Video Game Prices Are ‘Very, Very Low’ For What They Offer, Says GTA 6 Publisher Take-Two

Eiknarf said:
Wonder if it'll get like restaurants? All varying

Are all 12oz ribeye steaks 🥩 the same price at every restaurant?
No. Some are $19.99
Some are $38.99
Some are $79.99

Should every new game be the same price?
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Gaming is weird.

It's got to be the only industry where almost every standard game released is at the same price. Doesn't matter if it's GTA or a piece of junk.

Even in other media, prices vary a lot. CDs, DVDs, BR etc.... you got new releases that can be +/- $1 or more. It's not like every music CD back in the day launched at $14.99 or every BR at $24.99.

Yet for gaming now, there's a standard price of $70 US.
 
20 years ago, he might've been right. Not that even then it would've warrented a price increase. But nowadays with 'micro'transactions, unfinished games, bad games, season passes, and so on they are not low for what they offer, they pretend to be and then try to sucker punch you for your wallet.
 
LRKD said:
20 years ago, he might've been right. Not that even then it would've warrented a price increase. But nowadays with 'micro'transactions, unfinished games, bad games, season passes, and so on they are not low for what they offer, they pretend to be and then try to sucker punch you for your wallet.
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Also the marketing partnership deals must be insane now vs 20 years ago. And additional revenue comes from sub plans when a game's sales peter out. Buddy up with one of the ecosystem companies and they'll pay money too.
 
They can try to price hike, but with the way most of today's games are basically cinematic walkthroughs I think they would only encourage more people to watch a playthrough on YouTube.

Don't publicize your greed, it's onky going to piss people off.
 
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Right... And it's not your business model of c-suite employees making $200,000+

Just try it. Try me at $150. I'm a fucking pirate your ass.
 
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So is the cost of a soccer ball IRL, super low but insane value for money in terms of replay time used. Players even get to share their time together with just one purchase, imagine 22 players paying once to play together as many times as they like?

Just because one analogy aligns with what you want to promote doesn't make it true or right.
 
Most games are only worth $30, at best.

Compared to other services my family uses, I get Crunchyroll for $10/month for 4 users. We watch 20-30hrs a month each x 4, so 80-100hrs of entertainment for $10.
 
havoc00 said:
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has said during the publishing powerhouse's latest earnings call that he feels video game prices are generally too low for what consumers get out of them.

The executive offered insight into how Take-Two calculates video game prices, and reckons as a whole the industry offers "terrific price to value opportunity" for players.

In terms of our pricing for any entertainment property, basically the algorithm is the value of the expected entertainment usage, which is to say the per hour value times the number of expected hours plus the terminal value that's perceived by the customer in ownership, if the title is owned rather than rented or subscribed to.

You'll see that that bears out in every kind of entertainment vehicle. By that standard our prices are still very, very low, because we offer many hours of engagement, the value of the engagement is very high. So I think the industry as a whole offers a terrific price to value opportunity for consumers.

www.psu.com

Video Game Prices Are ‘Very, Very Low’ For What They Offer, Says GTA 6 Publisher Take-Two - PlayStation Universe

GTA 6 publisher Take-Two reckons video game prices are still 'very, very low' for the amount of content they offer.
www.psu.com
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And thats why all gamers should never believe the PR crap they are fed in Tweets or softball Q&A sessions. Earnings report time is when the real deal happens. Finances, profits, business strategies to tell Wall Street.

You'll never hear the CEO or directors talking to gamers about algorithms and pricing. Instead, they'll tweet about corporate culture, what a hard time it is to make games and stuff like that. Anything to make you (the gamer) feel like they are doing you a favour making games for you. Slogging away with costly budgets trying to make it sound like they are broke.

Earnings time is when the truth comes out. Dollars and cents.
 
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I wonder what Bobby thinks

v6pE9oF-_400x400.jpg
 
If we were able to somehow establish a "fair" price based off of quality and length of a game, I'm not sure I'd mind paying it. Adjusted for inflation, games are much cheaper than they used to be. Earthbound would have been $150 today, and I'd probably be okay paying that much for a game like Tears of the Kingdom or Baldur's Gate 3.

Unfortunately, it just can't work like that, and Sega can get away with charging $60 for Sonic Superstars.

Side note, I paid $90 for three little bags of groceries today and I'm pissed. Everything is way too expensive right now.
 
Marvel14 said:
Agreed. They cost $40 in 1991. That's $90+ today. Oh and per hour? Movies in the cinema cost $6ish. Baldurs Gate 3? 53 cents.
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Salary was far better back then. Money have lost their value. Everything is becoming expensive but salaries won't become better. Food is expensive which is a very basic need.
You can't compare today's economy with 1990 or prior to that.
 
Offering a broken and incomplete experience sure is worth more money. Don't forget to grind out your season pass for the actual in-game rewards. But beware, this will take you a very long time. No worries, we got you covered for another 50 bucks to unlock it all in one go.

Fuck off Take-Two. You re-release a game 4 times and still ask full price.
 
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Marvel14 said:
Agreed. They cost $40 in 1991. That's $90+ today. Oh and per hour? Movies in the cinema cost $6ish. Baldurs Gate 3? 53 cents.
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Not so fast with the shilling.

Back then they did not have modern monetization strategies. MP monetization, packs, skins and other near 100% profit margin margin digital goods, GAAS, underwhelming DLCs, special and ultimate editions, remasters, remakes etc.

They did not have gambling in video games - a.k.a. lootboxes.

They did not have modern sales volumes, ESPECIALLY Take 2 sales volumes.

They did not have modern sales profit margins - digital delivery (nearly free for the publisher) or even discs (again nearly free) vs cartridges with chips in them.

And, they didn't have the competition in the entertainment space that modern games face - phones, tiktok, netlfix etc.

So, get bent Zelnick. You greedy fuck.
 
AFAIK, publishers get to set their own prices. So... Set the price of your next game to be what you think it should be? See how it goes.

I suspect that game pricing has little to do with what a game is worth and is instead set at the maximum the market will bear.
 
Fair is fair, but also in the name of fairness, for every single bug one encounters in this, inherently interactive piece of entertainment, one should be compensated with a decent amount of those money back.
 
KEY INSIGHTS

Biggest company based on gaming revenue
Tencent

Global video game market revenue
396.2bn USD

Biggest video gaming industry segment by revenue
Mobile games

(source)

Price are low but still they manage to pull out 396.2B$ in revenue in 2022
Strauss Zelnick is not saying "we are shortselling ourselves" he says "we could gain so much more money" and he's a cunt for it.
Everyone can see what 20 years of "we could gain so much more money" did to the vg industry, we went from fallout to starfield... Fuck all the suits.
 
RaduN said:
Fair is fair, but also in the name of fairness, for every single bug one encounters in this, inherently interactive piece of entertainment, one should be compensated with a decent amount of those money back.
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Yes, if the price was set on a strictly per hour entertainment value, you would have to be compensated when the game would kick you out, delete your save, the mp wouldn't work etc.
 
What he means is 'yes we've made vast amounts of profit with gta 5 but we'd like to make even more with gta 6 please!'

If something is too cheap then surely profits would be at a minimum but when they make silly money on the base game and then a bucket load more on the dlc/microtransactions... How can it be classed as too cheap?

Can we start saying microtransactions are to expensive and they'll lower their prices? Some skins take minimal effort to make yet companies will charge £10+++ for them.
 
OP trimmed off the last bit of context almost certainly for the purpose of fueling the gamer rage:
doesn't help OP's clickbait narrative said:
That doesn't necessarily mean that the industry has pricing power, or wants to have pricing power. However, there is a great deal of value offered, and look, it's our strategy here to deliver much more value than what we charge consumers, that's always been our strategy.
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And I mean it's an earnings call. People are seriously getting mad at him talking about things like price and value on an earnings call? C'mon now.

So yeah, feel free to call out MTX monetization schemes. I'm guessing that during the call he didn't say anything about them providing a "great deal of value" because they obviously don't. I don't play GTAO so I don't know how predatory it is or isn't, but unfortunately short of aggressive government regulation, that shit seems here to stay.

Presumably gaming prices will continue creeping up, and the second-tier games will continue to aggressively have sales a few months down the road after getting what they can out of the "Day One!" crowd.

T2 isn't going to single-handedly move gaming prices up, but since their shit indeed is pretty 'high-value', even in the relative context of the 'high-value' gaming industry, they will be at or near the leading edge of industry-wide price increases.

They definitely could try to push GTA6 to $100, but it seems like a needless risk. And they'll have some $99+ FOMO early access edition anyway. If I were them I'd never sell it for less than like $40 on a sale until GTA7 comes out in 15 years. And the greedy version of me would make the online F2P (but maybe not right at launch), but also make it annoying in a way where you have to buy and complete the campaign mode to unlock something useful in the online, ya know, like how COD makes the weapons in Warzone a complete nightmare to level until you say "fuck it" and just buy the base game so you can more quickly grind that shit out in the regular multiplayer on a retarded spam map like "Shipment".
 
99,99 the first game ever to do it. No extras, no nothing! The Deluxe edition will be € 149,99 including a g-string for both characters.
 
Don't defend this just fucking don't , u want to see a franchise ruined with microtransactions play their 2k games ,I can bet my house that GTA 6 will have the most scummy microtransactions in the history of gaming
 
Games are £60 here in the UK. I think the overall point is a valid one. But for many people it's the initial outlay on games. And then there is no tiering based on quality.

The future going forward will be a mixture of tier 1 aaa, subscription and f2p
 
Bullshit. Most new games are copies of something done already. There's no ingenuity, no fun factor, nothing new.

Increasing the prices would be a bad move.
 
Jibran#one said:
Don't defend this just fucking don't , u want to see a franchise ruined with microtransactions play their 2k games ,I can bet my house that GTA 6 will have the most scummy microtransactions in the history of gaming
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Yeah, I don't understand any form of defense for this. Games are not cheap, they are expensive when taking into account that in many cases the paid for product isn't complete. On some occasions they aren't even functional without an additional patch and then we have MTX and season passes and also battle passes in some games.

GTA is one of the worst offenders ever with its scummy MTX and shortcut DLCs. There's no fucking way this game is worth more than £60 when factoring that in.

If this game is sold for more than the RRP for games, he can rest assured that there will be a lot of people sailing the seven seas for it. Even if it's just for the single player.

Note - I don't condone piracy. I also don't condone rich cunts telling me that we should be lucky games are the price they are. Especially in the current economic climate.
 
Elder Legend said:
His correct believe it or not. $70 is very cheap considering how expensive game development days. People are forgetting that back in the old days some games sold at $80 in the 90s.
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I remember paying £70 for a shitty, slow, squished-screen UK copy of Street Fighter 2 on the SNES in 1992, which apparently equates to £178.65 in today's money.
 
zzR3o8Z.jpg


Video game prices are very high for what they offer.

GTFO here. £70 for base game loaded with DLC, season/battle passes and micro transactions!?!?
 
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He is totally right and people laughing are delusional af.
His point isn't about how much it costs to develop or how much the suits can keep in their pockets (if the game is even a success, which fails still quite often) but compared to cinema, finer cuisine, vacation on a beach, skiing, motorsports, getting drunk, skydiving etc, practically anything that isn't just frolicking around in nature, playing with a stick and a hoop or most ball sports without equipment and the like, gaming is cheap af. I guess books (especially if you read old legally free stuff) and listening to music is cheaper, can give more value, for the little money you need there for infinite hours, but you don't get the interactive part then of course.
 
GTA6 release date, AI usage, potential gta movie and other info

GTA 6 comes next year, in their 2025 FY, which means between 2024 April and 2025 March (maybe a bit earlier). The ongoing strike doesn't seem to affect the release.

AI will increase efficiency, quality, will help them do things that wasn't done before, won't replace creatives, also won't drive product prices down.
"Do I think that generative AI is going to make hit games? No. Do I think that the need for creative people will go away? Absolutely not. High level work is enhanced in importance."
Potential movie:
At the moment they are not going to finance a movie themselves. They prefer licensing out titles right now. They have a wait and see approach, like how will the Borderlands movie perform. Also, they net much more from games than a potential big hit movie. They will license out other, potentially smaller titles in the future, so no GTA movie in progress/planned.

On the price debacle:

Eric Sheridan/Goldman Sachs:
You've seen a lot of media inflation and increases in subscription prices, broadly in the media landscape. How do you think about striking the balance between pricing and attracting a wider array of audience when you think about the content pipeline you're going to bring to market over the next couple of years to capture the right mix between those two dynamics?

Yeah, I mean, you don't want to go on generalize to our business too much from what's gone on in linear entertainment because the increase in subscription pricing and linear entertainment is really a reflection of the fact that too many streaming services were underpricing to acquire customers and then they realize those customers were not durable and the LTVs were upside down. So they were basically adjusting their pricing to make sure that the LTVs are potentially positive. And I think there's still more pain to come for some of those services. And I can wax eloquent if you want, although it has nothing to do with our business.

In terms of pricing for any entertainment property, but basically the algorithm is the value of the expected entertainment usage, which is to say the per hour value times the number of expected hours plus the terminal value that's perceived by the customer in ownership if the title is actually owned, not say rented or subscribed to. And you'll see that that bears out in every kind of entertainment vehicle. By that standard, our front line prices are still very, very low because we offer many hours of engagement. The value of the engagement is very high.

So I think you know the industry as a whole offers a terrific place to value opportunity for consumers. That doesn't necessarily mean that the industry has pricing power or wants to have pricing power. However, if there is great deal of value offered, and look, it's our strategy here to deliver much more value than what we charge consumers. It's always been our strategy here. We want to make sure the experience is first class. And the nature of the experience is not just the quality of what we offer. It's also what you pay for it. Everyone knows that anecdotally. So that's how we look at it.

There have been precious few price increases in the business. The price increase, for example, to $70 for certain front line products was the first price increase in many years after many generations. So again, I think we offer a terrific value to consumers.

Other bits:
GTA5 sold ~ 190m units
GTA Online is strong, thanks to new seasonal events, content etc.
RDR2 ~57 million units
Tales of the Shire: 2024 release, working with Weta Workshop
 
The amount of people in this thread that aren't taking economies of scale into account is baffling. A game like GTA needs to be $100 for some reason while a game like fortnite is free and is epics most profitable game ever? Go buy a shark card if you think Rockstar deserves more of your money.
 
This is absolutely fucking hilarious after the release of the 3 hour full game MW3 that was totally NOT dlc and was totally NOT sold at full price....Totally.

All these greedy CEO's can suck on my big fat skin coloured banana.It would be a better experience for them than all the broken garbage they keep releasing at full price.
 
If game development was actually a meritocracy nobody here would know who the fuck Strauss Zelnick or Bobby Kotick was. Ideally both would be behind bars.
 
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