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.
Honestly, he’s right. Game prices are the same 60-70 dollars they’ve been for 30 years, but nothing else has stayed the same price that long. With inflation, a game should be around 200 dollars.
Super Mario Bros 3 came out in the last half of 1988 and costed $50 dollars, or around 127 dollars. It also costed about $800,000 to develop, which is about $2 million today.
Nowadays, it costs around $80 million (about 40x) on average to make a AAA title that costs $60 (about half). This is why all these games have cash shops and battle passes and paid dlc and whatnot: they need to make up that extra cost somewhere.
I can understand woth this information companies wanting to charge more, but I feel like standards need to be higher and refunds guaranteed. They can't ask us to spend 100's of dollars on half-complete, buggy messes of games AND also want to charge for DLC and have micro-transactions.
And don't forget it's just a rental of the game, at any time they could shut off the game or license servers because they don't want to sell or keep that game anymore.
While i agree that prices have been stagnant, its also a game of companies wanting to reduce risk. You have unicorn examples like Baldurs Gate 3 which took its time to develop a game, and has stated they dont plan on making paid expansion content, meaning where they at they see the game as profitable, despite spending 5 years in development for it.
Part of the reason why some games have balooned cost is because of improper spending of the money. Many spend a lot of money on marketing which tends to have an overly inflated cost on its own, due to the fact that people have a preference to play whats familliar, however its been shown that also actually making a good game with little marketing also works, and a lot of dev studios havent gotten to that point yet.
Super Mario Bros also only sold about 2.5 million units in the first several month after release. Baldur's Gate, for example, sold almost 6 million in 2 weeks. The NES sold 2.5 million units in its first year. The Switch sold 13 million. Even the worst selling modern console, the Xbox Series X sold 8 million in the first year. While individual game prices have not risen, the total number of sales has dramatically increased. So pardon me if I don't think the cost of games not rising has been a problem for publishers and developers of AAA titles. Their real problem has been putting out good content that enough gamers want.
Distribution is getting easier and cheaper, the available talented workforce is larger than ever, tools are getting better and faster with every day and despite "no large increase in costs", the gaming industry has grown to be one of the largest and most profitable industries in the entire world and everyone wants a piece of that cake.
$60 is fine and anything above that is pure greed.
I buy games that release for $40 and $50. They don't have dlc. They don't have microtransactions. They don't have cash shops. They don't have battle passes. I just pay my $40/$50, get my physical copy, often with a bundled goodie like cards or keychains, and play and enjoy my 40hr game.
It's absolutely possible because the companies that release these titles are pumping out several per year. You just.... have to stop spec racing and obsessing over 200hr playtimes and top of the line graphics and actually focus on making a decent, mid-sized game, with realistic expectations.
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.
Well, I think gaming standards are too low, Harushiro Tsujimoto.
Here's the deal, we keep the game costs where they are, but you need to stop pulling unrealistic ideals to match up to. And you need to stop shitting out bad games just to keep the trademarks alive and other copyrights. Give us GOOD Megaman games, not whatever Megaman Dive is.
We need to go back to the model of where making good games was a key priority. Why have you forgotten this?
What a fucktard. If games were cheaper, more people would buy them. Nowadays a hell of a lot of people wait until the game is updated and on sale to buy it since most games are released broken anyways. That or they just pirate it. No way I’m spending 1/10 of a paycheck on a new video game every once in a while.
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Aktywne