Black Myth Wukong was fantastic and probably worth the box price. Hogwarts legacy was pretty great too but I got it on sale so I feel you for sure. Why pay full price today when you can wait for a steam summer sale next year or the year after? Hell, that's if it doesn't go on gamepass. You wont find more bang for your buck then Gamepass. Hi-Fi Rush, Warhammer Darktide, Starfield, STALKER 2 and a bunch others where literally day one release. That's already like 200+ in games for 10 bucks a month.
ive got over 70+ great big name games on steam and ive never paid more than $30 for them. Recently gave $26 for Cyberpunk2077 and like 15 for RDR2. why would i pay full price when i can wait for a sale and some patches and have a better experience. not like i have a shortage of games to play lol.
The last time I paid for a full price is Resident Evil 4 Remake, I personally think the sheer quality of the game and replayability justifies the 60$. After that game, I literally never buy any full-priced game ever.
rarely ever unless I feel it a fantastic game and worth the price, for example I paid full price for BG3 and have no regrets, same for Metaphor: ReFantazio or elden ring.
AAA game studios when small developers produce high quality games: ''That's not the industry standard'' AAA game studios when prices increase: ''That's the new industry standard''
And yet, we have single or low double digit teams putting out far higher quality games with far more polish and care FOR AN OFTEN LOWER PRICE, IF ANYONES NOT UP TO STANDARD ITS THE TRIP A'S! If they're gonna price hike then they'd damn well make it worth that much.
@@killerzer0x74 The 2 game I put the most time is Dwarf Fortress with 2 developer (and people who made it more user friendly) and Haven and Hearth also with 2 developer (and also with a helper making more user friendly client)
One example I heard speculated about is; GTA 6 will release at 70$, BUT you will be able to get it 5-7 days early access if you buy the "premium edition" at 100+$... thats how its going to begin.
Reminder that the suits might want you to pay $100 for a select few games, us devs don't! Unfortunately, we don't set the price if you don't want it to become a thing, don't buy any game at that price. Even if it is GTA 6
Agreed. I read one person saying something along the lines of "I don't like the Idea of games being $100. I'll probably buy GTAVI but I don't want to see this become a trend." I'm like no, everyone buying GTAVI at $100 is what's going to set the trend. If GTA under performs in sales, that's what's going to cause studios to think twice.
@@ramonalavigne8953 Sadly, GTA has such name brand recognition. The people like us who would hold off on buying it are more than likely inconsiquential. Not to say people should give in, more so it's gonna be the difference between GTAV! being the best selling game ever versus GTAVI being a successful game.
Ubisoft are the perfect example of a company who don't understand their franchises aren't worth much. $100 games would tank that company even more that it already is now.
@@realrealityeast6278 hard copies don't exist on PC and any console that has hard copies, the games are usually 'more' expensive than on PC. Even 10-15 years ago, a PC game bought in a shop just came with a steam code inside the box.
@@realrealityeast6278are you making a wishful wish or are you actually believing that? If this is the latter, do I have bad news for you bub. In any case, I’d advise against such beliefs.
We’ll see how it plays out, but entering triple-digit territory in an era where the cost of living is through the roof + an insane amount of competition doesn’t seem like a very well-thought out idea.
@cherry9787 Sadly, the statement you put out is self-defeating. Since people used to try and say 70 wasn't too bad if no micro and that line proved to be just as true then as it was now. I didn't have a problem with zelda totk costing 70 cuz of what all it added. But like the rest of the industry, the vultures at WB couldn't help but sell a inferior version of mk1 on the switch for 70. That's a scam, idc who says otherwise. We'll just buy games at discounts or be playing our libraries. I have no desire to play these cost games just to play a game.
@@dychostarr $70 for ANY Switch game IMO is a scam. Zelda is a far outlier. Tbh no version of M1K is worth $70 either. If they stopped the day 1 dlc crap and just put that with the game and the dlc base game then games might be worth $100... The way the economy is going, $100 might not even buy a flash drive anymore lmfao
Yep, games get added to my wishlist which is sorted by discount. When a game has a discount of 60% or more, I re-evaluate it, check reviews etc and maybe buy it.
And don't forget it's not going to be just $100, even at that price they'll still try to upsell you a $30 skin, a $50 DLC and $15 for a weekly xp boost or something. And they'll still claim they need to cut costs and fire everyone and replace them with AI then wonder why no one buys their games.
Because profits must go up. Sold a million copies last year? Have to sell 1.2 million this year, no matter how that would work in a closed system. The system must grow. You must consume. Already own the game on PlayStation? Buy it for the PC anyway. There's a clear parallel to addiction here, I think. Some money or lots of money isn't enough for them. They want all the money possible now. And they want 102% of that the next quarter.
@@l0rf Public Corpo Shareholders demanding MORE MORE MORE! I bought this stock and now I want it HIGHER so I can sell it to someone else who'll demand the same thing!
Problem are the consumers and die off fans, look at Bethesda studio and their cult, you couldn’t critic Star citizen because it was the most amazing game ever before elder scroll 7 😂
@@l0rf Entire system of stocks and all the things around them is a scam. This is the endgame, it was always going to be like this. From the very start.
I love how US analytics always forget that rest of the world exist. Canada, Australia, European (and surely other) countries pay more for games every year due to conversion. In my country I can see price rises, on PSN store twice a year. If they rise prices further, in some countries we won't be willing to buy anymore.
This exactly! AAA games on full price to me are a rare luxury to me because the conversion rate from dollars here is brutal. 60$ is a significant amount of money here.
This will make developing AAA even more of a gamble, because people will just buy fewer games. You will either produce THE game of the season or have a commercial flop. Fits perfectly into the current pattern of execs going full risk at the risk of studios going bust afterwards. The industry has become one big gamble.
Yep, much like Hollywood, rather spend 300 million dollars to MAYBE make 1 billion than make smaller mid-sized movies which alone would make the same with much lower risk if individual movies flop.
Yep. I think we'll be seeing smaller and smaller projects soon. Which isn't a bad thing but it's definitely interesting seeing the way the industry is going.
Meanwhile my salary is the same like in 2019, and the currency lost 10% value to inflation for 5 years in a row. But the price of games plan to almost double. Hilarious guys. 😄
This thing with "advanced access" or "early", "before official release". B***h please, the advanced access, early, before offcial release is the official release. You just have to give them more money or you get penalized and get access at a later date. People needs to stop being such cucks. THE GLASS IS HALF EMPTY.
The psychology is different. Having an upfront cost of 60 and paying more "because you want to" feels better to big spenders than only having the choice of spending 100. It sounds stupid but there's a good reason so many millions go into the psychology of marketing.
@JJJBunney001, but the point is that it should be the standard, not what currently is, which is dragon age veilguard, cyberpunk 2077 (when it released), anthem, mass effect andromeda, skull and bones, and many more like them.
Not a criticism, but BG3 is essentially Divinity games + D&D + movies Once in a lifetime... nah son, it was honed over the course of several years into magnificence The general recipe can be repeated I'm looking forward to Doom and GTA 6 people will buy no matter how much they screw people Murica #1 (of screwing you)
@@StephenMcGregor1986 So did Elden Ring, and The Witchers 3, and Monster Hunter W, and Path of Exile 2, As it should've been. So many bigger studios hav way more resources and way more IP, it should be easier for them to do what BG3 did. But Have they? No, instead of Chasing good games, they chase money.
@@ProjectFrazpeople are angry that the trailer implies that cirilla somehow completed the trials of grass as an adult and a woman Oh and don't forget the best devs left and made their own new studio, it's the end of CD projekt
"Games have never been cheaper when adjusted for inflation" yes, this is true. Games price increases have not kept pace with inflation. Neither have incomes. Games have gone up in price while wages have been stagnant. People are making about the same as they were twenty years ago, but CoL has gone up, leaving people with less discretionary income, and games have gone up in price, meaning that people simply can't afford to buy them regularly anymore. They save up. They wait for sales. People used to have $200/mo to spend on four $50 video games. Now people have $50/mo to spend on one $70 video game - you can't square that circle. The 'AAA' video games industry have priced themselves out of their own market. This is beside the point that even at $70, with the truly ridiculous budgets they CHOOSE to set for their games, they are still making a profit. They just aren't making as BIG of a profit as they'd like. Sony and Ubisoft are the only ones losing money over here, and that's because one likes to set money on fire chasing trends, while the other likes to push the idea that your $70 is really just a long-term rental. The rest are making plenty of money, they just aren't making ALL of the money, and that can't be allowed to continue.
True. What we experience isn't inflation, since inflation lowers the value of money, which leads to higher wages as well. I think the correct term is stagflation.
I also hope these games start costing 100$,heck lets make em 200$...it will be awsome for gamers because it will lead to indie games and AA games that actualy make good games to have their sales skyrocker
That's not how markets work. Triple A have been doing terrible the last 5 years and indie games have been killing it already. having to pay 200 bucks for Black Myth Wukong or Marvel Rivals instead of it being free is not good for gamers don't be fucking dilutional. There are plenty of fantastic IP from studios that are "AAA" Look at the new game CD Project Red are working on. Witcher but you're a vampire. Looks great. You're actually out of your mind if you think there doesn't exist any good major releases.
I assert that by coming out and saying you would stop making videos- you probably realized you still have lots to say, and that you have a talent for it. I’m glad you’re still uploading, Kira
If I am paying $100 per game I am simply buying less games. There is no more money coming in. It would just mean more games fail because people can't afford it. It's a cheek coming from Rockstar who earned over $1 billion from GTA and it was wildly profitable. They do not need more money. If it is $100 its an easy pass for me.
Games should probably have been moving towards $100 years ago...on the PS1 and N64 in the late nineties new games were about $40-50...adjusting for inflation that's getting close to $100 today.
@@vallejomach6721 Games have been moving to above $100 for a while now. It's called day 1 DLC and deluxe and ultimate editions. Publishers want their cake and to eat it too. At $100 base, a complete edition of a game will cost upwards of $150.
@@vallejomach6721 except they have been taking their pound of flesh in PLENTY of other ways. Which I can almost guarantee wouldn't suddenly disappear because they charge what they 'should' be charging in their eyes. Instead, you'd just get gouged almost double the cost on the game price... Then the battle passes, the MTX, the DLC, etc, etc. They make FAR more money doing what they do now than they used to. Even adjusted for inflation lol.
@@vallejomach6721 but I think it says a lot about the fact they haven't needed to be $100 says a lot. Production methods are different, which makes a lot of production methods generally cheaper. And the number of games available was limited, so you either played one of their games or didn't. Especially during the era of high console exclusivity. Now a lot of games are published across many countries and many consoles. You have so much choice, so why would anyone want to spend $100 on a broken game.
@ That's an entirely different kettle of fish. At the end of the day though games are luxury items, not necessities. Nobody has ever been forced to buy a game at gunpoint. The reason they have got away with charging those prices and adopting those monetisation models is because people have paid the asking prices and bought them. I would be the worst customer of a AAA publisher. I have a library of hundreds games, yet I don't think I've bought a new game at release for 20 years...and I certainly don't buy cosmetic doodads and gizmos or play free-to-play grindfests. Ever. If I were representative of the typical gamer then none of this BS would have ever taken root in the first place... Sadly, I am not the typical...people buy this garbage and therefore they sell it. If people did not buy it then they wouldn't be making it. It's as simple as that. The free market would decide...and for years now the free market has been filled with people that are happy to spend money on those things.
To be fair, the idea that all new releases have to have the same sticker price is just a relic of the times when cost per unit sold was dominated by having to ship it to you in a box and really needs to go. These days, the fact that the latest yearly EA FC casino game has the same up-front price as Baldur's Gate 3 just doesn't make any sense and is actually kind of insulting.
I already thought 70$ for totk was ludicrous, I would refuse 100$. Talk about how expensive the games are to make all you like - it's not like developers see any of that money anyway - wages have stagnated for decades. There is no justification for this price hike beyond greed/rent seeking.
It BAFFLES me that these studios do not seem to understand that they are the ones deciding on the budget and the scope of the games. They always cry "development is so expensive!", while they are the ones who decide on how much they want to spend. Some still seem to think: "If it's a 200 million budget, it will be a hit for sure!" Not understanding that the game needs to be enjoyable, no matter how much the development cost.
Budget is kinda based on the development cycle. if your studios yearly wages are $50m then a 5 year dev cycle will be $250m, it's why publishers might end up releasing a game as is despite needing more time to cook. Part of the reason budgets are bigger is because there's more devs, CDPR went from 250 to 400 for CP77, games either need to sell more or be more expensive.
Heh, most games, especially AAA games, are already selling for 100 euros. Of course, this is if you want the finished product. If you want a poor man's copy for 60 euros, you're missing the first-day DLCs and other cuts. They want new poormans to cost 100 euros and up for 140 deluxe, 190 collectors, and 220 supper duper deluxe collectors edition.
The game industry has been the BIGGEST money on the PLANET for quite awhile. Bigger than movie, music, books COMBINED. All these YEARS with their transactions, all the BILLIONS they have FLEECED out of people now they want to cry some kind of poor? Get the F outta here. Just incentivizing people to...sail the high seas. arrrrrr matey.
At $100 price point, they will lose revenue as a fair amount of people will either wait for a decent sale, or sail the high seas. The interpretation of how well a game is at launch is also at risk due to lowered player counts, which could affect investment down the road as well.
The fools. The FOOLS! The gaming market is not like other markets! You cant go there with your apple customer capture enshittification subscription mentality and expect it to work there! These are people who will *out compete you* . If you take their game away, if you make them angry enough, if you make skype bad enough THEY WILL GO MAKE SOMETHING BETTER FOR LESS while throwing darts at the picture of your company logo. Gamers get the best of everything, because they dont *put up* with anything less. You dont know where you are. The rage you inspire in them could very well drive innovation that destroys you.
you can buy a budget laptop for less than $200, and that's a piece of hardware that while slow can do a lot of different things, why are we paying so much for SOFTWARE, it's ridiculous imo. like i get covering the cost of the labour but a good game can be made by 1 person so why are they spending millions and millions on labour per game?
Damn bro, unfortunately you bring out there makes supplying your digital games very difficult. We have to jack up the price to cover supply costs of your digital game.
High price points really are a perfect catalyst to drive people away from ever purchasing these games. There are developing countries with weaker currencies and prices that have long been in the triple-digit range with discounts that can't effectively dull these absurd prices. And guess what? Potential gamers simply settle to playing at cybercafes, pirate, or move on to cheaper platforms like PCs and mobile phones. It's the chief reason console gaming never caught on in most of these markets and now the PC platform is at risk of marginalized too due to the inflating cost of new hardware and competition from cheap phones.
Rockstar might be the most overrated developer of all time, GTA will do nothing to justify a £100 price tag nor any other game. £60-£80 is already simply too high
I'm fine with paying developers, qa testers, artists, actors, and everyone else essential to making a game a decent wage, and if a price hike is what is required, then fair. HOWEVER, I'm not up for paying more to pad the pocket of shareholders, executives, and the idiots in charge who don't think I'll pick rent over the next big release.
i don't think chinese companies are interested in this kind of price gouging, so they're just going to lose even more market share to chinese owned game companies, not that i mind, but they can't pull this off without the whole industry going along lol
To echo kira abit: smaller studios have been the ones making great games with small teams. The development of the massive games that lose money seems to be the problem, guided by greedy clueless corporate decisions that waste hundreds of millions of failed projects for every project that we ultimately see. Seeing the solution to this as upping pricing feels to me like doubling down on a losing strategy when it should as Kira points out be clear to anyone not blind that AAA has been falling apart, and I think due mostly to absolutely idiotic corporate management. When I compare that with smaller studios making great games they are the ones that have been shaking things up and hugely profitable. The AAA space to me is suffering from its own stupidity, billions invested in live service projects that were immediate flops. It just speaks of a culture of greed, it’s just a shame that so many will lose jobs while this house of cards collapses, but I feel like the games industry will ultimately still continue to thrive. Just what was never sustainable and idiotic has failed and will continue to fail. Good to see the cats again :)
They literally just keep increasing the prices for the 'finished' games while also controlling most of the manufacturing process and the budgets that go into making games. You can't tell me that there's a need to make a game cost $100 outside of the control of the publishers. The budgets keep increasing because you make the games more expensive to make because you think you have to go bigger every year to further the narrative of infinite growth in a finite system to your shareholders.
LOL... pretty much, I had a Neo Geo in 1991 and the games were £125 in the UK. I use to play them for a week and take them back and exchange for another or get my money back, I couldn't actually afford to OWN the games, the shop did do rentals so that was what I got to play. Sold it in the end and bought a SNES with a Super Wild Card.
Basic economics: supply and demand. They can't comprehend that they are already way past the point where those 2 curves meet and increasing prices further will result in less money as they just sell less. Plus they can't comprehend that people have less disposable income either. So they're probably working with really outdated market data as well.
The last Ubisoft game I bought was for $4 three years ago and I still haven't played it. If Ubisoft tries to charge $100 for anything they'll go bankrupt.
You already need to shill out hardware upgrades to run the unoptimized slop they're pushing out, there's no reason but greed to gouge the price of software as well
The 10 dollar price hike wasn't too hard to swallow because I buy games on sale anyways. I see that as part of the problem though. If a massive amount of your customers are waiting around for your product to drop in price, It might be worth your while to rethink your pricing strategy.
The problem is wages aren’t going up so if everyone charges $100 they will probably price out a lot of their customers and ironically lose even more money.
TBF 60$ in 2005 is 100$ today and 60$ in 2000 is 112$ today. But of course, this is on top of bs dlc and microtransactions in single player games for which the game is made intentionally less fun so you spend money on lvl ups, so it's like having your cake and eating the baker into bankruptcy.
@ it very much is because those are the companies making games, if they don't make a decent profit, they close and can no longer make games, e.g. imagine if Atlus would not have been bought by Sega
@@ButWhyWasTaken Yeah but a lot of those games were physical copies and required distribution networks eg. Brick and mortar storefronts like gamestop. Hell, many games like fallout 76 are released as only digital nowadays, the physical box was just a CD code for the game IIRC. More so game consumption as in gaming demographics have steadily increased since then. Also the gaming industry needs to stop spending money on unnecessary advancements like mo-cap animation and what not. Some games can benefit from these expensive advancements sure, but why does every AAA or even AA game need to be as graphically advanced (and consequently as expensive to produce) as possible?
@@nicholashubbard7146Are graphics to be blamed per-se? Whenever I see an endless staff roll in AAA games it feels as if 50% if not more of the people involved are PR, HR, translators and other such bloat. I thought UE5 and the likes came with the promise of even singular nobodies being able to make decent-looking games? Is mocapping that expensive at this point? I thought it was fairly normal by now. Maybe it's not the tech but the devs hiring high-profile actors? And even if true that it's graphics - maybe AAA devs should then stop hiring psychologists and skin designers but instead visual designers or whatever. That being said the players themselves sometimes greatly overrate graphics too. Whenever a trailer for a game is released, both a promising or trashy one, there are instantly people who criticize the graphics NOT looking as if they gonna were to cook your system. I'm subscribed to a few channels that love to make videos that show the upcoming best-looking games. So this culture of graphics first, gameplay secondary is being boosted not just by developers. A lot of other people need to get their priorities straight too, especially those PC gaming gigachads with their rigs being the equivalent to NASA supercomputers.
I still remember when most games cost £20 - £30 at launch, back when they had to get the discs, and case, and GAME MANUAL manufactured for each copy sold, and physically shipped all around the country to physical stores in high-cost building locations that need heating, and multiple staff employed. Back when playing video games was orders of magnitude less popular (and thus had less far sales). I will pay more than that for games but it's pretty rare (CP2077, Baldur's Gate 3 collector's edition, PoE2 collector's edition), often I'm happy to just wait for a game to go on a discount to under £30. The longer I need to wait for that to happen the more happy I am to wait longer for it to go even cheaper or just lose interest and not buy it. Likewise, I refuse to buy a game for over £30 at all if it's not new - for example if it was released on a different platform over a year ago, even if it's a game that I WOULD happily pay £70 at launch for, it's no longer a new game and I refuse to pay full price for it. They already made me wait for it so I'll just wait a bit longer for the price to go down. (Especially if it's a heavily story based game where most of the story has had plenty of time to get spoiled - I may not ever buy the game in that case).
So on top of insane "micro"transactions, season passes, subscriptions, etc, they also want a hundred dollars for whatever garbage they pump out? No thank you, I'll stick to my old games and pirate servers.
Yep, it just won’t work. People will stop buying. I liken it to streaming services. They thought that people would just endlessly sub to multiple services as they fragmented the market and increased prices ending up spending $120+ a month, it didn’t happen.
I love that Gaming Companies are pushing prices up and claiming more cost to make games. Then you have them making sure their workers use AI to help improve the speed of making games and fire people to keep cost down... Makes sense.... Not saying they are making games with AI, but using AI to speed up their work and help them do it faster.
It's funny how these industry nerds think that their slop is on the same level as Rockstar games. GTA6 may be worth 80-100 bucks and if the game is good I will gladly pay that. But Johnny Executive's newest live service fighting game battle royale hero shooter is not worth that same price. Expecting me to pay the same amount of money for chopped horse meat that I paid for dry-aged Wagyu beef is actual insanity.
@@nicholashubbard7146 Part of me is happy TB went out when he did, because he didn't have to suffer through seeing the industry converge into live-service/gacha slop.
a lot of the best games still cost around $50 and less if you buy them on seasonal discounts, because they are FUN not a service trying to outlive itself
If I drop any money these days I want to be able to install without DRM and to be able to own and play without any store, subscription, login or always online requirement attached, day 1.
This can only end badly. Unless their game is amazing beyond anyone's wildest dreams, they'll hit the critical point of affordability vs desirability, where most of their playerbase opts not to buy their game.
Look Kira, you just don't get it. We don't need "people" to "develop" our "games"... we just need executives to continue to make more money than the previous year. You need to see the bigger picture here.
The thing is 70$ dollars hasn’t done anything to improve most games that have come out. Triple A games just got greedier and they added more microtransactions
Prices were what drive piracy back in the 80s and 90s, when games MSRPs were the equivalent of $120-200 in today’s money. Even if you bought them on sale you were still looking at over $70 in today’s money.
Larian could release literally anything and if I see Swen Vincke smiling when he talks about it or wearing a suit of medieval armor I know it's gonna be good, the player trust they've built is so strong I don't care what they charge me for anything they are passionate about
This is the reason why I wait for a sale or play indie games instead. Not only are they cheaper, but also indie devs are trying new and interesting ideas. Not to mention the amount of content you get in some of these games is great. I don't mind paying full price for those titles. AAA games on the other hand? My backlog is massive enough as is. I can wait for a while.
I just haven’t bought a full price game for years now and price hikes just make that easier. I tend to get them a year or 6 months later for a reasonable price and with an experience fixed like it should have been on release. I wouldn’t consider buying new even if it was affordable as the basically accepted practise now for studios releases broken unfinished products. It’s just a no brainier to wait. I do support early access indie games im interested in though.
Sure video game industry, I'll pay $100 for a new game. Just as soon as you are as a whole making games that are at least as good as Baldur's Gate 3, the only recent game I can think of where I could have paid $100 for it and after playing it thought it was worth it.
Before GTA 5, Avatar was the greatest selling medium in the history of the world. It's entire theatric release, re-release, DVD sales, and merchandise totaled 750 million dollars. GTA 5 beat that on it's first day of sales. It topped a billion dollars on day 3. To this day, GTA 5 makes the top 10 list of most profitable games because of micro transactions for GTA online. If Rockstar charged $100 dollars for GTA 6 not only will people buy it, but it will make just as much if not more money than GTA 5. You can't compare GTA to other video games. GTA 5 is so far ahead of anything that not only the gaming industry, but the entertainment industry as a whole has ever seen. Never underestimate the effect of hype and dopamine.
Yea except the same people ain't running rockstar anymore so the games not gonna be that great mark my words. I'm not paying a hundred dollars for any game
There are so many fantastic games out there that I'd rather buy a strongly discounted game for like 10 euro rather than an incomplete buggy overhyped game for 70+ at launch
Never understood how games are priced all at the same price just because they fit the "AAA" tag, when some of them are just trash and most people would not pay 25 when on sale.
I was paying $55 and $60 back in 1995. If I had been cryogenically frozen back in '95, then resuscitated 30 years later and told to estimate the cost of video games present day, I probably would have guessed $120. The fact that it only went up to $70 a couple years ago is actually kinda crazy.
25 years ago we saw the jump from $50 games to $60. Amazing that it has taken this long for devs to even try to push to $70. Of course these days they sell skins that cost more than the old prices, but devs don't seem to add that to their greed formula.
Fun fact: Back in 1986, I paid about 100 bucks (swiss francs) for an Atari ST game. A game that, by todays standards, would qualify as maybe a mobile game for 2, 3 bucks. So todays game prices are actually a lot better than they often were decades ago. Considering the exploding costs of AAA games, I think that at least for that kind of game, higher prices are warranted. I love smaller, simpler games, indie stuff etc. as much as anyone, but I also love to play a cinematic, full-blown all-in AAA banger from time to time; and as long as the quality is there, I'm OK with paying a premium.
Its wild how with the state of AAA games with ganeplay and sometimes even graphics that are being out done by 360 era launch titles and often majorly unfinished they somehow think charging even more is the smart play. These companies are getting more desperate than ever before
sometimes i just think of game journalists or whoever writes delusionally good articles about bad things in the game industry are writing with guns pointed at them
They are. It's a well known industry dirty secret that studios or entire corporations will blacklist you for even a whiff of middling praise. No early release copy, no pre-release access, sit out on the curb with the plebs and hope that delay in covering the game cost all the potential ad revenue to vanish.
Its going to happen at some point but i dont get the sudden big jumps. Movie tickets are the same here regardless of what the movie cost to make. But they just slowly went up
I wouldn't even pay $60 for GTA6. The game is going to come out on PC a year and a half after consoles, at that point we are talking $40 tops from my pocket. If they don't meet my expectations in a timely fashion I will just get it for like $10 two years later like I did with GTA5. If other companies try charging $100 it just wont work. Maybe the other big ones, FIFA, NBA, CoD, might get away with it.
I think you might have missed a small part of the problem. When games go on sale on for example steam it's usually reduced from the base price, this would mean whatever increase in base price you have would still affect the sale by an amount proportional to the sale. For example a price hike from 70-100$ at a 75% sale would mean and increase in price for the consumer by 7.5$. There's also this idea of an anchoring value, if the industry can make you accept 100$ as what a new tripple A game is worth then even when they sell it back to you at 60$ you will think that's a great deal even though many people consider this the price the product should have by default right now. All this to say, a price hike will affect every consumer day 1 or day 1000 in the long or short term.
Anyone else find themselves only buying old games or games on sale. Cant tell you the last time I bought a new full price game.
Black Myth Wukong was fantastic and probably worth the box price. Hogwarts legacy was pretty great too but I got it on sale so I feel you for sure. Why pay full price today when you can wait for a steam summer sale next year or the year after? Hell, that's if it doesn't go on gamepass. You wont find more bang for your buck then Gamepass. Hi-Fi Rush, Warhammer Darktide, Starfield, STALKER 2 and a bunch others where literally day one release. That's already like 200+ in games for 10 bucks a month.
ive got over 70+ great big name games on steam and ive never paid more than $30 for them. Recently gave $26 for Cyberpunk2077 and like 15 for RDR2. why would i pay full price when i can wait for a sale and some patches and have a better experience. not like i have a shortage of games to play lol.
The last time I paid for a full price is Resident Evil 4 Remake, I personally think the sheer quality of the game and replayability justifies the 60$. After that game, I literally never buy any full-priced game ever.
Yepp. Getting 3-5 games out of a 100 bucks, sometimes supporting small studios that could really use any sale.
rarely ever unless I feel it a fantastic game and worth the price, for example I paid full price for BG3 and have no regrets, same for Metaphor: ReFantazio or elden ring.
AAA game studios when small developers produce high quality games: ''That's not the industry standard''
AAA game studios when prices increase: ''That's the new industry standard''
Larian Studios is anything but a small developer, but otherwise true.
@@neoteraflare AA at best, but the quality justifying the price is the point.
And yet, we have single or low double digit teams putting out far higher quality games with far more polish and care FOR AN OFTEN LOWER PRICE, IF ANYONES NOT UP TO STANDARD ITS THE TRIP A'S! If they're gonna price hike then they'd damn well make it worth that much.
@@killerzer0x74 The 2 game I put the most time is Dwarf Fortress with 2 developer (and people who made it more user friendly) and Haven and Hearth also with 2 developer (and also with a helper making more user friendly client)
One example I heard speculated about is; GTA 6 will release at 70$, BUT you will be able to get it 5-7 days early access if you buy the "premium edition" at 100+$... thats how its going to begin.
Reminder that the suits might want you to pay $100 for a select few games, us devs don't!
Unfortunately, we don't set the price
if you don't want it to become a thing, don't buy any game at that price. Even if it is GTA 6
Agreed. I read one person saying something along the lines of "I don't like the Idea of games being $100. I'll probably buy GTAVI but I don't want to see this become a trend." I'm like no, everyone buying GTAVI at $100 is what's going to set the trend. If GTA under performs in sales, that's what's going to cause studios to think twice.
@@ramonalavigne8953 Sadly, GTA has such name brand recognition. The people like us who would hold off on buying it are more than likely inconsiquential. Not to say people should give in, more so it's gonna be the difference between GTAV! being the best selling game ever versus GTAVI being a successful game.
Skull and Bones is a perfect example of executives fucking around and finding out when it comes to goofy pricing.
How dare you criticize the world's first quadruple A video game?
Ubisoft are the perfect example of a company who don't understand their franchises aren't worth much. $100 games would tank that company even more that it already is now.
Yeah if Ubisoft ever thought they could hop on the $100 game bandwagon with their "copy/paste" gameplay, they'd be laughed off stage.
I'm not really willing to pay 5-10% of my total computer cost for each game that I want to play that I also don't ultimately own.
Hard copies still exist. Steam won't be able to just take everyones shit away and shut down they would be sued into the ground.
@@realrealityeast6278 maybe, but that isn't ownership.
@@realrealityeast6278 hard copies? On pc? Lmao where?
@@realrealityeast6278 hard copies don't exist on PC and any console that has hard copies, the games are usually 'more' expensive than on PC. Even 10-15 years ago, a PC game bought in a shop just came with a steam code inside the box.
@@realrealityeast6278are you making a wishful wish or are you actually believing that? If this is the latter, do I have bad news for you bub. In any case, I’d advise against such beliefs.
We’ll see how it plays out, but entering triple-digit territory in an era where the cost of living is through the roof + an insane amount of competition doesn’t seem like a very well-thought out idea.
I'll tell ypu how it will play out: we'll be playing the triple digit games for free. While sailing.
A $100 game doesn't sound too bad, but we all know it's gonna be a $100 game with loads of shit microtransactions
Car company CEO: "Guys, Ferrarri charge millions for their cars. We should do the same."
Everyone else: "Sir, we build Skodas."
@cherry9787 Sadly, the statement you put out is self-defeating. Since people used to try and say 70 wasn't too bad if no micro and that line proved to be just as true then as it was now.
I didn't have a problem with zelda totk costing 70 cuz of what all it added. But like the rest of the industry, the vultures at WB couldn't help but sell a inferior version of mk1 on the switch for 70. That's a scam, idc who says otherwise.
We'll just buy games at discounts or be playing our libraries. I have no desire to play these cost games just to play a game.
@@dychostarr $70 for ANY Switch game IMO is a scam. Zelda is a far outlier. Tbh no version of M1K is worth $70 either. If they stopped the day 1 dlc crap and just put that with the game and the dlc base game then games might be worth $100... The way the economy is going, $100 might not even buy a flash drive anymore lmfao
This is why I just buy games when they're 3 years old for 20 bucks or less.
I mostly do the same thing unless it's one I really want. Which is rare, but it happens.
Smart move
Yep, games get added to my wishlist which is sorted by discount. When a game has a discount of 60% or more, I re-evaluate it, check reviews etc and maybe buy it.
@@Magnumaniac 75% discount for the GOTY edition that'll have *all* the console exclusives. That's the majority of my Steam backlog.
That’s why they want to get rid of physical
"It's inflation bro" You know what hasn't kept up with inflation? Our salaries. We objectively have less spending power than we did a decade ago.
And don't forget it's not going to be just $100, even at that price they'll still try to upsell you a $30 skin, a $50 DLC and $15 for a weekly xp boost or something. And they'll still claim they need to cut costs and fire everyone and replace them with AI then wonder why no one buys their games.
Because profits must go up. Sold a million copies last year? Have to sell 1.2 million this year, no matter how that would work in a closed system. The system must grow. You must consume. Already own the game on PlayStation? Buy it for the PC anyway. There's a clear parallel to addiction here, I think. Some money or lots of money isn't enough for them. They want all the money possible now. And they want 102% of that the next quarter.
@@l0rf Public Corpo Shareholders demanding MORE MORE MORE! I bought this stock and now I want it HIGHER so I can sell it to someone else who'll demand the same thing!
Problem are the consumers and die off fans, look at Bethesda studio and their cult, you couldn’t critic Star citizen because it was the most amazing game ever before elder scroll 7 😂
@@cherry9787 and that's why Swen "I went to the Game Awards in full plate armor" Vincke is based, he's keeping Larian private
@@l0rf Entire system of stocks and all the things around them is a scam. This is the endgame, it was always going to be like this. From the very start.
I love how US analytics always forget that rest of the world exist. Canada, Australia, European (and surely other) countries pay more for games every year due to conversion. In my country I can see price rises, on PSN store twice a year. If they rise prices further, in some countries we won't be willing to buy anymore.
This exactly! AAA games on full price to me are a rare luxury to me because the conversion rate from dollars here is brutal. 60$ is a significant amount of money here.
At any rate, me paying 100$ for a single game will never happen. Not on my life.
Same with Scandinavia. There is a limit how much people are willing to pay. Feels like subsidising the US games market at this point.
This will make developing AAA even more of a gamble, because people will just buy fewer games. You will either produce THE game of the season or have a commercial flop. Fits perfectly into the current pattern of execs going full risk at the risk of studios going bust afterwards. The industry has become one big gamble.
Yep, much like Hollywood, rather spend 300 million dollars to MAYBE make 1 billion than make smaller mid-sized movies which alone would make the same with much lower risk if individual movies flop.
Yep. I think we'll be seeing smaller and smaller projects soon. Which isn't a bad thing but it's definitely interesting seeing the way the industry is going.
Just so you know the caliber of business genius you’re dealing with here, the analyst who made that report also runs a metaverse ETF.
Meanwhile my salary is the same like in 2019, and the currency lost 10% value to inflation for 5 years in a row.
But the price of games plan to almost double. Hilarious guys. 😄
it's all so tiresome
They already do this. 100 for the gold version , 150 for platinum and you can play 2 days early
you can play 2 days "early" ...if the servers are working lol
This thing with "advanced access" or "early", "before official release". B***h please, the advanced access, early, before offcial release is the official release. You just have to give them more money or you get penalized and get access at a later date.
People needs to stop being such cucks. THE GLASS IS HALF EMPTY.
Yes, but now it will $150 and $200 to play 2 days early
The psychology is different. Having an upfront cost of 60 and paying more "because you want to" feels better to big spenders than only having the choice of spending 100. It sounds stupid but there's a good reason so many millions go into the psychology of marketing.
And then there is DLC and MTX aswell to push the game's overall cost even higher
They also told us Baldur's Gate 3 is not Gaming standard.
To be fair Larian also said that, BG3 was a once in a decade game like the witcher 3
@JJJBunney001, but the point is that it should be the standard, not what currently is, which is dragon age veilguard, cyberpunk 2077 (when it released), anthem, mass effect andromeda, skull and bones, and many more like them.
@@leopard_52hey now skull and bones was a quadruple A game
Not a criticism, but BG3 is essentially Divinity games + D&D + movies
Once in a lifetime... nah son, it was honed over the course of several years into magnificence
The general recipe can be repeated
I'm looking forward to Doom and GTA 6 people will buy no matter how much they screw people
Murica #1 (of screwing you)
@@StephenMcGregor1986 So did Elden Ring, and The Witchers 3, and Monster Hunter W, and Path of Exile 2, As it should've been.
So many bigger studios hav way more resources and way more IP, it should be easier for them to do what BG3 did. But Have they? No, instead of Chasing good games, they chase money.
finance bros ruins everything once again.
Saying CDPR is a day one buy is crazy consdering Cyberpunk's release.
And the lore-shattering implications of the W4 trailer. I'm definitely waiting several weeks, maybe even for a heavy discount.
@@Totallynotkyubey what lore shattering implications
Buying any game day one is the same simping as subscribing to an onlyfans girl. Might aswell buy a cybertruck while you're at it
@@Totallynotkyubey all games need a heavy discount
@@ProjectFrazpeople are angry that the trailer implies that cirilla somehow completed the trials of grass as an adult and a woman
Oh and don't forget the best devs left and made their own new studio, it's the end of CD projekt
"Games have never been cheaper when adjusted for inflation" yes, this is true. Games price increases have not kept pace with inflation. Neither have incomes. Games have gone up in price while wages have been stagnant. People are making about the same as they were twenty years ago, but CoL has gone up, leaving people with less discretionary income, and games have gone up in price, meaning that people simply can't afford to buy them regularly anymore. They save up. They wait for sales. People used to have $200/mo to spend on four $50 video games. Now people have $50/mo to spend on one $70 video game - you can't square that circle. The 'AAA' video games industry have priced themselves out of their own market.
This is beside the point that even at $70, with the truly ridiculous budgets they CHOOSE to set for their games, they are still making a profit. They just aren't making as BIG of a profit as they'd like. Sony and Ubisoft are the only ones losing money over here, and that's because one likes to set money on fire chasing trends, while the other likes to push the idea that your $70 is really just a long-term rental. The rest are making plenty of money, they just aren't making ALL of the money, and that can't be allowed to continue.
True. What we experience isn't inflation, since inflation lowers the value of money, which leads to higher wages as well. I think the correct term is stagflation.
Exactly. Purchasing power has gone down and that’s what matters when speaking about “luxury goods” like games
I also hope these games start costing 100$,heck lets make em 200$...it will be awsome for gamers because it will lead to indie games and AA games that actualy make good games to have their sales skyrocker
That's not how markets work. Triple A have been doing terrible the last 5 years and indie games have been killing it already. having to pay 200 bucks for Black Myth Wukong or Marvel Rivals instead of it being free is not good for gamers don't be fucking dilutional. There are plenty of fantastic IP from studios that are "AAA" Look at the new game CD Project Red are working on. Witcher but you're a vampire. Looks great. You're actually out of your mind if you think there doesn't exist any good major releases.
@@toolittletoolate but the industry standard will become the price they set,look at how almost all new tripleA games now are 70-80 bucks
It's like paying 200$ for a T-Shirt a lot of people will do it for fame and feel included.
No they won't. Those games still suck. You guys are the minority.
@ yeah sure,indie games selling tens of milions vs skulla nd bones and failguard quadrupeA selling less than 2 mil lol
I assert that by coming out and saying you would stop making videos- you probably realized you still have lots to say, and that you have a talent for it.
I’m glad you’re still uploading, Kira
Same. Always happy for a new Kira video no matter the subject
If I am paying $100 per game I am simply buying less games. There is no more money coming in. It would just mean more games fail because people can't afford it. It's a cheek coming from Rockstar who earned over $1 billion from GTA and it was wildly profitable. They do not need more money. If it is $100 its an easy pass for me.
Games should probably have been moving towards $100 years ago...on the PS1 and N64 in the late nineties new games were about $40-50...adjusting for inflation that's getting close to $100 today.
@@vallejomach6721 Games have been moving to above $100 for a while now. It's called day 1 DLC and deluxe and ultimate editions. Publishers want their cake and to eat it too. At $100 base, a complete edition of a game will cost upwards of $150.
@@vallejomach6721 except they have been taking their pound of flesh in PLENTY of other ways. Which I can almost guarantee wouldn't suddenly disappear because they charge what they 'should' be charging in their eyes.
Instead, you'd just get gouged almost double the cost on the game price... Then the battle passes, the MTX, the DLC, etc, etc. They make FAR more money doing what they do now than they used to. Even adjusted for inflation lol.
@@vallejomach6721 but I think it says a lot about the fact they haven't needed to be $100 says a lot. Production methods are different, which makes a lot of production methods generally cheaper. And the number of games available was limited, so you either played one of their games or didn't. Especially during the era of high console exclusivity. Now a lot of games are published across many countries and many consoles. You have so much choice, so why would anyone want to spend $100 on a broken game.
@ That's an entirely different kettle of fish.
At the end of the day though games are luxury items, not necessities. Nobody has ever been forced to buy a game at gunpoint. The reason they have got away with charging those prices and adopting those monetisation models is because people have paid the asking prices and bought them.
I would be the worst customer of a AAA publisher. I have a library of hundreds games, yet I don't think I've bought a new game at release for 20 years...and I certainly don't buy cosmetic doodads and gizmos or play free-to-play grindfests. Ever. If I were representative of the typical gamer then none of this BS would have ever taken root in the first place...
Sadly, I am not the typical...people buy this garbage and therefore they sell it. If people did not buy it then they wouldn't be making it. It's as simple as that. The free market would decide...and for years now the free market has been filled with people that are happy to spend money on those things.
To be fair, the idea that all new releases have to have the same sticker price is just a relic of the times when cost per unit sold was dominated by having to ship it to you in a box and really needs to go.
These days, the fact that the latest yearly EA FC casino game has the same up-front price as Baldur's Gate 3 just doesn't make any sense and is actually kind of insulting.
The industry should get used to us not buying their games at release then.
I already thought 70$ for totk was ludicrous, I would refuse 100$. Talk about how expensive the games are to make all you like - it's not like developers see any of that money anyway - wages have stagnated for decades. There is no justification for this price hike beyond greed/rent seeking.
It BAFFLES me that these studios do not seem to understand that they are the ones deciding on the budget and the scope of the games.
They always cry "development is so expensive!", while they are the ones who decide on how much they want to spend.
Some still seem to think: "If it's a 200 million budget, it will be a hit for sure!" Not understanding that the game needs to be enjoyable, no matter how much the development cost.
Budget is kinda based on the development cycle. if your studios yearly wages are $50m then a 5 year dev cycle will be $250m, it's why publishers might end up releasing a game as is despite needing more time to cook.
Part of the reason budgets are bigger is because there's more devs, CDPR went from 250 to 400 for CP77, games either need to sell more or be more expensive.
I can't even justify buying a game for 30 or 40 dollars, and they're trying to get me to pay 100?? Always wait for sales and specials
Heh, most games, especially AAA games, are already selling for 100 euros. Of course, this is if you want the finished product. If you want a poor man's copy for 60 euros, you're missing the first-day DLCs and other cuts.
They want new poormans to cost 100 euros and up for 140 deluxe, 190 collectors, and 220 supper duper deluxe collectors edition.
I refuse to pay more than $40 for any video game. There's no game I can't wait until the Steam sale for.
The game industry has been the BIGGEST money on the PLANET for quite awhile. Bigger than movie, music, books COMBINED. All these YEARS with their transactions, all the BILLIONS they have FLEECED out of people now they want to cry some kind of poor? Get the F outta here. Just incentivizing people to...sail the high seas. arrrrrr matey.
At $100 price point, they will lose revenue as a fair amount of people will either wait for a decent sale, or sail the high seas. The interpretation of how well a game is at launch is also at risk due to lowered player counts, which could affect investment down the road as well.
The fools. The FOOLS!
The gaming market is not like other markets! You cant go there with your apple customer capture enshittification subscription mentality and expect it to work there! These are people who will *out compete you* . If you take their game away, if you make them angry enough, if you make skype bad enough THEY WILL GO MAKE SOMETHING BETTER FOR LESS while throwing darts at the picture of your company logo.
Gamers get the best of everything, because they dont *put up* with anything less. You dont know where you are. The rage you inspire in them could very well drive innovation that destroys you.
If they want me to pay 100 dollar per game than they really must make some awesome and amazing games.
you can buy a budget laptop for less than $200, and that's a piece of hardware that while slow can do a lot of different things, why are we paying so much for SOFTWARE, it's ridiculous imo. like i get covering the cost of the labour but a good game can be made by 1 person so why are they spending millions and millions on labour per game?
Games quality is only going down, and they want more money!? Most AAA games is not even worth 20$
I don’t care if it’s GTA 6 I will not be spending over $80 for a game in 2025
I live in New Zealand so games are already over 100 dollaridoos, so this ain't surprising. Avowed over here is 130 and thats just standard edition.
i cant even
Damn bro, unfortunately you bring out there makes supplying your digital games very difficult. We have to jack up the price to cover supply costs of your digital game.
High price points really are a perfect catalyst to drive people away from ever purchasing these games. There are developing countries with weaker currencies and prices that have long been in the triple-digit range with discounts that can't effectively dull these absurd prices. And guess what? Potential gamers simply settle to playing at cybercafes, pirate, or move on to cheaper platforms like PCs and mobile phones. It's the chief reason console gaming never caught on in most of these markets and now the PC platform is at risk of marginalized too due to the inflating cost of new hardware and competition from cheap phones.
Rockstar might be the most overrated developer of all time, GTA will do nothing to justify a £100 price tag nor any other game. £60-£80 is already simply too high
I'm fine with paying developers, qa testers, artists, actors, and everyone else essential to making a game a decent wage, and if a price hike is what is required, then fair. HOWEVER, I'm not up for paying more to pad the pocket of shareholders, executives, and the idiots in charge who don't think I'll pick rent over the next big release.
Games are not too expensive to make because of the "fidelity". It's bad and inefficient management combined with insane marketing budgets.
This will kill new multiplayer games that aren't free-to-play. It will just create more people like me that are OK waiting 5 years for a $5-$10 sale.
with my backlog of games,5 years is optimistic
i don't think chinese companies are interested in this kind of price gouging, so they're just going to lose even more market share to chinese owned game companies, not that i mind, but they can't pull this off without the whole industry going along lol
Australians: Am I a joke to you?
Yes.
Yep.
Ive paid $60 for a game like twice. And was thoroughly dissapointed in both cases. I dont care to try for a third time.
Gt7?
do it again, no balls.
@@dr_diddy my ex kinda kept those along with the kids. Sorry
To echo kira abit: smaller studios have been the ones making great games with small teams. The development of the massive games that lose money seems to be the problem, guided by greedy clueless corporate decisions that waste hundreds of millions of failed projects for every project that we ultimately see. Seeing the solution to this as upping pricing feels to me like doubling down on a losing strategy when it should as Kira points out be clear to anyone not blind that AAA has been falling apart, and I think due mostly to absolutely idiotic corporate management. When I compare that with smaller studios making great games they are the ones that have been shaking things up and hugely profitable. The AAA space to me is suffering from its own stupidity, billions invested in live service projects that were immediate flops. It just speaks of a culture of greed, it’s just a shame that so many will lose jobs while this house of cards collapses, but I feel like the games industry will ultimately still continue to thrive. Just what was never sustainable and idiotic has failed and will continue to fail.
Good to see the cats again :)
15$, take it or leave it
You can overdose on crayons? I'm going to have to change my diet now.
Have you ever met a Marine? :)
Just avoid the red ones, the other dyes don't hurt nearly as much ;]
I am a Marine and I can confirm it is impossible to overdose on crayons
They literally just keep increasing the prices for the 'finished' games while also controlling most of the manufacturing process and the budgets that go into making games. You can't tell me that there's a need to make a game cost $100 outside of the control of the publishers. The budgets keep increasing because you make the games more expensive to make because you think you have to go bigger every year to further the narrative of infinite growth in a finite system to your shareholders.
Can't wait to see Ubisoft try to jump on a price hike after charging $70 for Skull and Bones lol
“Make my day [Ubisoft]”
We have officially reach Neo Geo levels of pricing
LOL... pretty much, I had a Neo Geo in 1991 and the games were £125 in the UK. I use to play them for a week and take them back and exchange for another or get my money back, I couldn't actually afford to OWN the games, the shop did do rentals so that was what I got to play. Sold it in the end and bought a SNES with a Super Wild Card.
Basic economics: supply and demand.
They can't comprehend that they are already way past the point where those 2 curves meet and increasing prices further will result in less money as they just sell less.
Plus they can't comprehend that people have less disposable income either. So they're probably working with really outdated market data as well.
The last Ubisoft game I bought was for $4 three years ago and I still haven't played it. If Ubisoft tries to charge $100 for anything they'll go bankrupt.
You already need to shill out hardware upgrades to run the unoptimized slop they're pushing out, there's no reason but greed to gouge the price of software as well
I think game makers should realise they've already gone past the tipping point of selling worse games for higher prices.
The 10 dollar price hike wasn't too hard to swallow because I buy games on sale anyways. I see that as part of the problem though. If a massive amount of your customers are waiting around for your product to drop in price, It might be worth your while to rethink your pricing strategy.
The problem is wages aren’t going up so if everyone charges $100 they will probably price out a lot of their customers and ironically lose even more money.
No chance I'm paying $100 for a game. I'm just going to play Dead by daylight for another 4000+ hours.
"Development cost keep going up!" say the studios, in the same year that Balatro won Game of the Year! Because it's good!
palworld was made by like 5 devs, unreal engine is popping off, they give you so many free assets, the cost of development is at an all time low
With the size of my steam backlog...I can afford to wait for a sale......or to raise the anchor and sail the high seas
TBF 60$ in 2005 is 100$ today and 60$ in 2000 is 112$ today.
But of course, this is on top of bs dlc and microtransactions in single player games for which the game is made intentionally less fun so you spend money on lvl ups, so it's like having your cake and eating the baker into bankruptcy.
Purchasing power today compared to 2005/2000 is dogshit, though
none of my concern
@ it very much is because those are the companies making games, if they don't make a decent profit, they close and can no longer make games, e.g. imagine if Atlus would not have been bought by Sega
@@ButWhyWasTaken Yeah but a lot of those games were physical copies and required distribution networks eg. Brick and mortar storefronts like gamestop. Hell, many games like fallout 76 are released as only digital nowadays, the physical box was just a CD code for the game IIRC. More so game consumption as in gaming demographics have steadily increased since then. Also the gaming industry needs to stop spending money on unnecessary advancements like mo-cap animation and what not. Some games can benefit from these expensive advancements sure, but why does every AAA or even AA game need to be as graphically advanced (and consequently as expensive to produce) as possible?
@@nicholashubbard7146Are graphics to be blamed per-se? Whenever I see an endless staff roll in AAA games it feels as if 50% if not more of the people involved are PR, HR, translators and other such bloat. I thought UE5 and the likes came with the promise of even singular nobodies being able to make decent-looking games? Is mocapping that expensive at this point? I thought it was fairly normal
by now. Maybe it's not the tech but the devs hiring high-profile actors?
And even if true that it's graphics - maybe AAA devs should then stop hiring psychologists and skin designers but instead visual designers or whatever.
That being said the players themselves sometimes greatly overrate graphics too. Whenever a trailer for a game is released, both a promising or trashy one, there are instantly people who criticize the graphics NOT looking as if they gonna were to cook your system. I'm subscribed to a few channels that love to make videos that show the upcoming best-looking games. So this culture of graphics first, gameplay secondary is being boosted not just by developers. A lot of other people need to get their priorities straight too, especially those PC gaming gigachads with their rigs being the equivalent to NASA supercomputers.
I still remember when most games cost £20 - £30 at launch, back when they had to get the discs, and case, and GAME MANUAL manufactured for each copy sold, and physically shipped all around the country to physical stores in high-cost building locations that need heating, and multiple staff employed. Back when playing video games was orders of magnitude less popular (and thus had less far sales).
I will pay more than that for games but it's pretty rare (CP2077, Baldur's Gate 3 collector's edition, PoE2 collector's edition), often I'm happy to just wait for a game to go on a discount to under £30.
The longer I need to wait for that to happen the more happy I am to wait longer for it to go even cheaper or just lose interest and not buy it.
Likewise, I refuse to buy a game for over £30 at all if it's not new - for example if it was released on a different platform over a year ago, even if it's a game that I WOULD happily pay £70 at launch for, it's no longer a new game and I refuse to pay full price for it. They already made me wait for it so I'll just wait a bit longer for the price to go down. (Especially if it's a heavily story based game where most of the story has had plenty of time to get spoiled - I may not ever buy the game in that case).
So on top of insane "micro"transactions, season passes, subscriptions, etc, they also want a hundred dollars for whatever garbage they pump out? No thank you, I'll stick to my old games and pirate servers.
Yep, it just won’t work. People will stop buying. I liken it to streaming services. They thought that people would just endlessly sub to multiple services as they fragmented the market and increased prices ending up spending $120+ a month, it didn’t happen.
If a game cost $100, I ain't buying it until it ends up on the bargain shelf.
I love that Gaming Companies are pushing prices up and claiming more cost to make games.
Then you have them making sure their workers use AI to help improve the speed of making games and fire people to keep cost down... Makes sense....
Not saying they are making games with AI, but using AI to speed up their work and help them do it faster.
It's funny how these industry nerds think that their slop is on the same level as Rockstar games. GTA6 may be worth 80-100 bucks and if the game is good I will gladly pay that. But Johnny Executive's newest live service fighting game battle royale hero shooter is not worth that same price. Expecting me to pay the same amount of money for chopped horse meat that I paid for dry-aged Wagyu beef is actual insanity.
Honor TB.
NEVER pre order a game.
No. Stop it.
*boops nose with newspaper*
RIP king, if only more people took his messages to heart.
@@nicholashubbard7146 Part of me is happy TB went out when he did, because he didn't have to suffer through seeing the industry converge into live-service/gacha slop.
a lot of the best games still cost around $50 and less if you buy them on seasonal discounts, because they are FUN not a service trying to outlive itself
no man's sky is less than $50 without a sale afaik lol
I'm glad i have a huge backlog
If I drop any money these days I want to be able to install without DRM and to be able to own and play without any store, subscription, login or always online requirement attached, day 1.
This can only end badly. Unless their game is amazing beyond anyone's wildest dreams, they'll hit the critical point of affordability vs desirability, where most of their playerbase opts not to buy their game.
This can only end badly? make good games or get broke
Look Kira, you just don't get it.
We don't need "people" to "develop" our "games"... we just need executives to continue to make more money than the previous year. You need to see the bigger picture here.
The thing is 70$ dollars hasn’t done anything to improve most games that have come out. Triple A games just got greedier and they added more microtransactions
Prices were what drive piracy back in the 80s and 90s, when games MSRPs were the equivalent of $120-200 in today’s money. Even if you bought them on sale you were still looking at over $70 in today’s money.
Larian could release literally anything and if I see Swen Vincke smiling when he talks about it or wearing a suit of medieval armor I know it's gonna be good, the player trust they've built is so strong I don't care what they charge me for anything they are passionate about
I mean, if they made good games I'd probably be OK with it.
Thanks Friendo!
After the messed up online of 5, there is no way in hell I'm paying 100 bucks for 6. I'm very reluctant to pay 70 bucks for MH wilds, which is my
This is the reason why I wait for a sale or play indie games instead. Not only are they cheaper, but also indie devs are trying new and interesting ideas. Not to mention the amount of content you get in some of these games is great. I don't mind paying full price for those titles.
AAA games on the other hand? My backlog is massive enough as is. I can wait for a while.
I just haven’t bought a full price game for years now and price hikes just make that easier. I tend to get them a year or 6 months later for a reasonable price and with an experience fixed like it should have been on release. I wouldn’t consider buying new even if it was affordable as the basically accepted practise now for studios releases broken unfinished products. It’s just a no brainier to wait. I do support early access indie games im interested in though.
Sure video game industry, I'll pay $100 for a new game. Just as soon as you are as a whole making games that are at least as good as Baldur's Gate 3, the only recent game I can think of where I could have paid $100 for it and after playing it thought it was worth it.
Id pay 100 for a game like BG3. Everything else will have to wait a couple years and for steam christmas sales.
it's wild how we've basically had 8 DLCs for free.
EA 100% would have charged for new class additions or a new ending dlc.
The post-launch support alone makes BG3 worth every penny.
i can't remember the last full price game i bought. i wait a year, wait for a sale then get the whole thing.
Before GTA 5, Avatar was the greatest selling medium in the history of the world. It's entire theatric release, re-release, DVD sales, and merchandise totaled 750 million dollars. GTA 5 beat that on it's first day of sales. It topped a billion dollars on day 3. To this day, GTA 5 makes the top 10 list of most profitable games because of micro transactions for GTA online. If Rockstar charged $100 dollars for GTA 6 not only will people buy it, but it will make just as much if not more money than GTA 5. You can't compare GTA to other video games. GTA 5 is so far ahead of anything that not only the gaming industry, but the entertainment industry as a whole has ever seen. Never underestimate the effect of hype and dopamine.
Yea except the same people ain't running rockstar anymore so the games not gonna be that great mark my words. I'm not paying a hundred dollars for any game
GTA6 is also possibly the most awaited game ever, just to add to the reasons it isn't a comparable point.
I honestly have no idea what GTA 6 would have to offer for me to warrant a $100 price tag. I'll just wait for a sale.
There are so many fantastic games out there that I'd rather buy a strongly discounted game for like 10 euro rather than an incomplete buggy overhyped game for 70+ at launch
"Your sh!t, made in three years, slopped-out, full of microtransactions, content withheld, day-1 bug, piece of sh!t, triple-A game". Classic 😂
the only way i really would spend 100 bucks on a new game is to get a physical special edition with some extras i actually want.
Never understood how games are priced all at the same price just because they fit the "AAA" tag, when some of them are just trash and most people would not pay 25 when on sale.
Whats bad is alot of the times i finally give in and buy some triple A game at like 10 to 30 dollars...im still let down
I was paying $55 and $60 back in 1995. If I had been cryogenically frozen back in '95, then resuscitated 30 years later and told to estimate the cost of video games present day, I probably would have guessed $120. The fact that it only went up to $70 a couple years ago is actually kinda crazy.
25 years ago we saw the jump from $50 games to $60. Amazing that it has taken this long for devs to even try to push to $70. Of course these days they sell skins that cost more than the old prices, but devs don't seem to add that to their greed formula.
All I can say is: "It's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see how it pans out for 'em."
Fun fact: Back in 1986, I paid about 100 bucks (swiss francs) for an Atari ST game. A game that, by todays standards, would qualify as maybe a mobile game for 2, 3 bucks. So todays game prices are actually a lot better than they often were decades ago. Considering the exploding costs of AAA games, I think that at least for that kind of game, higher prices are warranted. I love smaller, simpler games, indie stuff etc. as much as anyone, but I also love to play a cinematic, full-blown all-in AAA banger from time to time; and as long as the quality is there, I'm OK with paying a premium.
Banger by Kira, you're back baby!!
Its wild how with the state of AAA games with ganeplay and sometimes even graphics that are being out done by 360 era launch titles and often majorly unfinished they somehow think charging even more is the smart play.
These companies are getting more desperate than ever before
The core diagreement I have here is that I don't think any video game is worth $100
As somebody with job related to industry, I just want industry to make step back by few years of its 'development'.
sometimes i just think of game journalists or whoever writes delusionally good articles about bad things in the game industry are writing with guns pointed at them
They are. It's a well known industry dirty secret that studios or entire corporations will blacklist you for even a whiff of middling praise. No early release copy, no pre-release access, sit out on the curb with the plebs and hope that delay in covering the game cost all the potential ad revenue to vanish.
Its going to happen at some point but i dont get the sudden big jumps. Movie tickets are the same here regardless of what the movie cost to make. But they just slowly went up
I wouldn't even pay $60 for GTA6. The game is going to come out on PC a year and a half after consoles, at that point we are talking $40 tops from my pocket. If they don't meet my expectations in a timely fashion I will just get it for like $10 two years later like I did with GTA5. If other companies try charging $100 it just wont work. Maybe the other big ones, FIFA, NBA, CoD, might get away with it.
right out of the gate Kira hits the nail on the head, not even 1 min in.... LMAO!!!! You aren't Rockstar hahahahahaha
I think you might have missed a small part of the problem. When games go on sale on for example steam it's usually reduced from the base price, this would mean whatever increase in base price you have would still affect the sale by an amount proportional to the sale. For example a price hike from 70-100$ at a 75% sale would mean and increase in price for the consumer by 7.5$.
There's also this idea of an anchoring value, if the industry can make you accept 100$ as what a new tripple A game is worth then even when they sell it back to you at 60$ you will think that's a great deal even though many people consider this the price the product should have by default right now.
All this to say, a price hike will affect every consumer day 1 or day 1000 in the long or short term.