No. Games cost more to make than 20 years ago but the thing that increased even more than development cost was the number of customers. It doesnt matter if games are twice as expensive to make if you're selling to 10x more people. It would matter for physical things. Producing a car has a manufacturing cost, producing two has twice that cost. Selling a game to one person is essentially the same cost as selling it to one billion. Not exactly but the additional cost is negligible.
Are we really supposed to buy the $80 price increase is because "games cost more to make" from Microsoft?
- Thread starter DryvBy
- Start date
dragonyeuw
Member
The chase for endless growth is going to make everything collapse on itself. The line can't keep going up into perpetuity. Blood can't be extracted from a stone, not that everyone coming for your dollar isn't trying to test that theory across all industries and walks of life.
Viking Warrior
Member
First rule is never buy a game on day one,2nd rule is never buy a game in the first three months of launch,3rd rule never ever pay full price for a game.
Shadowstar39
Gold Member
Fuck Sony too. Why you forgetting them. They've been woke, censours, greedy, no good games c#nts since late ps4. They also take away disc drive and raise the price on games, hardware etc...Fuck Microsoft, nothing but L's for those fucking losers.
And FUCK NINTENDO, THOSE STUPID FUCKS for setting the bar with their early PS4 looking dogshit games going for 80 bucks, greedy cunts.
All 3 are doing it.
Only good place for affordable gaming is OG switch and PC (well if you game at 1080p/1440p anything more and you will need a loan for the gpu, lol.)
Viking Warrior
Member
Digital only will guarantee high prices,they will have you in a vice grip with no other options,the games will remain $70-$100 indefinitely.
Again it applying to some games and not others is not relevant just as it wasn't relevant when you were complaining about helldivers 2 being $70 and it turned out it was $40. The fact that not all games are $70 didn't stop you there did it?
PSlayer
Member
You don't have to buy anything,you don't have to play video games at all much less as soon as the game comes out. It is just a hobby, wait until the game is on sale.
With that said AAA games went from costing $50 million to $200 million so yes $60 dollars my not be enough for your typical game, even with whorish mtx.
With that said AAA games went from costing $50 million to $200 million so yes $60 dollars my not be enough for your typical game, even with whorish mtx.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
You'll have to refresh my memory for when this happened. I have no recollection and the search doesn't seem to think so either.
This is the only thing that pops up when I search for it.
* Obviously this post was made before BG3 got its physical release.
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Regardless, the original point about who you thought ushered in the $80 price tag was wrong. Let's leave that discussion point at that.
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Hero of Spielberg
Member
I mean some games on psn (eg GT7) are already $125 AUD in Australia… gotta wonder if people are really prepared to spend much more than that on one game.
You'll have to refresh my memory for when this happened. I have no recollection and the search doesn't seem to think so either.
This is the only thing that pops up when I search for it.
* Obviously this post was made before BG3 got its physical release.
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This wasn't the original point. This isn't about whether I believe MS ushered in the $80 game (though I do believe they are the first third party publisher to do so on PS and Xbox). It was about your post getting defensive as usual regarding "singling out MS". I said that's rich coming from you when you were singling out Sony for the prices of other publishers games even. When somebody said MS ushered in the $60 from $50 on the 360 you were again deflecting by "singling out Sony"
So what do you believe? That the platform holder sets prices but not on xbox 360, yet sony set Take 2s prices even on xbox series consoles? Don't be silly with these deflections from MS' price hike. I'm not aware of any publisher setting $80 price points on PS and xbox other than MS. They've pushed this with CoD and Activision just as you believe they did during the 360 days but you used that to deflect from xbox there too.
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adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
* I * didn't single it out, the VGC article citing Bloomberg said that Sony were looking to charge more than $70 originally before deciding on $70, which is the thing linked in my post you keep quoting.
* I * have as much to do singling that out as * I * have making MS increase the price to $80 now.
This is a word salad.
We don't know what the first party game will be that's $80 from MS, we're all theorizing that it could be CoD. By the time it comes out, there would already have been multiple other first party $80 games from other platform holders so it'd be a moot point trying to pin it on MS in the first place.
If you want to scream to the high heavens that MS did this, you're welcome, it'd be factually wrong, but you're welcome to scream that.
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No it's not word salad and no it's not factually wrong. Youre just deflecting from the point by not answering the question. If you believe that's factually wrong due to timing only in that case you are factually wrong with claiming Bobby Kotick ushered in the $60 dollar game too especially as the PC version of COD was $50 compared to the $60 xbox 360 version and more importantly other games like "Peter Jackson's King Kong" and "Condemned: Criminal Origins" released at the exact same time with that $60 price tag on 360 only. From Ubisoft and Sega respectively so Kotick had nothing to do with it.
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adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
ok? I haven't said or argued a single iota about who ushered in the $60 and whether it was Kotick's fault or not. You've been in my face about it the past few pages lol.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Consolidations increased, that's why it's "more expensive."
Um the quote I gave showing your hypocrisy was about you deflecting the 360 price hike by blaming kotick and claiming he ushered in the $60 game. Are you having difficulty following?
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custardbun01
Member
Americans are just starting to cop what other markets have been taking for years. The PS5 generation heralded $120 AUD games up from $80-90 AUD games on PS4 for us in Australia at the get go. All you guys going digital only makes it happen more easily. You can still easily get physical copies at launch for $20-$30 less as retailers fight amongst each other. Digital doesn't see discounts from $120 for new games for months and months.
The best way to counter this is to buy physical, it's the only way you still get price competition in games.
The best way to counter this is to buy physical, it's the only way you still get price competition in games.
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Setsuna Mudou
Member
a wise man once said...
ZehDon
Member
Fair point, although that's coming from the analysists. Reconciling Sony declaring the current generation their most profitable against thin margins isn't terribly difficult when we're seeing their numbers, I feel. Thin margins aren't necessary bad in an economy of scale. Sony's business is focused on 100 million current generation units and 20 million unit blockbusters. Even thin margins on those numbers is evidently enough to create record profit amounts. As you mentioned in your prior post, it does highlight efficiency concerns, which is a point I'll agree with - having 800 full time staff for linear titles like TLOU2 and spending USD$400 on something as terrible as Concord is simply not a sustainable business model.
An interesting consideration, however, that narrows us to talking about Sony's first party specifically. They skewed their ROI heavily with the PS5 generation. I believe the Insomniac documents show they spent around USD$100m on Spider-man, and then spent closer to $300m on the sequel - which ultimately sold about the same. A similiar scenario occurred for God of War. With TLOU, despite nearly USD$250m for the PS4 sequel, they landed with around 50%-60% of the sales of the original. Sony's pouring more money into titles and genres that simply don't have room to recoup it. This is similar to Square Enix expecting the Tomb Raider reboot to come close to COD numbers. I don't think it necessarily demonstrates an issue with the market, so much as out of touch expectations from delusional management. Titles like Black Myth Wukong and Expedition 33 demonstrate what you can achieve with smaller budgets. Sony simply shouldn't be spending that kind of money on those kinds of games, in my opinion.
Believe what you want, they are charging $80 a game. You either buy or wait to buy for cheaper or don't buy.
I remember when initially movies on VHS tape were $90. They found out that price was too high. Was not maximizing profits. And it created a black market for copies. EVentually, over a few years or so, the price of new releases dropped to $30.
So if their pricing is rather random and they are trying to figure it out then maybe it's too high. But all signs point to that not being the case between recent tariffs, recent spikes in inflation, audience not growing and development costs ballooning.
I remember when initially movies on VHS tape were $90. They found out that price was too high. Was not maximizing profits. And it created a black market for copies. EVentually, over a few years or so, the price of new releases dropped to $30.
So if their pricing is rather random and they are trying to figure it out then maybe it's too high. But all signs point to that not being the case between recent tariffs, recent spikes in inflation, audience not growing and development costs ballooning.
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Mattyp
Not the YouTuber
This is what I tried explaining in Microsoft's quarterly, 5% is good growth, revenue is through the roof, people still shitting on that amount of growth and wanting 10% a quarter for a company to be 'healthy' this is how we get there.
And people saying hope Sony doesn't follow through they already have for the rest of the world several months ago.
StereoVsn
Gold Member
How about we just agree that all there corpos suck, whether MS, Nintendo or Sony.
They are all looking at next quarter or maybe a year out at most because (at least for Sony and MS) that's how C suite bonuses work. And they f-over their customers as much as they possibly can.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I don't buy games at full price retail anyway so they can suck an egg with these price hikes.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
Quoting my post from the other thread for visibility:
Harmonized Tariff Schedule
hts.usitc.gov
You can directly go and check the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS) and see that no Tariffs are listed for videogame consoles under heading "9504" section 1 (Section 2 is for N. Korea, Belarus and Cuba).
So, this isn't at all predicated on Trump's tariffs. This is just MS's opportunist greed, plain and simple.
ProtoByte
Weeb Underling
Economies of scale are supposed to create larger profit margins.
Margins are arguably the most important thing. I make this argument with Microsoft all the time: Their revenue is higher than ever (we don't hear anything numerical about profits) but the cost of that revenue is insane. They've had to buy out 30% of the industry on top of being a platform holder to make those "gains", which are less gains than transfers. We've already seen a significant number of studio closures from them, and there will be a flood of more coming in the next few years despite the circlejerking about an 8% bump in revenue.
On Sony's side, there are a bunch of things that have occurred that make them very fortunate, and thin margins despite all that means that there needs to be reform - because things are much more likely to get spontaneously worse than better.
I mean, let's go down the list of things that's bumping up Sony's purely nominal figures:
- The base console is 100 dollars more than the PS4 Pro ever was, and has actually been increasing in price as opposed to the other way around
- The games are 16% more expensive
- The Xbox hardware has cratered to such a degree that this gen will likely not even hit 60% of the XBO - hence, a one-off transfer of customers that will not be made at scale again
TLOU2 never had 800 full time staffers and the issues that cut into that game are not financial in nature; Concord was a game built specifically because Sony was looking for ways to jump on the easy money wagon as a result of thinning game margins.
No, it doesn't. Major Sony first parties often sell more than the average major third party title; Sony takes away 100% of that revenue barring the pittance of 70% they take when they very stupidly port shit on Steam - but for third party publishers, there's no avoiding the 30% storefront tax.
This explains why third party publishers latched onto live services so much more quickly than Sony or Nintendo; the numbers just make it very difficult to make money on actually selling games.
This is a similar dynamic for every publisher. Dev costs (and licensing in the case of IP/Spider-Man) are only going up.
Black Myth and Expedition demonstrate what you can do with state-funding and cheaper workforces.
Black Myth was developed with lowly paid and way less pampered Chinese labor funded and, imo, astroturfed by CCP money. Apparently, 75% of sales were in China alone, indicating that Chinese nationalism also played an outsized role. That is not replicable for western or even Japanese publishers, nor do I think it's desirable for us as consumers. I don't even think it's replicable for Chinese devs.
Clair Obscur is a way less obvious or egregious example of state funding, but I can almost guarantee that the French government gave them some funding of significance as they do with a lot of "arts" entrepreneurs.
As for sales, all it's done so far is 1 million units at a pretty severely cut launch price, and similar to Metaphor (which cleared a million in a day) I would not be surprised if it was relatively front loaded. But we do have to wait before we start drawing comparisons. But I would bet that Sony or PS fans would not be happy to have the height of their catalogue to be filled out with games that only reach wherever this game is likely to reach.
Again, they benefit from being in a way lower cost center than anywhere in the States too. I remember people bragging about Space Marine II being "AA" when it was literally developed in Russia. Maybe there's something to be said about it, but it's not practical, reasonable, desirable or even sensible to shift all of these expensive dev studios from America to Europe or China, or (and this'll be coming up next) India or Africa.
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DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Yeah, now the sale prices are going to be what was once regular prices a very small window ago
Mattyp
Not the YouTuber
Yeah, now the sale prices are going to be what was once regular prices a very small window ago
Welcome to the future
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Is this Aussie shillings?Welcome to the future
Efren is G.O.A.T.
Member
How many full price AAA y'all buy per year?
asdasdasdbb
Member
I kind of wonder what % of Steam sales are publishers selling wholesale keys directly, since Valve lets them do that for free.
(And that's not even considering the % that buy keys from those Shady Key Sites, and I'm not even talking about abusing Regional Currency arbitrage)
Mattyp
Not the YouTuber
It is, but since Sony bumped the prices up that's spot on $80 US.
RickMasters
Member
I was just about to say this. It was only a few weeks ago Nintendo was telling people switch 2 games cost 80 bucks.
And with rockstar talking behind the scenes about potentially charging 100 bucks for GTA 6…… yo……. People better get used to the cost of things. Or subscribe, to a service.
Barakov
Member
BacklashWave534
Member
Like I give a shit. People are angry about a lot of things that are not based in reality or which they don't understand. It's the age of feels versus reals and it's far more satisfying for people to be able to be able to point a finger and be angry about something.
When it comes to these discussions people won't acknowledge simple facts. I'll post a chart of the average US wage outpacing the CPI and people will come up with some anecdote about how they've personally been fucked over. The labor statistics don't care!
Unfathomably based and economically literate post. Finally someone who gets it.
Ok dude. Hopefully mommy and daddy can afford to by those $80 videogames for you. The rest of the people that work for a living have actual bills to pay with rising costs on literally everything and no relief in site. Your detachment from reality is epic to say the least because anyone dealing with the current ecomonic climate isn't cheering on price increases for thier entertainment.
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MondoPentecost
Neo Member
Just to address your point about Hi-Fi Rush, it was a dismal failure (Great game though), the claim it was a success is a marketing tool to build FOMO and generate positive press coverage. Rule of the thumb for game success claims, if they don't not provide solid numbers of sold copies (where if they lie they can sued by various stake holders) then assume it was not a great success.
We've already bashed Nintendo to death over this. MKW shouldn't cost them $80 lol only a fool and his money think that's a good thing. But from Microsoft, this is really rich.
- Microsoft has spent close to $100 billion dollars in acquisitions with Activision and Bethesda in the past 5 years.
- They practically don't even bother with physical games, which saves them money.
- They run lean for projects. Even games they claim are a success (Hi-Fi Rush), they shut down the studios for who knows why.
- Half of the reason their studios make it more expensive to make games is because almost every project they do that's big goes through a dev hell process. Fable, Perfect Dark, etc.
- Halo Infinite cost them some ridiculous amount of money and produced nothing on value. Another forgettable Halo game.
- They've wasted countless amounts of money on goofy things no one cares about.
This sounds like some kind of greedy way to get people on Game Pass. I'm waiting for the "Pay $80 or just get gamepass, bruh" nonsense. But even with Game Pass, they suck at it too by having $1 promotions all the time and blowing smoke about how many users they have. The best thing they've done in the past few years has been shut Phil Spencer up and then put their games on PS5. But that's it.
We need another one of these in this industry:
If Sony does this and Steam too, then I'll follow up with more bashing. But MS is extra silly given their recent history of why they're games would cost more.
GulfCoastZilla
Member
I mean budgets are through the roof and so is cost of living so you got to pay these devs living wages. I'm just surprised it wasn't $80 at the start of this gen. I feel like what's his face, Shawn something from PS has been going around saying forever that something has to change.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Coming soon, to an America near you.
The market has doubled/tripled since like 1995. Gta3 cost like 5-10mil to make, gta4 100mil. Games these days regularly go beyond 200-500 mil
dcx4610
Member
Studios have wanted $80 games for years now. They just needed the right moment to pull the trigger and blame it on development cost, tariffs, inflation, etc.
This is from 2024:
"Q3 sales within the Game & Network Services division rose by 16 percent year-on-year to 1.6 trillion yen ($10.4 billion)."
Why make 10.4 billion when you can make 12 billion? It's all about appeasing your stock holders and giving your execs a fatter bonus.
This is from 2024:
"Q3 sales within the Game & Network Services division rose by 16 percent year-on-year to 1.6 trillion yen ($10.4 billion)."
Why make 10.4 billion when you can make 12 billion? It's all about appeasing your stock holders and giving your execs a fatter bonus.
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RickMasters
Member
Yeah there's always that too. But now a 50 percent off sale is gonna mean 45 bucksOr maybe, wait for a price drop.
THe market has not just doubled or tripled in 30 years. What an insane take.
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DeltaPolarBear
Member
Free trade didn't harm my country. Free Trade didn't harm the EU either. If you want to say that it is a good thing for America to suffer for your own good, you are just making excuses for not having self control.
Imagine saying it is a good thing to become poorer because it is an excuse to lose weight. You could have lost weight while you are rich, don't blame Free Trade for making you too happy and content. The rest of us outside the US prefer happiness and contentment, thankyouverymuch.
I already buy pretty much zero games day 1 and everything on sale. So I will be effected I guess as sale prices will be higher.
Funny enough the last AAA game I bought on Day 1 I think was Doom Eternal. Really not sure if I will pay full price for the new Doom.
Funny enough the last AAA game I bought on Day 1 I think was Doom Eternal. Really not sure if I will pay full price for the new Doom.
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Cakeboxer
Member
One month Game Pass on release + a purchase when 20 Bucks or so are the way to go for Microsoft games. At least for me.
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dragonyeuw
Member
Using the ole inflation calcular, $70 in 2020 when the price jumped is equal to $86 today. Which, to be clear, I'm not at all happy with this or one of those 'bu bu bu inflation!' posters. But the gains they were hoping to get since Covid were basically wiped out, and they're no doubt using that as reason to up the price again. The problem continues to be, wages have not kept pace for decades. If someone was making $70k in 2020, they'd have to be making $86k now but I'm betting many/most people didn't make the same jump ( especially if they've stayed in the same job, position and not gotten promoted or left for more money). How is the minimum wage in 2025 barely above what it was like 2009, while everything else jumps up tenfold?
All of these simply can't continue to go up. They're going to sell less copies at $80, just as they lost some people at $70. Another big issue with these games are the frequent price drops( I know that sounds odd from a consumer, but bear with me). What's the point in pricing a game at $80 and then 6 months later it's at $50-60 ( asides from Nintendo first party)? Why does Ubisoft price their games at $60-70 and then they're $30 two months later( and EVERYONE knows not to buy their games at launch)? I'm no economist, but why not just price the game at $60 and leave it there for a year or more? And when its on sale after a year, its at $40.
Again, I'm certainly not advocating for games not to go on sale, I'm just asking how much do these games 'really' need to be priced at out the gate when most companies willingly drop the price within 4-6 months? It just feels like they're long-term fucking themselves over because you're going to have more and more people nope out with every increase, instead of pricing it at a level that's less exclusionary and sustain it longer instead? It's like the companies are trying to catch flies with vinegar instead of honey.
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Well I looked up a few sources on the size of the market and when you do not include mobile (mobile is not what this is about) it's about anywhere from 2 to maybe 4x larger. Remember PS1 sold like 80 million consoles and PS2 160million. It has not increased 10x like u say.