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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?
Every time - every single time - I've purchased a major AAA game anywhere close to the release window in the past 10 years, it's been a mistake. Pay a shitload more for a half baked, buggy, unfinished mess.
At this point I just don't buy big time releases within 6 months of launch. Even when I'm certain of the game itself, it just ends up being a mistake.
Great news!
They are!
... Just typically not the overproduced and overpriced corpo ones.
Wanna drive down AAA game prices?
Stop paying them!
Support your favorite indie or AA game today!
Don't like games with predatory microtransactions?
You'll never believe this, but you can also just stop playing games with them!
Get all your friends onboard with the plan, fight the man!
I just played Escape from Ever After. Every bit as good and polished as the old Paper Mario games. $25. They cost $50-$65 back then.
... I've never even heard of it.
But I do love the old paper mario games!
So wow, now we have a real life example of actual organic word of mouth spread of a game, as opposed to just being a passive advertisement sponge!
Idc if the Price is justified but the question is how many of them are just that good that the Price is justified?
Or live with AA and indie games like many of us do, at tell AAA publishers to get fucked by not spending money on their live-service crap.
Just don't buy Triple A titles.
The last "AAA" title I bought was elden ring for 30$ (unless you count Silk Song)
There are plenty of indie style, A or AA studios that are in the 5-30$ range.
The more people who move over to that type of mindset and buy from small titles, the more apt that large companies are going to lower their prices.
Retail price doesn't even matter anyways. It's more a placeholder to make sales seem more impressive with X% off to make people feel they are getting a bargain.
Pricing is dictated by what someone is willing to pay for it.
For me, $70 USD is too much for the average game that is being sold at that price tag because those types of games(AAA/AAAA) are:
Again, not all, but the average AAA slop title usually has one or more of the above points.
BUT, that doesn't mean that Indie games at $20 USD are a "steal" or "bargain" either. There are many Indie games I bought at their launch(Silksong), but others I have waited for a decent sale.
If everyone stopped buying games at $70 USD then prices would fall and/or projects going forward would be re-evaluated to either keep costs/expectations down. But people are paying the $70 USD so that price point is here to stay.
A fifth thing for your list: formulaic and predictable af
Why are 90% of AAA games a dude with a gun. How many iterations of dude with a gun can we possibly get?
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.
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 😮💨
You don't even have to be that patient these days. I got Arc Raiders 3 weeks after release for 60% off, it was like $18.
Have you met our lord and saviour, retro gaming?
And the Son, Emulation?
Or the step brother, piracy?
The only problem is too much choice!
Seriously, when you’ve got thousands of ROMs and vintage PC games to choose from, it’s really difficult to land on one to play right now!
I went down a rabbit hole of emulation last year. I got PCSX2 and tons of games like Ratchet & Clank, Tak 1-3, Jak 1-X, the Sly series, Spider-Man 2, and so many others. I spent a good month and a half just playing old PS2 games and I had an absolute blast
Nice! I’ve been gradually playing through a bunch of NES classics: Faxanadu, Dragon Warrior, Blaster Master, Fire Emblem. The next game I want to go through is Castlevania 1 and then Ultima IV after that!
They already are. It's called - sales.
The problem are people going out in droves, willingly spending $70 or more on special editions. They've caved to FOMO and it is a them problem.
We're still in the best age of gaming where there are sales in all directions.
You can go AAA for cheap no problem, people just need to not get FOMO‘d out of their minds and half-resist the compulsion to jump on the next shiny thing immediately.
The newest DOOM is around 27 Euros rn and not even a year old. Buy on release - or worse yet, pre-order - and you‘ll get the worst deal (financially as well as technically).
Game prices are fine for me because I literally just wait until they‘re at a point where I don‘t see them as a waste of money anymore. In the meantime, there‘s 203 untouched games in my Steam library that had reached that price at some point in the past already. Not even mentioning the hundreds of games I got for free between GOG, Prime, and Epic.
And, not buying immediately you get to know if the shiny is real or is just a painted turd. Or if it disappears after a couple months.
Basically do the same thing. Until a game hits $20 or less, I won't purchase it. For $70, I would rather buy something useful like new shoes.
Check out ITAD then... lots of ways to make sure you get stuff super cheap.
Though it's really confusing to set up.
Btw, do i have to manually unsubscribe games i unsubscribed/bought on Steam and GoG? Synch is set up.
If you're doing sync, you can tell it to remove items from your waitlist when they are added to collection. It won't work retroactively, but it will do it going forward.
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.
Bloomberg's all broken for me, so going by the snippet:
I get the impression the absolute majority of games aren't even past the 40 USD threshold, including the majority of successful games I see in the wild. If the snippet considers the AAA games as a good sample for the gaming market, I'd argue otherwise, that they're a loud minority of games, and a decaying one at that for multiple reasons, including the bloated prices.
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.
That's what indie games are for, instead of these absurd-budget blockbusters that often aren't even fun, but also, the world just needs to be cheaper to live in. Games are first on the chopping block because disposable income for entertainment is always the first to collapse.
Aren't inflation-adjusted prices for video games quite low, comparatively? Charts like this comes up in a quick search: https://infographicsite.com/infographic/console-game-prices-inflation-adjusted/
I think the last game I paid full price for was the MGS Collection for PC. Otherwise it's waiting for sales, usually 75-80% off original price then I buy.