Even the most terrible AAA games sell millions of copies these days. They more than make their money back with each one, the margins are slimmer but the volume is magnitudes higher than ever. Cry me a river.
This exact thought (volume) occurred to me when I saw the headline. They like to say that the price of games hasn’t increased in line with inflation, but I’d be interested to know how big the market was in the 80s, 90s, 2000s and today. I’d bet the market is orders of magnitude bigger today.
I’d be curious comparing these prices to median income or median disposable income. I’m guessing it tracks those numbers much closer than inflation, which wages haven’t kept pace with.
And the profitability has skyrocketed. The videogame industry is now one of the largest insudtries on the planet. A big driver has been normalisation of after-purchase items. Console players now pay to unlock their collar to the internet (ps+ and XBlive). Microtransactions add to this, and now battlepasses want $10+ every 50-90 days. Lootboxes normalizing near-gambling with overwatches success was a huge bar-lift in profitability expectations for shareholders.
Special editions are also hitting $90 and higher, plus those other expenditures. Ask “the gamers tm” and they’ll tell you you have to buy a special edition for $120 or you’re not a real fan anyway. Starfield has a $300 version. The Digital Premium doesn’t even come with the GAME! It’s another $35 after you already gave Microsoft $70.
Additionally, the work to make a new game has decreased. Assets are able to be salvaged from one engine to the next reducing the amount of work to make a game in UE6 after it was on UE5. the workforce has matured and can be taught as a class so there’s not nearly as many “self taught” making half a game. Roller Coaster Tycoon was made almost entirely by one dude. Obviously re-using assets is smart. But then to say you “built the game from the ground up” is false. Elden Ring was even praised for it
Marketing budgets have fuckin EXPLODED. A “Rule of Thumb” for indie devs is to spend HALF your budget on just marketing. Destiny allegedly spent 2.5× what they spent on development, for marketing. Publishing studios didn’t used to spend this much. “For every dollar on the game, spend another .25 to .50 on marketing”
Buying power has gone DOWN since ps1. You think I’m joking but federal minimum wage in the US is still 7.25. In 1994 (launch of ps1). It was 4.25 - adjusted for inflation thats $8.43. Meaning if you made minimum wage then, you’d be making more than minimum wage now, effectively. People are fucking broke and game companies want MORE money for games.
In 1994 when you bought a PS1 game you got THE WHOLE GAME. That was it. There was no merch drop pip-boy for the special edition. There was no Day-One patch. There was no “pay to get multiplayer”. There was no in-game shop to buy skins for the characters. All these features were intentionally cut to resell to consumers post-launch.
Games cost less to make now, but budgets went up. Buying power is down. Please stop defending corporate bullshit excuses about wanting more money, forever.
It was a specific example to show how AAA games reuse assets, not mtx. A low hanging fruit of that could be like…any sports game.
A similar example of good reuse could be EA and a specific Female Character Mesh they’ve had for awhile and they just keep reusing her. The photo example I found searching was Falck from BF 2042. Her hitbox and mesh is in Battlefront 2, as a First Order officer; and in Battlefield 5.
I dont outright hate reuse of things here and there - it saves money and time.
This drives me crazy every time I see it so I’m glad to see others recognizing this. Yes game production has gone up, but the market has massively increased. Your costs are fixed; doesn’t matter if you sell 10,000 copies or 10,000,000. More people are gaming than ever so when I see all these attempts to squeeze more money from consumers to address rising costs I have no sympathy for the publisher.
When the creator of Stardew Valley can charge $14 for his awesome game, and put it on multiple platforms and release updates for jo extra cost, and not charge subscription fees, and everyone can mod it and be happy, and the creator has made multimillions by now … Other companies need to take note.
From someone who worked at a company who wasted tons of money and had too many parties, excess staff and ceos who made excessive salaries, if these gaming companies are charging too much they need to look internally to fix issues instead of asking their customers to fuel their greed.
He said “because of ballooning development costs”. Stardew valley is famously a one man labor of love, the opposite of ballooning development costs.
$14 pr sold copy is ridiculously high in this context, because development costs is only for one dude.
You’re comparing this guys runaway success with a company with several development teams, office spaces, marketing teams, accountants, probably janitors, security, etc, etc.
I’m not saying he is in the right, just pointing out that it is apples to oranges.
You’re comparing this guys runaway success with a company with several development teams, office spaces, marketing teams, accountants, probably janitors, security, etc, etc.
That’s sorta the point tho, isn’t it. Not saying Capcom should be one guy in a bedroom, but maybe there’s alot of bloat not related to actual game development that could be streamlined/cut. Esp. When it comes to executives.
I agree with this. I find myself regularly missing the middle of the road games with lower development costs because those are the games that often dares to try new things.
Last one I remember like that was Ubisoft’s “Grow Home” which was utterly charming and had me hooked from beginning to end. Didn’t need to be big. Didn’t need amazing graphics. Just needed a little idea that (pardon the pun) grew to become a really engaging game.
More games like that please! Maybe the development costs didn’t have to balloon that much.
These “development costs” are creating beta-level games and you don’t even just pay $60 for a game anyway.
Street Fighter 6 is $60. Street Fighter 6’s TMNT content alone (not including the base game) is $100. They have more than made up for any development costs with the ridiculous amount of “DLC” and MTX.
Or… maybe development costs have just gotten stupidly high? There are a lot of great indie games for a few bucks that pack a heck of a lot more fun and experimentation than a lot of the cookie cutters garbage coming out of a lot of big studios lately. I’m honestly sick of every facet of my life trying to bleed me dry of any spare cent I get.
I just recently played Hrot, and it has been one of my favorite shooters to come out as of late. A game made by a Czech dude in a custom engine that he wrote for $16.00. I’ll play four separate games like that before I spend $70.00 for many competing AAA games out there. Not that high budget games shouldn’t have a place, but sometimes less can be more.
The president of Capcom can lick the wrinkles out of my sweat steamed scrotum if he thinks I’m buying another Capcom game after this.
Yeah, games cost more to make than they did on the SNES.
But theres also an absolutely massively bigger customer base buying more games than ever before. So if your big name games are failing to bring in big numbers, that sounds like you and your fellow executives need to step down and let someone who knows what customers actually want run the company. But I bet that thought never crossed his fuckin mind.
Just to add to what you mentioned, Capcoms Street Fighter 6 in my region on steam is $100 AUD, assuming you don’t want the deluxe or ultimate editions (Not that the store page bothers to explain the differences}. On top of that you can buy the Year 1 character pass for $45 which adds 4 characters. The ultimate pass for $75 which adds the previously mentioned characters and some cosmetics for those 4 characters. The soundtrack for $50 holy shit that’s an expensive soundtrack.
And on top of all that you can buy the games in game currency, fighter coins. Which are used to unlock costumes and characters including classic costumes. Wanna buy a character? You’ll never be able to buy just the right amount of coins, coz fuck you give us money.
It’s bad enough these people want to raise prices whilst making record breaking profits, but they monetize their games in so many different and often scummy ways on top of the purchase price.
I want to say thats an example of out of touch executives.
But we both know predatory practices like that wouldnt have gotten this far if there wasnt a plethora of short sighted idiots out there, with more money than sense, refusing to do without their instant gratification and, as a result, not only throwing literally mountains of money at predatory companies, but actively complaining online about how they wish they could get even more financially exploited.
Tsujimoto also went on to claim that a slow economy wouldn’t have a big impact on video game prices either: “Just because there’s a recession doesn’t mean you won’t go to the movie theater or go to your favorite artist’s concert. High-quality games will continue to sell,” he said.
Yes it does. “Recession” means you have less disposable income to waste on poor quality entertainment.
Most cinemas in my region charge $12 to $20 per ticket. But, there was one I found in Brisbane with tickets as low as $4. My wife and I would literally go watch movies just to sit in their air con.
Why not. 3 dollars for a couple of hours of entertainment is poor cost efficiency compared with what I’ve got out of some games. Don’t get me wrong, capcom don’t need to raise prices as I’m pretty sure they make plenty of money already, but cinema is not cost effective entertainment compared with a video game.
Or, hear me out, we cut out the most expensive part of game development.
Upper management. They cost the most, contribute the least (if anything), and can be replaced by someone who not only take 25% of what some of these CEOs make, but do a better job.
To also be fair, producers have been trying to raise prices on game for over 15 years now to little traditional success and instead relying on battle pass and micro transactions
I don’t think it is surprising that with recent events they are attempting to raise prices again
The BASE cost remains the same. They then started finding ways market a spreadsheets with of ‘versions’. Then they added ‘micro’ transactions, battle passes, etc. Or they just shut down the old game so you have to buy the new version to keep playing.
And the cost of games has risen faster the minimum wage in the US.
So will all the multi millionaires and billionaires video games were making… I think $60 was more than fine for a large studio produced game.
Here’s my hot take, I agree, but publishers need to increase pay to developers before I will accept a price hike. Until then I am waiting for that discount like I always do.
The best developers are not in the game industry, because of the pay. Only exceptions like really-into-games dudes and highly skilled ones, like game engine developers.
I actually agree with him, and I am not an employee of the gaming industry. In the mid 90s N64 carts were freaking $79.99 at one point early on! I realize part of this is because the carts were expensive, but even CD based games were not THAT far behind at $49.99 or $59.99 as I recall. I realize they don’t have the same physical distribution costs, but game prices really have not kept up with inflation. Growing up it was a big freaking deal to get a new NES game you damn well better learn to love it, like it or not haha. Now… games are generally much more affordable for the average family, plus if you just wait a bit and don’t buy on release (barring Nintendo 1st party titles) they are way cheaper!
I’ve never understood why people defend this mentality. Ballooning development costs? Last I checked half of the triple A games that get released spent just as much on marketing as fucking development. Not to mention Video Game revenue has been increasing year on year.
Also fuck these people because how often does this shit release with extra “monetisation” like on top of trying to make games more expensive they also throw in tons of microtransactions, loot boxes and battle passes, platform exclusive content, pre-order exclusive content etc.
Maybe you should stop spending millions on overblown graphics, motion capture, voice acting, pointless story/cutscenes, and other bullshit and just make a game like you did in the old days then, Crapcom.
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