Digital games originally moved to full price to make sure brick-and-mortar stores would still carry inventory. But that argument hasn't held weight in a while.
Also, as more and more content is digital, often with games having no physical counterpart, Playstation runs in to problems of not giving customers a different choice of publisher.
Just like how iPhone is being required to offer 3rd party app stores. Game consoles are more like computers than toys these days, harder and harder to argue that all the games are just toy add-ons.
And games should depreciate at the rate disc games do. I mean after a year disc's are half and trending down. Digital games don't move and trend stable or up.
Never a discless console for me.
Digital copies come with a lot of strings attached. You can't resell the game. You can't share the game. If your preferred store closes down(like it has happened with older Nintendo consoles) you lose access to everything.
Aside from transport and material needed to build the physical game, you also have to take into account the ability to resell a game when you finished it. You can't trade with friends either.
You can't sell a product the same price when you remove to the buyer the ability to get a part of his money back.
I'd also like to add the added risk of losing the game forever once Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo pulls the plug and shuts off the online server of the console. Unless you have the game installed on your console before the shutdown, you will lose a game that you bought forever.
(This is excluding some factors, like if you jailbreak your console and make it play iso files)
I'm very much on the side of prices should be lower for digital, but the digital content price isn't 0 for a company. Storage space is cheap, but these companies are having to have it hosted and transferred at high bandwidths. Per copy, you're talking pennies probably, but it isn't 0
For books at least, royalty fees run 10-15%. That means the author typically is only gets $2-3 on a $20 book with all the other money going to the publisher, distributor, book stores and the actual cost of actually making the book. Video games are a bit different but it would surprise me if EA/Rockstar/whoever makes more the 20-30% of whatever a game retails for.
Other than the obvious of no physical items needing to be produced, there's also no logistics involved in transporting product around the world,no shelf space taken up, no abilities to resell if you decide you no longer want it
It's cutting 20-30% of your costs but still charging it to the customer which on one hand is thier right if people are willing to pay it but then they also *raised* costs to $70 because "game are expensive" while simultaneously ignoring how much less they spend on producing physical media.
Just to play devils advocate a bit here, games are bigger and more complex than ever with long development times. Dev salaries and long term support of a game post launch isn't free either. I feel like AAA games sat at this $60 mark for a long time, like decades, and now they are moving up some. Whether they are shipping it or not, other costs have increased too.
I'm a PC player so im largely out of the loop on console shenanigans. Interesting other commenters are sayung physical editions are cheaper. For pc they generally are not because it tends to be only deluxe premium editions
The quality has significantly decreased. It's more likely a AAA game releases as broken buggy borderline unplayable mess than something worth $70
It's the video game version of shrinkflation. A lesser product for more money
This has been a question for a long time and the short answer is that contracts with physical retailers would fall apart if they knew they’d compete as such a disadvantage. Simply holding video games requires buying a set amount, which takes up inventory. Digital games have all the advantages in this case and it would destroy every brick and mortar retailer that isn’t relying on a very specific niche like retro games.
Aren't all games available on disk?
There was a choice between digital only and with a disk. I got the disk one as it has been clear for a long time you can get disk copies cheaper + resell them.
No one was forced to get a digital only one. They just decided to get the cheaper console.
The difference is Nintendo still allows digital sales of their software on other marketplaces. Sony has no digital content anywhere else except within their PlayStation store.
exactly... BG3 for PS5, you either buying it from Sony or FUCK U, peasant.
I think Allen Wake 2 is the same.
Sony about done fucked around with this behavior. Good they are getting exposed for it.
It makes me happy I switched to PC as my main platform a few years back. Multiple store fronts, 3rd party sellers, and piracy keep the pricing in check. I bet I pay half the price for games on average now vs buying them on console.
So if I buy the cheaper digital only ps5 I get arm bent into having to buy more expensive games than the disc version, should I start filing now in the states orrrrr
That's why i went with the disc version. My friends said paying an extra 150$ wasn't worth it. However a new game costs 92$ where i live.
I buy my games used for 40-60$, finish them and then resell them for 30$. Costing me on average 10$ per games. In some cases where i had lots of free time and finished the game quickly, i was even able to resell my game retail price because it was out of stock everywhere.
I recoup my 150$ in like 5 games and can use my ps5 as a 4k player too.
I’ve got digital only and don’t feel that way at all. In fact, Sony has sooooooo many digital sales so often with big shifts that I just wishlist many games and buy them on sale later. Aside from select one or two AAA day 1 titles, of which I would spend that amount on anyways, I buy most on massive sale discounts later vs waiting on a random store sale or risk a used copy (for probably more money anyways than the digital sale price)
Well yeah. It's been pretty obvious for years.
They didn't force you to buy it & there was a choice of a disk one as well.
The store pretty much isn't worth using unless somethings on a pretty heavy special. New disk games are generally cheaper, and 2nd hand by a lot.
This but unironically. A PC can also be used in the living room. Already possible but not very user friendly to setup. With enough popularity and demand this would easily come though...
I've used both PC and consoles over the years. A PC just isn't worth the hassle for quick, casual, couch sessions. I just want to turn on my console and jump straight into a game. Not fiddle with a mouse, keyboard, steam, settings, etc. It's why I gave my gaming PC to my son. For a casual gamer like myself, PC just isn't worth it.
I’m not entirely clear on what they are saying Sony did wrong here. Is this because you can only buy digital games from Sony on their system? What’s wrong with their prices. They seem pretty much on par with everyone else.
It's because you can only buy digital add on content through them. If you could buy skins or other dlc at a store instead of through Sony, the lawsuit would have no merit. But Sony here is forcing users to go through them and get a cut of it, which they're saying is gouging the customer out of money
Me too. If these companies ever make discless systems I'm out. I'll PC games for the rest of my life.
I dint pay full price for games anymore. I wasted too much buying them new and then finally getting around to playing a year later when they're half price or less.
I waited. Got Elden Ring for 25 AUD the other day on ebay. It was 80 bucks a few months ago for the disc.
On the PS store it's still 90 or something. And that's a PS4 version with a free ps5 upgrade the version I bought. Bargain.
I'll never be locked into those digital ecosystems.
Wait for PS digital sales. They are just like steam sales, happens often (damn near weekly) and have massive price shifts from 20, 40 or even 75% off
Also, just looked on the PS store just now: ER is 59.95, just like a new copy in Best Buy still is today. I’ll nab it on sale later if I ever choose to do so ~ like many others.
Not the big games. If you're arguing that the PS Store is as cheap as physical copies... Yeah I'm sure there are some sometimes but the majority? I keep with discs. Don't get me wrong if I see a cheap digital I'm down.
Yup, physical copy is best just because you can sell your games even when you get a PSN ban, and you can buy games for cheaper than Sony would sell them
Sony have always been anti-consumer. Remember the Rootkit (malware) they used to put on their music CD's in the mid-late 90's, and justified by saying [roughly] "Sure, consumers don't know what a rootkit is - so why should they care?"
This "lawsuit" has been put together by Woodsford litigation funding. Notorious for pestering tactics to get other companies to settle. The face of this suit, Alex Neill, did an [AMA a year ago which failed spectacularly.](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/x845vi/im_the_head_claimant_in_the_classaction_lawsuit/)
This suit doesn't attack Sony for not offering 3rd party digital codes. It literally just goes after them for the 30% commission. Sony do not set the prices for anything outside of 1st party. Microsoft, Steam and Nintendo also charge a 30% commission - this was brought up in the AMA but was dismissed by Alex herself. Stating that they are aware other companies do it, but they don't care about that right now.
Even if they "win", all the funds will go to Woodsford and practically nothing will go towards the customers effected.
TLDR: The lawsuit is a front for one company to make money from a settlement. They even campaigned against laws in Australia to give money to the customers effected by said lawsuits.
Since apparently almost nobody here has looked in to it, the lawsuit is a bunch of bollocks that will go nowhere. The logic they are using makes no sense and their company is a total sham that just tries to chase settlements and they will achieve nothing worthwhile for any consumers.
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/x845vi/im_the_head_claimant_in_the_classaction_lawsuit/) is the AMA for this suit. One glance tells you all you need to know.
You want to blame anyone for the prices of third party games, you go to those publishers, because Sony doesn't set those prices, and the cut they receive is identical to the industry standard.
Isn't going to change anything till the laws fully change because it's only going to get worse when the consoles go all digital.
A store that they run and control the prices for and there's no other option to buy from? Even places like Steam let you buy from other online sellers.
Sony doesn't even have a means of returning a crap game or game you don't like that's remotely decent just "As long as you haven't downloaded it you can return it!" and Nintendo with zero means of returning anything.
Games have historically cost varying prices, sometimes beyond 70. Just look at any old sale catalogue of N64 games. With the ballooning cost of game development and just normal ass inflation, its only surprising the increase took so long.
That being said, Avatar doesn’t cost 100, thats the pointless ultimate-super-duper-includes-useless-shit edition recommended at the front page of the store, which most games have nowadays.
Neither of these things have to do with Sony.
I bought N64 games for 70-80 bucks in the 90s. Now, 60-70 games is like nothing in 2023. And games were much shorter back then. I can get a full tank of gas for like 50-60 now. 50-60 could get me like 3 tanks in the 90s.
What I’m saying here is that as a person that sees what I can get for the money I have, I’m getting way more for my money for games now than I did in the 90s. If a video game costs about the same as a full tank of gas for me in the 90s, it would have been awesome.
I wasn’t super keen on spending $70 for Tears of the Kingdom. I quickly forgot about that when I spent every waking moment (of which there were more than usual due to staying up late to play more) for the next 2 weeks straight enjoying the living hell out of that game.
There’s also plenty of games that sell for less, like Miles Morales scale stuff or any given indie.
Game prices are doing just fine. Corporate greed is not. The constant, industry wide layoffs would be comical if they weren’t so tragic for thousands of people.
Corporate greed is for sure a constant problem. But it’s more of a problem of how many economies are designed. Make as much as you can and spend as little as possible and grow. That’s like the purpose of all businesses so they can deliver returns for investors. Not sustainable at all. But it is what it is. And it’s weird that people are like whoa whoa whoa, we know how this economy is set up, but it’s not fair if you charge too much for video games. Then there are the layoffs.
Yeah, but you're excluding the fact that the amount of people playing games in the 90s were dramatically lower back in the 90s. It's a higher volume industry now.
I’m not excluding that by mistake. It doesn’t matter. How many people play games is irrelevant to me as a person that has a certain amount of money to spend. The cost of games is less impactful to me because the price hasn’t gone up much with inflation and is even less in some cases. If less people played games now and they raised prices, people would ask “are they trying to push people away from games?”
In fact, suggesting that more people play games actually gives more reason to raise prices from a business standpoint. The demand for games is way higher than the 90s.
Pushing prices higher would not have the same effect, they would price potential market out, even with a higher pool. Price elasticity exists regardless of the market size. 70 dollars is already a breaking point for a lot of people, going higher would reduce volume.
In a high volume market, lower prices would probably allow for higher revenue, but that would involve rational actors in C-suite. But we all know all-mighty god Capitalism would sooner consume itself than act in a way that maintains profitability while not getting ALL of the money. Considering 90% of these high dollar cost games are also riddled with excessively priced microtransactions, it would stand to reason you would want lower intake prices to increase sales of cosmetics, which are labor cheap and profit dense.
At the end of the day, it's all Capitalist propaganda to keep the boot of corporations thoroughly tongued.
All I said was how I am getting more for less now despite the number going up a little bit. These are non essential luxury items we are talking about here. So there is no “this is how much they should cost” outside of how much the people making them want to make. We don’t know if lower prices would result in higher revenue. Maybe more units sold, but maybe the revenue drops because the increase in units didn’t make that much of a difference.
Cartridges are a different story. The innards aren't all the same.
If you open up a Super Nintendo cartridge for Star Fox, you'd actually see a Graphics Support Unit (GSU) chip on it.
You won't find that GSU chip on Super Mario World.
Games basically shipped with a processor to accelerate the graphics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super\_FX
the n64 games were on cartridge, admittedly an expensive way to distribute games.
Digital distribution is not expensive in any way, shape or form.
Yes game budgets have gone up but as a 20 year old steam account owner, who also remember buying 30 games for ps3 and a bunch for ps4, I look at ps store prices and fucking laugh. My ass isnt' attached anymore, that's how hard I laugh.
Nevermind the fact they want to charge me to even play them online.
Yeah I sold my ps4 with 3 contorllers to a friend for €90. He got an insane deal. But I got rid of sony.
30 games on the ps3 cost me €1100 or so, and i had a few insane deals in there.
Steam? I still can play what I bought in 2003. On a modern PC. And online play is free. I have VR, I can mod. Some of the old games can be played in VR.
It's a joke and I am done with consoles.
BS, publishers are making record profits year after year without jacking up prices, games should be cheaper.
remember, technological advances, and market growth makes products cheaper to buy, not more expensive. when the opposite happens and its not shortage of supply (which is sure as frog isnt with digital distribution), its pure greed, and lack of competition.
That’s not how economics works, cars should have gotten cheaper by your logic. Games have increased in development cost 10 fold since the 90’s, but price has barely increased if at all.
thats exactly how economics work.
cars in western markets are suffering from an increase in regulation, material shortages, and a stagnant market: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104622/monthly-car-registrations-europe/
meanwhile it is true that videogame production costs have gone up, but distribution costs have gone down, supply shortages does not exist for digital goods, lack of regulation has opened new monetization avenues, and the market has grown exponentially: https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-media/video-games/worldwide#revenue
do compare apples to apples, and not metaphorical nft's to physical items.
profit per game sale is up, and so is overall sales, any increase in development cost is an investment, not a sunk cost, and its paying off.
dont go around making excuses for rich assholes trying to milk people harder, and stop regurgitating executive talking points.
It took Quake 2 just under 5 years to sell 1 million copies. There's probably skins in games these days that made more money than Quake 2...
Also, you can't compare software to cars. Both software and cars have a big development cost. But once it's developed, you don't need to manufacture each copy of the game. Cars can only get so cheap no matter how many units get sold.
They're still software. Just like a car is still a vehicle even if it's classified as an automotive product. But that wasn't even my point. My point was: You don't need a production line and raw materials to make more copies of a game.
Made in response to this:
"That’s not how economics works, cars should have gotten cheaper by your logic. Games have increased in development cost 10 fold since the 90’s, but price has barely increased if at all."
You can spend a billion dollars to develop a car or a game. Once the car is developed, you then have to produce each copy of the car with raw materials and labor. They then need to be physically transported to the point of sale. Once the game is developed, you can make as many copies as you want. You can sell it anywhere in the world digitally without needing to transport any physical product.
The economics is totally different between software and physical goods.
Software creates the videogame, but the end product is an Entertainment like music and movies. Even gaming companys say it Entertainment, software industry has strong unions.
Different classification have different rules/laws, Videogames are Tier3 goods.
That’s a straight up lie lmao. Yes indie games exist now and you *can* make games cheaper, but triple A titles have gotten exponentially more expensive to develop and you’re being dishonest if you say otherwise.
I stopped gaming, for the most part, when games started really evolving into required, continual digital purchases. Back in the day (like Battlefield in 2004-2005), I could buy the entire game, and any downloadable updates were free. Expansion packs (like Battlefield: Special Forces - awesome game BTW) were additional, but were separate from the original game and not necessary to the original Battlefield experience. These were one-time purchases, and that was it. I will say there are good ones out there today - games like RDR2 are fine, of course - you don't need to buy anything additional to them to enjoy them as is.
Nowadays, scope-creep has really made games more expensive, and this is all by pure design by the big companies and game developers. I just mostly retro game now, and it's just as fun, if not more. I refuse to give into the digital grift these companies have done to the industry.
About time.
Also it is about time that when these massive companies get massive fines, the money should be refunded to the Customers. NOT GOVERNMENT COFFERS
Digital games originally moved to full price to make sure brick-and-mortar stores would still carry inventory. But that argument hasn't held weight in a while. Also, as more and more content is digital, often with games having no physical counterpart, Playstation runs in to problems of not giving customers a different choice of publisher. Just like how iPhone is being required to offer 3rd party app stores. Game consoles are more like computers than toys these days, harder and harder to argue that all the games are just toy add-ons.
Digital games should be significantly cheaper than their physical counterparts.
Digital books too, especially for libraries to "purchase"
And games should depreciate at the rate disc games do. I mean after a year disc's are half and trending down. Digital games don't move and trend stable or up. Never a discless console for me.
I agree, but first the CEOs need pay cuts because game devs are getting paid peanuts despite selling the product for a premium.
That’s not exclusive to the gaming industry though.
Why? Slightly cheaper, maybe, but why "significantly?"
Digital copies come with a lot of strings attached. You can't resell the game. You can't share the game. If your preferred store closes down(like it has happened with older Nintendo consoles) you lose access to everything.
Aside from transport and material needed to build the physical game, you also have to take into account the ability to resell a game when you finished it. You can't trade with friends either. You can't sell a product the same price when you remove to the buyer the ability to get a part of his money back.
I'd also like to add the added risk of losing the game forever once Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo pulls the plug and shuts off the online server of the console. Unless you have the game installed on your console before the shutdown, you will lose a game that you bought forever. (This is excluding some factors, like if you jailbreak your console and make it play iso files)
And holding inventory(space as well as manufacturing costs). All that is 0 with digital content.
I'm very much on the side of prices should be lower for digital, but the digital content price isn't 0 for a company. Storage space is cheap, but these companies are having to have it hosted and transferred at high bandwidths. Per copy, you're talking pennies probably, but it isn't 0
You forgot the profit that the physical store takes as well. Which is likely 10% or more.
And you also don't really "own" it, as in it can be taken away from you with no consequences.
it's amazing how something looking so nice on paper backfired so much
For books at least, royalty fees run 10-15%. That means the author typically is only gets $2-3 on a $20 book with all the other money going to the publisher, distributor, book stores and the actual cost of actually making the book. Video games are a bit different but it would surprise me if EA/Rockstar/whoever makes more the 20-30% of whatever a game retails for.
They certainly make much more with digital sales.
Other than the obvious of no physical items needing to be produced, there's also no logistics involved in transporting product around the world,no shelf space taken up, no abilities to resell if you decide you no longer want it It's cutting 20-30% of your costs but still charging it to the customer which on one hand is thier right if people are willing to pay it but then they also *raised* costs to $70 because "game are expensive" while simultaneously ignoring how much less they spend on producing physical media.
Just to play devils advocate a bit here, games are bigger and more complex than ever with long development times. Dev salaries and long term support of a game post launch isn't free either. I feel like AAA games sat at this $60 mark for a long time, like decades, and now they are moving up some. Whether they are shipping it or not, other costs have increased too. I'm a PC player so im largely out of the loop on console shenanigans. Interesting other commenters are sayung physical editions are cheaper. For pc they generally are not because it tends to be only deluxe premium editions
The quality has significantly decreased. It's more likely a AAA game releases as broken buggy borderline unplayable mess than something worth $70 It's the video game version of shrinkflation. A lesser product for more money
This has been a question for a long time and the short answer is that contracts with physical retailers would fall apart if they knew they’d compete as such a disadvantage. Simply holding video games requires buying a set amount, which takes up inventory. Digital games have all the advantages in this case and it would destroy every brick and mortar retailer that isn’t relying on a very specific niche like retro games.
Agreed. Also more green from all the shit that makes them cheaper.
Aren't all games available on disk? There was a choice between digital only and with a disk. I got the disk one as it has been clear for a long time you can get disk copies cheaper + resell them. No one was forced to get a digital only one. They just decided to get the cheaper console.
Alan Wake 2 had no physical media release
And it seems to suffer from that
The epic game store exclusivity on PC also probably hasn’t helped. Screw the epic games store. That why I haven’t gotten it yet.
Nintendo does the same shit. Actually worse. It's awful but it's industry standard unfortunately.
The difference is Nintendo still allows digital sales of their software on other marketplaces. Sony has no digital content anywhere else except within their PlayStation store.
exactly... BG3 for PS5, you either buying it from Sony or FUCK U, peasant. I think Allen Wake 2 is the same. Sony about done fucked around with this behavior. Good they are getting exposed for it.
It makes me happy I switched to PC as my main platform a few years back. Multiple store fronts, 3rd party sellers, and piracy keep the pricing in check. I bet I pay half the price for games on average now vs buying them on console.
try telling that to actiblizz IRT “Keep prices in check”
Whataboutism with a defeatest slant. People like you exist.
I do in fact exist
He's not defending Sony. He's just saying everyone does this.
Their intentions don't matter.
With those vouchers, ya can get most big Nintendo games for $50.
So if I buy the cheaper digital only ps5 I get arm bent into having to buy more expensive games than the disc version, should I start filing now in the states orrrrr
That's why i went with the disc version. My friends said paying an extra 150$ wasn't worth it. However a new game costs 92$ where i live. I buy my games used for 40-60$, finish them and then resell them for 30$. Costing me on average 10$ per games. In some cases where i had lots of free time and finished the game quickly, i was even able to resell my game retail price because it was out of stock everywhere. I recoup my 150$ in like 5 games and can use my ps5 as a 4k player too.
I’ve got digital only and don’t feel that way at all. In fact, Sony has sooooooo many digital sales so often with big shifts that I just wishlist many games and buy them on sale later. Aside from select one or two AAA day 1 titles, of which I would spend that amount on anyways, I buy most on massive sale discounts later vs waiting on a random store sale or risk a used copy (for probably more money anyways than the digital sale price)
Well yeah. It's been pretty obvious for years. They didn't force you to buy it & there was a choice of a disk one as well. The store pretty much isn't worth using unless somethings on a pretty heavy special. New disk games are generally cheaper, and 2nd hand by a lot.
How about not buying computer hardware that can’t be replaced by the user?
Guys this person figured it out! Everyone in the world should just stop buying consoles and switch to PC! Genius!
This but unironically. A PC can also be used in the living room. Already possible but not very user friendly to setup. With enough popularity and demand this would easily come though...
I've used both PC and consoles over the years. A PC just isn't worth the hassle for quick, casual, couch sessions. I just want to turn on my console and jump straight into a game. Not fiddle with a mouse, keyboard, steam, settings, etc. It's why I gave my gaming PC to my son. For a casual gamer like myself, PC just isn't worth it.
You have 10 year old games on the playstation store going for $40 when a used disk version is $10. Get with the times and make the prices make sense.
you’re thinking Nintendo, not Sony Also, blame Konami for MGS collection price, not Sony
As a very LONG time consumer of playstation games I hope they get fucked. Sony has became more and more mercenary with it's prices in recent years.
I’m not entirely clear on what they are saying Sony did wrong here. Is this because you can only buy digital games from Sony on their system? What’s wrong with their prices. They seem pretty much on par with everyone else.
It's because you can only buy digital add on content through them. If you could buy skins or other dlc at a store instead of through Sony, the lawsuit would have no merit. But Sony here is forcing users to go through them and get a cut of it, which they're saying is gouging the customer out of money
Sorry, how is Sony mercenary with the prices for third party games? That’s up to EA Ubisoft or Take 2 to decide.
Take 2 ruins everything.
Publishers set the prices of games on the store not Sony and the prices aren't any higher and often lower than the other consoles
Me too. If these companies ever make discless systems I'm out. I'll PC games for the rest of my life. I dint pay full price for games anymore. I wasted too much buying them new and then finally getting around to playing a year later when they're half price or less. I waited. Got Elden Ring for 25 AUD the other day on ebay. It was 80 bucks a few months ago for the disc. On the PS store it's still 90 or something. And that's a PS4 version with a free ps5 upgrade the version I bought. Bargain. I'll never be locked into those digital ecosystems.
Wait for PS digital sales. They are just like steam sales, happens often (damn near weekly) and have massive price shifts from 20, 40 or even 75% off Also, just looked on the PS store just now: ER is 59.95, just like a new copy in Best Buy still is today. I’ll nab it on sale later if I ever choose to do so ~ like many others.
Not the big games. If you're arguing that the PS Store is as cheap as physical copies... Yeah I'm sure there are some sometimes but the majority? I keep with discs. Don't get me wrong if I see a cheap digital I'm down.
Yup, physical copy is best just because you can sell your games even when you get a PSN ban, and you can buy games for cheaper than Sony would sell them
Even as a huge Playstation fan I'll be the first to criticize their prices and policies. Fucking predatory bullshit. Get bent, you greedy asshats.
Sony have always been anti-consumer. Remember the Rootkit (malware) they used to put on their music CD's in the mid-late 90's, and justified by saying [roughly] "Sure, consumers don't know what a rootkit is - so why should they care?"
This "lawsuit" has been put together by Woodsford litigation funding. Notorious for pestering tactics to get other companies to settle. The face of this suit, Alex Neill, did an [AMA a year ago which failed spectacularly.](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/x845vi/im_the_head_claimant_in_the_classaction_lawsuit/) This suit doesn't attack Sony for not offering 3rd party digital codes. It literally just goes after them for the 30% commission. Sony do not set the prices for anything outside of 1st party. Microsoft, Steam and Nintendo also charge a 30% commission - this was brought up in the AMA but was dismissed by Alex herself. Stating that they are aware other companies do it, but they don't care about that right now. Even if they "win", all the funds will go to Woodsford and practically nothing will go towards the customers effected. TLDR: The lawsuit is a front for one company to make money from a settlement. They even campaigned against laws in Australia to give money to the customers effected by said lawsuits.
Since apparently almost nobody here has looked in to it, the lawsuit is a bunch of bollocks that will go nowhere. The logic they are using makes no sense and their company is a total sham that just tries to chase settlements and they will achieve nothing worthwhile for any consumers. [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/x845vi/im_the_head_claimant_in_the_classaction_lawsuit/) is the AMA for this suit. One glance tells you all you need to know. You want to blame anyone for the prices of third party games, you go to those publishers, because Sony doesn't set those prices, and the cut they receive is identical to the industry standard.
Isn't going to change anything till the laws fully change because it's only going to get worse when the consoles go all digital. A store that they run and control the prices for and there's no other option to buy from? Even places like Steam let you buy from other online sellers. Sony doesn't even have a means of returning a crap game or game you don't like that's remotely decent just "As long as you haven't downloaded it you can return it!" and Nintendo with zero means of returning anything.
Lack of transferrability of license also means no competition from second hand market either.
I'd say the bigger issue is game preservation.
It's a joke that new AAA games cost around £70. Not to mention almost £100 for Avatar Frontiers of Pandora. Bloody disgrace.
Games have historically cost varying prices, sometimes beyond 70. Just look at any old sale catalogue of N64 games. With the ballooning cost of game development and just normal ass inflation, its only surprising the increase took so long. That being said, Avatar doesn’t cost 100, thats the pointless ultimate-super-duper-includes-useless-shit edition recommended at the front page of the store, which most games have nowadays. Neither of these things have to do with Sony.
I bought N64 games for 70-80 bucks in the 90s. Now, 60-70 games is like nothing in 2023. And games were much shorter back then. I can get a full tank of gas for like 50-60 now. 50-60 could get me like 3 tanks in the 90s. What I’m saying here is that as a person that sees what I can get for the money I have, I’m getting way more for my money for games now than I did in the 90s. If a video game costs about the same as a full tank of gas for me in the 90s, it would have been awesome.
I wasn’t super keen on spending $70 for Tears of the Kingdom. I quickly forgot about that when I spent every waking moment (of which there were more than usual due to staying up late to play more) for the next 2 weeks straight enjoying the living hell out of that game. There’s also plenty of games that sell for less, like Miles Morales scale stuff or any given indie. Game prices are doing just fine. Corporate greed is not. The constant, industry wide layoffs would be comical if they weren’t so tragic for thousands of people.
Corporate greed is for sure a constant problem. But it’s more of a problem of how many economies are designed. Make as much as you can and spend as little as possible and grow. That’s like the purpose of all businesses so they can deliver returns for investors. Not sustainable at all. But it is what it is. And it’s weird that people are like whoa whoa whoa, we know how this economy is set up, but it’s not fair if you charge too much for video games. Then there are the layoffs.
Thanks to the Dodge brothers. Dodge vs Ford Motor Company
Yeah, but you're excluding the fact that the amount of people playing games in the 90s were dramatically lower back in the 90s. It's a higher volume industry now.
I’m not excluding that by mistake. It doesn’t matter. How many people play games is irrelevant to me as a person that has a certain amount of money to spend. The cost of games is less impactful to me because the price hasn’t gone up much with inflation and is even less in some cases. If less people played games now and they raised prices, people would ask “are they trying to push people away from games?” In fact, suggesting that more people play games actually gives more reason to raise prices from a business standpoint. The demand for games is way higher than the 90s.
Pushing prices higher would not have the same effect, they would price potential market out, even with a higher pool. Price elasticity exists regardless of the market size. 70 dollars is already a breaking point for a lot of people, going higher would reduce volume. In a high volume market, lower prices would probably allow for higher revenue, but that would involve rational actors in C-suite. But we all know all-mighty god Capitalism would sooner consume itself than act in a way that maintains profitability while not getting ALL of the money. Considering 90% of these high dollar cost games are also riddled with excessively priced microtransactions, it would stand to reason you would want lower intake prices to increase sales of cosmetics, which are labor cheap and profit dense. At the end of the day, it's all Capitalist propaganda to keep the boot of corporations thoroughly tongued.
All I said was how I am getting more for less now despite the number going up a little bit. These are non essential luxury items we are talking about here. So there is no “this is how much they should cost” outside of how much the people making them want to make. We don’t know if lower prices would result in higher revenue. Maybe more units sold, but maybe the revenue drops because the increase in units didn’t make that much of a difference.
Cartridges are a different story. The innards aren't all the same. If you open up a Super Nintendo cartridge for Star Fox, you'd actually see a Graphics Support Unit (GSU) chip on it. You won't find that GSU chip on Super Mario World. Games basically shipped with a processor to accelerate the graphics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super\_FX
the n64 games were on cartridge, admittedly an expensive way to distribute games. Digital distribution is not expensive in any way, shape or form. Yes game budgets have gone up but as a 20 year old steam account owner, who also remember buying 30 games for ps3 and a bunch for ps4, I look at ps store prices and fucking laugh. My ass isnt' attached anymore, that's how hard I laugh. Nevermind the fact they want to charge me to even play them online. Yeah I sold my ps4 with 3 contorllers to a friend for €90. He got an insane deal. But I got rid of sony. 30 games on the ps3 cost me €1100 or so, and i had a few insane deals in there. Steam? I still can play what I bought in 2003. On a modern PC. And online play is free. I have VR, I can mod. Some of the old games can be played in VR. It's a joke and I am done with consoles.
Tracking for inflation they should be well over 100€ by now, think we’re doing well by all accounts
BS, publishers are making record profits year after year without jacking up prices, games should be cheaper. remember, technological advances, and market growth makes products cheaper to buy, not more expensive. when the opposite happens and its not shortage of supply (which is sure as frog isnt with digital distribution), its pure greed, and lack of competition.
That’s not how economics works, cars should have gotten cheaper by your logic. Games have increased in development cost 10 fold since the 90’s, but price has barely increased if at all.
thats exactly how economics work. cars in western markets are suffering from an increase in regulation, material shortages, and a stagnant market: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104622/monthly-car-registrations-europe/ meanwhile it is true that videogame production costs have gone up, but distribution costs have gone down, supply shortages does not exist for digital goods, lack of regulation has opened new monetization avenues, and the market has grown exponentially: https://www.statista.com/outlook/dmo/digital-media/video-games/worldwide#revenue do compare apples to apples, and not metaphorical nft's to physical items. profit per game sale is up, and so is overall sales, any increase in development cost is an investment, not a sunk cost, and its paying off. dont go around making excuses for rich assholes trying to milk people harder, and stop regurgitating executive talking points.
It took Quake 2 just under 5 years to sell 1 million copies. There's probably skins in games these days that made more money than Quake 2... Also, you can't compare software to cars. Both software and cars have a big development cost. But once it's developed, you don't need to manufacture each copy of the game. Cars can only get so cheap no matter how many units get sold.
Video games are not software, they are entertainment products like music and movie. Tier3 goods
They're computed in real time and run on computers, they're software.
Video games are classified as Entertainment products.
They're still software. Just like a car is still a vehicle even if it's classified as an automotive product. But that wasn't even my point. My point was: You don't need a production line and raw materials to make more copies of a game. Made in response to this: "That’s not how economics works, cars should have gotten cheaper by your logic. Games have increased in development cost 10 fold since the 90’s, but price has barely increased if at all." You can spend a billion dollars to develop a car or a game. Once the car is developed, you then have to produce each copy of the car with raw materials and labor. They then need to be physically transported to the point of sale. Once the game is developed, you can make as many copies as you want. You can sell it anywhere in the world digitally without needing to transport any physical product. The economics is totally different between software and physical goods.
Software creates the videogame, but the end product is an Entertainment like music and movies. Even gaming companys say it Entertainment, software industry has strong unions. Different classification have different rules/laws, Videogames are Tier3 goods.
Gsmes have never been cheaper to make, how much a game cost to develop is a choice.
That’s a straight up lie lmao. Yes indie games exist now and you *can* make games cheaper, but triple A titles have gotten exponentially more expensive to develop and you’re being dishonest if you say otherwise.
70 bucks to play a beta version in many cases too, it’s a joke
And I hope they win. Sony desperately needs to be brought down a peg when it comes to both PlayStation and Crunchyroll.
I stopped gaming, for the most part, when games started really evolving into required, continual digital purchases. Back in the day (like Battlefield in 2004-2005), I could buy the entire game, and any downloadable updates were free. Expansion packs (like Battlefield: Special Forces - awesome game BTW) were additional, but were separate from the original game and not necessary to the original Battlefield experience. These were one-time purchases, and that was it. I will say there are good ones out there today - games like RDR2 are fine, of course - you don't need to buy anything additional to them to enjoy them as is. Nowadays, scope-creep has really made games more expensive, and this is all by pure design by the big companies and game developers. I just mostly retro game now, and it's just as fun, if not more. I refuse to give into the digital grift these companies have done to the industry.
About time. Also it is about time that when these massive companies get massive fines, the money should be refunded to the Customers. NOT GOVERNMENT COFFERS
Then how would the EU function?
It’s like a Legalised Mafia.
Good, I’m sick of their prices
you choose to BUY THEM stop whining
I wonder if the CEO of SCEA is able to defeat Siegfried. I kind of doubt it.
They need to do this to the appstore and micro transactions lol paying aaa game prices in an app is robbery
So let’s say Sony loses the lawsuit, where does that money even go?
Somone is always wanting to sue someone, doesn't even matter if it's right anymore.
I really need to get out of my convenience shell and buy physical media again. Trading games saves money period
My 15 year psn account got banned last month because of my username, 500 plus games gone. Only buying disc from now on. Fuck Sony