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[IDKFA]

It costs that much because it takes lots of people a really long time.

Lol. Yeah, I know. It now takes more people longer to make a single game.

Game development needs to be more efficient.

Look at how many people are needed to make the games we love and it is no surprise.



A multitude of hard working, talented people who have bills to pay, families to feed just like we do. If they aren't going to make a decent living making these games, they'll go and work in a different industry and then we'll be left with shitty games, or no games at all.

Tickle my nuts! That many people for a remake? Jesus. No wonder the gaming industry is fucked.

Games development needs to be more efficient where we have less people making games in a shorter amount of time.

 

[Deerock71]

Nintendo charges $60 for 7 years old games.

Games that still play better than 95% of the games out there.

 

[DryvBy]

"nO oNe AcCoUnTs InFLatIoN"

And you don't consider the amount of games that are bombarding us with DLC, season passes, skins, random crap, cut content we buy in another pass a form of correction? These companies are making bank right now. Gaming is (or was at least) the number one entertainment business now. When you're CEO is making more than 5 profitable games a year, that's part of the issue.

 

[SportsFan581]

Games don't need to cost more, development needs to cost less. The market will pay what it wants to pay, charging more for games above what they're worth will only lead the industry further into the grave.

Absolutely, you'd just have fewer sales. Non GaaS games would struggle that much more.

 

[Toots]

Basically, seeing all these layoffs and hearing part of the reason is the risk and small margins...well, there's one simple solution: games need to cost more.

Over here in New Zealand, we currently pay $90-$120.00 or thereabouts a game, games have nearly always cost this much...going way, way back to at least the 90s. I don't really understand why video games are immune to going up in price (apart from the recent $10 USD bump), I mean...if it meant less lay offs, a healthier industry and people still wanting to work in the industry, surely us taking a $20-$30 bump on the chin is worth it?

I probably am not the median gamer in terms of earnings and such, but even when I was a broke Uni student in the late 90s & early 2000s, games were still $90-$120.00 a game here - and I paid it and was happy....that's like $200.00 now adjusted for inflation lol, so yeah, why do many feel SO strongly against games increasing in cost?

I've gotten $200 of value from Hell Divers 2 already, $500 of value from Cyberpunk etc etc - it just feels like it's a crazy good deal, but are we hurting our own industry by not being open to a price hike?

$80-90 USD a game, I'd go there - if it means the industry keeps on smashing it (that's mean $150.00 NZD for sure, painful, but worth it).

The kind people have a wonderful dream
Corpo chills on the guillotine

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Games don't need to cost more, development needs to cost less. The market will pay what it wants to pay, charging more for games above what they're worth will only lead the industry further into the grave.

Yup. It’s like superhero movies costing $100s of million in production and marketing costs, and tv shows like She Hulk being $25M per episode (9 part series cost $225M according to articles). And the costs still keep trending up over the years.

Companies are setting themselves up for financial disaster unless they get lucky and the sales gravy train keeps going up.

But entertainment industry companies are ones that typically “only go up” in project costs, or celeb or sports salaries….. until shit hits the fan making it into a crisis. Dot com era in 2000 was similar. Way too much money floating around and people irresponsible with it.

 

[SonGoku]

Im down to pay more as long as all elements of GaaS, microtransactions, dlc, season pass, cosmetics etc. are banned from paid games.

 

[Diddy X]

It's been several years since I paid more than 20€ for a game, maybe I pay full price for GTA VI for PC

 

[hyperbertha]

Basically, seeing all these layoffs and hearing part of the reason is the risk and small margins...well, there's one simple solution: games need to cost more.

Over here in New Zealand, we currently pay $90-$120.00 or thereabouts a game, games have nearly always cost this much...going way, way back to at least the 90s. I don't really understand why video games are immune to going up in price (apart from the recent $10 USD bump), I mean...if it meant less lay offs, a healthier industry and people still wanting to work in the industry, surely us taking a $20-$30 bump on the chin is worth it?

I probably am not the median gamer in terms of earnings and such, but even when I was a broke Uni student in the late 90s & early 2000s, games were still $90-$120.00 a game here - and I paid it and was happy....that's like $200.00 now adjusted for inflation lol, so yeah, why do many feel SO strongly against games increasing in cost?

I've gotten $200 of value from Hell Divers 2 already, $500 of value from Cyberpunk etc etc - it just feels like it's a crazy good deal, but are we hurting our own industry by not being open to a price hike?

$80-90 USD a game, I'd go there - if it means the industry keeps on smashing it (that's mean $150.00 NZD for sure, painful, but worth it).

Gamers like you that can derive 500 hours of enjoyment from single game is rare. Most people are done in less than 20.

 

[Elysium44]

Lol. Yeah, I know. It now takes more people longer to make a single game.

Game development needs to be more efficient.


Tickle my nuts! That many people for a remake? Jesus. No wonder the gaming industry is fucked.

Games development needs to be more efficient where we have less people making games in a shorter amount of time.

Sounds like you're kneejerk assuming it's inefficient, okay which of those roles in the credits aren't needed? Or which ones are needed but aren't working efficiently? If you don't know then you're just jumping to conclusions.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

"nO oNe AcCoUnTs InFLatIoN"

And you don't consider the amount of games that are bombarding us with DLC, season passes, skins, random crap, cut content we buy in another pass a form of correction? These companies are making bank right now. Gaming is (or was at least) the number one entertainment business now. When you're CEO is making more than 5 profitable games a year, that's part of the issue.

Yup.

Gaming is giant and you most big companies at record sales and profit, or pretty close to it since COVID beastly sales were years ago. So the pie is there and full of cash waiting to be grabbed.

It’s just that social media makes it sound like a crisis, nobody takes into account for every laid off tech worker the past year, there were probably 3 or 4 hired before that, and there’s also so many gaming companies churning out endless games big and small the pie is getting carved up into too many slices.

That’s probably why so many people just stick with cod or fifa and the like. There’s so many games they can’t keep up and probably just wait fuck it. If some of these tried and true games I like are good I’ll just stick with it with mtx or buy the sequel since I know it’s reliably a good series.

Games cost a lot or buy. No different than any other industry. When stuff costs a lot you’ll likely stick to something that you know will be good instead of risking buying something else which might be shit.

It’s not like gaming is an industry like buying cookies where every bag is anywhere from $2-5. Who cares if a new flavour sucks. It’s only a couple bucks. Also, if you hate it that much a store will refund you back your measly $3.49. A game store might not refund your $100 game ($90-95 CDN + tax).

 

[Jaybe]

Paying more isn’t something I’m volunteering for. It’s for the publishers and developers to determine price points and how fast and deep they want to go on sale, and how to control their costs. Most industries and especially the game industry employ or hire as consultants people experienced in revenue management to help with the strategy. Play early editions, deluxe editions, pre-buying ultimate editions for DLC you don’t even know what it will be, pre-order bonuses, microtransactions, macro transactions, online passes, soundtracks, licensing to subscriptions, and more are ways in which the industry have or are maximizing revenue. Cost-wise, they need to be smarter. Using internal expert teams like how Sony has one for mo-cap seems smart. Microsoft cycling through 18-month contractors in proprietary engines, seems wasteful. I think all developers need to get scope in check. Keep cinematics to 1 to 2 minutes at most. Re4 Remake was perfect for me. 16 hour-ish game I replayed twice, rarely taking me long out of the game. Compare to Gow Ragnarok and its long unstoppable cutscenes and walk and talk. I was excited to try a combat based dlc Valhalla, but immediately you are rowing a boat for 2 minutes! In an opposite case though you have subscriptions which can make gaming cheaper than ever, but that seems to be a platform and certain publisher push. In a way it seems to be a race to the bottom, attempting to get scale and customers blindly paying month to month. What I miss are deep discounts more quickly. I feel like 75% off within a two year window is rarely happening and could be rose tinted glasses but felt like that happened more prior gens. Seems like every one wants to be Nintendo on holding price and leaving the subscription as a way for the discount focused customer.

 

[Elysium44]

I see the same sort of ill-informed comments here as I do elsewhere online about various things costing what they do. Energy bills rising? Supermarket food prices? But they make billions in profits! They don't need to rise! But when you look at it, they make very small profit margins and there are good reasons the price of things has gone up. So many people just jump to whatever simplistic conclusion confirms their biases though.

The same sort of people demand price caps on everything from rents to toilet rolls, and then get surprised that whenever this has been tried it just leads to shortages.

 

[Freeman76]

They could avoid these lay offs, but the dudes at the top wont lose their massive wages to keep people in work. Sony are the greediest of all the companies and always seem to be the ones laying people off. They sell more of everything and yet make more people redundant than any other company in gaming.

 

[Fbh]

Nintendo charges $60 for 7 years old games.

Their pricing policy, high quality and not chasing after high end graphics are some of the smartest decisions Nintendo has made.
In the end it all comes down to how you manage expectations from your customers:
If you are constantly putting your games on sale a few months after they launch you are encouraging a "just wait for a sale" mentality
If your games mostly depend on increasingly better graphics to feel "new" then that's what people will expect from you studio and they'll be disappointed when you don't deliver (notice how most Nintendo fans don't give a crap if Tears of the Kingdom looks dated or most FROMSOFT fans don't give a crap if Elden Ring doesn't look as good as Demon Souls remake. But imagine if the next ND game doesn't look much better than TLOU2)
If your games launch broken and full of issues and it takes months worth of updated to fix them you are telling your customers they should wait next time.

As a random example imagine you bought Jedi Survivor on ps5 for $70.
To your disappointment you are greeted with a crappy performance mode running in the mid 40 fps and resolution that goes as low as like 680p.
6 months later you find out the game is not only on sale for $40 but also after multiple updates it has way fewer bugs and the performance mode now runs at a more acceptable 1080p and nearly locked 60fps.
Why would you buy the next Respawn game at launch if you know you can wait 3-6 months and get it for cheaper and when it's actually finished?

 

[Evil Calvin]

Games are now digital...........no overhead
Games do not have to be shipped
Games do not need to have a 3rd party seller
Games do not need packaging
Games sales mainly go to publisher

No....piss off. games are now $75 with tax. More than enough. Pay your execs MUCH less than the hundreds of thousands of dollars.........even millions of dollars. That's excessive.

They also justified $70 games a few years ago saying costs are going up and they will not have to put as much MTX or DLC in the games if they charged more. No....they doubled down on MTX and GAAS.

 

[Schmick]

Kind of naïve to think that raising the price of games will mean no redundancies.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Their pricing policy, high quality and not chasing after high end graphics are some of the smartest decisions Nintendo has made.
In the end it all comes down to how you manage expectations from your customers:
If you are constantly putting your games on sale a few months after they launch you are encouraging a "just wait for a sale" mentality
If your games mostly depend on increasingly better graphics to feel "new" then that's what people will expect from you studio and they'll be disappointed when you don't deliver (notice how most Nintendo fans don't give a crap if Tears of the Kingdom looks dated or most FROMSOFT fans don't give a crap if Elden Ring doesn't look as good as Demon Souls remake. But imagine if the next ND game doesn't look much better than TLOU2)
If your games launch broken and full of issues and it takes months worth of updated to fix them you are telling your customers they should wait next time.

As a random example imagine you bought Jedi Survivor on ps5 for $70.
To your disappointment you are greeted with a crappy performance mode running in the mid 40 fps and resolution that goes as low as like 680p.
6 months later you find out the game is not only on sale for $40 but also after multiple updates it has way fewer bugs and the performance mode now runs at a more acceptable 1080p and nearly locked 60fps.
Why would you buy the next Respawn game at launch if you know you can wait 3-6 months and get it for cheaper and when it's actually finished?

Exactly.

Gaming is an industry with the most predictable pricing strategies ever. Most full bugeat games are priced the same $70 US whether it’s a huge game like GTA or a b-tier game. Sales go on discount fast for most games especially UBI and EA. I don’t even buy UBI games and even I know that.

But then as you said some companies like Nintendo barely put their games on sale. So if they can do that so can others. But most companies prefer the margin killing spiral down the toilet of 50% off prices later in the year. I’m conditioned to wait for sales. No different then when I bought office shirts before COVID. Why would I waste my money buying at regular price when I know every week brands rotate 40% off at The Bay? I’ll just buy what’s available at the bargain price.

 

[Evil Calvin]

No....it's unsustainable to be charging $70+ for most games. Unless it is a AAAA game (not Skull and Bones) then $70 just isn't worth it.

Look at mid-tier games selling crazy like PalWorld, Balatro, Hades......so many more. All $30 and less.

Put out a great game and at a decent price and there is a better chance of great sales.

 

[Senua]

I DO hope you're being sarcastic.

He's mocking people that don't want to throw their money at corps willy nilly.

 

[LazyParrot]

Luckily the games that have developers and publishers bemoaning the difficulties of recouping hundreds of millions in development costs also tend to be the ones I couldn't care less about.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Games are now digital...........no overhead
Games do not have to be shipped
Games do not need to have a 3rd party seller
Games do not need packaging
Games sales mainly go to publisher

No....piss off. games are now $75 with tax. More than enough. Pay your execs MUCH less than the hundreds of thousands of dollars.........even millions of dollars. That's excessive.

They also justified $70 games a few years ago saying costs are going up and they will not have to put as much MTX or DLC in the games if they charged more. No....they doubled down on MTX and GAAS.

Games have no inventory carrying costs, gaming is a global thing now across lots of multi platform versions and you also get endless remakes and collectors and complete editions.

If this was the 90s a greatest hit game is a million copy seller. That’s it. One million copies. That was a big achievement during the cartridge or cd rom days. Now, one million copies can be achieved by bad games just from launch period alone.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

You’re asking to be paying more for the same stuff you can pay less for right now? What kind of ass backwards consumer logic is this?

I like that you mentioned Helldivers 2 in your post. Yeah, that’s a good game even if it launched with some terrible glitches and server issues. It also launched with zero pay to win weapons and a very consumer friendly battle pass system that you don’t even have to spend money to unlock the premium version of. And it cost $40.

The problem with the industry when it comes to studios struggling has everything to do with publishers and corporate big wigs, nothing to do with gamers. Placing the onus on the consumers is no different than when the auto industry did that or when banks did that. We’ve also seen the movie industry do that.

Dev costs are out of control and it’s not consumers fault. When a good game launches and sells millions but it fails to meet the expectations of a dude in an office so stocks are affected and jobs are lost, that’s not consumers fault.

All you’ll see if we pay more for games is the expectations rise accordingly. Corporate suits will still set unrealistic sales expectations to make back a bloated dev and marketing bill, they’ll just expect to have made more revenue than before because games will cost more.

It’s also reminiscent of the whole online pass thing, remember when used game sales were killing the industry and online passes were supposed to mean better games, more online content and less nickel and diming? How did that all work out?

 

[Švejk]

As long as there's sales, whatever. There's usually only 3-4 games a year now that I'd buy at launch.

 

[Jsisto]

Less AAA games. I don’t mind paying more, but do we really need to? Especially nowadays where I imagine most sales are digital, cutting manufacturing and distribution costs to basically nothing.

 

[IDKFA]

Sounds like you're kneejerk assuming it's inefficient, okay which of those roles in the credits aren't needed? Or which ones are needed but aren't working efficiently? If you don't know then you're just jumping to conclusions.

I didn't analyse the full list, but there is no way that many people are needed for a remake of a PS2/GC game.

Why are stunt coordinators needed? It's a game not a film.

Who are M-Two? I know they assisted, but with what? How much did they charge?

Cut the voice actors in different languages. Just have English, Japanese, Spanish. The rest can make do with sub titles. Maybe have one person do the voices for each language or have the Devs do the VA in their spare time. It's a game. Nobody would give a fuck if the voice acting is bad or completed by one person. It's a video game.

 

[GHound]

Increase the price and I'll be paying even less.

 

[Elysium44]

I didn't analyse the full list, but there is no way that many people are needed for a remake of a PS2/GC game.

Why are stunt coordinators needed? It's a game not a film.

Who are M-Two? I know they assisted, but with what? How much did they charge?

Cut the voice actors in different languages. Just have English, Japanese, Spanish. The rest can make do with sub titles. Maybe have one person do the voices for each language or have the Devs do the VA in their spare time. It's a game. Nobody would give a fuck if the voice acting is bad or completed by one person. It's a video game.

So you have no idea what you're talking about, thought so.

FWIW the voice acting in RE4 was already criticised, especially of Ada. If they dumbed it down even more and just got the devs to do it, come on man. You never heard of false economy? You cut corners too much, the game won't be as well received and thus as profitable.

 

[IDKFA]

So you have no idea what you're talking about, thought so.

FWIW the voice acting in RE4 was already criticised, especially of Ada. If they dumbed it down even more and just got the devs to do it, come on man. You never heard of false economy? You cut corners too much, the game won't be as well received and thus as profitable.

Who gives a fuck about VA? You could pay back alley Tina a cheeky £200 to say some lines. Would it be Oscar worthy? No. Would anybody care? Also no.

What would you prefer? Capcom paying Tom Cruise a seven figure sum to voice Leon? Ten mil to Julia Roberts to voice Claire? Get real!

 

[Elysium44]

Who gives a fuck about VA? You could pay back alley Tina a cheeky £200 to say some lines. Would it be Oscar worthy? No. Would anybody care? Also no.

What would you prefer? Capcom paying Tom Cruise a seven figure sum to voice Leon? Ten mil to Julia Roberts to voice Claire? Get real!

Yeah of course it has to be a choice between someone off the street or Tom Cruise, okay man.

You also repeated that nobody cares about the quality which I explained was wrong but you ignored. Why stop there? Just make the whole product substandard by using the cheapest workers or amateurs.

 

[Guilty_AI]

FWIW the voice acting in RE4 was already criticised, especially of Ada.

Wasn't the issue with Ada's because they changed the VA to fit some stupid DEI criteria? Same thing with Kiryu and yongyea, now there's a good place to start making changes.

 

[LordOcidax]

Nahh, the industry just need to learn from Nintendo… We are seeing the results of pushing graphics over gameplay… Also, people’s wanting to pay more for games and hating over gamepass is just surreal.

 

[MiguelItUp]

Hell no. We are already paying More. Subs, dlc, season passes, microtransctions ... Etc!!

$60 o $70 is just an entry fee

Exactly. Inflation is impossible to ignore. It's why games have gone up in price over the years. But the tacking on of heavy (or greedy) MTX on a full-priced product is more than just typical inflation. Not to just echo the quote, but yeah, the new MSRP is $69.99 these days, and in most cases it's NOT just that and so much more when you tack on everything else. Especially If you enjoy a game so much and/or just wanna support the developers.

Video games reached a new height in popularity years ago, and they continue to attract more and more. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of fans don't make a ton of money, have a cush job, etc. There's a level where a specific price point works, but any more than that would just not be sustainable to those people. It'd be way too expensive. I've seen so many people say, "I'd be willing to pay a bit more if it included the entire experience." or something similar, and I agree depending on what the game is and how I feel about it.

The reality is the game industry is a business, and businesses want to make money. If they can make enough to sustain themselves, they're happy, but they're always going to want to make more than that. If one studio/company sees someone else do something that gets them a ton of money, they attempt to do the same to get a slice of that pie.

 

[veterangamerUK]

Publishers decided to go down the over the top interactive movie games and bloated single player games. Nobody was asking for them. So no I won’t pay more

 

[IDKFA]

Yeah of course it has to be a choice between someone off the street or Tom Cruise, okay man.

You also repeated that nobody cares about the quality which I explained was wrong but you ignored. Why stop there? Just make the whole product substandard by using the cheapest workers or amateurs.

I said nobody cares about story or VA. These are games, not films. Studios could save millions right there.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Publishers decided to go down the over the top interactive movie games and bloated single player games. Nobody was asking for them. So no I won’t pay more

Game companies are themselves up in such a way gamers expect a certain amount of production quality for the same $70. That’s on them for amping it up without considering costs. They just go ape shit on budgets and assume the sales will follow.

That’s like a chocolate muffin company selling it fir $5 per 6-pack. Over the years they keep making the muffins bigger, better, and now it’s an 8-pack. All for the same $5.

That’s on them to figure out. If the muffin company wants go up the wazoo on costs and sell for the same price. That’s their problem.

 

[poodaddy]

No thanks Morrissey, games are expensive enough as is and I always wait for sales as a result. Also of note is that, as prices keep going up, the games industry pays better now on average, even accounting for inflation, than it ever has, and dev studios have record number of employees as well....

That doesn't compute. Less work divided out amongst the staff for more pay, and now we need to pay even more?

Nah. There is a light that will go out, and it's the industry if that happens.

 

[Rocco Schiavone]

Ivory Samoan

Are you f kidding me??
The normal retail prices for games in my country are 69,99€.

 

[GermanZepp]

No fucking way.

Game companies can ask for the price they want, yes. But i'm buying at the price that i consider fair.
Paying more does not translate to better games. Sorry.

 

[MHubert]

This Thread:

- ' If you don't pay for big and novel games, you will stop getting big and novel games'

- 'That litterally makes no sense because I keep spending money on games riddled with microtransactions'

lol

 

[Alebrije]

Games are expensive specially digital copies

No package, transport costs
No retail / stock costs

Digital should be at least 10.US less than physical.

The problems are :

1) Oversupply we have more games than ever.
2) Gaas , tons of players just play one Game for hours instead of 2 or 3.

We need less developers and return to Quality over quantity.

 

[ReBurn]

I can afford to pay more and I would be ok with that but first the CEOs and highly paid executives need to take big pay cuts.
Paying people million dollar plus salaries doesn’t seem sustainable to me. This isn’t the customer’s fault, it’s the industry’s.

How much cheaper do you think games would be if they cut executive pay? Not a gotcha, I'm genuinely curious.

I don't think executive pay is the issue. Their executives aren't paid obscene salaries compared to other companies, although I'm sure stock equity makes up for the difference in salary.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Im down to pay more as long as all elements of GaaS, microtransactions, dlc, season pass, cosmetics etc. are banned from paid games.

Don't forget online sub requirements to enjoy the full game.

 

[ReBurn]

Games are expensive specially digital copies

No package, transport costs
No retail / stock costs

Digital should be at least 10.US less than physical.

The problems are :

1) Oversupply we have more games than ever.
2) Gaas , tons of players just play one Game for hours instead of 2 or 3.

We need less developers and return to Quality over quantity.

Maybe they need to start basing the price of physical games on what it actually costs to distribute games that way. Maybe physical games need to be $10+ higher if it costs more to distribute games that way. If (for the sake of argument) the calculus is that $48 is the expected return per copy regardless of medium then let the price for digital be $48 plus whatever it costs to distribute digitally and the cost for physical be $48 plus the cost to distribute physical copies. If those numbers are different then so be it.

 

[Trilobit]

I wonder what a straight-forward Sly Raccoon sequel would cost to develop today. I think Suckerpunch needs to take a fun break from the serious samurai games to live it up with cel-shaded Sly and the gang.

 

[IDKFA]

I wonder what a straight-forward Sly Raccoon sequel would cost to develop today. I think Suckerpunch needs to take a fun break from the serious samurai games to live it up with cel-shaded Sly and the gang.

Got to be less than a nine figure sum. Easy. They just need to make a fun, whimsical platformer.

Just like the old days when games were games and not interactive films that require writing rooms, inclusion advisors, motion capture studios, stunt coordinators etc etc.

Just make video games!

 

[Elysium44]

Got to be less than a nine figure sum. Easy. They just need to make a fun, whimsical platformer.

Just like the old days when games were games and not interactive films that require writing rooms, inclusion advisors, motion capture studios, stunt coordinators etc etc.

Just make video games!

How old are you talking about, how far back do you want to take us? 20 year old games used motion capture studios and stunt coordinators.

 

[Mozza]

*old man voice*

In 1995, I paid $100.00 here in New Zealand a game for my SNES, today in 2024, I paid $100.00 here in New Zealand for a game for my Switch...I didn't feel like I was being ripped off in 1995, so why is it a rip now to adjust?

Also, not all games have those wretched things you describe, and the live service games that are doing it right? (nudge nudge HD2), they are charging bugger all - they need all the $$ they can get to buy servers the size of the Kink.com building.

If you raise the price too much then perhaps people buy less, yes development costs have risen, but our hobby is far more popular, so it's the old make less profut per game, but sell a lot more copies. Let's not feel too sorry for these games developers just yet, or feel the need to have a collection for them.

 

[iHaunter]

Their pricing policy, high quality and not chasing after high end graphics are some of the smartest decisions Nintendo has made.
In the end it all comes down to how you manage expectations from your customers:
If you are constantly putting your games on sale a few months after they launch you are encouraging a "just wait for a sale" mentality
If your games mostly depend on increasingly better graphics to feel "new" then that's what people will expect from you studio and they'll be disappointed when you don't deliver (notice how most Nintendo fans don't give a crap if Tears of the Kingdom looks dated or most FROMSOFT fans don't give a crap if Elden Ring doesn't look as good as Demon Souls remake. But imagine if the next ND game doesn't look much better than TLOU2)
If your games launch broken and full of issues and it takes months worth of updated to fix them you are telling your customers they should wait next time.

As a random example imagine you bought Jedi Survivor on ps5 for $70.
To your disappointment you are greeted with a crappy performance mode running in the mid 40 fps and resolution that goes as low as like 680p.
6 months later you find out the game is not only on sale for $40 but also after multiple updates it has way fewer bugs and the performance mode now runs at a more acceptable 1080p and nearly locked 60fps.
Why would you buy the next Respawn game at launch if you know you can wait 3-6 months and get it for cheaper and when it's actually finished?

High quality? Shitty recycled minimum effort fast food games. Reusing the same bullshit for 15 years.

How Nintendo managed to brainwash so many people is beyond me. They're the most egregious, close minded, and ignorant company of the big 3. They single handedly stopped all of the Smash Melee tournaments.

 

[Roni]

I'll say this: if niche genre fans were willing to pay extra for their hardcore experiences, there'd be a lot more of them.

Immersive Sims are such a genre that could charge US$150+ and depending on the game's design it would still be a steal.

The genre would be alive and well and fans wouldn't have to wait for the stars to align and some misguided publisher attempt to test the market yet again with a new iteration.