It feels to me like the closer we get to the Nintendo Switch 2’s June launch and the, apparently, $80 games associated with it, the more people are fighting with themselves over what is and isn’t worth it. But at least Sony veteran and previous head of PlayStation Indies Shuhei Yoshida is free from inner turmoil – he thinks relatively expensive, high quality video games are unequivocally necessary.
“I don’t believe that every game has to be priced the same,” Yoshida continues. "Each game has different value it provides, or the size of budget. I totally believe it’s up to the publisher – or developers self-publishing – decision to price their product to the value that they believe they are bringing in.
Yoshida continues to say that, “In terms of actual price of $70 or $80, for really great games, I think it will still be a steal in terms of the amount of entertainment that the top games, top quality games bring to people compared to other form of entertainment.”
“As long as people choose carefully how they spend their money,” he continues, “I don’t think they should be complaining.”
Considering the at least 100+ hours I invested in give or take ten* games throughout my childhood / adolescence / young adult past, then even €100 would’ve been a steal.
*Age of Empires 2, MU Online, Unreal Tournament 1999, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1/2/3, Battlefield 1942, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, R.O.S.E. Online, Counter-Strike 1.6, Counter-Strike: Source, Battlefield 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, Insurgency.
Does this mean less expectations for sales numbers too?
Not wrong. You and other AAA studios are not making games worth that price tag though.
I’m carefully spending my money by buying less games, mostly DRM-free indie games.
Why sell multiple games and make more money collectively when you can just sell one and alienate your loyal customers? Art of the deal.
We know they were an exec of one of the shittest companies around by the way they talk.
yup, “a steal” is a good word for that, but not in the direction they mean
They’re referring to hours of entertainment. People pay $20 to see a 2 hour film. Games give us 50+ hours at times.
That’s not to say games should cost the same as movies in terms of “entertainment hours”.
Quantifying the value of your media in “hours spent consuming it” is an intrinsically poor way to do things
Oh I will be choosing very carefully.
I’ll be going back and playing all the super Nintendo games I missed out on as a kid I think
You’d be better off getting an Anbernic for that.
I do choose carefully, I buy half a dozen indie games on sale instead, and I have nothing to complain about.
This is the way.
He’s not wrong, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a steal for the price it is. “Really great games” do exist and they’re worth their price tag, the problem is the number of AAA games of that caliber are like 1 in 30. We’re lucky to get one in any given year. Meanwhile, there are consistently high quality indie games coming out for less than $40.
but like… if your entire customer base is saying you’re wrong, aren’t you then wrong by definition? the buyers set the prices, in a way.
If the customers still buy it in the end, the publisher was right. We will see over time. Maybe there will be a drop in sales but then GTA6 comes along and no one can resist, opening the path for other games.
Someone on lemmy recently put this into perspective for me. Even like 1% of the population of the USA is 3 million people. If you increase the cost of a product and don’t care about long-term sales, the immediate gain in profit can outweigh the loss of total customers down the line.
I still think cutting off customers and burning good will isn’t a good business model, but I’m not stupid wealthy, so what do I know.
$80? How much is that, like 4 bananas?
Translation: The executives who don’t do anything deserve to get lots of money and you should be happy to pay them for it.
Fuck you.
“as long as people spend less money on games overall things will be fine!” Easy to say when you’re retired from the industry. I don’t think anyone in the industry would appreciate the implications of that…
If you look at inflation adjusted pricing, it really is a deal. IIRC we should be at like 90 or 100+ dollar games at this point.
We are already are, look at season passes, dlc etc, 90+ is the de facto price of a lot of AAA games. They’ll claim going even higher is to support developers or whatever when laying people off en masse and posting even larger quarterly results, it’s pure avarice.
They also tend to sell more copies vs decades ago, which is partly why the $70cad game was so normal for so long IMO.
As usual, the problem isn’t so much that the cost of everything is rising; It’s that wages aren’t keeping pace.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean the game developers don’t need to be paid. It’s still a bargain for the work that’s being done.
this would make sense if the game developers were being paid properly to begin with, rather than the leeches that are the c-suite taking more than they should
point to the wage increases for those developers
That’s not inflation works. Inflation shouldn’t apply to everything at the same rate.
My first computer costed the equivalent to 1000 euros. Do you think the average desktop should cost 3000?
That is how inflation works… when costs go up prices go up.
Yeah, your computer probably should cost a lot more in “today dollars” but because performance of components gets more efficient over time, you can likely get a better computer for less money.
It’s the same reason you have a computer more powerful than multiple thousands of dollar super computers. The technology has improved enough you don’t have to pay as much.
Do you think prices should just be locked in place for eternity at $60?
You can’t just scale game prices linearly with inflation, sure costs of development have increased, not just because of inflation but also because games are much more complex now. But the gaming market has grown a lot and games are infinitely reproducible so that hugely increases profits.
I don’t know how much we should pay for games, but just comparing it to inflation is useless
Games were $60 for so long everyone things it should be like that forever
