One way to get out of the video-game industry funk is to recognize that players aren’t spending $70 on most games
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The $60/$70 price tag on video games from major makers is an entry fee, it doesn’t get you the full game anymore. You have to pay for luxury editions, expansions, microtransactions of some sort, battle pass. It’s cheaper to start a tabletop miniature army than play video games now.
Is it? What game requires any of that? Even the most microtransation heavy games lile NBA 2k and Fifa are perfectly playable without micro transactions. You’ll still get a top team you’ll still get 100s of hours out of it.
Paying for an expansion to a game you like doesn’t seem like it belongs that list. DLC from the Souls games (Bloodborne included) adds a ton to its respective base games.
There are examples that I can excuse. I’m more of looking at the likes of Destiny 2 or World of Warcraft.
They become cheap if you’re patient enough.
Except Nintendo. And the mentality is spreading, I’ve never seen sekiro below $40
Become a patient gamer. This winter sale, I bought probably 25 games totaling around 30 dollars. It’s enough to keep me busy for the next 5 years.
I set a rule not to buy any game util i finish what I already have. I have not bought anything for the last two years. Any game that interest me is going to my wishlist for now.
This… Put games on your wishlist, set your wishlist to only show sales, and sort by price. Then only buy games from that list when they go on a significant sale. Plenty of decent games out there regularly go for $5-10 or less. With very few exceptions I refuse to pay more than $20-30 for a game and, even then, only if they’re like 50% off and not likely to come down.
Also… stop pre-ordering games. They’ll still be there when they do go on sale. You don’t need to play them as soon as they come out. Conquer that FOMO shit and develop some integrity.
stop pre-ordering games. They’ll still be there when they do go on sale.
Yeah but then I wouldn’t get the sick Cardi B Wet Ass Pussy character skin 😮💨
Games should be cheaper to make, too.
See, that’s the conundrum: big companies make huge investments and want a ROI. They dump 100+ million dollars on a game with a team that’s over 200 people and expect 10x money back.
Shit has ballooned out of control in the corporate world and Indies have to fight tooth and nail against each other, bigger players, shovelware and older titles
How much of that money goes into marketing, and executive pay checks?
I haven’t spent more than $30ish bucks on a game since … 2013?? I think the last game I paid full price for was gta5 on ps3
Do y’all not know about the bargain bin and steam sales…? Is everyone so up to date on their backlog you can’t wait a few months for that price to drop to 50%
It doesn’t take long, Doom the dark ages has already hit that discount a few times iirc
My friend, let me tell you about this thing called “Pre-order.”
There are plenty of “gotta have it first” people out there. Doesn’t matter if it’s a new phone, game, see a movie on opening day, whatever. Plenty of gamers want to be in Alpha and Beta tests (which FML they do nothing but bitch about as being unplayable) and shell out money for skins and early upgrades or level up packs. Vloggers and tiktokkers too or whatever who want to pull in the views as they play the new games.
These are the people the studios cater to. Not the patient gamers who wait for the product to go on sale 90 days down the road after the initial rush is over.
So as long as the people in the first paragraph exist that’s what the studios will charge.
Games have been $60 since the 90’s and people need to quit bitching about this.
Games were more than $60 in the 90s.
But video games were limited by physical copies back then. Supply was limited, and it cost the publisher multiple dollars, sometimes in the double digits, to manufacture the physical goods to sell. But with that you got a usually complete mostly bug-free game (as in, if there were bugs they usually were not commonly found in normal gameplay), as patches werent really a thing and making physical revisions was expensive. You also got the entire game that you paid for, all the content in the game was available to you from your one purchase. You can lend it to a friend if you want, too.
Nowadays we get sold half of a game that barely works for $70, so you can get the other half by buying the next 14 $20 battlepasses and playing only that one game for the next 5 years to finally get all the content of the game. You also cant let your friend borrow the game.
I don’t need to pay for a dev team that is overbloated with too many people, a marketing team that thinks every ad needs to have a Beatles song, and an executive that just demands more profit. Dev teams need to get smaller, marketing budgets need to shrink, and executives need to be less greedy. They already make record profits, they do not need more.
Just to really put it into perspective: if a Nintendo64 game sold for $55, the developer would usually see a profit of about $6 or $7. Compare that to the immense profit that happens now. Its not even close.
This may sound crazy, but hear me out… $70 might just be relatively cheap right now, when considering historic prices and inflation.
So about 20 years ago, I used to work at a game shop and at that time all new AAA console games were all $50 and I believe the switch to $60 happened just shortly after I left.
That said, a quick web search says that there’s been 65% inflation since 2005. $50 x 1.65 = $82
So at least when compared to other products, $50 to $70 is not a huge price jump.
Now all that said, this does not account for the added cost of micro transactions and paid dlc which didn’t really exist in 2005. So the actual lifetime cost of a top pricing tier game may actually be higher than $70. Honestly, I have more of a problem with that than with the higher base cost, hidden costs are deceptive.
Edit: I looked it up, the switch to $60 actually happened in 2005, I was probably still working there when it happened. If we were to do that same calculation starting with $60, that’s $60 x 1.65 = $99. So there’s food for thought
That’s the thing. Pricing in a direct comparison of inflation and base game label price ignores all the ways in which that same game would have been diluted to increase the average price with microtransactions, deluxe editions, and early unlocks for pre-orders or whatever. It’s not apples to apples with the past.
And that’s all totally true. Though there is a way around that trap… Don’t buy the dlc!
That’s my secret, I treat the base price as the only price, and if the game doesn’t stand on its own without dlc, it’s a bad game. And I will 100% say that out loud, I’ll give it a bad review, I’ll avoid buying it in the first place. If a game needs pricey dlc to be worth playing, it isn’t worth playing at all.
So there’s my hot take.
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I haven’t paid over £35 on a game in years. Quite a few games are free now too, though some have kinda scummy cash shops.
Same here, only exception: Baldurs Gate 3, because i loved the mindset of the devs and i knew from their prior games that they deliver quality. That was more about supporting Larian with extra cash.
I limit myself to one or two “new full price” purchases a year, and it’s usually games from known devs i want to support that I’m excited about.
I would struggle to find 2 I actually want, but £250 is about what I spent on steam last year, mix of about 15 games and a few expansions. So I guess a bit more money in total but way more games by getting cheaper ones. Looking back there are a few that were probably not really worth buying but perhaps if they get updated in future I might get some more time out of them.
Best advice for myself to follow to avoid disappointments in future I think would be to avoid games near release if I have not enjoyed a similar game from that dev in the past. Sequels to games I enjoyed are consistently good buys, but if its new that has the highest disappointment rate.
I buy a ton of games a year after they release or so. I got the benefit of the expanded edition or whatever and it’s just as much fun for me as it was for everybody else a year or two ago.
Now I play a lot of single player stuff, so your mileage may vary.
I play a mix of single and multi player. But even multiplayer games I only really play ones that have people playing them for years. Gallipoli is probably the largest game I will get on day 1 this year, played their previous 3 WW1 shooters and liked all of them.
Fuck $70+ games.
Where are these statistics from?
SteamDB.
Thanks! That’s a really neat link
These price hikes could not have come at a worse time, not just in the sense of the general cash people have but in the sense that video games right now are straight up not interesting.
Good games are not being made anymore. Bloated “experiences” designed to keep you hooked and spending money are being made. I can’t even accuse them of being casino games because that would more fun and interesting.
The rise in price comes at a time when we have virtually limitless backlogs of digital and physical games that are superb and high quality and indie games that get better and better. The price alone isn’t the issue, it’s the price and stagnation of game design
Im tired of early access hell, most games never reaching roadmap goals, never leaving early access
Great statement. But why?
Do the math on dollars per hour of entertainment. Games are comparably cheap at first glance. They problem is that people are cheap too. So they won’t pay more for a better profuct. That has led the industry to invent more ways to get your money. Microtransactions, dlc… I would pay $100 for a game like portal these days. It would be less than a dollar per hour enjoyed. And no extra costs. But instead we have thousands of “free” games that are now geared to be most enjoyed by the people who pay the most.That said, today’s games aren’t just a cd in a package. Most require servers running to be played for the most fun. What I would like is more of a subscription to a server provider that pays for servers for all the games. It’s more efficient if you play lots of different games. And a lot less hassle.
That may be true but what about the devs who spent a lot of money in uni? Just to make all the work cheap? I agree with that, but not much.
Games have been $60 forever, $70 is a relative bargain
The games have never been easier to make and the market bigger, fuck their margins
The margins haven’t changed that much, I’m making a point that $60 in 2005 is the equivalent of like $100 today
My rule of thumb is $1 per hour of gameplay. So if I don’t expect to get at least 70 hours out of a game, I’m not paying $70 for it. I don’t consider it a bargain until I get down to significantly less than a dollar per hour.
