALL of it annddd after I buy their game they don't just stand there with their ...handS out, more money, more money. I got a couple that are "early access", if I didn't know it, I wouldn't KNOW it. Also what's this $70 you're talking about? In Canada, on Steam they want 93.00 for Slopfield. They can dreeeaammm on about that one. Maybe, maaayyybbeeee when it's on sale for 4.99 the...maybe...maybe.
A lot of these modern releases aren’t even worth the $70 price tag. The studios and companies are simply bloated and have too many hands on deck for their own good. If the games were great, it would be justified but they’re trash, have political topics shoved into them and are made with pretentious writers thinking the fans of these franchises and genres don’t know what they want and their degrees and positions mean they know what’s best for the consumer when it’s obviously not the case. $70 will only be the standard if morons continue to feel obligated to buy the overpriced product. If they can’t help themselves and they for some reason NEED the product at launch because they have issues and can’t seem to wait and do research or send a signal to greedy companies that the product is subpar, the quality isn’t there and their teams are too large... Ubisoft is a perfect example of this.
"First we need to look at the company that I think does microtransactions the best", then proceeds to mention patient 0 for the most vile and predatory practices in the industry. 🙃
Look, if you like Fortnite you like Fortnite, that's fine, but let's not pretend they did it WELL. The quality of the skins isn't the only thing that needs to be considered. Sure, if a game has to have microtransactions I at least expect them to be worth it, but I also expect them to respect me enough not to try and wring my wallet dry with the most scummy tactics out there.
Regarding the last section of your video, CDPR used to be precisely that company, until the Cyberpunk 2077 fiasco. As for the rest of it, it's not a gaming issue but rather a consumer culture issue, or more precisely a late stage capitalism issue. Your comparison between gaming and big oil was spot on and is precisely what I'm talking about here, only it's a much larger issue. You did mention the heart of the issue, however you kind of brushed it aside rather than focus on it, this issue being investors, or more precisely how companies, across all industries, stopped caring about their customers and instead only care about their shareholders. I'm of course only talking about publicly traded companies here, but that includes the absolute majority of triple A studios and publishers(the only one I can think of that, off the tip of my head, isn't there is Valve). You can see it very egregiously in the entertainment industry, with giants like Disney and Amazon engaging in an extreme race to the absolute bottom, but that's just 1 example of many throughout the corporate world.
The power dynamic simply shifted away from the consumer and into the shareholders' hands. It's being helped by the law, with 2 magical words: 'fiducial responsibility' that all C-level executives use to defend their scummy business practices and the business culture as a whole. Legally it makes perfect sense, if shareholders can sue a CEO for 'leaving money on the table' than said CEO will do everything within his/her power to not do so in order to avoid getting sued. Makes perfect sense right? The only problem is how to define and measure this concept of 'leaving money on the table' which has no clear answer which makes it such a catch-all excuse. Companies like Disney have been suffering negative growth for several years now yet investors have yet to successfully sue Disney's upper management on the basis of violating their fiduciary responsibility to them. Why? Because Disney seemingly did everything within their power to avoid 'leaving money on the table' in the eyes and with their own(and lets face it, industry wide as well) data and research supporting their claim. Now these data points and researches are obviously flat out wrong, because the people analyzing the data and conducting the research are utterly clueless about what's actually going on, so they let their own biases lead their conclusions rather than allow the research to neutralize their biases.
It's the same with gaming companies. Employing all these anti consumer practices are being done in order to be deemed as fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders, even if it costs them customer good will and eventually sales. Sometimes they make up for the drop in sales with their anti consumer practices, sometimes they don't. The point is that they appear to be doing so and are therefore safe from potential lawsuits against them. Moreover since their own shareholders are clueless as well, they don't realize just how bad those anti consumer practices hurt these companies, especially in the medium and long run, which ultimately costs these very shareholders money, they just don't know nor understand it.
Since this is the driving force behind the vast majority of the evils within the gaming industry the solution is as simple as it is complicated. Simple because all it requires is changing the American legal culture of being so trigger happy with lawsuits and also removing, or at the very least heavily modifying this concept of 'fiduciary responsibility' as in its current form it's basically a license to kill for any C-level executive. Complicated because the US is so used to using their court system and the concept of civil lawsuits as a means of punishing wrong doers, whether it's suing for malpractice, wrongful whatever, damages for whatever, etc. There are of course other, better, ways of dealing with all of those issues, but those other ways aren't part of the American culture and this culture is so engrained at this point that it's extremely complicated if not outright impossible to change. As for the law change, we all know how complicated that aspect is as well, and that's on top of the inherent built in issues of properly defining this term to the satisfaction of the public, while it's the shareholders who hold all the power due to their deep pockets which lead to campaign contributions, lobbying efforts, etc.
Great video, but I'd recommend citing your sources in the description or doing that and a little card in the video. Fantastic work, mate!
It was a good video to watch and the price for some games is understandable but others I do agree with you that a good amount don't deserve the price increase and the companies are just trying to get more money out of people
It’s crazy that the total price of call of duty is $170+++. If you consider someone who buys battle passes at $30 a pop waste of money.
There's games on the PS Store that are $125 AUD for just the standard edition, stupidly overpriced.
Of all the years and all the games I've played, I have only ever bought two microtransactions, the Bacon customization pack in Black Ops 2 and the Captain Price pack from CoD Ghosts. If everyone was like me we would have better games because developers would put more time into a good game and less on an optimized in-game store.
I, personally, wouldn't neccessarily be against games costing $70 dollars purely because games do cost an absolute fuckton of money to make.
However, when we're talking about games costing 100 dollars if you want to play 3 days early, 120 if you want those 3 extra missions/quests and the 5 skins packed into the bundle to fluff the price, 150 dollars if you want a season pass as well - and THEN be bombarded with battle passes, microtransactions and the most obnoxious of them all - XP BOOSTS FOR SINGLEPLAYER EXPERIENCES (that have obviously been balanced around people buying the boosts) to then paying ~180 dollars for a game that'll then get some sort of spin-off DLC that isn't included in the season pass because "it's not a DLC it's an expansion pack" or it gets released as a standalone game.... now THAT I do have a problem with. I'm looking at you, Ubisoft.
A simple example of why $70 to "cover development costs" is a lie are fighting games where you're basically strongarmed into getting the $100 deluxe edition to get all the characters in the first season
A 1 Billion Dollar budget for MW3 is some real nasty work.
We could probably solve this issue if more people just stopped Pre-ordering products that haven't released yet as that lowers the incentive to do a good job the more pre-orders a game gets. Gotta make them work for the money.
Reason why older games end up feeling better to play was cause of hardware limitations and how developers would need to be clever to work around them. But newer games can get away with more cause developers lack any real hinderances and dont need to try be as clever anymore during development. Thus, modern games feel lackluster.
For ALL the money Rockstar has made off of gta online they should NEVER have to charge a PENNY for ANY of their games again...EVER.
That's not how it works I'm affraid. Companies want to earn a profit as living by a world of just trying to break even would lead to companies being less and less willing to push the needle.
Rockstar hasn't JUST "broken even" with gta online. With ALL this money WHAT "needles" are they pushing? NOTHING for single player buutttt a ...CASINO for online. TAKE AWAY vehicles that have been in the game EVER SICE it's inception. Theeennn turn around and want to SELL a "new " vehicle. Listen they DO make great games AND DO deserve to be rewarded but HOW MUCH is ENOUGH? THEIR "answer"? NEVER, it's neevvveerrr enough. Hell they couldn't even be bothered to remaster their OWN games. Games that practically BUILT their "empire". They handed it off to some nobody ever heard of "company". Annnddddd they want to charge FULL PRICE for that? All of them are the BIGGEST money makers on the PLANET, I cry NO tears for them.
@@Exiled7
okie bro
not to mention..the cost if subscription to psplus..where in os3 era it was free online
COD games is basically a scam, Activision is easily one of the worst companies to Ever exist
Some of the best live Service games rn are Priced around 20-40. Everything above is too much
Meanwhile, a furry made a game for the budged of a paperclip that outsold CoD and costs 10 bucks.
god of war, jedi survivor, ff rebirth, all three are sequels which barely changed anything, look the same, play the same yet demand an extra £20
Very well done video , great points and views .. nice work ..
14:07 Wow, who thought that rereleasing Superman 64 was a good idea???
Video starts at 1:38
How could you forget Larian in the ethical gaming companies category? i saw BG3 B roll.
i've bought BG3 twice and i still feel like i'm robbing them
damn, MW3 remake costed a billion dollars to make and that's all they have to show for it?? embarrassing
I actually have fun with Skull and Bones. But I'm still the one to admit Black Flag was better in a lot of ways. And I agree that the pricing is pretty terrible. That and though i find the game fun and rather kind of engaging in some ways, it does kind of feel like what a lot of today's games really are. Something that could've been done even on less butch hardware, and a game that would've been interesting to have in a way to play on, on the go.
Want a cheaper option too Skull N Bones? Go check out a little game called Under The Black Flag if you'd like a solo venture. And on the Nintendo Switch of Steam to play on a Steam Deck or something like that for quite the game of that experience on the go.
Something I don't believe is talked about nearly as much as it should be, is how these prices affect markets outside of America. Most games today are 60 or 70 American Dollars. Unfortunately I do not live in the USA. I live in Australia, a 1st world country with relatively good income. Yet, Games are regularly 90 to 120 Australian dollars new. It is getting increasingly hard to justify buying games digitally, as with digital purchases there are no sales, GTA V has even increased in price. At least physically we have plenty of competition, sales are regular. This likely at least partially explains why outside of America Digital purchases still are not the main way to get games, physical tends to ironically be much cheaper in markets where digital is absurdly expensive. However, buying physical new at launch costs is certainly still expensive. Pretty much every game at 70 USD is 120 AUD down here.
There are already places in this world where the costs of gaming are so scarily high that the choice between buying groceries or video games is a real one.
that's why i NEVER EVER EVER buy a game: on launch or if it doesnt have AT LEAST 50% discount... meaning for it to have a 50% discount it has to be out at least 2 or 3 years. plenty of time for any bugs and glitches or fuck ups are fixed.
Skyrim's DLC was a mockery compared to the major expansion of Oblivion, 'The Shivering Isles'; And yes, I'm also taking into consideration 'Dragonborn'.
And also, all of this "higher cost to make games", only applies to 'AAA' games. 'AA' and 'Indie' games, are made relatively cheaply, with very small teams.
One thing that i've noticed with a lot of games is that they (the games) look, graphically, all the same... Nothing makes me go "Wow, these graphics are amazing" anymore, last game that actually did this to me was RDR2 and i think we can all agree that it blows away so many games, not just with its graphics.
I, personally, don't need a game that looks 1 to 1 like real life, i dont need the 4K textures (this just makes the game bigger and companies don't know how to compress nor optimize these textures) Give me something that looks like, at max, GTA 5 and, at minimum, BF3. These 2 games can look real, at times, and at other times look like a game, which is a good thing.
On the topic of people buying games.
I won't hate on people buying their favourite games, if they like CoD, Battlefield, or HALO, then buy those guys, you enjoy them, go for it. The people that DO hate the games however... Why are they still buying it? I'm 100% sure that the same people that crap on the top titles, everyday, are still buying those games and spending a tonne of money on the games cosmetics and such. Is it FOMO? Did something in the back of their brains say "It'll be different"?, they play it, its still the same. But now...its a problem, you played it, you're addicted to it, because NO OTHER GAME/S have that same feeling... Sadly
We need more price variety. I've gotten more time & fun out of cheaper games like Battlebit, Trepang², Insurgency & Helldivers 2 instead of $70+ games like FF16, MWIII, & 2042
Also, from my quick research, Sony and MS charge the standard 30% commission for digital sales. So the money that would go to physical distribution and unsold copies of games? That's saved by the publisher.
Yes which is why in this part of the conversation i'm not saying the platform should be lowering the price of the games. As the companies making the game are in charge of the price of the game.
@Exiled7 I agree that no game should cost $70, as budgets do not need to be as high aa they are.
Nothing need ever look better than games do right now. Graphics are basically perfect.
Publishers should look into making things cheaper to produce, via efficiency. They should spend less on billboard and TV marketing and more on cheaper RUclipsr/Streamer advertising.
But 1st party games can't be sold at a discount, due to the cost that goes into making them.
the only issue is games like rockstars and even cod are more expensive and than most 1st party games.
id love a video about how epic is treating their games and playerbases and comunities besides fortnite because they are just try to milk all the money out of games like fall guys and rocket league to make it into a fortnite mingame for they're fortnite multiverse or something like that and for the players of these Games its just frustrating to see them not comunicating with anyone about it and then just killing of a big comunity part of the comunity for it and make people loose their job because of it. youre video is great btw I love it keep up the good work
Even your MW3 numbers are inflated. How tf a recycled multiplayer game with barely any campaign cost $1B USD
Tf dude
Thank you for talking about this subject and PS. Sorry about the long message. So around the 20 min mark you hit the nail on the head with fomo. Let's look at Destiny for example, I used to play Destiny all the time even played Destiny 2 ended up stopping but got back into it during Forsaken dlc. Long story short I have spent a lot on in game micro transactions just for gear that would be unlockable in games of the past. Between all three characters. Close to 3k maybe more and that is just in one season all around you are looking maybe close to 20k. Could be more could be less idk however I am proud to say I am no longer playing Destiny and I am avoiding games with micro transactions. Do you know how difficult that is in this day in age of gaming? The fomo is real, do not be tempted by an item that should be obtainable while playing the game, not from a stupid in game shop that is designed to keep you buying because that one item you really want well it will be gone soon so you should buy it now before it's gone for good. You don't want to be the only one not looking cool right? It's a sick method game companies have been using for years.
I will make my own before I ever pay another subscription, play "free to play or invest in another game that can be taken away, in any way.
I'll be publishing free as well, only taking donations for income.
These corporations can jump.
Playing $70 for games that look like they've been crafted from Ubisoft feels like a scam
AAA been real quiet since this dropped
I'm yet to buy a game at 70 dollars. I've been lucky that most of my must haves have still released at 60 or less
I just want to add to the indie game scene section. Even when you have indie titles like the $24 distance, which surpass AAA racing and challenge oriented games by a mile, they're not even known. Or talked about. Thats just the one I know. I'm sure there's MANY others.
There's another issue too. Fanbase. When game companies like fromsoftware have a fanbase who are basically like a cult that will defend their every flaw, they can get away with releasing a heavily flawed product rife with serious problems and still be guaranteed to make money like elden ring. This game did not need to be such a massive open world. Yet it was. Why? They could've very well done away with a much smaller open world and kept costs down or better yet, use that same budget to improve the quality of the game. Why do games need to keep getting bigger?
These companies also don't seem to be budgeting properly or spending way too much in marketing. You constantly hear about large portions of the game being scrapped due to change in vision or other reasons. I'm sure those cost quite a lot. On top of letting go of talent, these companies then have to spend even more time preparing the newcomers on the work of the previous, experienced folks. Surely, if companies adopted better practices and budgeted properly they could cut costs down.
I'm not saying only one is at fault, but this AAA scam is a work of everyone involved. Including the customers/fanbase.
yeah and when you count the cod series bundle costing over 1000 euros hell nah
I’m not working an entire day at a minimum wage job to get a game like MW3 trash. It’s so ridiculous. I don’t mind genuinely good games but these have been disgraceful