
Next-gen games may cost $70. It’s overdue, but also worrisome - blinding-streak
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/07/03/next-gen-games-may-cost-70-its-overdue-also-worrisome/
======
ageitgey
Here's how much games of old would cost now, considering inflation:

Atari 2600 (1980, ~$25) - ~$77.79

NES (1986, $29.99-$49.99) - $70.16-$116.94

SNES (1991, $49.99-$59.99) - $94.11-$112.93

N64 (1996, $49.99) - $81.69

PS2 (2000, $49.99) - $74.43

Xbox 360 (2005, $59.99) - $78.76

So if anything, big-budget games have never been cheaper than they are now
despite newer games requiring huge development budgets compared to classic
titles. And there are way more "indie" games being released now in the $5-$30
range than ever before, many of astounding quality.

But even more importantly, the AAA game industry is moving away from charging
a fixed price for big-budget games anyway. They would rather give you the game
for free and get you into their ecosystem to buy season passes and cosmetic
items. It's more profitable for them in the long term.

In a world of Humble Bundles and free-to-play games, no one has time to play
even a tiny fraction of what is being released. There has never been more
entertainment available for essentially no cost. The world has a lot of
problems, but the high price of video games is not one of them.

~~~
dx87
Yeah, I don't get it when people are saying games are too expensive. I
remember buying $50 NES games in the early 90s, and they didn't get updates
and bugfixes, and unless it was a game made by a well known studio, there were
no reviews to make an informed decision. Compared to almost every hobby, video
games are a bargain when you consider that you can regularly get hundreds of
hours of entertainment in a AAA title.

~~~
Loudergood
They also shipped well tested back then compared to now.

~~~
bogwog
They were also much simpler and smaller back then compared to now

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aosaigh
I'm not sure if this is a minority opinion, but I'm happy to pay $70+ for AAA
games. I'm currently playing through Last of Us II on PS4 and will have gotten
20+ hours entertainment from it, not to mention that it's just an incredible
piece of art. Alongside that, during the last 3 months of Covid lockdown I've
played countless hours of Call of Duty with my friends. $70 isn't that much of
an investment for so much entertainment.

Of course the real question is whether or not you'll have to pay-to-play
alongside your initial $70 investment. I'd rather pay more initially to have
this trend disappear (which is unlikely).

I'd be interested to hear from people with more knowledge of the industry. As
someone who only returned to video games "recently" (in the last 2 years) I've
been astonished at the quality now on offer, but also shocked at the revenues
of some of the companies are making, in particular revenue related to in-game
purchasing (if I remember correctly, Activision are making ~1.8B revenue per
quarter for example, the majority of which is from susbscriptions[1]).

[1] [https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-
release-d...](https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release-
details/activision-blizzard-announces-strong-first-quarter-2020)

------
matt_s
I'll pay $20 for a movie and be entertained for a couple hours. I've paid $90
for a collectors edition game and played 100's of hours (maybe a thousand or
more).

They could charge $100 for a AAA game that doesn't have in-app purchases and I
would pay it - if its something I think I'd enjoy a lot.

~~~
atomi
I remember in the 80's and early 90's there used to be a great shareware
ecosystem with computer games. I'd really like to be able to play the game
before deciding to spend $100 on it. As it is there are some games I buy that
I just never get to play anyway due to time or lack of interest.

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andrewzah
Game pricing needs an overhaul. It's very expensive to make big budget
triple-A games, so a standard $60 doesn't necessarily make sense.

However as a cynical gamer, I see companies bumping the price up to $70 and
changing nothing about their practices. So we'll now pay $70, and still get
unsavory (and predatory) behavior such as lootboxes, day 1 DLC, etc.

This increase is just another argument to join the /r/PatientGamers and
/r/GameDeals clubs and pick up games for a pittance years after release. I do
this for most of my games aside from some multiplayer ones.

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flohofwoe
IMHO the sticker price for video games isn't all that relevant anymore, unless
you definitely want to play a game on launch day.

The only thing that's weird is that there is a standard price to begin with.

Just wait for the next sale, or until the game gets discounted after a few
months, whatever comes first. Eventually the price will adjust itself to what
the customers think the game is worth (of course that price will never be
above the standard price, so from the seller perspective it makes sense to set
a high initial price).

~~~
CydeWeys
The most I've spent on a game in the past several years was US$40 pre-tax on
Half-Life: Alyx (it was on sale just recently). In other words, I'm definitely
not buying games at launch because I so rarely feel the need to play anything
_now_.

But that might change later this year: I suspect I might be buying Cyberpunk
2077 at full price within a couple weeks of launch if it gets good reviews.

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rusty__
A $10USD rise usually means a $15-20 rise here in Canada. Games here are
already $79.99 which means with taxes a next gen console game is likely to be
>$100 at launch - that's a psychological barrier I think that will be very
problematic.

When games are discounted at least 25% within 3 months of release and 50%
after 6 months isn't that uncommon, I wonder how launch day sales will be
impacted by this change vs longer term sales.

Maybe they've done their sums and realized that the medium term sales would be
boosted by this change more than launch day sales.

------
ludamad
"Retail prices for major release (or “AAA”) games haven’t moved since
Activision released “Call of Duty 2” for $60 back in 2005"

Google tells me inflation since then has been around 35% - is this really
news? I feel like price memory trips people up, it would be nice to report a
stable figure that doesn't become obsolete in a decade

~~~
dogma1138
Since 2005 games have been more or less cutting content and nearly every AAA
title now has some sort of monetization other than the retail price, season
passes, micro-transactions, DLC....

Call of Duty 2 had a 9 hour campaign and everything out of the box was free,
there were two map packs costing $5 each and as long as one person in the
lobby had it the entire lobby could play on those maps.

The latest CoD, Call of Duty Modern Warfare has a campaign length of 6 hours a
season pass and micro transactions.

~~~
gibspaulding
My friends and I just got back into CoD with the new modern warfare for the
first time since mw3. While I've been annoyed by Blizzard's launcher compared
to Steam, I haven't been too bothered by their season passes and stuff. I
bought the game for $40 I think, and haven't felt a need to put another dime
into it. In fact despite owning the full game, we spend quite a bit of time
just playing the free to play mode.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather they did away with all of it, but I don't get a
sense that content was cut from the game in this particular case.

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swarnie_
I will accept $70 under a few conditions:

1) You can't pack a full price game with hundreds of dollars of micro
transactions and DLC.

2) Stop with the gambling box nonsense.

3) Stop hacking out uninspired, yearly squeals over and over by incrementing
the number on the box by 1.

~~~
yissp
Agreed on all 3 points, but realistically - you know as well as I do that
there's zero chance publishers will stop doing any of these things. :)

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jdlyga
The only games where the sticker price matter are Nintendo games. Everything
else gets discounted after release.

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izzydata
The "AAA" gaming industry seems unsustainable. Big budget games are getting
more uninspired by the year and are mostly the same old games with identical
game-play and mechanics with shinier graphics on top. They have become
passionless assembly lines following a formula.

You'd think at some point people would stop caring so much about graphics.
It's also such a huge portion of the cost. Smaller studios and indie
developers can make nearly identical games without bleeding edge graphics
technology.

------
Steven_Vellon
One could argue that this is already the case. How many AAA games actually
give you the full game for $60? Usually you need to buy a season pass to
access the full content. Some of the most notable examples have included Mass
Effect 3 which locked plot critical characters behind DLC. Total War: Rome 2
had $50 worth of DLC less than 1 year after launch, and their more recent
Warhammer titles lock iconic factions like Chaos Warriors behind DLC.

------
seibelj
"Worrisome"? Critics are never happy. Free to play game with option to buy
features? Horrible scam by evil corporations! Expensive games that give you a
lot of content up-front to recoup development costs? Robbery by evil
corporations!

There are so many games out there, you can be entertained for a lifetime
without ever needing to buy a recently released AAA game. Things cost what
they cost, no one puts a gun to your head.

~~~
theyrightho
Really they’re right though.

There’s really little reason a game can’t be art assets slurped into a
pipeline like devops employs.

Engine code itself needs to be performant, but from the perspective of
“shipping a game”, asset management and build pipelines look ALOT LIKE a
devops pipeline but offline.

There’s no artistic or technical reason open license content and, for example,
Github actions, couldn’t leveraged to build a game pipeline.

Iterate over that until the results look AAA.

Emotional capture of attention by social norms is the only thing in the way.

Here we are though, accepting inflation as a real thing. Not saying much
explicitly about the pressure on our buying power, effectively deflation, that
creates.

Why not deflate their profits a bit, I wonder?

Gig artists are out there. Rules for RTS, FPS, and generative algorithms are
all well known and documented. There’s literally no reason an open pipeline
for compiling AAA games from crowd funded content couldn’t be a thing except
for how we are expected to apply attention to such things

~~~
gridlockd
If your theory is correct then you (and only you) figured out a massive
arbitrage opportunity - while all those deeply profit-oriented business people
over at those game studios got it all wrong.

More likely though, your theory is just wrong.

------
Assossa
I'm fine with paying over $60 as long as the game is well made and does not
contain non-cosmetic micro-transactions. I think the recent influx of micro-
transaction-heavy games and incomplete games is a sign that the current
standard triple-A price tag is too low and the developers are having to ship
early or use other monetization schemes to support themselves.

------
Phillips126
As an avid gamer, the price increase I find a bit unsettling (especially since
content is moving digitally - thus cutting several costs). Realistically, it's
only a $10 increase, however, I feel the sticker price is approaching that
point where I personally am at the "wait for sale" mindset. Not to mention
that many games these days include a variety of gimmicks (loot boxes, micro
transactions, cosmetics) to vacuum as much money out of the customers as
possible. EA is notorious for this behavior so I am interested to see how this
game in particular (NBA 2K21) is received.

Lately I've found myself purchasing more games on my PC as they frequently
have sales and prices tend to be lower than the console equivalents. Of course
my "gaming PC" was a bit more than a console, that doesn't seem to be the case
anymore with some of these rumored prices coming out on the next gen systems.

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
> games these days include a variety of gimmicks (loot boxes, micro
> transactions, cosmetics) to vacuum as much money out of the customers

Do other people avoid video games these days for this reason? Perhaps it's a
function of being busy, and generally liking other hobbies (like programming),
but I just don't want to participate in a gaming world which is defined by
this sort of economics. I understand it's more profitable, but it turns me
away.

~~~
Phillips126
I certainly avoid games that put these trends front and center (even if free).
Some games that I've purchased over the years, Destiny 2 for example, have
changed their model completely and I find it saddening. The core game is now
free (which I paid full price for) and all expansions (DLC) are paid. They
also include paid seasonal content (4 times per year, 10 weeks in length, $10
each) where they introduce some (typically poorly received) content to grind
out and some new items in their in-game real money market (Eververse). Typical
items in the "Eververse" are $10+.

I hope these trends fade away over time although I am not expecting that to be
the case with the profits some of these publishers are reporting.

------
effingwewt
Bullshit. Every game released now has DLC, season passes, etc. on PlayStation
you even have to pay a subscription to play online. Games are more expensive
than ever befote with AAA titles easily surpassing $100 for a game including
season pass and that doesn't even include all the DLC for many games now.

I remember when DLC started we all knee where this was going to end, and all
the publishers and Microsoft went on and on how they would never piecemeal
games and nickel and dime us.

What did we get? Disc locked DLC and when you find out they slap you with an
EULA making datamining illegal. _cough Destiny 1 with Activision /Bungee
cough_, and fames with upwards of $10 for a single skin!

And the worst of it all- loot boxes.

In what world do publishers think they deserve more money? They all dream of
the day they can charge us per minute of play. We will be there soon enough.

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wastedhours
There's also perceived value vs delivered value as well. I bought RDR2 for £30
as it seemed like a relative bargain for the gaming potential it'd deliver.
I've put maybe 10 hours on it in 3 months.

Euro Truck Simulator was under a tenner, with the thought it might be a "play
once, get bored" title, probably 40-50 hours into it.

As much as the numbers above are true, I'd _still_ be unlikely to consider
paying £30 for ETS, whilst still likely to buy RDR3 (whenever, wherever) for
£50+. Perceived quality and potential payoff will win out, actual reality of
playing _that much game_ [0] be damned.

[0] I have neither the time nor patience to pour 100+ hours into a game any
more.

------
Agathos
"I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to
work less and I'm not kidding."

\--
[https://twitter.com/Jordan_Mallory/status/127748375624544256...](https://twitter.com/Jordan_Mallory/status/1277483756245442566)

(later immortalized in foone's death generator by
[https://twitter.com/moshboy/status/1278202555995090947](https://twitter.com/moshboy/status/1278202555995090947))

~~~
gridlockd
I want infinitely long games with impeccable graphics made by people who live
for nothing but their work. I'll also stop playing after the first ten minutes
so I'll only buy the game at 90% discount.

I guess we'll have to meet somewhere in the middle.

------
rusty__
Looking at Amazon's top PS4 games right now, the _vast_ majority are under
$35.

I wonder what % of gamers actually pay full price anyway. The next 12-24
months look like an insanely busy release schedule, with that long a backlog
for many gamers I doubt many but the most hardcore of gamers will be picking
up more than 1-2 titles at full price and many (most?) will be picking up
games at more like 50% off, many (like me :) ) wait until the price dips below
$20...

"Never pay more than $20 for a computer game" \- Guybrush Threepwood.

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drivingmenuts
I rarely get a game on first release anymore and usually wait until it’s on a
huge discount sale. I don’t do multi-player, so lack of community isn’t an
issue. $60 is just too much to gamble on whether or not I’ll enjoy or not,
given that we’re just beta testers these days. If the price goes up even more,
then that’s just incentive to quit altogether.

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pnw_hazor
In the rare instance when I buy a AAA title, I wait a few months after release
to save 25%. This saves me money and it also gives time for bugs fixes and
balance patches to come out.

More often lately I have been buying $2.50-$20.00 PC classics from Steam or
GOG that I never got play.

Also, every now and then Playstation Plus offers a good game for "free".

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lawrenceyan
I think video games are moving more towards subscription based models (i.e.
PlayStation Plus, Google Stadia, etc). And from a consumer standpoint, I think
it makes sense given most people only really play through a game once.

$10 per month is a far easier sell than $60-70 a pop for one individual game.

------
danbee
I remember being horrified when Nintendo 64 games cost about £70 in the UK in
the mid/late 90's. At the exchange rate back then that would have been just
over $100.

But then I had been used to paying £9.99 for mainstream titles and £2-3 for
budget titles for my ZX Spectrum!

~~~
Synaesthesia
Those were pretty darn expensive yeah, the cartridge format was a contributor.

------
at-fates-hands
I'm not a gamer by trade, but have played them in the past. Does the pricing
differ if you're playing on Steam vs. buying the game outright?

~~~
ThrowawayR2
Steam sells you the game outright as well so, no.

------
echelon
I remember certain N64 games costing $70 at launch, notably Ocarina of Time.

With inflation, this is cheaper than the 90s.

~~~
Tiktaalik
Yeah but back then they actually had to make expensive physical hardware.

CDs are cheaper, and it's incredibly absurd that the download product, which
has no production or shipping costs, is the same as the physical.

~~~
andrewzah
Why does it have to be cheaper just because it's not physical? That's how the
majority of people get games now.

Not only would getting a physical disk be a hassle compared to downloading,
but I don't have a drive to put it in...

~~~
echelon
Downloads for consoles always felt like risky propositions.

They're DRMed. Once the console is no longer sold or supported, there's no
store for you to connect to to validate or re-download your purchase. I don't
feel comfortable with them living on an encrypted and unsupported hard disk
partition.

Do you anticipate playing your games again in 15 years?

I like that I can play all of my old N64, Gamecube, and PS2 games on their
original media.

------
monoideism
Could be an early indicator that inflation is starting to really rise.

