Support NeoGAF

[Phase]

The layoffs are because they overextended themselves while simultaneously producing many poor quality products. This is how the market corrects itself. Most people don't have money to purchase luxury products right now and you want them to pay MORE for them? The result of raising the prices right now would be even less sales.

 

[Punished Miku]

Unless what PC has been doing isn't really working anymore.

Maybe that cheapskate mindset is part of why the industry is suffering.

The bigger the budget gets, the more She Hulk you will get. When there's unlimited money going to the west coast with limited oversight, and anytime people criticize it you just blame the consumers. That's how you end up with more She Hulk. They can make you a She Hulk game at Insomniac for $80 sold over 3 parts.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Why are you putting any amount of blame on pc gaming? Sony is a console-first company. This isn't ms that puts games out day and date.

I'm not putting blame on the PC community, but I consider the possibility that PC gaming could see a price increase.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

Just hypothetically speaking, if the industry decides to raise prices on PC releases, what are PC gamers going to do?
Play webbrowser games while consoles get all the great games?

Or are they going to jump ship to consoles, or quit gaming entirely?

Wait for a sale? Unless you are also suggesting that games never go on sale on pc as well?

 

[sankt-Antonio]

In the 90s only a small portion of people played video games, the highest selling game of 1990 sold 3,5 mill (up until 1992) - Super Mario.
These have been juggernaut numbers in 1990-1992.

Everything else sold a couple hundred thousand copies, so development had to be payed off of these units, so price was at 90$.
Since then gaming has ballooned and every other game sells millions in a couple of weeks, so game price could stay the same over the years because more games have been sold and competition arose.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Only for Playstation PC releases.

You know, for extra revenue.

Easier to just raise your online and PlayStation Plus fees.

You’ll do nothing but whine and then bend over: Sony knows who’s easy and who’s not.

 

[mitch1971]

For the $1 gamepass subscribers

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Brand new games here in Canada are $103 with tax, I went from buying multiple new releases per year, I’m talking 5 to 10 back when games were $60 Canadian, to now buying 1 to 3. As a result of their increase in prices, I am now more patient and saving more. With most games I wait for a deep discount, if they increase the price I will just continue to do so, they’re not gonna be getting more money out of people like me.

I suspect that this is because of the Sony layoffs, in which case you’re delusional if you think they would use that money to hire more employees, or prevent employees from getting laid off.

Sonys profits rely heavily on the PS division. Roughly $2 billion per year for ages.

They are going to try spending back as little of that as possible. They want to purely bank it. It’s not like they increased sub plan fees 33% in some regions so they can relay it back to gamers in the form of more games made. It went straight to the bottom line. No different than todays cost cutting which is to preserve as best as possible that $2 billion annual profit from the gaming division.

For every 100 employees cut making $100,000 on avg. that’s $10M. 900 employees might be $90M. For sale of argument round it off to $100M.

So for next year that $2 billion can creep up to $2.1 bill.

 

[Elysium44]

You keep harping on 2005 prices.

The standard price for new release games until late 2005 was still $49.99. High speed internet was still very geographically limited. Only a handful of games got full priced "expansions". Expansions to successful games were usually full blown sequels. Most games were still feature complete out of the box. Games like Halo 2 were outliers, not the norm.

Since late 2005, the base cost of games went from 49.99 to 59.99 to 69.99. They have added more "revenue streams" than they could have ever imagined in 2005 with DLCs, micro- and macro-transactions, the online passes of the late 2000s, season passes, GaaS, digital-only cost reductions, et cetera.

They're already charging a LOT more than 2005 prices and the end result has been a gradual decline in overall quality.

Since 2005 the base cost of games has stayed the same in real terms, more or less. (Until it recently rose to $70 it has been cheaper in real terms for years.)

Rarely are the expansions and microtransactions you refer to in modern games, essential. Some games have good ones, and people are happy to pay extra. That isn't new, GTA IV had two expansion DLCs 15 years ago. Forza Motorsport 3 I believe was the first Forza game to introduce a multitude of car pack DLC the same year, and so on. None of this is new.

 

[Forsythia]

How about no. How about publishers realising not every game needs to be a 300 million AAA blockbuster.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Wait for a sale? Unless you are also suggesting that games never go on sale on pc as well?

That's also an option. But then you have to hope the games you want go on a noteworthy sale, if they go on sale at all.

But it's purely hypothetical, ofcourse. I figured people who always talk about having expensive gaming hardware don't worry that much about a couple of bucks more per game.

 

[Killjoy-NL]

Easier to just raise your online and PlayStation Plus fees.

You’ll do nothing but whine and then bend over: Sony knows who’s easy and who’s not.

Or I'll just go PC if Sony gets carried away.

Plan B.

 

[Tajaz2426]

Since 2005 the base cost of games has stayed the same in real terms, more or less. (Until it recently rose to $70 it has been cheaper in real terms for years.)

Rarely are the expansions and microtransactions you refer to in modern games, essential. Some games have good ones, and people are happy to pay extra. That isn't new, GTA IV had two expansion DLCs 15 years ago. Forza Motorsport 3 I believe was the first Forza game to introduce a multitude of car pack DLC the same year, and so on. None of this is new.

Bud, they charge 20 dollars for a digital costume that had no value. They make plenty of profit. Stop boot licking, EA alone made 4.3 billion on micro transactions last year. In 2011 they made a 100 million. They have plenty of money.

Edit: you realize the stratospheric difference between those do you not?

 

[MagiusNecros]

I'll pay more if the game is worth more. Realistically most games aren't even worth $30 much less $70.

If people want to pull the inflation card also understand that while the price of products goes up by 30% the same cannot be said about wages. Which leads to people spending less overall.

And honestly with how great tech is today these companies or devs shouldn't be spending millions to make a single game over the course of 3-5 years. What a waste.

 

[King Dazzar]

OP, unfortunately giving rich multi billion corporations even more money, doesn't mean they would still not be making redundancies. This is with an industry where by they abuse gamers/customers with micro transactions, super duper ultimate titanium editions, online forced subscription passes, pre-ordered bonuses, loot boxes, refund challenges. And then frequently deliver broken, half baked games, with a non commital promise that they will fix it later on over the coming months. The industry has repeatedly demonstrated anti consumer practises and your solution is to play a violin and give them even more money. Sorry, but fuck that.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

That's also an option. But then you have to hope the games you want go on a noteworthy sale, if they go on sale at all.

But it's purely hypothetical, ofcourse. I figured people who always talk about having expensive gaming hardware don't worry that much about a couple of bucks more per game.

I don't know where you get this idea? One of the benefits of the pc platform is the cheaper software. I fail to see why you would want to pay more for games just because you spend more on hardware. Should games on ps5 pro cost more?

 

[intheinbetween]

I agree the current mainstream model is unsustainable however I refuse to pay more for a product which is not worth it. Funny this topic arises when Sony announces layoffs, not weeks ago when many other companies were laying of, studios not meeting goals or even studios being closed.

I refuse to pay more than 80€/$ for a product that will provide the same or less entertainment as it did 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30+ years ago. If the industry has to adopt to a new model or go back to basic instead of going full cinematic experience then so be it

 

[cireza]

Making the games more expensive will lead to companies making less money, since less people will be able to afford the games. Raising the prices is not some kind of magical solution, it is about finding a sweet spot where you can get as much money as possible from people having different revenues.

 

[Elysium44]

Bud, they charge 20 dollars for a digital costume that had no value. They make plenty of profit. Stop boot licking, EA alone made 4.3 billion on micro transactions last year. In 2011 they made a 100 million. They have plenty of money.

Which you aren't forced to buy. They aren't making plenty of profit, have you been watching the news lately? Sony profit margins are tiny. Microsoft probably isn't making any profits on the Xbox division at all. Studios worldwide are slashing jobs.

 

[Dr.Morris79]

What is this shit?

 

[Killjoy-NL]

I don't know where you get this idea? One of the benefits of the pc platform is the cheaper software. I fail to see why you would want to pay more for games just because you spend more on hardware. Should games on ps5 pro games cost more?

Sony can charge whatever they want. If I don't think it's worth it, I won't buy it.
I'm also not loyal to Playstation, so if I think they way overcharge for their games, I'll buy a nice gaming PC.

I'm not worried about gameprices. €80 is cheaper than going out to diner for 2 and games last way longer than it takes to finish my plate.

So I don't see a problem with raising prices on PC, because it's all relative.

On the other hand, I do agree that it's an issue for publishers, not the end-user.
So it's not like I don't get the point being made here.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Your dollar went a lot further back then though. That's a big difference.

Which makes the post I was responding too all that much worse. $500 back then was a much much much bigger chunk of someone's income than $500 today. A NeoGeo was a true luxury item, which is a big reason why it failed.

 

[digdug2]

Just recently I went to Subway in Germany and got a 12" sub. It cost almost $17 but it was the same shitty $5 dollar footlong quality as it always was.

The same thing will happen with gaming if they jack up the price, because we all know the quality won't rise in kind. A rising tide does not lift all boats, Mark.

 

[Tajaz2426]

which you aren't forced to buy. They aren't making plenty of profit, have you been watching the news lately? Sony profits are tiny. Microsoft probably isn't making any profits on the Xbox division at all. Studios worldwide are slashing jobs.

Yeah, that’s on them for mismanaging their companies, not the fault of the consumer. Plenty of companies out there making record breaking profits. They assumed because of folks being indoors during covid that they would keep making the money and hired more and spent more on development. Sony also bought a few companies, right along with Microsoft spending a cool 80 or so billion.

That isn’t my fault or anyone else’s but their own. If they do not understand the market and employ their strategies correctly, they go out of business. Oh well.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

This sounds an awful lot like Disney blaming the fans for The Marvels bombing. Here's a radical thought. Manage your budgets and make good games.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Gamers: We should be paying more for our gamez! The developers can’t sustain themselves!!

The Developers

 

[demented waffle]

Or how about they just use AI instead of an army of graphics designers and engineers instead.

The people laid off can #learntoweld.

 

[Yautja_Warrior]

Companies need to manage their finances better and more efficiently when making games now, not put that burden on customers.

We have already seen an increase in prices on many bigger games and I already wait for more sales because of that, plus I still buy physical games too because I can get them £10-£20 cheaper than digital in most cases. I've seen many others say they wait for more sales too, so price hikes are not the answer to this.

 

[Mortisfacio]

Game prices went to $60 around 2006. $70 started 2020ish to become the standard. 40% increase in price. Stlouisfed.org has median household income in that span going up around 15-16% in that span.

That's really the core argument against further price increases (not just gaming, but the economy as a whole). Cost of goods is often outpacing wages.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

Gamers: We should be paying more for our gamez! The developers can’t sustain themselves!!

The Developers

Gamers are also paying way more for rent in our shitholes than even 5 years ago. Forget owning a home. We need to pay more for games though. Give me a break.

 

[clarky]

Basically, seeing all these layoffs and hearing part of the reason is the risk and small margins...well, there's one simple solution: games need to cost more.

Over here in New Zealand, we currently pay $90-$120.00 or thereabouts a game, games have nearly always cost this much...going way, way back to at least the 90s. I don't really understand why video games are immune to going up in price (apart from the recent $10 USD bump), I mean...if it meant less lay offs, a healthier industry and people still wanting to work in the industry, surely us taking a $20-$30 bump on the chin is worth it?

I probably am not the median gamer in terms of earnings and such, but even when I was a broke Uni student in the late 90s & early 2000s, games were still $90-$120.00 a game here - and I paid it and was happy....that's like $200.00 now adjusted for inflation lol, so yeah, why do many feel SO strongly against games increasing in cost?

I've gotten $200 of value from Hell Divers 2 already, $500 of value from Cyberpunk etc etc - it just feels like it's a crazy good deal, but are we hurting our own industry by not being open to a price hike?

$80-90 USD a game, I'd go there - if it means the industry keeps on smashing it (that's mean $150.00 NZD for sure, painful, but worth it).

I spent over £5k last year on my hobby, so no.

 

[FoxMcChief]

Even if you ignore in game monetisation and the pay to play online, the ‘$70 in 1970 plus inflation’ argument still makes no sense.

New and emergent mainstream technology always costs a lot initially and then comes down over time as more players enter the market and the technology matures.

In 10 years time you’ll be able to get technology that’s better than the Apple Vision Pro at less than half the price. You’d be a clown to say ‘well the Vision Pro cost £5k in 2024 so it should cost £9k in today’s money’.

Music CDs cost between $15 and $20 in the 90s and early 00s. That doesn’t mean they should cost £50 today. But what about production costs? Said no one ever.

Quest 3 is already out.

 

[Tg89]

I'd be fine with it. I don't think every game needs to cost that much but there's certainly a number that can justify it. I'd happily have paid $100 for TOTK, Elden Ring, BG3 as recent examples.

Gamers tend to have wildly different ways of assigning values to things though, especially in the era of F2P or even indie games. I have friends that simply won't pay $70 for anything because in their mind, they paid $20 for Stardew Valley and that got them 300 hours of gameplay, so why should they pay $70 for a game with a 30 hour campaign and no replay value? There's a huge cohort here who was up in arms because TOTK (one of the most universally praised games in recent years) dared to cost $70. That's not how I see things and obviously there's a huge variety of business models across gaming and what dictates value is a very subjective thing.

I'd also say that although game cost hasn't really gone up that much in recent years, the size of the market has grown pretty dramatically, so the profits are still there for the big budget games. The ones that are able to get those profits are few and far between though - the reality is that there's far more competition in the space and you have more and more games nowadays that simply dominate players time. There's a lot of gamers out there but many of them stick to one game/genre.

Part of this is also people becoming a bit more savvy with what they consider acceptable. A decade ago I can see a game like Suicide Squad selling plenty fine with the right marketing push, I think a lot of people have stopped being fooled by these tactics and are getting smarter with their money. Studios need to rethink their approach and stop wasting huge budgets on marginal graphical increases or mocap/custscenes. For the most part, games that are truly at the top of their craft seem to get the sales they deserve.

 

[Imru’ al-Qays]

I'd be happy to pay $100, for instance, for a game of the quality of Elden Ring, but that's going to require companies get serious about evaluating what their games are actually worth. I think what actually needs to happen is for companies that can't make it in the AAA space to cut down on all the bloat and go back to producing shorter AA games.

 

[Trogdor1123]

I agree, you can pay my share.

 

[Banjo64]

Which you aren't forced to buy. They aren't making plenty of profit, have you been watching the news lately? Sony profit margins are tiny. Microsoft probably isn't making any profits on the Xbox division at all. Studios worldwide are slashing jobs.

Sony’s profit margins are tiny.

Sony also literally signed one of the worst deals I’ve ever seen with Marvel, where the terms are heavily stacked against them.

That’s Sony’s problem.

[LEAK] Licensing Terms between Sony and Marvel for Wolverine exclusivity

Those HW bundles royalty fees are 😵‍💫. In-case people aren't understanding, Insomniac aren't getting 35-50% of the Hardware bundles revenue, the calculation given afterwards show the number is then cut by the percentage based on the agreed fee for the bundled game. I don't know the wholesale...

www.neogaf.com

 

[Cyberpunkd]

The issue isn't what the companies are making, it's what they're spending especially in the AAA space. Some of the budgets reported are outright obscene in some cases. Just maybe we all need to scale back, from the companies to the consumer, as far as what is most sustainable and healthy for the industry and it is the opposite of where shit has been heading the past decade.

This. Also - AAA games killed the smaller market for games at 30/40€ since people do not think they are worth this amount when you have your mega blockbuster with obscene budget for 70€.

 

[havoc00]

You guys dont tip when purchasing a game? wtf

 

[Punished Miku]

Gamers: We should be paying more for our gamez! The developers can’t sustain themselves!!

The Developers

Here you are assuming most gamers can even afford a house. That's funny.

 

[Nydius]

You guys dont tip when purchasing a game? wtf

Oh my God, how did this thread go five pages before someone thought of mentioning tipping culture?!?!

This was perfect and made me spit out my drink in laughter.

 

[Hero_Select]

No thanks. Maybe stop with the inflated budgets.

 

[ReBurn]

You guys dont tip when purchasing a game? wtf

People who are concerned they aren't paying enough can always buy two copies I guess.

 

[JimmyRustler]

Why the doom and gloom when there are layoffs? You do know that the same companies added hundreds of employees to their workforce over the years? Imagine if we had headlines like “Sony added 300 people in 2023” and you had this every year? No one would care.

That being said, I do agree that games can cost more. Only proper games though you can actually finish. All service games can remain at their price point for all I care.

 

[StueyDuck]

the market clearly disagrees since the games at budgeted prices are seemingling doing far better relatively speaking than your AAAA boat game.

entertainment doesn't have a tangible value figure and because you feel you got X out of game doesn't mean everyone else feels the same.

games are priced the way they are because they are competitive, the issue is more that development needs to change to be more suitable for the market, not to exclude people who aren't in a certain earning bracket.

sure i can afford it your proposed value figure now, but when i was a kid, who had to do lots of chores, odd jobs and nickle and dime/trade in older games to get a second hand title your proposed value figure would have completely priced me out and i wouldn't be the big gamer like i am today using my adult money to support these companies.

 

[efyu_lemonardo]

Careful, people here don't like to acknowledge the existence of inflation.

You can't acknowledge inflation without acknowledging the fact that wages haven't kept up with it. As a consumer, the price I'm willing to pay is going to be a certain percentage of my salary, not a dollar number.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

In real terms that isn't true at all.

No, but in MSRP it is, though. Which is all anyone notices or cares about, which I'm sure you know.

 

[Elysium44]

No, but in MSRP it is, though. Which is all anyone notices or cares about, which I'm sure you know.

I can't help what people notice, if they're still wrong. Real terms is all that matters. When did this become controversial?

 

[Walter Matthau]

Between free to play games, subscriptions, mobile, piracy, Epic freebies, indie games, retro compilations, emulators, and discount bundles.. there's thousands of games to play for next to nothing.

The market is flooded. Gaming backlogs are bursting. There's too much supply in the industry and it's finally caught up to the publishers.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

You guys dont tip when purchasing a game? wtf

The closest thing a tip I give game developers is very occasionally buying games on day one. Re4 remake for example. Because I knew it would be a super high-quality product that I would love. 95 percent of the time I'll wait for a sale. Most people should. Control your bitch game developers.

 

[angrod14]

I would gladly pay more if they sold me an actual DRM-free file, like GOG does. But not paying top dollar for them to tell me the shit I buy isn't even mine. And no, I'm done with physical media.