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..
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.
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?
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.
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'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.
"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 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!
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.
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
In all fairness, back then like 30 years or so people were complaining about how games were so expensive and that there were claims that there was price gouging. It feels like we're talking about the same thing still while at the SAME TIME have to worry about microtransactions which behave more like macrotransactions in mobile and live service games as well as some games (Asura's Wrath) would boldly hide what's suppose to be something you get normally with a paywall just to gain access to the true ending of that game. Yakuza: Infinite Wealth is a more recent example when they would charge $15 to play New Game +, a feature that you would get for free in any other game but apparently not this one.
"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.
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
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?
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
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.
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
@@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.
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. $70 will only be the standard if morons continue to feel obligated to buy the overpriced product. If they can’t help themselves and they for some reason NEED the product at launch because they have issues and can’t seem to wait and do research or send a signal to greedy companies that the product is subpar, the quality isn’t there and their teams are too large... Ubisoft is a perfect example of this.
The indie scene in the sense of music and doing the work in more private studios, or even on a laptop came up. Hell they're doing filming of some interesting bits with phones now. Sooner or later that tech level and people able to make things happen easier is going to catch up. These companies can learn now, or fall into collapse later.
This is why I NEVER bought or will buy a game at full price. I always wait until a 20$ - 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.
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.
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.
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! 😃👍🏾
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
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!
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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 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).
For the worst monetizing practice, I refer to Rockstar: Take existing cars from players and put them behind a GTA+ subscription. EVEN IF THEY WERE ON THE COVER OF THE DISC. SINCE XBOX 360. Rockstar, ladies and gentlemen. 👏
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.
They dont have to make all the money they invested back in a small time frame, gta6 didnt use 2 billion in a month, they used it in the period of 10+ years, i think discounting the price from the get go will definitely help them earn their money back in a comfortable amount of time and also please the customer base I really think everyone should open their eyes and call the companies out on their exploitation
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.
"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.
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’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
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.
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.
Activision is trying to be like Fortnite but the key thing activision always seems dumbfounded by is that Fortnite is fucking free and the money you would’ve spent buying the game still goes to the game because of the micro transactions activision is basically trying to have their cake and eat it too they want to charge 70 bucks for the game and still want you to buy $30-$50 bundles
You said 6:00 a game can be worth 100$ 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 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.
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.
you're naiive. the people making decision about charging extra aren't making them because they're crap at hiring and got some admin things wrong. They're doing it because you'll pay it. And if you don't, they fire whole studios and move along to the next thing. Saying that the solution is on them while everyone still spending money on it is just daft. - it's on you and it's on us. STOP SPENDING THE MONEY!
People are less likely to rush out to buy a $70 dollar game so they are forced to actually wait and see reviews. For me YAKUZA 8 and Dragons Dogma 2 are the only games worth $70 this year
And that’s the problem. Who are you to decide if yakuza is $70 or not. For me I would never even pay more than $5 for a yakuza game. So NO GAME should be $70+ no matter what game it is.
The ironic thing is that you're the type of gamer who drives game costs up, and the quality of games down. I'm more than willing to pay $70 or even more for a good game. And I really don't care if the game has some glitches at launch, so long as they get it running fairly well within a couple of months. Games are complicated, and that's just the reality of modern games. Crying about how your game had a funny glitch the day it came out is just bitching about nothing. If you can't handle glitchy games, wait 3 months before you play it. It's not that complicated. You'll probably get a better price too. Most games go on sale within a few months of release, if you don't have to have it on launch day. Modern games are very complex, and companies have to get them out the door at some point. If you want perfect games out of the gate, go play Squaresoft games on the SNES. Those small simple games were much easier to get running perfectly before launch. Personally, I'll buy good games at launch for full price, because I have the money to be able to afford to support the companies that have good business practices. I understand that not everybody has the money to be able to afford to do that. But there's a very easy solution to that problem. Wait. Within a year you'll probably be able to find that game for half the price. 2 years and it'll be practically free. And it's not like the game is going to be worse if you wait to play it. If anything, it will be better. And I don't really care if the game is buggy, as long long as the companies get those bugs mostly fixed eventually. I don't have to play a game right now. Just give me a good experience eventually and I'm happy to pay for it. It's people who play "free" games, and then shell out money for a worthless optimus prime "skin", those are the people who incentivize game companies to charge money for worthless low effort content. Fortnite is the devil. You're teaching game companies the wrong lesson. That's the reason why Ubisoft and WB have completely abandoned the idea of making quality games. They see players paying money for nothing and they want their own infinite money machine, and they think that failing to make an infinite money machine like fortnite is a better use of their time than making good quality games, which will only make them so much money. They figure they can fail 30 times, but all they need is one success at an infinite money machine, and they have infinite money forever and can fire all their employees and just sit back and collect money off of worthless skins made by interns and AI indefinitely.
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.
You’re the problem right there. Why would you pay $100 for a game? You’re slow. Either all are ok for $100 or NONE are ok for $100. If these companies see you are willing to pay $100 for another game, then that enables them to slap $100 price tag. And who are you to decide if a game is worth $100 or not?
Price & quality of a game is irrelevant. People who complain give in to fomo. Just wait until a game is fixed & discounted with dlc included. My $30 purchase of cyberpunk 2077+ phantom liberty was not compromised by the game’s terrible launch. Why? Because I waited. I bought MK 11 with all its contents for $20. I’m currently waiting for a repackaged Spider-Man 2 with dlc for $20-$40 & Final Fantasy 7 with all 3 parts. People should stop giving into emotions when buying a game. Just think. Games are depreciating assets. Buy them during their dips. It will take years. But at least you didn’t pay full price for a broken mess.
There is no such thing as “microtransactions done right”. Cosmetics are part of the experience and companies have no legitimate reason to nickel and dime players for it. I also have issues with online subscriptions and gamepass ransomware subscriptions. All this gold digging is done purely out of greed and nothing else.
I disagree for 2 reasons, #1. games that are free aren't free to make, and #2. games like the Witcher 3 and cyberpunk 2077 have great expansions, even though i wouldn't call them "microtransactions," they technically are. I'm not trying to start an argument, just giving you my personal thoughts.
@@coltivision I never said I wanted free games. Also keep in mind that Sony raised the prices amongst their most profitable year. They make a ton of money off single player games and they still have an online subscription. Xbox is even worse. They rent you games. And while Nintendo has the cheapest subscription, they do have a second, more expensive tier and their games never go on sale, even after years.
NGL im ok with good cosmetics on a full price games but only if its done post launch, put real effort into it and not cut content from the main game like older CODs do. But these days it has the audacity to charge reskins from previous entries, palette swaps and a freakin gold camo for $20 ea. Fucking Outrageous, they literally treat us like dumb children who would jawdrop on emission/glow sliders set to 1000. Enough is enough.
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.
Games are cheaper now than they were 20 years ago when adjusted with inflation assuming full MSRP. Eg. Lotr: the return of the king £55 2003, £95 2024 Eg. Midnight club: dub edition remix, £25 2005, £42 2024 I don't think it's a price issue, I think that we are more risk adverse as gamers and are unlikely to spend high amounts money on a game just for it not to meet expectations
We already see that happening. As studios that fall apart, we are seeing the rise of indie and double A games. I don't have a negative view of the future. It's the market changing slowly. Vote with your wallet, and things will eventually change. Support what you believe in.
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.
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
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 $70 as you know here it is £70, (£>$).
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.
Buy the games that are worth $70 TO YOU or simply wait for sales, pirate, or skip out on games entirely
I usually wait for a sale.
Pirate all carry on.
Pirates actually have a pretty heavy influence on gaming overall so mass pirating could make a huge difference especially with how easy cracking teams are able to break through the DRMs nowadays
Games like cod, new fifa, 2k, and madden releasing every year aren’t worth 70 dollars to anyone and that’s the issue. Those games shouldn’t be listed at 70 in the first place. Pirate is the move
I usually buy on steam sales 80% off, or G2A. But there are games that I'm just unwilling to buy, so I just buy them on pirate bay. Sims 4 costs hundreds of dollars. How do you even buy that?
None of the games released today have earned the right to seventy dollar games. Since most of the games releasing today are broken anyway. Lol
Like?
Oh please get over yourselves guys. That's why the gaming community is looked down upon. After a year with a crazy amount of great games. Tekken, Persona, Mario, Zelda, Alan Wake, Final Fantasy, Starfield(even if it wasn't "the greatest game of all time' it was by all means a good game. Armored Core, Elden Ring etc.
Stop b#@$!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
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'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.
"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 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!
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)
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.
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
1 billion for mw3!?!? There is some money laundering or something going on
In all fairness, back then like 30 years or so people were complaining about how games were so expensive and that there were claims that there was price gouging. It feels like we're talking about the same thing still while at the SAME TIME have to worry about microtransactions which behave more like macrotransactions in mobile and live service games as well as some games (Asura's Wrath) would boldly hide what's suppose to be something you get normally with a paywall just to gain access to the true ending of that game. Yakuza: Infinite Wealth is a more recent example when they would charge $15 to play New Game +, a feature that you would get for free in any other game but apparently not this one.
"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
Companies will ask for money. If users will pay what companies ask, then they are doing something right.
I dont mind $70 games, but when its $70 + $50 yearly battle pass + Loot Boxes + Cosmetics......its just TOOO FUGGIN MUCHHHHH!!!!
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
I want to blame Sony because they're the ones who started the whole trend for $70 games.
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?
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
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
What happens to the actual developers when all the income got divided into Publishers, Retailers, Liscence, Pysical copies and unsold inventory ?
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
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.
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. $70 will only be the standard if morons continue to feel obligated to buy the overpriced product. If they can’t help themselves and they for some reason NEED the product at launch because they have issues and can’t seem to wait and do research or send a signal to greedy companies that the product is subpar, the quality isn’t there and their teams are too large... Ubisoft is a perfect example of this.
The indie scene in the sense of music and doing the work in more private studios, or even on a laptop came up. Hell they're doing filming of some interesting bits with phones now.
Sooner or later that tech level and people able to make things happen easier is going to catch up. These companies can learn now, or fall into collapse later.
This is why I NEVER bought or will buy a game at full price. I always wait until a 20$ - 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.
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.
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.
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! 😃👍🏾
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
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!
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
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.
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
How. On Earth. Did MW3 cost $1 billion. Treyarch built it in a year… with a box of scraps.
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.
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.
COD games is basically a scam, Activision is easily one of the worst companies to Ever exist
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
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.
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
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
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.
A 1 Billion Dollar budget for MW3 is some real nasty work.
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).
And players also have to purchase a PS Plus subscription in order to experience these video games at their fullest. It's ridiculous.
For the worst monetizing practice, I refer to Rockstar: Take existing cars from players and put them behind a GTA+ subscription. EVEN IF THEY WERE ON THE COVER OF THE DISC. SINCE XBOX 360.
Rockstar, ladies and gentlemen. 👏
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.
They dont have to make all the money they invested back in a small time frame, gta6 didnt use 2 billion in a month, they used it in the period of 10+ years, i think discounting the price from the get go will definitely help them earn their money back in a comfortable amount of time and also please the customer base
I really think everyone should open their eyes and call the companies out on their exploitation
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.
"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.
If we get charged for the hour I’ll just go back to playing 360 games
completly understandable.
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.
There's games on the PS Store that are $125 AUD for just the standard edition, stupidly overpriced.
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
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.
CoD essentially doubling dipping and charging full price, plus getting by with free to play style microtransactions every year is crazy.
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.
Activision is trying to be like Fortnite but the key thing activision always seems dumbfounded by is that Fortnite is fucking free and the money you would’ve spent buying the game still goes to the game because of the micro transactions activision is basically trying to have their cake and eat it too they want to charge 70 bucks for the game and still want you to buy $30-$50 bundles
You said 6:00 a game can be worth 100$ 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 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.
damn, MW3 remake costed a billion dollars to make and that's all they have to show for it?? embarrassing
Some of the best live Service games rn are Priced around 20-40. Everything above is too much
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.
you're naiive.
the people making decision about charging extra aren't making them because they're crap at hiring and got some admin things wrong.
They're doing it because you'll pay it.
And if you don't, they fire whole studios and move along to the next thing.
Saying that the solution is on them while everyone still spending money on it is just daft. -
it's on you and it's on us.
STOP SPENDING THE MONEY!
You heavily underestimate the power of a marketing division.
@@Exiled7dumbass
The 3rd reason downloading games became more popular was because gamestop kept fucking with the only people giving them money.
loved cod but since mwII they just totally stopped caring about the game and started pumping more money into skins than anything else
People are less likely to rush out to buy a $70 dollar game so they are forced to actually wait and see reviews. For me YAKUZA 8 and Dragons Dogma 2 are the only games worth $70 this year
And that’s the problem. Who are you to decide if yakuza is $70 or not. For me I would never even pay more than $5 for a yakuza game. So NO GAME should be $70+ no matter what game it is.
The ironic thing is that you're the type of gamer who drives game costs up, and the quality of games down. I'm more than willing to pay $70 or even more for a good game. And I really don't care if the game has some glitches at launch, so long as they get it running fairly well within a couple of months. Games are complicated, and that's just the reality of modern games. Crying about how your game had a funny glitch the day it came out is just bitching about nothing.
If you can't handle glitchy games, wait 3 months before you play it. It's not that complicated. You'll probably get a better price too. Most games go on sale within a few months of release, if you don't have to have it on launch day.
Modern games are very complex, and companies have to get them out the door at some point.
If you want perfect games out of the gate, go play Squaresoft games on the SNES. Those small simple games were much easier to get running perfectly before launch.
Personally, I'll buy good games at launch for full price, because I have the money to be able to afford to support the companies that have good business practices. I understand that not everybody has the money to be able to afford to do that. But there's a very easy solution to that problem. Wait. Within a year you'll probably be able to find that game for half the price. 2 years and it'll be practically free. And it's not like the game is going to be worse if you wait to play it. If anything, it will be better.
And I don't really care if the game is buggy, as long long as the companies get those bugs mostly fixed eventually. I don't have to play a game right now. Just give me a good experience eventually and I'm happy to pay for it.
It's people who play "free" games, and then shell out money for a worthless optimus prime "skin", those are the people who incentivize game companies to charge money for worthless low effort content. Fortnite is the devil.
You're teaching game companies the wrong lesson.
That's the reason why Ubisoft and WB have completely abandoned the idea of making quality games. They see players paying money for nothing and they want their own infinite money machine, and they think that failing to make an infinite money machine like fortnite is a better use of their time than making good quality games, which will only make them so much money.
They figure they can fail 30 times, but all they need is one success at an infinite money machine, and they have infinite money forever and can fire all their employees and just sit back and collect money off of worthless skins made by interns and AI indefinitely.
Playing $70 for games that look like they've been crafted from Ubisoft feels like a scam
Can't wait for the vid on exposing Quadruple A games!
"Things has changed and that's the way it is" - Tupac Shakur
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.
New games in Australia are usually $95-110. It sucks
Preach on brother... when I become overseer of the entire games industry, I'll mention you.
Meanwhile, a furry made a game for the budged of a paperclip that outsold CoD and costs 10 bucks.
What i cant believe are people paying extra 30 usd to access a game. A game without reviews.
Like shitfield and call of booty
I have been gaming since the 70's and in all that time i have never had any need to buy mtx.
I don’t think I’ve bought a 70 dollar game in 3+ years. After cyberpunk I was done
I'd pay >$100 for a Rockstar game, but Ubisoft's garbage isn't worth $40
You’re the problem right there. Why would you pay $100 for a game? You’re slow. Either all are ok for $100 or NONE are ok for $100. If these companies see you are willing to pay $100 for another game, then that enables them to slap $100 price tag. And who are you to decide if a game is worth $100 or not?
@@xacvhFAs a consumer, if you think a game is overpriced, you don’t have to buy it.
Price & quality of a game is irrelevant. People who complain give in to fomo. Just wait until a game is fixed & discounted with dlc included. My $30 purchase of cyberpunk 2077+ phantom liberty was not compromised by the game’s terrible launch. Why? Because I waited. I bought MK 11 with all its contents for $20. I’m currently waiting for a repackaged Spider-Man 2 with dlc for $20-$40 & Final Fantasy 7 with all 3 parts. People should stop giving into emotions when buying a game. Just think. Games are depreciating assets. Buy them during their dips. It will take years. But at least you didn’t pay full price for a broken mess.
They don’t make a profit off console sales they make money off games sales and subscriptions thats why the exclusives still cost $70
There is no such thing as “microtransactions done right”. Cosmetics are part of the experience and companies have no legitimate reason to nickel and dime players for it. I also have issues with online subscriptions and gamepass ransomware subscriptions. All this gold digging is done purely out of greed and nothing else.
I disagree for 2 reasons, #1. games that are free aren't free to make, and #2. games like the Witcher 3 and cyberpunk 2077 have great expansions, even though i wouldn't call them "microtransactions," they technically are. I'm not trying to start an argument, just giving you my personal thoughts.
@@coltivision I never said I wanted free games. Also keep in mind that Sony raised the prices amongst their most profitable year. They make a ton of money off single player games and they still have an online subscription. Xbox is even worse. They rent you games. And while Nintendo has the cheapest subscription, they do have a second, more expensive tier and their games never go on sale, even after years.
@@Hynotama I can't really argue against you there, I concede.
AAA been real quiet since this dropped
NGL im ok with good cosmetics on a full price games but only if its done post launch, put real effort into it and not cut content from the main game like older CODs do. But these days it has the audacity to charge reskins from previous entries, palette swaps and a freakin gold camo for $20 ea. Fucking Outrageous, they literally treat us like dumb children who would jawdrop on emission/glow sliders set to 1000. Enough is enough.
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.
AAA is old news, we're onto the AAAA generation now.
Yeah, like skulls and bones 😂😂
Games are cheaper now than they were 20 years ago when adjusted with inflation assuming full MSRP.
Eg. Lotr: the return of the king £55 2003, £95 2024
Eg. Midnight club: dub edition remix, £25 2005, £42 2024
I don't think it's a price issue, I think that we are more risk adverse as gamers and are unlikely to spend high amounts money on a game just for it not to meet expectations
We already see that happening. As studios that fall apart, we are seeing the rise of indie and double A games. I don't have a negative view of the future. It's the market changing slowly. Vote with your wallet, and things will eventually change. Support what you believe in.
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.
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