Ex PlayStation exec says "$70 or $80" for really great games are a "steal"

I mean I said this before. A game like rdr2 for 60$ is a steal indeed, but there aren't many of those, most games especially western games EA Ubi don't deserve more than 50$
 
StereoVsn said:
And that's the weird part. Console manufacturers are killing off their "pipeline" of younger gamers.

These prices will preclude a lot of kids, young adults abs folks not making 6 figure salaries from buying new titles or new consoles.

So what happens long term when PS6 releases at $700-800 with $80-90 titles in 2028?

I think it's going to be interesting to see how Switch 2 does over the next 3 years past 2025 early adopter sales as it could indicate where the winds are blowing.
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And they are doing this when mobile phones are already control the biggest chunk of the revenue in gaming.
Console market is bound to get smaller and smaller with new generations of gamers.
 
Of course people are going to complain about prices

It's practically human nature. No matter how affordable something is, it rarely feels cheap enough, and no matter how high the quality, it's seldom good enough
 
Bojji said:
Broken games are released on consoles as well, this "testing" is worth shit. Oblivion remaster is crashing consoles after too many save loads and performance drops after you play it for some time.

On pc you can often actually fix developers incompetence with mods while on consoles you have to wait on patch that may come or not.
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Its one thing for a game to be broken in the sense that framerate isnt even etc.

Its another thing for a game to just be completely broken and unstartable at times, which has happened to me personally and not on infamous bad cases like Arkham Knight.

Also if you have to fix something via mods then you are just doing free work that your money should have paid for, this isn't something to boast about imo.
 
winjer said:
And they are doing this when mobile phones are already control the biggest chunk of the revenue in gaming.
Console market is bound to get smaller and smaller with new generations of gamers.
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And not just that as kids have a lot of other entertainment distractions between doom scrolling, social media, streaming and so on.

It seems very weird to hike up prices on everything right now especially economic situation in most countries for regular folks.
 
except they don't make anything that great enough for that price tag either, and china can still put out something better than them for cheaper price like black myth wukong, all of my sony 1st party exclusive game for PS5 i play come from PS+, they didn't even worth to spend money on
 
winjer said:
And they are doing this when mobile phones are already control the biggest chunk of the revenue in gaming.
Console market is bound to get smaller and smaller with new generations of gamers.
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It is already smaller. When I'm on public tranportation I overhear kids talking about multiplayer PC games. Not many of them want a console. Console gamers are primarily 30+ or older. That being said those kids have shit taste.

Also, PC is currently the biggest player in the market if we exclude mobile games. PC is just convienient when even a shitty laptop can give you access to whole generations of games.

I'm myself are very interested in returning to being a PC gamer, but I still don't know what form it will take (Deck, PC or some laptop that I will use both for work and games even if that is the worst option).
 
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Its got nothing to do with it. I agree at a literal level that some games could be $80 or $100 because they are really good. However, when you start pricing games relating to its quality, not only is it somewhat subjective but if a game is priced at a certain level and its not a 90% and above on Metacritic then people won't buy it. If you are going to price it like a car, then I am not going to pay the same for a Ford as I would for a Ferrari.
 
They have to wait until next gen to bust out the 80 dollar baseline for AAAs.

Reactions to statements like this often expose precisely why the gaming market and entertainment at large is where it is. People will subscribe for a little over a hundred dollars a year for access to almost any listenable music you could ask for as opposed to paying on a per release basis and wonder why artists don't get paid shit if they're not touring and merch shilling. Supposedly enthusiast gamers don't acknowledge just how much goes into making a game and how thin the margins are on actually selling a game as a one time purchase.

Sorry guys, you can't keep games at 60 or 70 dollars forever and have a dev workforce making well over 100k on average before benefits, and have that workforce never pressured to crunch or sacrifice their "work-life balance", and not use new emerging tech like generative AI, and get the games we all know you actually want by revealed preference.
 
It will be the market (i.e., primarily casual gamers) that decide, not Shu or you or me. Are the filthy casuals willing to spend $70 or $80 for games? We shall see. (I expect they will be.)

Shu has a point. If you choose your game carefully, spending $70 or even $80 can be a good value. Some games have entertained me for 200 hours or more. That's 40 cents an hour, which is considerably cheaper than other forms of entertainment. However, games like that are few and far between, so you do have to be selective.
 
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It's a steal for Epic, Roblox, Mihoyo and Riot who are just going to see more players login to their F2P games and spend $30 chunks there every few weeks instead. Gamers also want more choice with their platform, which is why PC has exploded in popularity and is the market driver along with mobile while consoles have been treading water since last gen.

With console prices continually going up and software hitting $80(it won't stop there) on walled garden ecosystems, the PS7 and Switch 3 will be lucky to hit 50 million.
 
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Brakum said:
No one cares about his name. If he wrote his name no one would know who that is, at least the way he wrote it, it gave him some credentials instead of just sounding like a nobody. He's doing him a favor. But actually you're right, make him sound like a nobody because fuck this guy.

And by nobody i dont literally mean nobody, especially not on this forum, be he is a nobody for 99% of gamers. In terms of name recognition at least.
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You don't know what you're talking about.
 
I dunno... From my perspective, time is money. Me buying a game is a question of if it's worth my time investment. Not if it's worth what's in my wallet. I'm sure that's not everyone but simply from my perspective if a game looks good to you and there's hype behind it, your gonna buy it if it's $40 or if it's $90. Like honestly, someone will eat a box of kraft dinner or instant noodles for 1 day to save the $50 they were gonna spend of delivery food to afford a game. If games are shit, they don't really deserve any money anyways.
 
readonly said:
I'm sure that's not everyone but simply from my perspective if a game looks good to you and there's hype behind it, your gonna buy it if it's $40 or if it's $90.
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That will stop being true for you at some $ amount though, as it does for everyone. Consideration of what that point is collectively is how games have arrived at the price point they have, and why they are not already $90.
 
Oh why the fuck do they keep having those 20 euro a game sales on said tripple A games?

love and hip hop shut up GIF by VH1
 
I honestly agree with him in principle, not all games are worth the same amount and the market already has that covered. The ability to charge more for a game than before should reflect its increased value which certainly hasn't increased, it's dropped.

Also, the argument that everything else has gone up is bs. Especially on something tyat is entirely optional and there thousands of similar games you can get for a fraction of the price.

The only real way to prove this wrong is if people vote with their wallets. If the public, on large, pays the higher price then they are going to charge that price.
 
Astray said:
Its one thing for a game to be broken in the sense that framerate isnt even etc.

Its another thing for a game to just be completely broken and unstartable at times, which has happened to me personally and not on infamous bad cases like Arkham Knight.

Also if you have to fix something via mods then you are just doing free work that your money should have paid for, this isn't something to boast about imo.
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You know, on PC game can be abolutely fine and it will still crash to some % of people, it could be incompatible OS, drivers, hardware, viruses or programs. They literally can't test for every scenario, just for minimum and recommended they post on steam page.

Half of the time it could be issue related to the game and half of the time to something completely different. That's why refunds are very important.

But you can also refund games that you just don't like or they don't meet your standards, something that would be used by console gamers if that option was present.
 
calico said:
That will stop being true for you at some $ amount though, as it does for everyone. Consideration of what that point is collectively is how games have arrived at the price point they have, and why they are not already $90.
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I agree, part of why they are not already 90 is because it's hard to shift the entire industry to higher price points, this is why they have taken the strategy of incremental increases. You increase by 10 and wait for everyone to equalize on that price and repeat. The industry already moved to increased pricing on game per game basis and it's DLC and annoying micro transactions etc. you often only get 2/3 of a game at launch.
 
It may be worth it for that price, but "a steal?" Come the fuck on. That's as high as you can pay for a base video game software in this millennium.
 
Further proof that development budgets are extremely inflated...

Maybe paying 1000s of people to do a 100 peoples jobs wasn't the best move the industry ever made.

The pubs should be focusing on dropping budgets, speeding up development and creating a development pipeline that can be maintained, so that their products can sell for a reasonable price and still be successful whilst not taking almost a decade to release.

How every game became a "Blank cheque" game is actually a bit baffling. Only rockstar can pull that card because they make bank and sales day 1
 
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What are you doing buy video games at that price, what happens next $90 dollar base games? Now I'm excited for used video games sales for the first time
 
Now that I'm playing Capcom Fighting Collection 2, I find it entertaining and enjoy it more than a game like Horizon. It's not a bargain.

I'd rather emulate them and download the free PS2 versions, which are even better than the current ones.
 
"Former PlayStation exec says "$70 or $80" games are a "steal": "As long as people choose carefully how they spend their money, I don't think they should be complaining."

Gamers have plenty to complain about and it's not unfounded either!

YHrXTTs.gif
 
I agree, but that's so few games. What about all the mediocre/crap games? I guess we can all just buy the bangers and never touch anything else? Sounds like a plan to me.
 
Fuck, no. I was literally about to buy Doom The Dark Ages on Steam when I saw that they want 80€ for it, and then I was like "ehhh.. I can wait.". That 80€ is/was high enough to counter my urge to buy it.
 
He's right, for truly great games from developers with a proven track record. But there aren't that many of those. I'd have gladly paid $100 for Elden Ring and I'll gladly pay whatever From wants to charge me for their next "mainline" game. For the stuff Sony churns out, though? In retrospect I would have paid $80 for Returnal but I didn't know that at the time. TLoU2, GoW, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon? I already didn't buy those at full price.
 
Most games priced at $70/80 are not even worth half of that. Most games are straight up a waste of time. Make better games, not higher priced games. Expedition 33 is currently outgrossing Doom on Steam charts despite costing $30 less. Go back to the $50 standard and ditch those 400 dev teams and focus more on unique games. This current system has stagnated innovation and growth. Shuhei needs a reminder that Playstation became king due to its comparetively affordable offerings.
 
Outside of Zelda BOTW and Links Awakening on Switch, I haven't paid $60 for a game since the 7th gen. So the industry can push games to $100 if they want, I stay years behind releases and rarely pay as much as $20 for a game ( thanks to Steam key reseller sites). I don't think I've even bought any games released since 2023, IIRC Robocop Rogue City was the most recent release and I just got that last summer off CDkeys for like $15( and it's under $10 now).
 
readonly said:
I dunno... From my perspective, time is money. Me buying a game is a question of if it's worth my time investment. Not if it's worth what's in my wallet.
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That's true, too. As I've gotten older, I'm less concerned about whether a piece of entertainment is worth my money. I am more concerned about whether it is worth my time.
 
Klosshufvud said:
Most games priced at $70/80 are not even worth half of that. Most games are straight up a waste of time. Make better games, not higher priced games. Expedition 33 is currently outgrossing Doom on Steam charts despite costing $30 less. Go back to the $50 standard and ditch those 400 dev teams and focus more on unique games. This current system has stagnated innovation and growth. Shuhei needs a reminder that Playstation became king due to its comparetively affordable offerings.
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IMO the industry needs a complete strategic overhaul in how they produce and sell games. Its like the AAA model has locked itself into a cycle of spending a few hundred million that needs 20 million copies sold with post release DLC to be deemed a success, and even then we've seen teams laid off even in the wake of a commercially successful game. The way this industry operates( the AAA side specifically) is rotten to the core.
 
Elden Ring was $60. Did it need to be $80? No. Players were happy and so was Fromsoft. These disconnected execs can gtfo with their opinions, opinions nobody asked for either.
 
NeverYouMind said:
But you can get an official Steam key from Fanatical for less than 60 USD...
https://www.fanatical.com/en/game/doom-the-dark-ages

Are you afraid you can't refund it after 2 hours?
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It's 66€ over there. I wasn't aware of fanatical. While 66€ is better than fucking 80€, it's still a tad high.

I will think about it. Thanks, regardless.

Also: I never once used the refund function on Steam. I never had to since I usually know what I buy.
 
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