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Yeah but the IMPERATIVE IS ON US to make sure that the industry (AAA, AA & Indie) are on their best behaviour.
Like as an example, a game that looks like it would run on potato PC should run on one
Or do not allow a game to cross the recommended requirement of 8 GB ram etc...
I haven't spent more than $30ish bucks on a game since ... 2013?? I think the last game I paid full price for was gta5 on ps3
Do y'all not know about the bargain bin and steam sales...? Is everyone so up to date on their backlog you can't wait a few months for that price to drop to 50%
It doesn't take long, Doom the dark ages has already hit that discount a few times iirc
There are plenty of cheaper games out there. Go on whatever virtual store and check out current sales, and simple games made by small studios.
Cult of the Lamb, Spiritfarer, My Time at Portia, The Last Campfire, Arise: A Simple Story and What Remains of Edith Finch are all worth checking out.
Fuck $70+ games.
i did want a switch when SWSH came but decided not to get it, due to cheapflation of the pokemon franchise on the console by game freak, best decision. it wouldve cost 400+$(new swith included) plus all the extra stuff for nintendo required to play it online.
Games should be cheaper to make, too.
See, that's the conundrum: big companies make huge investments and want a ROI. They dump 100+ million dollars on a game with a team that's over 200 people and expect 10x money back.
Shit has ballooned out of control in the corporate world and Indies have to fight tooth and nail against each other, bigger players, shovelware and older titles
Well, many complex games have no budget on graphics, that's why you can have one-man army dev making a monster of a game like Aurora 4x.
How much of that money goes into marketing, and executive pay checks?
Yeah, and then the game made by a small team ends up being much more successful.
the game made by a small team ends up being much more successful
More successfull relatively to the money spent, but not overall.
Every time - every single time - I've purchased a major AAA game anywhere close to the release window in the past 10 years, it's been a mistake. Pay a shitload more for a half baked, buggy, unfinished mess.
At this point I just don't buy big time releases within 6 months of launch. Even when I'm certain of the game itself, it just ends up being a mistake.
Its the best way. Its cheaper, you have plenty of user reviews to check first, and you get a completed game, without bugs.
Great news!
They are!
... Just typically not the overproduced and overpriced corpo ones.
Wanna drive down AAA game prices?
Stop paying them!
Support your favorite indie or AA game today!
Don't like games with predatory microtransactions?
You'll never believe this, but you can also just stop playing games with them!
Get all your friends onboard with the plan, fight the man!
I just played Escape from Ever After. Every bit as good and polished as the old Paper Mario games. $25. They cost $50-$65 back then.
... I've never even heard of it.
But I do love the old paper mario games!
So wow, now we have a real life example of actual organic word of mouth spread of a game, as opposed to just being a passive advertisement sponge!
Or live with AA and indie games like many of us do, at tell AAA publishers to get fucked by not spending money on their live-service crap.
Become a patient gamer. This winter sale, I bought probably 25 games totaling around 30 dollars. It's enough to keep me busy for the next 5 years.
This... Put games on your wishlist, set your wishlist to only show sales, and sort by price. Then only buy games from that list when they go on a significant sale. Plenty of decent games out there regularly go for $5-10 or less. With very few exceptions I refuse to pay more than $20-30 for a game and, even then, only if they're like 50% off and not likely to come down.
Also... stop pre-ordering games. They'll still be there when they do go on sale. You don't need to play them as soon as they come out. Conquer that FOMO shit and develop some integrity.
stop pre-ordering games. They'll still be there when they do go on sale.
Yeah but then I wouldn't get the sick Cardi B Wet Ass Pussy character skin 😮💨
I set a rule not to buy any game util i finish what I already have. I have not bought anything for the last two years. Any game that interest me is going to my wishlist for now.
Just don't buy Triple A titles.
The last "AAA" title I bought was elden ring for 30$ (unless you count Silk Song)
There are plenty of indie style, A or AA studios that are in the 5-30$ range.
The more people who move over to that type of mindset and buy from small titles, the more apt that large companies are going to lower their prices.
Retail price doesn't even matter anyways. It's more a placeholder to make sales seem more impressive with X% off to make people feel they are getting a bargain.
Pricing is dictated by what someone is willing to pay for it.
For me, $70 USD is too much for the average game that is being sold at that price tag because those types of games(AAA/AAAA) are:
Again, not all, but the average AAA slop title usually has one or more of the above points.
BUT, that doesn't mean that Indie games at $20 USD are a "steal" or "bargain" either. There are many Indie games I bought at their launch(Silksong), but others I have waited for a decent sale.
If everyone stopped buying games at $70 USD then prices would fall and/or projects going forward would be re-evaluated to either keep costs/expectations down. But people are paying the $70 USD so that price point is here to stay.
A fifth thing for your list: formulaic and predictable af
Why are 90% of AAA games a dude with a gun? How many iterations of dude with a gun can we possibly get?
Have you met our lord and saviour, retro gaming?
And the Son, Emulation?
Or the step brother, piracy?
The only problem is too much choice!
Seriously, when you’ve got thousands of ROMs and vintage PC games to choose from, it’s really difficult to land on one to play right now!
I went down a rabbit hole of emulation last year. I got PCSX2 and tons of games like Ratchet & Clank, Tak 1-3, Jak 1-X, the Sly series, Spider-Man 2, and so many others. I spent a good month and a half just playing old PS2 games and I had an absolute blast
You can go AAA for cheap no problem, people just need to not get FOMO‘d out of their minds and half-resist the compulsion to jump on the next shiny thing immediately.
The newest DOOM is around 27 Euros rn and not even a year old. Buy on release - or worse yet, pre-order - and you‘ll get the worst deal (financially as well as technically).
Game prices are fine for me because I literally just wait until they‘re at a point where I don‘t see them as a waste of money anymore. In the meantime, there‘s 203 untouched games in my Steam library that had reached that price at some point in the past already. Not even mentioning the hundreds of games I got for free between GOG, Prime, and Epic.
And, not buying immediately you get to know if the shiny is real or is just a painted turd. Or if it disappears after a couple months.
Idc if the Price is justified but the question is how many of them are just that good that the Price is justified?
Check out ITAD then... lots of ways to make sure you get stuff super cheap.
I haven't paid over £35 on a game in years. Quite a few games are free now too, though some have kinda scummy cash shops.
I buy a ton of games a year after they release or so. I got the benefit of the expanded edition or whatever and it's just as much fun for me as it was for everybody else a year or two ago.
Now I play a lot of single player stuff, so your mileage may vary.
That's what indie games are for, instead of these absurd-budget blockbusters that often aren't even fun, but also, the world just needs to be cheaper to live in. Games are first on the chopping block because disposable income for entertainment is always the first to collapse.
This may sound crazy, but hear me out... $70 might just be relatively cheap right now, when considering historic prices and inflation.
So about 20 years ago, I used to work at a game shop and at that time all new AAA console games were all $50 and I believe the switch to $60 happened just shortly after I left.
That said, a quick web search says that there's been 65% inflation since 2005. $50 x 1.65 = $82
So at least when compared to other products, $50 to $70 is not a huge price jump.
Now all that said, this does not account for the added cost of micro transactions and paid dlc which didn't really exist in 2005. So the actual lifetime cost of a top pricing tier game may actually be higher than $70. Honestly, I have more of a problem with that than with the higher base cost, hidden costs are deceptive.
Edit: I looked it up, the switch to $60 actually happened in 2005, I was probably still working there when it happened. If we were to do that same calculation starting with $60, that's $60 x 1.65 = $99. So there's food for thought
That’s the thing. Pricing in a direct comparison of inflation and base game label price ignores all the ways in which that same game would have been diluted to increase the average price with microtransactions, deluxe editions, and early unlocks for pre-orders or whatever. It’s not apples to apples with the past.
They already are. It's called - sales.
The problem are people going out in droves, willingly spending $70 or more on special editions. They've caved to FOMO and it is a them problem.
We're still in the best age of gaming where there are sales in all directions.