I think the average VG pricing will soon reach $100

[Xzi]

And yet these days the games have a much higher development cost but somehow $70 is something to complain about.

Even at $70, lengthy games do continue to provide the best value in entertainment. I draw the line at $70 games monetized as though they're F2P. Thing is, when the price of necessities go up, people naturally get more critical of their luxury spending. Plus there's only so much time in a year, and 2023 has been more packed than average with highly-acclaimed releases. Might as well give many of them time to drop to half off or so.

 

[depaul]

I remember buying SF2:CE for the Mega Drive in 1993 for £59.99 and thinking it was totally worth it.

Wow I just remembered when my father bought ultimate mortal kombat 3 for 6990 Ptas (Spanish Pesetas), or about $60. Good times

 

[DinohScene]

And yet these days the games have a much higher development cost but somehow $70 is something to complain about.

I guess entitlement is the only thing that truly inflated.

 

[MMX]

And yet these days the games have a much higher development cost but somehow $70 is something to complain about.

I wonder what the development cost of the new MGS Collection was

tbh, 60€ from 2010 isn't the same anymore and it's reasonable that new releases will be 80. I see no issue with that if I perceive the product to be quality. Like I'd gladly pay 80 for GTA6 or Judgment 3.

 

[BETA215]

With inflation, I think $100 will soon become the norm for pirating. Get efficient with your budgets or screw you. Saying as someone that hasn't been able to buy games, not because they didn't wanted...

 

[Marc_LFD]

That's why Retro games will always be better even in the emulation scene. Yeah you can get games through other mans, but they'll be worth more than getting modern games who will eventually be just as expensive as getting phones, TVs, tablets, etc.

I'm tired of the whole used market bullshit with retro games so I decided to make my own digital retro collection and play that instead. Now, for a few hours I've been downloading and organizing Dreamcast games (and demos) to play sometime later.

I also downloaded Turbografx16/CD games if I want to play that too. Fun fact: Altered Beast was released on TG16, NES, SMS, and the Genesis (the best version, yet it doesn't include the backstory).



The Genesis version acts like an arcade game. I.e., straight to the game, no story!

 

[ironrafael09]

That's mostly why I think I'm going back to the retro scene. I think there's never been a year after I've had a decent PC that I haven't used it to emulate old school games. Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 2 mostly. I try getting excited for new releases, but it just doesn't happen that often anymore. Last racing game released was Forza Motorsport (2023) and from what I've read in the reviews I'm probably not gonna play it. I also managed to get my hands on an Xbox OG and fitted it with an SSD to prevent power outages from frying my HDDs and taking my savegames with them (which has happened once). I hope we can turn this around, but games keep getting more expensive and less interesting to me.

 

[DarkCoffe64]

I remember buying SF2:CE for the Mega Drive in 1993 for £59.99 and thinking it was totally worth it.

Man, I dunno y'all, but here in Italy, back in them ps1-2 days, most games tended to cost around 40 to 50 euros, rarely 60, with the new generation of consoles then having games mainly cost 50-60 euros, aside Wii ones.
Guess maybe with some value converting shenanigans, it ends up being the same price despite the different values, but dunno, just feel games were actually worth how much they asked back then.

And yet these days the games have a much higher development cost but somehow $70 is something to complain about.

I guess entitlement is the only thing that truly inflated.

Well, excuse me if effing demanding to have a game actually worth the price they're asking is too fucking much.
I still fucking remember when I used to just buy a game on release, fully complete and finished, able to actually play the game to unlock the extra stuff and things like that. Perhaps some games had some bugs or what, but most of them released stable.

Now you spend 70 fucking bucks or more to buy something that, especially on release, it's an unfinished broken mess, filled to the brim with monetization, demanding you to waste your money for things you used to just unlock before, and even then, you're only buying the skeleton of said game, add all the stuff they add in post, DLC, season passes and crap like that, and if you want the full package, then you're probably going to spend 150+ bucks on a single game.

Let's also not forget how a ton of these games are fucking ruined by this monetization bullshit, making the game a grindy slog to tempt you into buying the "timesavers" and "exp boosters" and shit. I dunno you, that sounds like a fucking scam to me.

All these big corporations lamenting about how "costly" it is to make games nowadays, and then make profits way over the cost of making said games, I don't give a shit and they just fucking piss me off. If you don't wanna use your cash to make a game, guess what, either make lower budget games, or fucking don't! It's been shown so many times before that you don't need super realistic graphics or stratospheric budgets to create an amazing game that sells like hot cakes. Hell, the new pokemon games are digital diarrhea, yet they've sold gangbusters. Plus, a lot of these scumpanies barely even pay their developers, so fuck off with them.

I don't fucking understand the point of this race for the super high quality realistic graphics or what: Why do we need them and why should we care?? All this does is inflate said game budgets towards it at the cost of everything else. So many games out there you can say look "beautiful" but play like shit since the devs had to focus on like making the dirt on the ground realistically kick dust up whenever the character stepped on it. All I want is just a game being good and not ask me to pay more for it. If I want a super realistic game, I just look outside the damn window.

So yeah, guess sorry if I and many other people aren't satisfied with paying 70 bucks for a game.
Now here I'd add about most indie games are better than these bigger budgeted games, but even those aren't really all perfect or what. Most of them can be said to be good, but only a few would say are truly great. If you can find them in sea of shit and like overcooked and vampire survivors clones, ugh.

Whatever, I'm tired of writing and ranting, I'm gonna go waste my time doing something else. Sigh.

 

[DestinyWells]

the development costs for AAA games have been steadily increasing over the years. there are some factors contributing to this, including the rising game design complexity, the demand for high-quality graphics, extensive voice acting, and the need for large development teams. the factors, along with marketing and distribution costs, have driven up the overall budget for creating and launching a AAA game

as a result, the pricing of AAA games has remained relatively stable at around $60 for quite some time. with the increasing development costs and the desire for publishers to maintain profitability, it's not unlikely that we might see higher prices for new AAA titles in the future

actually, some gaming companies have already experimented with higher price points for certain editions of their games or additional content, and this trend could continue. but the gaming industry is also evolving, with more emphasis on ingame purchases, season passes, and other monetization strategies. this might help balance out the rising development costs while keeping the base game price relatively stable for a while.

so, while $100 for a standard AAA game may not be the immediate norm, it's possible that we'll see some price increases or changes in pricing models in the future to adapt to the increasing development costs and inflation...

 

[Bladexdsl]

will reach huh?

 

[depaul]

the development costs for AAA games have been steadily increasing over the years. there are some factors contributing to this, including the rising game design complexity, the demand for high-quality graphics, extensive voice acting, and the need for large development teams. the factors, along with marketing and distribution costs, have driven up the overall budget for creating and launching a AAA game

as a result, the pricing of AAA games has remained relatively stable at around $60 for quite some time. with the increasing development costs and the desire for publishers to maintain profitability, it's not unlikely that we might see higher prices for new AAA titles in the future

actually, some gaming companies have already experimented with higher price points for certain editions of their games or additional content, and this trend could continue. but the gaming industry is also evolving, with more emphasis on ingame purchases, season passes, and other monetization strategies. this might help balance out the rising development costs while keeping the base game price relatively stable for a while.

so, while $100 for a standard AAA game may not be the immediate norm, it's possible that we'll see some price increases or changes in pricing models in the future to adapt to the increasing development costs and inflation...

Very well explained! Excuse me are you by chance using an AI tool to gather information? Just wondering because your reply just seems 100% perfect

 

[AncientBoi]

Or Just wait like I do for the steam sale when it's like 75% off because the game was either too expensive or not able yo live up to the hype I stopped doing the pirating thing for pc once I lost 400 hours on a game I really liked when my pc died and took the save with it. So now I just stick to steam sales for the cloud backups.

Thanks for reminding me [proceeds to backup everything to the clouds]

 

[jahrs]

Thanks for reminding me [proceeds to backup everything to the clouds]

Make sure you have a decent ramp it's pretty hard to get up there. Double so in reverse but when you do ask them if they can make it rain cause I don't wanna water all my outdoor plants today.

 

[Marc_LFD]

That's mostly why I think I'm going back to the retro scene. I think there's never been a year after I've had a decent PC that I haven't used it to emulate old school games. Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 2 mostly. I try getting excited for new releases, but it just doesn't happen that often anymore. Last racing game released was Forza Motorsport (2023) and from what I've read in the reviews I'm probably not gonna play it. I also managed to get my hands on an Xbox OG and fitted it with an SSD to prevent power outages from frying my HDDs and taking my savegames with them (which has happened once). I hope we can turn this around, but games keep getting more expensive and less interesting to me.

I have tried getting into N64 gaming and N64 has some good games, but the graphics look kind of odd to me as in it didn't age too well, except for Mario 64, Smash 64, Mario Kart 64, Conker, Zelda: OoT, and so on.

I just prefer older Nintendo consoles, Sega consoles, and PS1/PS2 than N64.

 

[eternal]

Everyone keeps talking about the prices cause of inflation, and whatnot...but what about all the legit cdkeysellers who can sell the new games even at a discount. Like greenmangaming, humble and others.
Surely the gaming industry cant be losing that much money if they can sell (who knows what amount of keys) as preorders and on launch day.

On the flip side of that I understand the normal digital games consumer wont look for that but still. Ive seen some AAA titles for a tiny bit more than 20$ off for US prices.

 

[Quore]

That's why Retro games will always be better even in the emulation scene. Yeah you can get games through other mans, but they'll be worth more than getting modern games who will eventually be just as expensive as getting phones, TVs, tablets, etc.

There's something I say sometimes to my friends when I see something like this:

"In the future, we will only play games by: buying old games, emulating older games and pirating new games"

 

[CoolKid575]

Maybe in like 15-20 years; but I seriously doubt games will reach $100 anytime soon. People are just starting to get used to $70 being the norm. And higher budgets don't inherently mean higher prices; after all, movies cost hundreds of millions to make as well and you can get a movie ticket for like $15.