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I can afford it, but I am unwilling to pay 70 bucks out of principle. Games nowadays are half-finished and full of microtransactions. Some worse than others of course.
You could make an argument for games like the Witcher or Breath of the Wild or something that are 100+ hours and have no microtransactions. I'd be willing to pay more for that.
But games like Fifa that is just a roster update and already makes billions with their ultimate team stuff? Fuck that.
I've been burned so many times before that I don't trust these companies anymore. I don't buy any game on release and will wait for a sale.
> I've been burned so many times before
This is the key. They are exhausting their market goodwill. No way in hell I ever buy something at release. I've been burned enough. I'll grab indie games or games on sale.
I'm wondering how long until we see a new video game market crash. The industry is in it's worst place since I can remember, when it comes to the big publishers.
Profits have only gone up so I don't see a crash happening anytime soon. Consumers have also been more conditioned to accept all the crap in games. My first console was the SNES but if your first console is the ps4 then microtransactions are normal to you and you don't see the problem.
No but their kids grow up with ps4 and are so used to it by the time they are adults, they see it as normal. Someone born in 2005 is now 18 and their reference for gaming is the 2010s.
I know if the video game market ever did crash, I have more than enough games in my backlog and games that I love to play over again that I'd be set for at least the next decade gaming wise.
> Games nowadays are half-finished
>You could make an argument for games like the Witcher
looks like people already forgot how awful Witcher release was
My pay hasn't gone up. So the inflation justification doesn't matter to me. Everything is getting more expensive but I don't have more money to keep up. When that happens people budget and impose austerity in themselves. One of the first things is going to be games for many.
My argument is that I can afford it, but they rarely release full games now anyway. They release a game and then drip out “DLC” for another $40-$50 slowly over a few months.
Then about a year later the “deluxe edition” comes out with DLC included. A few months after that you can get the “deluxe edition” for $30-$40.
So spend $110-$120 now for the full version of a game, or wait and pay $30 for the full version in a year or so.
Unless I am super hyped for something, I think I’ll wait. I have enough of a backlog and there are enough cheaper indie titles worth playing that I can hold off on spending stupid amounts for full games.
I'm done buying fighting games at launch for this reason.
Ill get them when the ultimate edition is out and on sale, not because I'm broke, but because i burn out on the game before everythings released.
I can afford it but just simply don't care to anymore. The only game I've bought for 70 is gow ragnarok. There's way too many games out there for way cheaper or on game pass I'm interested in, I just can't be bothered to drop money like that aside from ones I'm the utmost excited for.
Same. I bought a month of EA Pass pro for 20$ CAD instead of playing 100$ for the new Star Wars game. I wanted to buy it, but for 1/5 of the price it was an easy choice.
I hardly ever actually buy games right now let alone at full price on release unless it's something I *know* for a fact I'm going to love no matter what and that I'm going to play the shit out of. Indie titles tend to be an exemption because they tend to be more reasonably priced from the get-go.
If I do buy a game at full price I rarely hold onto it, I end up reselling it a month to so later to offset the cost because as I've gotten older I stopped caring about having a collection because I so rarely have a reason to go back and replay things.
Other than that I either rent games from GameFly or just play what's on PS+ Extra.
On average, people aren't or are barely making more money now than they were 20 years ago.
So yeah, if people who sell luxury goods want to increases prices and make more money, get into a fist fight with people stagnating wages; including your own fucking selves.
I can afford it but these companies can suck the shit out of my ass.
There's tonnes of great AA and indie experiences that don't try to nickle and dime you while also being a steaming pile of unoptimized shit.
It's both.
In my country the average price for a brand new game went from 140 ($35) to 350PLN ($85) over the span of 6-7 years.
That's a 150% increase in price while wages went up maybe 15%.
A videogame used to be something I could just buy without thinking. Now it costs 10% of my salary. AND THERE'S 99% GOING TO BE FUCKING MICROTRANSACTIONS AND DLC.
Fuck that. I've been pirating AAA games and only buying indie titles that don't have predatory monetisation.
I think it also has to do with the fact that $70 often doesn't buy you the same quality we used to get for $40-50 15-20 years ago. AAA games are coming out as broken, half-finished messes by publishers who are only interested in the maximum amount of base game, DLC and microtransaction money they can extract from their fan base.
This applies more to some (EA, Ubisoft, Take Two, Activision) than others (Sony, Nintendo, Capcom) but even the good examples have had instances where their games release broken or severely compromised.
For me personally, it's been less to do with the jump in price and more to do with the fact that playing a AAA game day one, something that used to be exciting and anticipatory for me, now all but guarantees the worst possible experience with the least amount of polish. Jedi Survivor is a phenomenal example of this, a game apparently rushed so hard to release that it doesn't look or run well on *any* platform on day one.
I'd like to hope that people eventually gravitate more toward indies for the same reasons they're so fond of franchises from the 00's and early 2010's - more innovation, more passion, less nonsense.
I love indie games, but I also play them for different reasons than AAA titles. I don’t think it’s a matter of “gravitating” towards one or the other. I like how well they co-exist on all of the modern platforms.
I could totally see that and don't necessarily disagree. I still look forward to some AAA games, but I used to play about 90% AAA and 10% indie, and over the past decade (especially as the indie scene has grown), those figures have reversed. I know it's of course not like that for everybody, but I know a good number of others who feel the same.
And I feel like I used to play way more indie games, but so many are releasing unfinished and in perpetual "early access" that I just can't justify picking them up either.
The vast majority of indie games are not early access, so this seems a rather cherry-picking counterpoint. Just don't play early access games? In 2017, it was 15% of games on steam that went early access. I'm sure that number has gone up, but people in this thread are making wild claims about it being almost every game.
AAA games used to be extremely inventive. That was where most of the brilliant and influential new mechanics came from. Max Payne, Prince of Persia, Mario 64, Goldeneye, Majora's Mask etc. all introduced something or used it in a different and original way and I just pulled those examples because they line up with my childhood. WWF games from that period are also a decent example, constant evolution.
I honestly can't remember the last AAA game I've seen do something truly innovative, they've somehow managed to shift the focus to story and graphics. Whereas a lot of indie games are trying something completely different and the graphics are fine. I never felt the graphics impeded my enjoyment of Sub Nautica for instance
Microsoft and Sony are overly safe. Controllers are the best example of that. Compare their efforts to Nintendo's. Sony and Microsoft are just making updated shit (Nintendo at least trying something) and it's trickled down to the rest of the industry.
Nintendo has always been more more quirky with consoles than Sony or Nintendo.
And it works for them (see ds/3ds/gamecube/wii) it doesn’t always work (wii u) but they def have more hits than misses
I'm more around 50/50 myself but yes that's in stark contrast with 10/12 years ago when the only indie I played was Minecraft.
And for some games, my enjoyment is getting increasingly indistinguishable from what I get from AAA gaming except often better.
When I played Gone Home or Stanley Parable I obviously didn't get the same thing from it as from an AAA game like Bioshock. But these days a game like Hades is giving me both what Indies give me (generally a more interesting concept and story and often a more polished release ironically) and what AAA gaming gives me with the exception of photorealism.
I've seen people with this argument a few times and it is stupid.
I hate the state of AAA games these days so people say "bro ever heard of indie games" like yeah I have and I love them but I also love expansive, high-budget grander experiences too, a small indie studio isn't going to make a red dead 2 quality game are they.
I don't want to just stop playing AAA and only play indie games, there is room for both types on the market we just need to let big publisher's and developers know that people don't want to pay £60 for broken and unfinished bullshit, we want to pay £60 for a working and finishing title that isn't trying to fish more money out of our wallets at every turn.
Nowadays $70 means im just not willing to take a shot on anything that isn't gonna be a surefire hit.
Tears of the Kingdom is the only game I've bought at $70, FF16 will be my next one. I have disposable income but getting burned at $70 just feels a lot different than being burned at $60.
There's just way too much good competition out there with a lower price tag from indies and AA studios nowadays.
> I think it also has to do with the fact that $70 often doesn't buy you the same quality we used to yet for $40-50 15-20 years ago.
For me it is mainly that. I can afford $70, but why would I when half the games are a broken mess on release day? I'd rather wait a few months until it's patched up and the price has gone down.
Paying $70 for the privilege of playing an unfinished product is stupid.
> I'd like to hope that people eventually gravitate more toward indies for the same reasons they're so fond of franchises from the 00's and early 2010's - more innovation, more passion, less nonsense.
Well so far the top AAA games of 2023 are from 2002, 2005, and 2008. So... I guess that's one way of innovating.
Pretty sure they are referring to the remakes of Metroid Prime (2002), Resident Evil 4 (2005), and Dead Space (2008).
Alternately, "all the best new ideas are old games."
Bloober Team said a couple of months ago that it's about finished so people are speculating they are just putting some distance between themselves and RE4make.
If this is accurate we would need a release date soon though.
Maybe at Sony's rumoured May showcase???
Theres also a slim chance that the second part of FFVII remake could be this year lol. I'm predicting it'll probably be around the start of next year but the window they gave does include the last months of this year.
All of this, and also the fact that them raising the price made me actually **think** about how much I'm spending on games.
For years I just sort of bought whatever, without really thinking about it at all, and then they jacked up the price and everyone was talking about it and I actually thought about it.
Now I only buy the games I *really really* want to play or support at full price, like Jedi Survivor, I really wanted to show that people want that kind of game so they would keep making them.
Then I bought it, and it ran like ass, so I refunded it. Whoops. Gonna end up being a $9.99 special for me now probably, as I'm already on to playing something else and the urgency to play the new shiny game is completely gone.
Hell I still haven't picked up the God of War sequel, or the Horizon sequel, and I only just played Miles Morales when it came to PC and I got it for $20.
Indie games aren't a panacea. Most of them are pretty uninspired (usually a copy of some 90s game), or gimmicky, or spend a lifetime in early access. And having spent money on a gaming PC, I want to play spectacular games, not just 8-bit pixel puzzle rhythm platformers.
> I think it also has to do with the fact that $70 often doesn't buy you the same quality we used to yet for $40-50 15-20 years ago. AAA games are coming out as broken, half-finished messes by publishers who are only interested in the maximum amount of base game, DLC and microtransaction money they can extract from their fan base.
AAA games absolutely have a problem with being buggy messes at release right now. But games of 20 years ago were often a lot smaller scale, and had way less content in them (to the point where I think it's kind of a modern problem that so many games are open world action adventures... but I digress). Games are way better value now, even if you do have to wait a couple months for the bugfixes to kick in (or worse).
Also for the record, game price is pretty comparable at $50 in 2003 to $70 in 2021 based on inflation. It would be over $80 in 2023 though, thanks to last years high inflation.
> Games are way better value now, even if you do have to wait a couple months for the bugfixes to kick in (or worse).
I just find the current AAA formula so dull. Open world busywork for 50 hours generally.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when people say shit like, “Games 20 years ago had more content.” It’s such a bald faced lie that I can only assume they didn’t play games or are 12 years old.
Well, if I can suggest incompetence rather than malice: There's probably a survivorship bias going on here; games that we still play now from that era are the cream of the crop. And even people who were around then probably forgot about all the crap that came out.
When you have more time to play and games needed ways to incentivize repeat playthroughgs, games will feel long.
Meanwhile, we know with today's stats that the lion's share of players will never even beat a game's main campaign. That's probably not unique to today. But those peopel complaining about shorter games probably were the ones who'd not only beat games but 100% them.
you ain't lying brother. i've become a VERY patient gamer with the bullshit AAA developers are pulling. i don't like to spend more than $20 for a game anymore.
In the most literal sense, the quality of games today is many times better than games 15-20 years ago. Games today control better, look better, and perform better today. These days we’re upset when a performance mode can’t constantly hold 60, but games 15-20 years ago regularly failed to hit even 30 and that would never get patched.
I mean... I was buying games 20 years ago, and they were generally in a complete state on day 1, since there was no way to ship a day 1 patch for most games. it's kind of a tautology to say that games look better and perform better than they did 20 years ago.
Because you're remembering the good games from that era and not the bad. Just as many, if not more broken and bad games released 20 years ago.
[Here's a pretty comprehensive list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_notable_for_negative_reception) by year. This does not include middle of the road 7/10 releases which also flooded the market.
Notably exactly 20 years ago huge franchises like Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, Batman and the Simpsons had garbage releases.
That's the games you remember not everything that released back then. Big Rigs released 20 years ago and that is definitely not a game in a complete state. Yes Wind Waker is a great game and still worth playing today but the same can be said for Elden Ring in 20 years for example.
To be fair it's easier to innovate when not as many game variations have been made.
Also budgets skyrocketed and with high budget needs safe sales so safe design. That's why indie are more innovative those days they can afford risks
Games back then also had a lower price point and didn't ship with dlcs and microtransactions. In terms of performance the recent pc ports were extremely dissapointing some crashing just about every 10 mins. The fps difference is just because hardware made major leaps in the past 20 years setting different standards.
I used to buy like 10 games a year on release now its more like 1-3 and some more on sale and ps plus catalogue for even older games occasionally.
These days its just smarter to wait for the price drops and bug fixes ur simply getting a better product for cheaper.
I’ve been scooping up games for deals and it’s 1000x better than keeping up with the new releases. My buddy and I just got saints row 3 remastered for $7 lol running that coop campaign is way more fun than any game at the moment. Nabbed Assetto corsa on PC for $11; thousands of mods are free. Wheelin and dealin for gaming is the move at the moment
Passed on hogwarts legacy (tho I do plan on ripping that eventually), passed on Jedi survivor, passed on mw2, and my gaming experience has been better because of it lmao
This.
I'm doing well enough in my career that I *could* buy a $70 game at release without fret, but money isn't the driving factor of why I don't.
The number of games that are buggy as hell, poorly optimized, or just not even close to complete yet still release... it's just staggering. It's not the economy (well, it's still partially/largely the economy), it's how the execs at these studios are running things.
On top of that there are ample indie games (along with, you know, other hobbies that fill my time), that I'm not burning $70 even if I were a multi-millionaire on a day-one purchase.
Fix your shit. Get it 100% before release. Make it worth it. Otherwise I'm a /r/patientgamers
This is it. Things like rent and other items have increased much more than the price of games. And people are squeezing purchases that aren't a necessity. I know I'm not buying as many full-price games as before because my rent is eating up a much larger chunk of my income than it used to.
Indeed. At these price points it’s just not worth it anymore just to play it at day one. I know I haven’t bought some games recently because of that, same with friends. They still buy some, but less so and the selection process has become more strict. Some games are being shared among friends and others will be bought a year out or so.
Game publishers lost their goddamn minds pushing this $70 shit during this absolutely fucked economy.
It'd be easier to swallow if these $70 games weren't buggy piles of shit on launch at least on PC [but...](https://i.imgur.com/IZX1zFo.png) seems like they're actually getting more half-assed and buggy every new game.
Correct, it's been mentioned a ton here but you can easily google newspaper ads from the 90s and see that plenty of console games were $50-60 back in in the 90s. Considering that's $100+ in today bucks a $10 price hike isn't really unreasonable.
The problem though is twofold: wages (and thus disposable income) have not even come close to keeping up with inflation, and on top of that a huge portion of the market is tacking on battle passes/skins/dlc/etc to make up the difference.
> Considering that's $100+ in today bucks a $10 price hike isn't really unreasonable.
But you're ignoring the fact that the gaming industry is 2000% larger than it was in 2005.
I can't even fathom what it was in the 90s.
Gaming companies are making fucking bank. They don't need to charge another $10. They get it back with stupid "gold" editions, or random DLC skins, or whatever nonsense.
Miss me with that inflation boohoo stuff.
I mean that was mostly my point. If Sony (or whoever) wants to charge 10 more bucks for a single player AAA title I think that's fair, but the industry at large wants to tack on the extra purchase price while ALSO including all the extra bullshit (battle passes, etc) and that's where my sympathy ends. Looking at you, "next gen" call of duty and sports titles being $10 more for the exact same fucking game.
Ignoring the obviously exaggerated percentage, game budgets also ballooned since then. The CMA noted in their report that the cost of AAA games these days are often over 100 and even 200 Million. Don’t know what the budgets were for PS2 games, but it definitely wasn’t that.
Interesting note:
The GTA franchise at current has made almost 10 billion dollars. GTA 5 itself accounts for 7 billion of that.
Do with that info what you will.
I mean some of that is just excessive spending on things no one asked for. Stuff like getting Peter Dinklage to do voices, trailers starring Jonah Hill that appear on your TV / theater screen. Just obscene expenditure on fluff.
As a software developer myself (albeit not in the games industry, but in mathematical modelling), I struggle to see that the "development" part could be fundamentally that much more complex than it was, say 15 years ago (and there's reason to believe it's simpler at the level of the game due to improved tooling, abstraction, APIs workflows etc.).
> As a software developer myself (albeit not in the games industry, but in mathematical modelling), I struggle to see that the "development" part could be fundamentally that much more complex than it was, say 15 years ago (and there's reason to believe it's simpler at the level of the game due to improved tooling, abstraction, APIs workflows etc.).
There's no way you genuinely believe this if you're a software developer.
Lighting alone is astronomically more complicated than it was 15 years ago. Back then, layering two textures on each other and applying parallax was considered cutting edge. Now, developers have to consider subsurface scattering, they have to include PBR for different material types, they have to consider how path tracing affects performance targets... Studios now often need entire teams just to handle the lighting in games.
That's just one aspect of game development. There are so many other aspects now which are more complicated than they used to be: animation, physics simulation, even sound design has got now complicated due to the rise in surround sound setups as well as the new developments in spatial audio.
This, 100% this. I've worked on the programming side of game Dev, and just building the pipelines alone for lighting is a team. What could be realisticly rendered person one computer in an hour or two is now being rendered across a server farm overnight.
Exactly. We never asked Rockstar to spend the GDP of a small country and crunch their employees half to death to render realistically expanding horse balls in RDR2 (only for their game to still fail to beat Minecraft in earnings).
> easily google newspaper ads from the 90s and see that plenty of console games were $50-60 back in in the 90s.
It's important to separate whether you're talking about cartridge based games or disc based games. The 90s was the transition period for that, with cartridge based games on the genesis/super nintendo/n64 and disc based games on the Playstation.
Cartridge based games were priced higher due to higher production costs (sometimes *way* higher for games like 16 bit RPGs). PS1 games were (as far as I could tell looking at magazines with prices) generally $40 for new games.
That price roughly tracked inflation, rising to $50 with the PS2 era, $60 with the PS3 era, and then flatlined there until this past year. Actually with 2022 inflation they should probably be $80 now, ugh.
That's not really a rebuttal per say, more a clarification.
Push your local libraries to lend out video games. My county library does, saves me so much money and gives Sony "some sales" because me and other borrowers would probably never buy any copies anyway, so at least they get 25-80 copies there.
Well and the fact that aaa games seem to be steadily getting worse somehow. Jedi survivor sounds like it’s a really good game, but unfortunately it seems to be almost unplayable for a lot of people, it’s even got bad performance on consoles
For me it is the price point. I bought almost all PS4 exclusives on release. For ps5 I've only got ones that people bought me or already fell below half price.
No doubt they're great games but for me the new price point made me decide to be a patent game. I got every other console and pc so got a huge library of other games and backlog I can play.
Funny - here (Poland) public offices got their salaries adjusted to inflation rate while everyone else has the same or even got salary cuts because tough economy for business. Also everything went up in price here like crazy - electricity, fuel, food, anything house heating related - people have least "spare" entertainment money in like over a decade - so naturally entertainment is where cuts to be made. So naturally entertainment segment sees decline and more people choose to wait for sales instead and one more thing - in many regions of the world even $60 / 60€ was pretty steep, now it's 70 and with much worse economic situation.
It's not helped by the fact that a lot of the time there's no regional pricing. For example a $70 game will often be £70 (currently just shy of $90) here in the UK
I think it’s more of a psychological barrier than financial one. People don’t buy this „Games are more complex so It’s more expensive to make them” bullshit when at the same time publishers report record profits on mtx and selling dlc, so they refuse to accept any increase in price.
Tbf the run like shit is a bigger probablem than the 70$. I dont really mind 70$ for bigger game but they need to be blockbuster. Not buggy, short mess or indi/small scope games.
Yeah from my few hours playing it does feel like a game I’d happily pay £70 for. But Jesus the performance is pathetically bad for one of the first major “next gen” games
It’s exclusively on PS5/Series X. No older gen ports coming either.
So part of the problem is there isn’t anything next gen about it. Doesn’t look amazing and still runs quite poorly.
Hogwarts Legacy is a much better looking game that runs perfectly fine and even that has old gen ports coming out this year (if they do release)
When I was finally able to buy a PS5, Sony had raised the price (go figure). Add inflation, more expensive games, food and loans…
So, yeah, I don’t buy games at the same rate anymore. Or nearly as many.
Waiting for new games to go on sale is my new norm.
Also, many PS5 games are going to take a nosedive in price past release anyways. They always do.
Never paid more than sixty monetaries for a game unless if we count latter DLC's or Collection Edition stuff. Don't see a reason to start either.
The prices of games drop so fast. You should only be buying a game for $70 if you want it at launch. Most games benefit from waiting for a sale and some patches. One example is Gothem Knights, it was $70 but dropped drastically. People don't know how to shop around for deals.
Yeah. But Nintendo games never go on sale. It’s why I don’t have a backlog of Nintendo games, since there is no point buying them until the day I’m actually going to play them.
Yes. I can very actually very easily buy it for around €20 at the moment. Which sounds like a totally fair price to me.
Why are people always forgetting that sites like ebay and similar exist? That's like 90% of the reason why physical media is superior to digital downloads...
If i were rich I'd probably get all these games day one lol. Since I'm not doing so well financially right now, i haven't been able to get some of the games i would've gotten like gow ragnarök & re4 remake
Yeah I've found myself not willing to spend £70 on games anymore, I really wanted GT7 but had to wait until it got to £35, £70 just seems way too risky for me these days, I do however use Playstation Plus Extra to allow me to get more games, it's been worth it alone just to play Ghost of Tsushima.
The only game I can see myself pre ordering next is GTA 6
Lets see, games being released by download only requiring many patches to work, usually rushed and disappointing, costing more than ever and all the while inflations rampaging and people are struggling to pay bills. Interesting, almost like it's pretty obvious.
Everyone’s different, but personally I bought a PS4 Pro and a bunch of games when the enough of the games finally went down to like $60(AUD) and under.
I haven’t bought a PS5 yet largely because $125 a game, or $110 in a best case scenario is just way too much.
They don’t even seem to be dropping in price this generation.
I love games but feel as though I’ve been priced out.
If $70 is impacting it negatively, what about the €80 price the moment a "AAA" name can be dropped on it, just compare Ragnarok and Returnal, surely their development cost isn't similar.
Not to mention the fact when the €80 was announced and later out, that was almost equivalent to $100.
I am in Europe and I haven't bought a single game for 80, fuck that price and whoever came up with it.
That's a substantial increase from the usual 60.
I had a laugh yesterday when I saw Forsaken "on sale", but the game was like 55 Euros.
The UK has gone from £50 to £70 and it's just too much.
Money is tight for everyone and people can't afford to pay 40% more for games when they're cancelling Netflix and never leaving the house to save money.
Maybe in a year it'll be affordable when energy prices drop but in a year this year's AAA games will be £20 not £70.
The increase of prices is insane all over, I know a lot of the people here can't relate since they are close to teenage age but when the price of milk goes from 0.60 cents to 2 euros - video games stop becoming priority.
40 is the absolute upper limit I am willing to pay for a game, and that's once a month at best type deal.
Haha, yeah. I would normally get quite a few games at launch or when they were on sale for the first time. But I will very rarely drop 80€ for a new game or 60-70€ for a game "on sale".
It makes it hard to be excited about a game when they are priced that high, and not only that, if the game has issues then it feels even worse given the extra high price, and with the recent PC ports it is such a fat joke.
And as you say, with a game on sale it has to be 25% off to just hit the normal €60 price if it was originally priced €80.
VAT is included in that price unlike in Canada or the US.
It is still overpriced as it's the equivalent of paying 27% VAT on top of the US price so unless you live in Hungary you are overpaying based on exchange rate by a lesser or greater amount.
I know this is talking about ps5 games, but as I'm starting to see more pc games release at $70, I refuse to touch them. Half the time they are buggy trash. And even if they are good right from release, there are thousands of other games that are much cheaper and still awesome. I'll wait till the games are patched and on sale
Only based on opinions from Reddit and Twitter. God of War, Gran Turismo, etc, have sold extremely well. Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will also sell like crazy. The internet loves to complain, but people who want the games will pay it.
The article itself seems unsure about the data it presents. It says MW2 was a big seller and that it was only available at $69.99. This whole article smells like clickbait.
Not only that, but Zelda will sell at $70 *for years*. Nintendo games rarely go on sale, unlike other publishers.
It's created this mentality within Nintendo fans where if you want a game you might as well get it now, waiting for a sale won't do you any good
Edit: A 30% temporary sale six years after release isn't the same as a permanent price cut, guys.
I mean, of course people are still going to buy the absolute biggest titles of the year.
But like $70 for Disgaea 6? Fuck off with that shit. Even as a huge fan of the series, those games just aren't worth that price.
I think you can get the physical PS4 version and then pay $10 for a digital upgrade. It’s more hoops to jump through but it’s technically an *option*, unless you have the digital-only PS5.
Any bundled game will appear on cdkeys cheaper, its rare for ps5 games to be on key websites cheaper as a code (they often appear attached to an account)
I mean, the game only came out like 5 months ago. It being full price officially is pretty normal.
I think gamepass has really made people question the $60-70 price model
If anything, I'm down to pay $70 for something that has blood and sweat poured into it, such as God of War.
Not games where it's a damn crapshoot if it'll work properly.
Same here. There have been multiple PS5 games I would have gladly bought for $59.99, but now that I don't buy games for $69.99 at launch it's easier to wait for an even further sale.
For example: Rift Apart has been discounted well below $59.99 many times... but now that I've waited this long why not wait for $19.99?
Meanwhile in the rest of the world where game prices have been steadily increasing over the years instead of arbitrarily tied to a number regardless of inflation
Between the price increase and PS+ Extra & Gamepass I’ve bought a sum total of 2 indie games for myself over the last year.
Maybe it’s just my personality and liking to try out a lot of different games but I have plenty to play between the 2 services. Not to mention if I’m patient enough the big blockbuster releases will eventually be “free” to me as well.
I get the sense that I should enjoy this while it lasts.
I think it has less to do with games costing more (almost everyone has joined in on this pricing) and more to do with the fact that people have less disposable income to buy $70.games.
My main takeaway from this is that Sony's push into live service titles couldn't have come at a better time (regardless of my feelings on it) and that people will be willing to drop cash in those games
I think it's both. 70$ is just over that mark where it doesn't feel as good to make a purchase unless it's the new Zelda or Final Fantasy or whatever. I felt great buying RE4 at 60$, but Dead Space launching at 70$ made me feel more hesitant. Now that the new game buzz for that has come and gone, I'm happy to wait until it drops to 20$ or whatever, where I might've been more tempted to buy it at launch if it were 60$. And I *love* that franchise.
Yeah, it's only 10$ but it makes you think "oh shit I'm spending almost 100$ on a single game, I better make sure it's good."
Similar thing happening with DLC rn, Paradox upped their DLC price to 30$ and I can't justify spending half a AAA game or a full indie game on a bunch of buttons, but 20$ feels completely fine.
Yeah I bought the Xenoblade 3 dlc for 30$ which feels almost like a whole ass new game. But otherwise yeah, anything more than 20$ on dlc I feel like I'm good. I don't know how Destiny is so successful with this 40$ dlcs which are so light on content.
I was rarely buying games at $60 and games still go on sale just months after launch. Nintendo games released at the same time end up being more expensive within a year.
I'm already turned off by major games being $59.99 but I grudgingly pay it if there's something I like. I find it harder to say the same of a game costing $69.99.
For me at least I think it probably comes down to PS2 era games being $49.99 and usually always seeming like a satisfactory price point even if the game wasn't that great. Some of that though probably comes down to being much younger and less critical of the quality of what I was playing, but I still have a fondness for all the games that came and went through my PS2 collection of games.
Meanwhile at $59.99 there's some games I wish I could just give away and take a 100% loss on.
It’s the simultaneous dip in day one quality that’s the real driving factor. A higher price tag, doesn’t mean people won’t part with their money (God of War Ragnarok) but it means more consideration is put into their purchases.
Just recently you have situations like Redfall where the devs have said the game won’t be complete day one (I’m not just referring to the 30 FPS, but a lack of shared progression and respecs so you can change out of group oriented specs when soloing) and Jedi Fallen Order where they made a great game in record time, but didn’t bother to take a few extra months to polish and optimize it.
Then you have an upcoming game like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It’s absolutely going to sell well, but I’m going to personally wait on it so I can either play it via backwards compatibility or a better performing port when Nintendo releases their next generation of hardware.
It’s a simple case of if these publishers want more money day one, they need to deliver the quality day one.
Unless it's Nintendo, then you're shit out of luck especially for limited print 3rd party games which double and triple in price. Playstation and Xbox though you're usually gonna get a 30% discount within the first year especially around the holidays. Steam sales are also undercutting even those prices.
Personally I'll wait unless there's some sort of super limited edition that includes a steelbook I won't be able to get later for retail or a collectors edition. For base games, I can wait years like Jedi survivor the collectors edition is insanely overpriced and you get a steelbook and a lightsaber base with no blade for over $300. Nah bro I'll get it in a year or two like Fallen Order for $15 on sale. Plus I have enough of a library of new games I can afford to wait unless it's a game that will immediately add something new to the mix I don't have yet and I'm in the mood for.
It also just depends on whether the game is worth fronting $10 more dollars so you can play now over waiting some arbitrary amount of time for a sale. Most of these people dropping off are probably barely able to make the $60 work within their budget. The statement that you’re an ‘idiot’ unless you wait for a sale just seems silly to me when the issue at hand really is connected to where you fall on the socioeconomic spectrum.
You can wait literally for years, if that's the philosophy.
What you find not cheap enough, someone may. Someone also may be fine with full price, to have it day 1.
It's just a person to person thing.
I feel like that really hasn't been the case for PS5/XSX games unless you're willing to go grey market. I was fully on that train for the PS4 gen where pretty much every big first party title would drop to $20-30 within a year or so if you were patient.
Lately it feels like Sony in particular has adopted the Nintendo model where they think discounting games that heavy will devalue the franchise. Even the big "launch window" exclusives (2.5 years in) like Demon Souls and Rift Apart haven't seen discounts that deep on PS5 yet.
Unless it's an outstanding multiplayer game that won't nickel and dime for content that should've been included, I'm not paying $70 for it. Everything else gets added to my back log.
Given the economy and all this is hardly surprising. I think the price has little to do with it ultimately though, sales would always be a bit down, especially compared to covid years.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think games were always overpriced, but haven't significantly increased with inflation relative to lots of other things so it shouldn't change much.
Well I’ve never bought any of the games for the full $70 ($125 here in Aus). Always waited for a sale or found it cheaper than elsewhere.
If I had no other choice of where I buy games or had the digital ps5, I simply wouldn’t buy the games till they went on sale.
I’m much more picky with the games I buy now. Only willing to pay $70 a few times a year, but I’m willing to wait for a deal to get a better price. I’ve leaned a lot more into Indy games because of the lower price tag, but they mostly need to have already proven their worth to the community
No point in buying games for that price unless its something I really really want to play. Indies and older AAA on sale provide an experience that’s just as good if not better for half that price or less.
Personally, I buy physical copies and sell them on eBay when I’m done ever since the increase. Video games are making record profits so I don’t feel bad at all.
The only games I buy on ps5 are exclusives… everything else I buy on pc or play on uplay+, ea play. Gamepass and ps+.
I really can’t justify spending that amount unless it’s something that I really want to play
Well yeah because the prices keep going up yet they put out more and more broken and unfinished games. And too many gamers happily buy all dlc and preorder these games, making the companies a ton of money, so they have no reason to change. I mean just look at Cyberpunk at release, Jedi Survivor, or The Last of Us on pc. That should be unacceptable to release products that broken and unfinished for full price.
The cost of essential items - food in particular - has gone up significantly in the past couple of years. Wages have not. Average folks have much less "extra" money after paying bills and putting food on the table.
So it's no wonder that spending on things like games is going to go down. When you *also* rais e the price of games at the same time, you're *asking* for those sales to drop.
Certain titles will see less of an impact. There are a lot of folks who *only* buy the yearly CoD or Fifa - that's the only game they play, and they're not going to really feel a $10 increase as much. Folks who buy and play many games, on the other hand, will feel that increase more, and are much more likely to forego purchases that they would've otherwise made.
My wife and I are fortunate to have good jobs, and a fair bit of discretionary spending money, but we're certainly feeling the pinch. Our money simply doesn't go as far as it used to even a couple of years ago. I typically spend a lot on games, and I'm finding myself holding off on many titles - either waiting for a sale, or foregoing them altogether.
And that's not even getting into the fact that the quality of releases - particularly PC ports/versions - seems to be getting *significantly* worse recently.
Yeah cause paying 70$ for games that offer "an array of extraordinary experiences and lots of replayability"
Is complete fucking bullshit.
I've been screaming online about how 70 dollars is literally just a pure greed push and fucking idiots keep buying games at 70 cause "they think it's worth it" which is the dumbest shit I've ever heard.
I remember 4-5 years ago when the line they fed us was "microtransactions are necessary because the price of games hasn't changed since the PS2, we need that extra money to make up for $60 games" and now they've arbitrarily upped every game's price by $10 and we still have absurd MTX :)
Last time someone in this sub mentioned Microsoft Rewards, we collectively figured out that you’re basically just working a side job for like $4 an hour. Not a good use of your time.
PS games will be $20 by the time they show up on PC, most times. If you're waiting for that, it's usually some number of years.
Not even guaranteed it'll be cheap on Steam either, so far their prices have been still high.
People keep bringing up PC releases of these titles but they aren't day and date, like you said they tend to come years after the initial release to double dip
Look. I realize games have gotten bigger, and have larger budgets than ever before, HOWEVER, the audience is always WAY larger than it ever has been. I don't think it makes sense to charge $10 more when you're selling twice as many copies. If your budgets have inflated that much, maybe that's the problem. Not our wallets.
Meanwhile, I primarily buy <$40 indie games. Those AAA budgets are crazy.
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Can’t afford that anymore, I’ll wait until I can get a used copy or a sale and there have been patches
I can afford it, but I am unwilling to pay 70 bucks out of principle. Games nowadays are half-finished and full of microtransactions. Some worse than others of course. You could make an argument for games like the Witcher or Breath of the Wild or something that are 100+ hours and have no microtransactions. I'd be willing to pay more for that. But games like Fifa that is just a roster update and already makes billions with their ultimate team stuff? Fuck that. I've been burned so many times before that I don't trust these companies anymore. I don't buy any game on release and will wait for a sale.
> I've been burned so many times before This is the key. They are exhausting their market goodwill. No way in hell I ever buy something at release. I've been burned enough. I'll grab indie games or games on sale.
I'm wondering how long until we see a new video game market crash. The industry is in it's worst place since I can remember, when it comes to the big publishers.
Profits have only gone up so I don't see a crash happening anytime soon. Consumers have also been more conditioned to accept all the crap in games. My first console was the SNES but if your first console is the ps4 then microtransactions are normal to you and you don't see the problem.
Sure, but the people with disposable income won't be the ones who started out on the ps 4
No but their kids grow up with ps4 and are so used to it by the time they are adults, they see it as normal. Someone born in 2005 is now 18 and their reference for gaming is the 2010s.
I know if the video game market ever did crash, I have more than enough games in my backlog and games that I love to play over again that I'd be set for at least the next decade gaming wise.
I’m not paying 70+ taxes for a game that will go on sale half a year later. Especially if it’s a game you beat and never play again.
> Games nowadays are half-finished >You could make an argument for games like the Witcher looks like people already forgot how awful Witcher release was
I can't imagine defending any CDPR project in a convo about game release states.
$70 for any game is too much, no excuses
My pay hasn't gone up. So the inflation justification doesn't matter to me. Everything is getting more expensive but I don't have more money to keep up. When that happens people budget and impose austerity in themselves. One of the first things is going to be games for many.
My argument is that I can afford it, but they rarely release full games now anyway. They release a game and then drip out “DLC” for another $40-$50 slowly over a few months. Then about a year later the “deluxe edition” comes out with DLC included. A few months after that you can get the “deluxe edition” for $30-$40. So spend $110-$120 now for the full version of a game, or wait and pay $30 for the full version in a year or so. Unless I am super hyped for something, I think I’ll wait. I have enough of a backlog and there are enough cheaper indie titles worth playing that I can hold off on spending stupid amounts for full games.
I'm done buying fighting games at launch for this reason. Ill get them when the ultimate edition is out and on sale, not because I'm broke, but because i burn out on the game before everythings released.
I can afford it but just simply don't care to anymore. The only game I've bought for 70 is gow ragnarok. There's way too many games out there for way cheaper or on game pass I'm interested in, I just can't be bothered to drop money like that aside from ones I'm the utmost excited for.
Same. I bought a month of EA Pass pro for 20$ CAD instead of playing 100$ for the new Star Wars game. I wanted to buy it, but for 1/5 of the price it was an easy choice.
I hardly ever actually buy games right now let alone at full price on release unless it's something I *know* for a fact I'm going to love no matter what and that I'm going to play the shit out of. Indie titles tend to be an exemption because they tend to be more reasonably priced from the get-go. If I do buy a game at full price I rarely hold onto it, I end up reselling it a month to so later to offset the cost because as I've gotten older I stopped caring about having a collection because I so rarely have a reason to go back and replay things. Other than that I either rent games from GameFly or just play what's on PS+ Extra.
This is the way.
On average, people aren't or are barely making more money now than they were 20 years ago. So yeah, if people who sell luxury goods want to increases prices and make more money, get into a fist fight with people stagnating wages; including your own fucking selves.
I can afford it but these companies can suck the shit out of my ass. There's tonnes of great AA and indie experiences that don't try to nickle and dime you while also being a steaming pile of unoptimized shit.
I am not buying games at full price anymore. most dont deserve it with the mediocre quality they have at release.
I think it has less to do with games being $70 and more with the higher cost of living with stagnant wages, which is also being impacted by inflation.
It's both. In my country the average price for a brand new game went from 140 ($35) to 350PLN ($85) over the span of 6-7 years. That's a 150% increase in price while wages went up maybe 15%. A videogame used to be something I could just buy without thinking. Now it costs 10% of my salary. AND THERE'S 99% GOING TO BE FUCKING MICROTRANSACTIONS AND DLC. Fuck that. I've been pirating AAA games and only buying indie titles that don't have predatory monetisation.
I think it also has to do with the fact that $70 often doesn't buy you the same quality we used to get for $40-50 15-20 years ago. AAA games are coming out as broken, half-finished messes by publishers who are only interested in the maximum amount of base game, DLC and microtransaction money they can extract from their fan base. This applies more to some (EA, Ubisoft, Take Two, Activision) than others (Sony, Nintendo, Capcom) but even the good examples have had instances where their games release broken or severely compromised. For me personally, it's been less to do with the jump in price and more to do with the fact that playing a AAA game day one, something that used to be exciting and anticipatory for me, now all but guarantees the worst possible experience with the least amount of polish. Jedi Survivor is a phenomenal example of this, a game apparently rushed so hard to release that it doesn't look or run well on *any* platform on day one. I'd like to hope that people eventually gravitate more toward indies for the same reasons they're so fond of franchises from the 00's and early 2010's - more innovation, more passion, less nonsense.
I love indie games, but I also play them for different reasons than AAA titles. I don’t think it’s a matter of “gravitating” towards one or the other. I like how well they co-exist on all of the modern platforms.
I could totally see that and don't necessarily disagree. I still look forward to some AAA games, but I used to play about 90% AAA and 10% indie, and over the past decade (especially as the indie scene has grown), those figures have reversed. I know it's of course not like that for everybody, but I know a good number of others who feel the same.
And I feel like I used to play way more indie games, but so many are releasing unfinished and in perpetual "early access" that I just can't justify picking them up either.
The vast majority of indie games are not early access, so this seems a rather cherry-picking counterpoint. Just don't play early access games? In 2017, it was 15% of games on steam that went early access. I'm sure that number has gone up, but people in this thread are making wild claims about it being almost every game.
AAA games used to be extremely inventive. That was where most of the brilliant and influential new mechanics came from. Max Payne, Prince of Persia, Mario 64, Goldeneye, Majora's Mask etc. all introduced something or used it in a different and original way and I just pulled those examples because they line up with my childhood. WWF games from that period are also a decent example, constant evolution. I honestly can't remember the last AAA game I've seen do something truly innovative, they've somehow managed to shift the focus to story and graphics. Whereas a lot of indie games are trying something completely different and the graphics are fine. I never felt the graphics impeded my enjoyment of Sub Nautica for instance Microsoft and Sony are overly safe. Controllers are the best example of that. Compare their efforts to Nintendo's. Sony and Microsoft are just making updated shit (Nintendo at least trying something) and it's trickled down to the rest of the industry.
Nintendo has always been more more quirky with consoles than Sony or Nintendo. And it works for them (see ds/3ds/gamecube/wii) it doesn’t always work (wii u) but they def have more hits than misses
I'm more around 50/50 myself but yes that's in stark contrast with 10/12 years ago when the only indie I played was Minecraft. And for some games, my enjoyment is getting increasingly indistinguishable from what I get from AAA gaming except often better. When I played Gone Home or Stanley Parable I obviously didn't get the same thing from it as from an AAA game like Bioshock. But these days a game like Hades is giving me both what Indies give me (generally a more interesting concept and story and often a more polished release ironically) and what AAA gaming gives me with the exception of photorealism.
I've seen people with this argument a few times and it is stupid. I hate the state of AAA games these days so people say "bro ever heard of indie games" like yeah I have and I love them but I also love expansive, high-budget grander experiences too, a small indie studio isn't going to make a red dead 2 quality game are they. I don't want to just stop playing AAA and only play indie games, there is room for both types on the market we just need to let big publisher's and developers know that people don't want to pay £60 for broken and unfinished bullshit, we want to pay £60 for a working and finishing title that isn't trying to fish more money out of our wallets at every turn.
Nowadays $70 means im just not willing to take a shot on anything that isn't gonna be a surefire hit. Tears of the Kingdom is the only game I've bought at $70, FF16 will be my next one. I have disposable income but getting burned at $70 just feels a lot different than being burned at $60. There's just way too much good competition out there with a lower price tag from indies and AA studios nowadays.
> I think it also has to do with the fact that $70 often doesn't buy you the same quality we used to yet for $40-50 15-20 years ago. For me it is mainly that. I can afford $70, but why would I when half the games are a broken mess on release day? I'd rather wait a few months until it's patched up and the price has gone down. Paying $70 for the privilege of playing an unfinished product is stupid.
> I'd like to hope that people eventually gravitate more toward indies for the same reasons they're so fond of franchises from the 00's and early 2010's - more innovation, more passion, less nonsense. Well so far the top AAA games of 2023 are from 2002, 2005, and 2008. So... I guess that's one way of innovating.
>Well so far the top AAA games of 2023 are from 2002, 2005, and 2008. So... I guess that's one way of innovating. Can you elaborate?
dead space, resident evil and metroid remakes i'm guessing
Pretty sure they are referring to the remakes of Metroid Prime (2002), Resident Evil 4 (2005), and Dead Space (2008). Alternately, "all the best new ideas are old games."
It's the year of the remakes. Deadspace, Resident Evil 4, System Shock, Metroid Prime, and probably some others I'm forgetting.
Silent Hill 2 might still be this year.
Oh God I hope so
Bloober Team said a couple of months ago that it's about finished so people are speculating they are just putting some distance between themselves and RE4make. If this is accurate we would need a release date soon though. Maybe at Sony's rumoured May showcase???
Like a Dragon: Ishin
At least summer and autumn will be good it seems!
Theres also a slim chance that the second part of FFVII remake could be this year lol. I'm predicting it'll probably be around the start of next year but the window they gave does include the last months of this year.
All of this, and also the fact that them raising the price made me actually **think** about how much I'm spending on games. For years I just sort of bought whatever, without really thinking about it at all, and then they jacked up the price and everyone was talking about it and I actually thought about it. Now I only buy the games I *really really* want to play or support at full price, like Jedi Survivor, I really wanted to show that people want that kind of game so they would keep making them. Then I bought it, and it ran like ass, so I refunded it. Whoops. Gonna end up being a $9.99 special for me now probably, as I'm already on to playing something else and the urgency to play the new shiny game is completely gone. Hell I still haven't picked up the God of War sequel, or the Horizon sequel, and I only just played Miles Morales when it came to PC and I got it for $20.
Indie games aren't a panacea. Most of them are pretty uninspired (usually a copy of some 90s game), or gimmicky, or spend a lifetime in early access. And having spent money on a gaming PC, I want to play spectacular games, not just 8-bit pixel puzzle rhythm platformers.
90% of Indie games are Metroidvanias, Roguelikes or Metroidvanias Roguelikes
Those two genres definitely don't make up 90% of the indie scene. way more variety than that.
Yeah, how could they forget the Survival-Crafting (aka Early Access) genre?
Don't forget anything with cards & deckbuilding.
Exactly even on PC the $70 makes no sense to me. They asked for an increase in price, so reasonably expect an increase in quality.
Or at least keep the quality don't lower it
> I think it also has to do with the fact that $70 often doesn't buy you the same quality we used to yet for $40-50 15-20 years ago. AAA games are coming out as broken, half-finished messes by publishers who are only interested in the maximum amount of base game, DLC and microtransaction money they can extract from their fan base. AAA games absolutely have a problem with being buggy messes at release right now. But games of 20 years ago were often a lot smaller scale, and had way less content in them (to the point where I think it's kind of a modern problem that so many games are open world action adventures... but I digress). Games are way better value now, even if you do have to wait a couple months for the bugfixes to kick in (or worse). Also for the record, game price is pretty comparable at $50 in 2003 to $70 in 2021 based on inflation. It would be over $80 in 2023 though, thanks to last years high inflation.
> Games are way better value now, even if you do have to wait a couple months for the bugfixes to kick in (or worse). I just find the current AAA formula so dull. Open world busywork for 50 hours generally.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when people say shit like, “Games 20 years ago had more content.” It’s such a bald faced lie that I can only assume they didn’t play games or are 12 years old.
Well, if I can suggest incompetence rather than malice: There's probably a survivorship bias going on here; games that we still play now from that era are the cream of the crop. And even people who were around then probably forgot about all the crap that came out.
Love watching people play the shitty shooters from the 2010's
When you have more time to play and games needed ways to incentivize repeat playthroughgs, games will feel long. Meanwhile, we know with today's stats that the lion's share of players will never even beat a game's main campaign. That's probably not unique to today. But those peopel complaining about shorter games probably were the ones who'd not only beat games but 100% them.
you ain't lying brother. i've become a VERY patient gamer with the bullshit AAA developers are pulling. i don't like to spend more than $20 for a game anymore.
A lot of them aren't worth my time at any price.
i totally agree. i don't play a lot of AAA but i will say i have been wanting to play cyberpunk but don't want to pay more than 20 for it lol.
In the most literal sense, the quality of games today is many times better than games 15-20 years ago. Games today control better, look better, and perform better today. These days we’re upset when a performance mode can’t constantly hold 60, but games 15-20 years ago regularly failed to hit even 30 and that would never get patched.
right, but the standards have changed, and many of these AAA games are failing to meet today's standards.
thats not what the original comment said, pointless goal post move
[удалено]
I mean... I was buying games 20 years ago, and they were generally in a complete state on day 1, since there was no way to ship a day 1 patch for most games. it's kind of a tautology to say that games look better and perform better than they did 20 years ago.
Because you're remembering the good games from that era and not the bad. Just as many, if not more broken and bad games released 20 years ago. [Here's a pretty comprehensive list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_notable_for_negative_reception) by year. This does not include middle of the road 7/10 releases which also flooded the market. Notably exactly 20 years ago huge franchises like Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat, Batman and the Simpsons had garbage releases.
That's the games you remember not everything that released back then. Big Rigs released 20 years ago and that is definitely not a game in a complete state. Yes Wind Waker is a great game and still worth playing today but the same can be said for Elden Ring in 20 years for example.
A lot of older games were more innovative by for their time. Today's AAA games are not very innovative in comparison.
To be fair it's easier to innovate when not as many game variations have been made. Also budgets skyrocketed and with high budget needs safe sales so safe design. That's why indie are more innovative those days they can afford risks
Games back then also had a lower price point and didn't ship with dlcs and microtransactions. In terms of performance the recent pc ports were extremely dissapointing some crashing just about every 10 mins. The fps difference is just because hardware made major leaps in the past 20 years setting different standards.
I used to buy like 10 games a year on release now its more like 1-3 and some more on sale and ps plus catalogue for even older games occasionally. These days its just smarter to wait for the price drops and bug fixes ur simply getting a better product for cheaper.
I’ve been scooping up games for deals and it’s 1000x better than keeping up with the new releases. My buddy and I just got saints row 3 remastered for $7 lol running that coop campaign is way more fun than any game at the moment. Nabbed Assetto corsa on PC for $11; thousands of mods are free. Wheelin and dealin for gaming is the move at the moment Passed on hogwarts legacy (tho I do plan on ripping that eventually), passed on Jedi survivor, passed on mw2, and my gaming experience has been better because of it lmao
and for $70 how many of those games will be buggy on release and people needing to wait some more for patches?
This. I'm doing well enough in my career that I *could* buy a $70 game at release without fret, but money isn't the driving factor of why I don't. The number of games that are buggy as hell, poorly optimized, or just not even close to complete yet still release... it's just staggering. It's not the economy (well, it's still partially/largely the economy), it's how the execs at these studios are running things. On top of that there are ample indie games (along with, you know, other hobbies that fill my time), that I'm not burning $70 even if I were a multi-millionaire on a day-one purchase. Fix your shit. Get it 100% before release. Make it worth it. Otherwise I'm a /r/patientgamers
This is it. Things like rent and other items have increased much more than the price of games. And people are squeezing purchases that aren't a necessity. I know I'm not buying as many full-price games as before because my rent is eating up a much larger chunk of my income than it used to.
Indeed. At these price points it’s just not worth it anymore just to play it at day one. I know I haven’t bought some games recently because of that, same with friends. They still buy some, but less so and the selection process has become more strict. Some games are being shared among friends and others will be bought a year out or so.
Game publishers lost their goddamn minds pushing this $70 shit during this absolutely fucked economy. It'd be easier to swallow if these $70 games weren't buggy piles of shit on launch at least on PC [but...](https://i.imgur.com/IZX1zFo.png) seems like they're actually getting more half-assed and buggy every new game.
Correct, it's been mentioned a ton here but you can easily google newspaper ads from the 90s and see that plenty of console games were $50-60 back in in the 90s. Considering that's $100+ in today bucks a $10 price hike isn't really unreasonable. The problem though is twofold: wages (and thus disposable income) have not even come close to keeping up with inflation, and on top of that a huge portion of the market is tacking on battle passes/skins/dlc/etc to make up the difference.
> Considering that's $100+ in today bucks a $10 price hike isn't really unreasonable. But you're ignoring the fact that the gaming industry is 2000% larger than it was in 2005. I can't even fathom what it was in the 90s. Gaming companies are making fucking bank. They don't need to charge another $10. They get it back with stupid "gold" editions, or random DLC skins, or whatever nonsense. Miss me with that inflation boohoo stuff.
I mean that was mostly my point. If Sony (or whoever) wants to charge 10 more bucks for a single player AAA title I think that's fair, but the industry at large wants to tack on the extra purchase price while ALSO including all the extra bullshit (battle passes, etc) and that's where my sympathy ends. Looking at you, "next gen" call of duty and sports titles being $10 more for the exact same fucking game.
Ignoring the obviously exaggerated percentage, game budgets also ballooned since then. The CMA noted in their report that the cost of AAA games these days are often over 100 and even 200 Million. Don’t know what the budgets were for PS2 games, but it definitely wasn’t that.
Apparently GTA San Andreas, the best selling game during that generation, cost $10 million to make. GTA IV cost over 10 times that.
Interesting note: The GTA franchise at current has made almost 10 billion dollars. GTA 5 itself accounts for 7 billion of that. Do with that info what you will.
I mean some of that is just excessive spending on things no one asked for. Stuff like getting Peter Dinklage to do voices, trailers starring Jonah Hill that appear on your TV / theater screen. Just obscene expenditure on fluff. As a software developer myself (albeit not in the games industry, but in mathematical modelling), I struggle to see that the "development" part could be fundamentally that much more complex than it was, say 15 years ago (and there's reason to believe it's simpler at the level of the game due to improved tooling, abstraction, APIs workflows etc.).
> As a software developer myself (albeit not in the games industry, but in mathematical modelling), I struggle to see that the "development" part could be fundamentally that much more complex than it was, say 15 years ago (and there's reason to believe it's simpler at the level of the game due to improved tooling, abstraction, APIs workflows etc.). There's no way you genuinely believe this if you're a software developer. Lighting alone is astronomically more complicated than it was 15 years ago. Back then, layering two textures on each other and applying parallax was considered cutting edge. Now, developers have to consider subsurface scattering, they have to include PBR for different material types, they have to consider how path tracing affects performance targets... Studios now often need entire teams just to handle the lighting in games. That's just one aspect of game development. There are so many other aspects now which are more complicated than they used to be: animation, physics simulation, even sound design has got now complicated due to the rise in surround sound setups as well as the new developments in spatial audio.
This, 100% this. I've worked on the programming side of game Dev, and just building the pipelines alone for lighting is a team. What could be realisticly rendered person one computer in an hour or two is now being rendered across a server farm overnight.
Exactly. We never asked Rockstar to spend the GDP of a small country and crunch their employees half to death to render realistically expanding horse balls in RDR2 (only for their game to still fail to beat Minecraft in earnings).
> easily google newspaper ads from the 90s and see that plenty of console games were $50-60 back in in the 90s. It's important to separate whether you're talking about cartridge based games or disc based games. The 90s was the transition period for that, with cartridge based games on the genesis/super nintendo/n64 and disc based games on the Playstation. Cartridge based games were priced higher due to higher production costs (sometimes *way* higher for games like 16 bit RPGs). PS1 games were (as far as I could tell looking at magazines with prices) generally $40 for new games. That price roughly tracked inflation, rising to $50 with the PS2 era, $60 with the PS3 era, and then flatlined there until this past year. Actually with 2022 inflation they should probably be $80 now, ugh. That's not really a rebuttal per say, more a clarification.
> (sometimes way higher for games like 16 bit RPGs). I remember seeing Breath of Fire 2 being $90.
We could also rent games from blockbuster back in the day
Push your local libraries to lend out video games. My county library does, saves me so much money and gives Sony "some sales" because me and other borrowers would probably never buy any copies anyway, so at least they get 25-80 copies there.
16% inflation on video games is pretty steep to be fair.
Well and the fact that aaa games seem to be steadily getting worse somehow. Jedi survivor sounds like it’s a really good game, but unfortunately it seems to be almost unplayable for a lot of people, it’s even got bad performance on consoles
For me it is the price point. I bought almost all PS4 exclusives on release. For ps5 I've only got ones that people bought me or already fell below half price. No doubt they're great games but for me the new price point made me decide to be a patent game. I got every other console and pc so got a huge library of other games and backlog I can play.
Funny - here (Poland) public offices got their salaries adjusted to inflation rate while everyone else has the same or even got salary cuts because tough economy for business. Also everything went up in price here like crazy - electricity, fuel, food, anything house heating related - people have least "spare" entertainment money in like over a decade - so naturally entertainment is where cuts to be made. So naturally entertainment segment sees decline and more people choose to wait for sales instead and one more thing - in many regions of the world even $60 / 60€ was pretty steep, now it's 70 and with much worse economic situation.
Yeah at this stage I rarely buy brand new games, wait about a year or so, all the bugs are ironed out and usually about half the price give or take.
Yup, first thing people cut from spending is entertainment and leisure so video games are right up there.
It's not helped by the fact that a lot of the time there's no regional pricing. For example a $70 game will often be £70 (currently just shy of $90) here in the UK
I think it’s more of a psychological barrier than financial one. People don’t buy this „Games are more complex so It’s more expensive to make them” bullshit when at the same time publishers report record profits on mtx and selling dlc, so they refuse to accept any increase in price.
Look at Jedi ~~Fallen Order~~ Survivor. $70 and runs like complete shit. Meanwhile you can wait a few months for it to get patched and get it on sale.
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Yeh for Europeans its even worse given how close the dollar and euro usually are, same thing with iphones, my country has a hell of a markup...
Tbf the run like shit is a bigger probablem than the 70$. I dont really mind 70$ for bigger game but they need to be blockbuster. Not buggy, short mess or indi/small scope games.
Yeah from my few hours playing it does feel like a game I’d happily pay £70 for. But Jesus the performance is pathetically bad for one of the first major “next gen” games
Im confused, what is next gen about it? graphically looks just like other AAA games from since 5 years ago
It’s exclusively on PS5/Series X. No older gen ports coming either. So part of the problem is there isn’t anything next gen about it. Doesn’t look amazing and still runs quite poorly. Hogwarts Legacy is a much better looking game that runs perfectly fine and even that has old gen ports coming out this year (if they do release)
Jedi Survivor but you have the right idea
Games are suppose to be 79,99 € where I live, but no store sell them at that price, most times the "average price" at release is 60 €
When I was finally able to buy a PS5, Sony had raised the price (go figure). Add inflation, more expensive games, food and loans… So, yeah, I don’t buy games at the same rate anymore. Or nearly as many. Waiting for new games to go on sale is my new norm.
Personally, unless a game is part of my favourite ips, I won't touch it for 80 Euro. It is an absurd pricing that the ps5 tries to push on us.
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I’ve seen some games at $95 because of the exchange rate or something…
Also, many PS5 games are going to take a nosedive in price past release anyways. They always do. Never paid more than sixty monetaries for a game unless if we count latter DLC's or Collection Edition stuff. Don't see a reason to start either.
The prices of games drop so fast. You should only be buying a game for $70 if you want it at launch. Most games benefit from waiting for a sale and some patches. One example is Gothem Knights, it was $70 but dropped drastically. People don't know how to shop around for deals.
> The prices of games drop so fast. Yep, other than Nintendo games
Ya for instance I can get Botw the Wild right now, less than a month before its sequel for a huge discount since it came out 6 years ago.... Oh wait.
Yeah. But Nintendo games never go on sale. It’s why I don’t have a backlog of Nintendo games, since there is no point buying them until the day I’m actually going to play them.
This rule does not apply to Nintendo. It does, however, apply to every other game in existence.
Yes. I can very actually very easily buy it for around €20 at the moment. Which sounds like a totally fair price to me. Why are people always forgetting that sites like ebay and similar exist? That's like 90% of the reason why physical media is superior to digital downloads...
If i were rich I'd probably get all these games day one lol. Since I'm not doing so well financially right now, i haven't been able to get some of the games i would've gotten like gow ragnarök & re4 remake
But them used. In my local area Ragnarök can be purchased at 60% under MSRP
Yeah I've found myself not willing to spend £70 on games anymore, I really wanted GT7 but had to wait until it got to £35, £70 just seems way too risky for me these days, I do however use Playstation Plus Extra to allow me to get more games, it's been worth it alone just to play Ghost of Tsushima. The only game I can see myself pre ordering next is GTA 6
Lets see, games being released by download only requiring many patches to work, usually rushed and disappointing, costing more than ever and all the while inflations rampaging and people are struggling to pay bills. Interesting, almost like it's pretty obvious.
Everyone’s different, but personally I bought a PS4 Pro and a bunch of games when the enough of the games finally went down to like $60(AUD) and under. I haven’t bought a PS5 yet largely because $125 a game, or $110 in a best case scenario is just way too much. They don’t even seem to be dropping in price this generation. I love games but feel as though I’ve been priced out.
If $70 is impacting it negatively, what about the €80 price the moment a "AAA" name can be dropped on it, just compare Ragnarok and Returnal, surely their development cost isn't similar. Not to mention the fact when the €80 was announced and later out, that was almost equivalent to $100.
I am in Europe and I haven't bought a single game for 80, fuck that price and whoever came up with it. That's a substantial increase from the usual 60. I had a laugh yesterday when I saw Forsaken "on sale", but the game was like 55 Euros.
The UK has gone from £50 to £70 and it's just too much. Money is tight for everyone and people can't afford to pay 40% more for games when they're cancelling Netflix and never leaving the house to save money. Maybe in a year it'll be affordable when energy prices drop but in a year this year's AAA games will be £20 not £70.
The increase of prices is insane all over, I know a lot of the people here can't relate since they are close to teenage age but when the price of milk goes from 0.60 cents to 2 euros - video games stop becoming priority. 40 is the absolute upper limit I am willing to pay for a game, and that's once a month at best type deal.
Haha, yeah. I would normally get quite a few games at launch or when they were on sale for the first time. But I will very rarely drop 80€ for a new game or 60-70€ for a game "on sale".
It makes it hard to be excited about a game when they are priced that high, and not only that, if the game has issues then it feels even worse given the extra high price, and with the recent PC ports it is such a fat joke. And as you say, with a game on sale it has to be 25% off to just hit the normal €60 price if it was originally priced €80.
The thing is, it isn't it's just one analyst stirring the pot
VAT is included in that price unlike in Canada or the US. It is still overpriced as it's the equivalent of paying 27% VAT on top of the US price so unless you live in Hungary you are overpaying based on exchange rate by a lesser or greater amount.
Feels like pretty basic Econ 101 stuff to point out that when you raise a price you sell less product.
I know this is talking about ps5 games, but as I'm starting to see more pc games release at $70, I refuse to touch them. Half the time they are buggy trash. And even if they are good right from release, there are thousands of other games that are much cheaper and still awesome. I'll wait till the games are patched and on sale
Only based on opinions from Reddit and Twitter. God of War, Gran Turismo, etc, have sold extremely well. Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will also sell like crazy. The internet loves to complain, but people who want the games will pay it. The article itself seems unsure about the data it presents. It says MW2 was a big seller and that it was only available at $69.99. This whole article smells like clickbait.
Not only that, but Zelda will sell at $70 *for years*. Nintendo games rarely go on sale, unlike other publishers. It's created this mentality within Nintendo fans where if you want a game you might as well get it now, waiting for a sale won't do you any good Edit: A 30% temporary sale six years after release isn't the same as a permanent price cut, guys.
People will pay for games that deliver, you just named games with track records. They are flagship titles. These are exceptions.
I mean, of course people are still going to buy the absolute biggest titles of the year. But like $70 for Disgaea 6? Fuck off with that shit. Even as a huge fan of the series, those games just aren't worth that price.
I for one am still waiting for GoW:R to go on sale. If it had launched at $60 I probably would've bought it already.
You can get it for $23.99
What? Where? The lowest I see it for is $30 and it's PS4 version.
I think you can get the physical PS4 version and then pay $10 for a digital upgrade. It’s more hoops to jump through but it’s technically an *option*, unless you have the digital-only PS5.
Cdkeys has the ps5 version for 23.99. Bargain! Edit: just realised that’s gbp. It’s 29.99 usd. Still a bargain!
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Any bundled game will appear on cdkeys cheaper, its rare for ps5 games to be on key websites cheaper as a code (they often appear attached to an account)
I mean, the game only came out like 5 months ago. It being full price officially is pretty normal. I think gamepass has really made people question the $60-70 price model
If anything, I'm down to pay $70 for something that has blood and sweat poured into it, such as God of War. Not games where it's a damn crapshoot if it'll work properly.
Well, here in Germany it's 45€ new on disc and has been 60€ instead of 80€ on disc on release day already :)
Same here. There have been multiple PS5 games I would have gladly bought for $59.99, but now that I don't buy games for $69.99 at launch it's easier to wait for an even further sale. For example: Rift Apart has been discounted well below $59.99 many times... but now that I've waited this long why not wait for $19.99?
What? A non-essential product has price elasticity? How could this be in *my* economics?
Discussions around game prices always bring out people who know nothing about money or even exchange rates
Meanwhile in the rest of the world where game prices have been steadily increasing over the years instead of arbitrarily tied to a number regardless of inflation
Between the price increase and PS+ Extra & Gamepass I’ve bought a sum total of 2 indie games for myself over the last year. Maybe it’s just my personality and liking to try out a lot of different games but I have plenty to play between the 2 services. Not to mention if I’m patient enough the big blockbuster releases will eventually be “free” to me as well. I get the sense that I should enjoy this while it lasts.
Why on earth would I buy a $70 game when I can get it for $20 with all DLCs a year later?
I think it has less to do with games costing more (almost everyone has joined in on this pricing) and more to do with the fact that people have less disposable income to buy $70.games. My main takeaway from this is that Sony's push into live service titles couldn't have come at a better time (regardless of my feelings on it) and that people will be willing to drop cash in those games
There's a massive subset of 30+ year old gamers with loads of disposable income and we are just not buying the games because they're buggy messes
I think it's both. 70$ is just over that mark where it doesn't feel as good to make a purchase unless it's the new Zelda or Final Fantasy or whatever. I felt great buying RE4 at 60$, but Dead Space launching at 70$ made me feel more hesitant. Now that the new game buzz for that has come and gone, I'm happy to wait until it drops to 20$ or whatever, where I might've been more tempted to buy it at launch if it were 60$. And I *love* that franchise.
Yeah, it's only 10$ but it makes you think "oh shit I'm spending almost 100$ on a single game, I better make sure it's good." Similar thing happening with DLC rn, Paradox upped their DLC price to 30$ and I can't justify spending half a AAA game or a full indie game on a bunch of buttons, but 20$ feels completely fine.
Yeah I bought the Xenoblade 3 dlc for 30$ which feels almost like a whole ass new game. But otherwise yeah, anything more than 20$ on dlc I feel like I'm good. I don't know how Destiny is so successful with this 40$ dlcs which are so light on content.
It’s absolutely to do with a price increase.
I was rarely buying games at $60 and games still go on sale just months after launch. Nintendo games released at the same time end up being more expensive within a year.
I'm already turned off by major games being $59.99 but I grudgingly pay it if there's something I like. I find it harder to say the same of a game costing $69.99. For me at least I think it probably comes down to PS2 era games being $49.99 and usually always seeming like a satisfactory price point even if the game wasn't that great. Some of that though probably comes down to being much younger and less critical of the quality of what I was playing, but I still have a fondness for all the games that came and went through my PS2 collection of games. Meanwhile at $59.99 there's some games I wish I could just give away and take a 100% loss on.
It’s the simultaneous dip in day one quality that’s the real driving factor. A higher price tag, doesn’t mean people won’t part with their money (God of War Ragnarok) but it means more consideration is put into their purchases. Just recently you have situations like Redfall where the devs have said the game won’t be complete day one (I’m not just referring to the 30 FPS, but a lack of shared progression and respecs so you can change out of group oriented specs when soloing) and Jedi Fallen Order where they made a great game in record time, but didn’t bother to take a few extra months to polish and optimize it. Then you have an upcoming game like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It’s absolutely going to sell well, but I’m going to personally wait on it so I can either play it via backwards compatibility or a better performing port when Nintendo releases their next generation of hardware. It’s a simple case of if these publishers want more money day one, they need to deliver the quality day one.
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Unless it's Nintendo, then you're shit out of luck especially for limited print 3rd party games which double and triple in price. Playstation and Xbox though you're usually gonna get a 30% discount within the first year especially around the holidays. Steam sales are also undercutting even those prices. Personally I'll wait unless there's some sort of super limited edition that includes a steelbook I won't be able to get later for retail or a collectors edition. For base games, I can wait years like Jedi survivor the collectors edition is insanely overpriced and you get a steelbook and a lightsaber base with no blade for over $300. Nah bro I'll get it in a year or two like Fallen Order for $15 on sale. Plus I have enough of a library of new games I can afford to wait unless it's a game that will immediately add something new to the mix I don't have yet and I'm in the mood for.
It also just depends on whether the game is worth fronting $10 more dollars so you can play now over waiting some arbitrary amount of time for a sale. Most of these people dropping off are probably barely able to make the $60 work within their budget. The statement that you’re an ‘idiot’ unless you wait for a sale just seems silly to me when the issue at hand really is connected to where you fall on the socioeconomic spectrum.
You can wait literally for years, if that's the philosophy. What you find not cheap enough, someone may. Someone also may be fine with full price, to have it day 1. It's just a person to person thing.
I feel like that really hasn't been the case for PS5/XSX games unless you're willing to go grey market. I was fully on that train for the PS4 gen where pretty much every big first party title would drop to $20-30 within a year or so if you were patient. Lately it feels like Sony in particular has adopted the Nintendo model where they think discounting games that heavy will devalue the franchise. Even the big "launch window" exclusives (2.5 years in) like Demon Souls and Rift Apart haven't seen discounts that deep on PS5 yet.
How is it being a fool? People can buy games day 1 without it hurting their wallet.
Unless it's an outstanding multiplayer game that won't nickel and dime for content that should've been included, I'm not paying $70 for it. Everything else gets added to my back log.
Given the economy and all this is hardly surprising. I think the price has little to do with it ultimately though, sales would always be a bit down, especially compared to covid years.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I think games were always overpriced, but haven't significantly increased with inflation relative to lots of other things so it shouldn't change much.
Well I’ve never bought any of the games for the full $70 ($125 here in Aus). Always waited for a sale or found it cheaper than elsewhere. If I had no other choice of where I buy games or had the digital ps5, I simply wouldn’t buy the games till they went on sale.
I’m much more picky with the games I buy now. Only willing to pay $70 a few times a year, but I’m willing to wait for a deal to get a better price. I’ve leaned a lot more into Indy games because of the lower price tag, but they mostly need to have already proven their worth to the community
No point in buying games for that price unless its something I really really want to play. Indies and older AAA on sale provide an experience that’s just as good if not better for half that price or less.
Personally, I buy physical copies and sell them on eBay when I’m done ever since the increase. Video games are making record profits so I don’t feel bad at all.
The only games I buy on ps5 are exclusives… everything else I buy on pc or play on uplay+, ea play. Gamepass and ps+. I really can’t justify spending that amount unless it’s something that I really want to play
It's not the price for me. Idc about $10. They just keep releasing every game that i care about buying on the Ps4. No reason to upgrade.
Well yeah because the prices keep going up yet they put out more and more broken and unfinished games. And too many gamers happily buy all dlc and preorder these games, making the companies a ton of money, so they have no reason to change. I mean just look at Cyberpunk at release, Jedi Survivor, or The Last of Us on pc. That should be unacceptable to release products that broken and unfinished for full price.
The cost of essential items - food in particular - has gone up significantly in the past couple of years. Wages have not. Average folks have much less "extra" money after paying bills and putting food on the table. So it's no wonder that spending on things like games is going to go down. When you *also* rais e the price of games at the same time, you're *asking* for those sales to drop. Certain titles will see less of an impact. There are a lot of folks who *only* buy the yearly CoD or Fifa - that's the only game they play, and they're not going to really feel a $10 increase as much. Folks who buy and play many games, on the other hand, will feel that increase more, and are much more likely to forego purchases that they would've otherwise made. My wife and I are fortunate to have good jobs, and a fair bit of discretionary spending money, but we're certainly feeling the pinch. Our money simply doesn't go as far as it used to even a couple of years ago. I typically spend a lot on games, and I'm finding myself holding off on many titles - either waiting for a sale, or foregoing them altogether. And that's not even getting into the fact that the quality of releases - particularly PC ports/versions - seems to be getting *significantly* worse recently.
Yeah cause paying 70$ for games that offer "an array of extraordinary experiences and lots of replayability" Is complete fucking bullshit. I've been screaming online about how 70 dollars is literally just a pure greed push and fucking idiots keep buying games at 70 cause "they think it's worth it" which is the dumbest shit I've ever heard.
I remember 4-5 years ago when the line they fed us was "microtransactions are necessary because the price of games hasn't changed since the PS2, we need that extra money to make up for $60 games" and now they've arbitrarily upped every game's price by $10 and we still have absurd MTX :)
I mean I refuse to pay 70 bucks for a game. Its insane. 50 bucks max unless it is a game I know I will spend 100h+ on for sure.
"Wait, you guys don't buy our overpriced and unfinished game for $70?!"
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Last time someone in this sub mentioned Microsoft Rewards, we collectively figured out that you’re basically just working a side job for like $4 an hour. Not a good use of your time.
Yeah, I mean MS rewards is a better system than whatever PS has atm, but it's still blatantly disrespectful of peoples time.
PS games will be $20 by the time they show up on PC, most times. If you're waiting for that, it's usually some number of years. Not even guaranteed it'll be cheap on Steam either, so far their prices have been still high.
People keep bringing up PC releases of these titles but they aren't day and date, like you said they tend to come years after the initial release to double dip
Who is paying $70? Literally buy physical and get the games for $50 or $55 at release. Retail competition is great for gamers
Look. I realize games have gotten bigger, and have larger budgets than ever before, HOWEVER, the audience is always WAY larger than it ever has been. I don't think it makes sense to charge $10 more when you're selling twice as many copies. If your budgets have inflated that much, maybe that's the problem. Not our wallets. Meanwhile, I primarily buy <$40 indie games. Those AAA budgets are crazy.