https://www.ign.com/articles/capcom-president-thinks-game-prices-are-too-low
Capcom president Harushiro Tsujimoto claims that the prices of video games need to increase to meet ballooning development costs.
Capcom president Harushiro Tsujimoto claims that the prices of video games need to increase to meet ballooning development costs.
Prices have mostly been decided by minimum wage. If you want a million people to buy your game, you need a million people to have $60 they can spare.
if you dropped game to $30 from $60, would double or more people buy it? or would too many people see the lower price and think it must be a shitty game to be 'that low' and pass on it?
People made that point about Hollow Knight. At $15, people will assume it's poor quality or a short game, when it actually has tons of content and is better quality than most AAA games. HK is a rare example of a game that's too cheap.
Imo the best example of an underpriced game is Terraria. The game stayed 10$ for the longest time, had a decade of updates(not just tiny ones), ridiculous hours of playtime and people even complained the devs were "greedy" when they increased the price of a steam sale of it(which the game is still an unbelievably good value)
They're actually currently working on the final final final final final final update, Every update from 1.4.0.1 through 1.4.5 were all supposed to be the final updates lol.
"We super mean it this time guys..." - Cenx, the creative director of Terraria
I definitely feel like team cherry spoiled us, and we still owe them for creating that game at that price
Even the most terrible AAA games sell millions of copies these days. They more than make their money back with each one, the margins are slimmer but the volume is magnitudes higher than ever. Cry me a river.
This exact thought (volume) occurred to me when I saw the headline. They like to say that the price of games hasn't increased in line with inflation, but I'd be interested to know how big the market was in the 80s, 90s, 2000s and today. I'd bet the market is orders of magnitude bigger today.
This drives me crazy every time I see it so I'm glad to see others recognizing this. Yes game production has gone up, but the market has massively increased. Your costs are fixed; doesn't matter if you sell 10,000 copies or 10,000,000. More people are gaming than ever so when I see all these attempts to squeeze more money from consumers to address rising costs I have no sympathy for the publisher.
Prices of video games and consoles have actually declined over time when accounting for inflation.
https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/cost-of-gaming-since-1970s
Here's an example:
PlayStation 1
Cost at Launch (1995): $299.99 Cost Today (2020): $509.19 Average Game Cost (1995): $49.99 Average Game Cost (2020): $84.85
PlayStation 2
Cost at Launch (2000): $299.99 Cost Today (2020): $450.64 Average Game Cost (2000): $49.99 Average Game Cost (2020): $75.09
AAA titles going to $90 would actually be putting them back to PS1 and earlier pricing.
And the profitability has skyrocketed. The videogame industry is now one of the largest insudtries on the planet. A big driver has been normalisation of after-purchase items. Console players now pay to unlock their collar to the internet (ps+ and XBlive). Microtransactions add to this, and now battlepasses want $10+ every 50-90 days. Lootboxes normalizing near-gambling with overwatches success was a huge bar-lift in profitability expectations for shareholders.
Special editions are also hitting $90 and higher, plus those other expenditures. Ask "the gamers tm" and they'll tell you you have to buy a special edition for $120 or you're not a real fan anyway. Starfield has a $300 version. The Digital Premium doesn't even come with the GAME! It's another $35 after you already gave Microsoft $70.
Additionally, the work to make a new game has decreased. Assets are able to be salvaged from one engine to the next reducing the amount of work to make a game in UE6 after it was on UE5. the workforce has matured and can be taught as a class so there's not nearly as many "self taught" making half a game. Roller Coaster Tycoon was made almost entirely by one dude. Obviously re-using assets is smart. But then to say you "built the game from the ground up" is false. Elden Ring was even praised for it
Marketing budgets have fuckin EXPLODED. A "Rule of Thumb" for indie devs is to spend HALF your budget on just marketing. Destiny allegedly spent 2.5× what they spent on development, for marketing. Publishing studios didn't used to spend this much. "For every dollar on the game, spend another .25 to .50 on marketing"
Buying power has gone DOWN since ps1. You think I'm joking but federal minimum wage in the US is still 7.25. In 1994 (launch of ps1). It was 4.25 - adjusted for inflation thats $8.43. Meaning if you made minimum wage then, you'd be making more than minimum wage now, effectively. People are fucking broke and game companies want MORE money for games.
In 1994 when you bought a PS1 game you got THE WHOLE GAME. That was it. There was no merch drop pip-boy for the special edition. There was no Day-One patch. There was no "pay to get multiplayer". There was no in-game shop to buy skins for the characters. All these features were intentionally cut to resell to consumers post-launch.
Games cost less to make now, but budgets went up. Buying power is down. Please stop defending corporate bullshit excuses about wanting more money, forever.
The article you linked for elder ring (a game with no micro-transactions) talked about re-using assets from that game.
As in it was built from the ground up but reused in the game.
It was a specific example to show how AAA games reuse assets, not mtx. A low hanging fruit of that could be like...any sports game.
A similar example of good reuse could be EA and a specific Female Character Mesh they've had for awhile and they just keep reusing her. The photo example I found searching was Falck from BF 2042. Her hitbox and mesh is in Battlefront 2, as a First Order officer; and in Battlefield 5.
I dont outright hate reuse of things here and there - it saves money and time.
The article said it re-used assets in the game that were made for that game and that game alone.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with what you said, I'm just repeating information from the article you posted.
I'd be curious comparing these prices to median income or median disposable income. I'm guessing it tracks those numbers much closer than inflation, which wages haven't kept pace with.
That's not what I asked though. Irrelevant information because we don't know the economies of scale at play.
Well distribution is basically entierly free at this point so more customers is just directly more money.
They can raise the prices all they want.
I'm still only going to buy them long after all the patches and on discount.
Funny how completed games are cheaper than games that are still in development/public beta.
Yeah goty is my preferred copy. Shit, those are usually on sale anyways.
If these companies can't support their movie crew sized teams, then scale down.
I want to mention the concept of consumer surplus since it's a lesser known economic principle compared to supply and demand.
Put simply, everyone has a price. A static price like $60 will get everyone willing to pay over $60. Some will be willing to pay $90, some $120, and so forth. The latest developments on pricing take advantage of that with horse armor, as those are folks with a higher threshold. On the other end of the spectrum, you have 50% to 90% sales to get the rest of us. Flexible pricing is the main reason companies are doing well, especially in an age of growing economic disparity. Just ask the whales how much they spend!
That said, saying the base price should go up neglects the broader economic situation everyone is in, and the US and Japan hasn't seen their baseline go up. Sadly, companies should know this, that's why prices vary by county. Ever buy a game from a Brazilian website? Much cheaper.
Tldr, dudes a short sighted twat, companies already optimize prices.
Or maybe don't make expensive games.
The AAA market seems to be chasing a business model that isn't there any more. I don't know why game developers still chase photo realism, it isn't what makes money.
Not to mention until it's actually photo-realistic, it looks uncanny. It's better to find a style and use that than to chase realism imo. But then again, these AAA games just add a bunch of foliage, some god rays, maybe a sprinkle of rain and people are oooh, aaah-ing and coughing up their cash.
This is all software, companies keep finding excuses to tack on “features” that increase development cost which eventually lead to necessary price increases.
In the professional world you will rarely ever hear project managers and leaders ask the question “would our customers rather pay extra for feature X or save money by sticking to their simpler feature set?” This is because development is nearly always started with the long term goal of incorporating a feature into the product to increase the overall “value” of the product. This increased “value” of the product then means that the company should charge more for it.
I am ranting now.
Yeah they always ask "Why won't people pay $100 for our video game?" and not "How about we DON'T spend $100,000,000 making ONE video game?"
There are still good AAA releases, it's just that 95% of AAA games are not worth the price.
I would argue the old business model still works, it's just that most AAA games studios don't follow that model anymore. Back in the day, a full priced game didn't have DLC or MTX, was an actual complete game, and focused more on the fun than the profit making. Games tried new ideas, they innovated instead of chasing whatever fad is popular at the time. It's the modern AAA game business model that is the problem and doesn't work anymore.
If 95% of the games aren't worth the price, then there is something wrong with that business model.
Yeah, a full priced game might not have had DLC or MTX, but it was more expensive adjusting for inflation and didn't have nearly the quantity or quality of in game assets as current games do.
And old games definitely chased fads, they were just different fads at the time fed in part by the differences in game economics.
The president of Capcom can lick the wrinkles out of my sweat steamed scrotum if he thinks I'm buying another Capcom game after this.
Yeah, games cost more to make than they did on the SNES.
But theres also an absolutely massively bigger customer base buying more games than ever before. So if your big name games are failing to bring in big numbers, that sounds like you and your fellow executives need to step down and let someone who knows what customers actually want run the company. But I bet that thought never crossed his fuckin mind.
Just to add to what you mentioned, Capcoms Street Fighter 6 in my region on steam is $100 AUD, assuming you don't want the deluxe or ultimate editions (Not that the store page bothers to explain the differences}. On top of that you can buy the Year 1 character pass for $45 which adds 4 characters. The ultimate pass for $75 which adds the previously mentioned characters and some cosmetics for those 4 characters. The soundtrack for $50 holy shit that's an expensive soundtrack.
And on top of all that you can buy the games in game currency, fighter coins. Which are used to unlock costumes and characters including classic costumes. Wanna buy a character? You'll never be able to buy just the right amount of coins, coz fuck you give us money.
It's bad enough these people want to raise prices whilst making record breaking profits, but they monetize their games in so many different and often scummy ways on top of the purchase price.
I want to say thats an example of out of touch executives.
But we both know predatory practices like that wouldnt have gotten this far if there wasnt a plethora of short sighted idiots out there, with more money than sense, refusing to do without their instant gratification and, as a result, not only throwing literally mountains of money at predatory companies, but actively complaining online about how they wish they could get even more financially exploited.
IT'S ALMOST AS IF THERE IS A DEFINED SOCIOECONOMIC CLASS THAT'S SUCKING MONEY FROM THE ECONOMY
Less infighting, more eating of the rich. Pay the devs, not the landlords. The capitalism system is broken and breaking further. The cost of goods is defined by how much workers need to be paid to make it, and then multiplicatively inflated by how much greed that BILLIONAIRE CLASS wants.
Government is for the people, by the people, that's the ONLY reason it exists. People in, and that want to be the billionaire class have declared war on the rest of us, and it's the government's sole purpose to protect the well-being and will of the people.
The government MUST serve the people.
If it can't, the highest priority is it MUST be fixed immediately.
The longer we flail and wait, the more that obviously hostile class of people grow in power and make fixing this a more and more serious issue.
Like any good leader, if you are failing in your duties, you must self-correct, elect an adequate replacement, or you must be removed, by your own will or by force.
Because life-time is too precious to waste waiting for the conflict to come to a head and burst.
That hostile class is doing everything possible to prevent any of this. Calm down, diffuse, obfuscate, confuse, project, gaslight, lie, cheat, steal, destroy, and gain power to RULE above the-will-of-the-people: the government.
Tell him to go live in the US in a rented apartment on an average salary. Bet he'll change his mind in 3 months.
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.
Recessions also cause a spike in vice and escapism, so it could drive more game sales or at least offset the lack of disposable income.
Spike in affordable escapism.
Going to a movie matinee for 3 dollars is not comparable to dropping $$$$Absurdity for games like these assholes want.
Closer to $12 than $3, though. Last time I went to movies, one ticket was ¥1800. And that’s not touching the concession stand.
That said, Baldur’s Gate 3 ran me ¥8500.
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.
Can tell you've been on the Internet too long! Nice rebuttal to a simple explanation of making money go further.
Not only never been poor, but super offended at the mere concept that someone is poor and cant bootstrap magic math their way out of it.
Clearly, they could charge more if they're selling more than ever. Also, you know it's not free to make a digital copy, right?! It's VERY expensive.
Capcom games with their gazillion overpriced DLCs that never go on reasonable sales? Funny.
I know that Diablo isn't a Capcom game, but if industry leaders are looking at $90 games with battle passes and in game purchases for $20 horse armor is "too low", then we are truly fucked.
Games in the 90’s were almost the equivalent of $100 today. They seemed better, though, and people seem to play them longer, but that's all probably just rose-tinted glasses
Game prices are already pushing $100+ when you factor in season passes, special editions, and microtransactions. Basically every AAA game has some combo of all of these.
The problem that they're not considering is that if they raise the prices, more people are going to be priced out of buying the games, and will resort to piracy. The cost of living is absurd right now, and I can only afford a handful of $60 games a year.
Why resort to piracy, just wait for next years 75% discount. It even comes with all the bugfixes.
I'm not going to argue the ethics of piracy, because the point is that a lot of people will do it if they otherwise cannot afford to buy games. Also, some games just never really go down in price, especially if you're talking nintendo. To this day Breath of the Wild is still $60 if bought new or digitally.
To be honest, game prices have stayed the same for a very long time, but you can't release garbage and expect people to hundreds for it
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.