I didn’t even buy them at 60. This would change nothing for me except further cement my patient gaming lifestyle.
They can make them more than $70USD and I’ll just keep waiting for a sale. I haven’t bought one at $70 yet, I’m certainly not going to pay even more.
I haven’t bought a game for more than $30 in over a decade.
And that was a nostalgia purchase.
Increasing the price just makes me want to go sailing.
Have you tried spending less on making them?
Maybe he should start by paying himself no bonus and cut his own salary, seeing that the company is in a nosedive position when he’s in charge.
Well, they have tried shutting down most of their studios. So… kinda?
Back in 1996 AAA games sold for $60 to $75. If we take the lowest price of $60 and adjust it for inflation, that would be $119 today. Computer games today are unrealistically cheap. And if you look at how much more effort goes into development, they’re pretty much free.
I think there is a bigger market for them now though. What was the most popular video game in the 90s and how many copies sold vs the biggest games now? And now with steam and other sevices you don’t even have to manufacture as many discs. Even freemium mobile games are making billions in revenue.
There’s a bigger market now for many products, but their prices are usually keeping up with inflation.
Back in 1996, the average computer cost $2-6k adjusted for inflation. Now they are also much more difficult and complex to make, are much more powerful, and cost less.
Yes, a bunch of effort has gone into development, but that development doesn’t disappear after the game is done. And now we have free, open source game engines that can be filled with assets made in free, open source 3d modeling software, using free, open source high level programming languages. A little bit of learning and the average person could make an early 2000s video game solo in a couple of weeks.
And yet they tend to be a worse experience, release before they are ready with DLC already ready to go, riddled with microtransactions and other awful issues. They aren’t worth more.
Wait. Wasn’t the whole point of competition to bring prices down?
Plus you’d think that with distribution costs, shelving costs, CD stamping costs and printing manuals, they’d already be cutting our costs… but it’s not about us.
That “did” cut our costs. Like the first year. The next year that’d be a net increase of 0%, and you can’t have numbers not go up every year
They can do that, but I’m not paying.
looks up
shakes head
goes back to Balatro
Ooh, a two pair
Lol I pirated a game the other day just because the company was charging full price for a remaster.
On the one hand, games have stayed the same price for a long time, well below the rate of inflation.
On the other, wages have also stayed well below inflation for a long time. I don’t expect they’ll see the growth they want when a game purchase takes a larger and larger bite out of someone’s paycheck.
It’s a good example for how inflation isn’t something constant that affects everything equally. Game development costs are mostly wages, if wages stay below inflation then development costs stay below inflation unless teams get larger, and especially game development is known for paying rather low wages.
Development, yes. Executives, the sky is the limit.
Especially when you have a great success, like laying off tonnes of your employees, which Embracer has been leading the charge on.
Ohh wow, what a weasel. Dude can’t even keep their own company intact and still talk big.
The man doesn’t want the industry to thrive, he wants money in his own pocket ASAP.
@nanoUFO I’m still not used to new games costing $70 USD yet since I buy most of my games used. In my head, $70 games are still the “Deluxe Editions”. If someone released a $100 game, I’d probably think of it as the “Super Deluxe Edition” and wait for it to be $60.
I pretty much exclusively play and buy indie games nowadays but in Canada it’s around $80 to $90 for new games not including tax. Don’t think any AAA game would draw me for that kind of price. I could get selaco, crow country and probably world of goo 2 for that price.
Games from last year will still be less than half of that though, right?
Sekiro still sell for 60 dollar. The industry figured out they can use scarcity in a form of limited time discount to encourage customer to make purchase, so there’s no need to lower the base price forever.
I’ll wait till they’re on sale for under 30. Over 70??? Yeah, if I really want it, i’d hit the high seas for it.
