CEO and C-suite bonuses are the biggest budgetary fat that never gets cut and is fundamentally what the excessive costs are paying for. If you want better sales, cut the wage and bonuses to said roles who do the least work and reap the most reward.
I’m sure that plays a role. But it might also be worth noting that the market is absolutely saturated. You don’t need to go out and get The Latest New Game to enjoy yourself. There are titles that are 20 years old and can stand up to anything the AAA titles will put out next week.
The marketing budget is what’s driving a lot of the prices of these bigger titles. You see a Superbowl Ad for the new Call of Duty or GTA game? That’s $5 of the sticker price right there. Sometimes firms are spending 50-100% of the actual production cost of the game to tell you to buy the game. Other times they’re just going out to the gaming mags/influencer groups and leading you with “The game is coming!!!” news articles for years at a time, hoping to build a critical mass of pre-orders to fund the next title in the pipe.
Once the game is out, though, its done. Anything you can flip it for is free money for the owner of the property. So why not re-sell the SquareEnix back catalog for $10/ea? Tune up the graphics a bit, maybe spring for a few new cut scenes. You can take a title that landed on shelves in the mid-90s and turn it into another eight-figure release just by hyping it back up again.
My rule is I’m only willing to pay a dollar for every expected hour of play, so you can imagine I buy few things at full price.
The last two games I paid full price for were Elden Ring and Mandragora. I am far more likely to pay full price for an indie title that I’m excited about than anything else, because as an artist myself, I fully understand the impact of a pre-purchase on an indie studio.
That’s generally how I follow it also. Though I add the stipulation that they’re enjoyable hours, and it’s not hardline. I know not every game can be measured that way. If it’s a particular genre or series, l might take the dive anyway. For indies, it goes even further than that. Some I track for years before release, so I pre-order as soon as it becomes available, just to support as much as I can. So $/hr is a good baseline, but it’s deeper than that.
If you only look at $/hr, there are some 70 hr games which milk your time and should have been shorter, like Assassin’s Creed, and then there are short, story rich games, like Outer Wilds, which are absolutely worth it even at more than a dollar an hour.
2 hour movies are also competing with streaming services like Netflix where people can see many more hours of TV shows and movies for less. Some just stick to youtube which requires no money and has some free movies there too.
Its like how people can drop hundreds and thousands of hours on f2p games without spending any money. $/hr valuation is outdated.
To be convinced to spend, consumer has to be convinced what a game is offering is unique to other cheaper and sometimes free alternatives. $/hr is something they will have a hard time competing with.
I don’t strictly adhere to it or anything, but I think it’s a good reminder sometimes when I balk at the price of a new game that I’m liable to spend hundreds of hours playing.
Yeah. Only reason I mention hours not being so important is because I’ve bought many games that are 5-10 hour experiences because I found the aspects like the atmosphere, story, or gameplay very compelling.
On a per hour basis The Finals has been the clear winner for me past 2 years its been out dropping over a hundred hours a year with no money spent. And enjoying more than paid multiplayer games.
To you perhaps. Cinema is less than half that cost here and even then I go less than once a year because I don’t really feel like most films that come out are worth bothering to see given the combined effort and cost.
I like some of the early access development styles used in things like Enshrouded and Satisfactory, so mostly ive been spending on games like that. I like the idea of collaborating with a player base to create a game together I think.
It all depends on what you’re looking for. I’ve put hundreds of hours into games and gotten way less than $1/hr, and I’ve also had a great experience paying significantly more.
So I don’t see games in terms of $/hr, especially these days when I’m more limited by time than money. Instead, I look for unique experiences with cost being a much lower factor. Generally speaking, I spend much less than $1/hr since I buy a lot of older games, but I’ve spent far more ($5-10/hr) on particularly interesting games.
But yeah, generally speaking, I’m willing to pay more for indies than AAA titles because indie games are more likely to offer that unique experience.
Aka the market has rejected your overpriced bullshit. Adapt or die. Welcome to the free market.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a mega corporation and previously had the winning formula. You adapt to meet evolving market demand or you die.
These c suites got too comfy doing everything to only please their shareholders. They forgot that pleasing their consumers wasn’t optional. We are your money supply. If you lose us, it all comes crashing down.
I don’t have the time anymore, the price isn’t really the factor. Anything new has to compete with my existing library and backlog, and other things on my wishlist. It’s a problem that’s only going to get worse, games aren’t really aging out of relevance at the rate they used to.
i almost never buy games on steam itself anymore…Even on the steam sales. The sales are a poor imitation of the great values that they were 10+ years ago, and quite frankly…the quality of games coming out isnt what it was 10+ years ago, either.
I subscribe to Humble Monthly and, eventually, get almost every game I’ve ever wanted.
I don’t even do humble monthly anymore. They’ve had periods of months and months where I don’t get anything I want to play or some obscure game that isn’t interesting. Its cheaper just to get the monthly bundle when I do see a game I want. Humble monthly was more than worth it maybe 10 years back.
Because youre overinflated executive and managerial budgets dont justify the fucking price when games like Hollow Knight, Jump Ship, and Stardew Valley are 10x better.
Would be interesting to see the stats for revenue by game, price by volume. If someone charges 300 for a game that no one bought. Then it shouldn’t count, hypothetically.
I work in market research. Data at this level of granularity (price band view) is extremely expensive.
Around 300K per year and that would also likely only include a few retailers GameStop, BestBuy, Walmart. I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I believe Steam data wouldn’t be included.
It’s very likely Valve doesn’t share the full dataset with anyone. Maybe partial data with some of their biggest partners.
As much as it’s great to shit on triple A games, this is quite bad for the industry as a whole. Devs cannot price their game above $15 without being held to an absurdly high standard, which makes budgeting for game development extremely difficult for smaller studios. If we want the AA scene to expand and give us more great games as we’ve seen in the past few years, that’ll need to change.
Arc Raiders launched as a feature complete game, mostly bug free, well optimized, with a sufficient amount of functioning servers, and with genuinely innovative game design.
It sold incredibly well at 40 dollars. I’ve bought it 4 times myself.
Expecting every game to meet those criteria is not “absurd”. It used to be par for the industry and it still should be.
AAA games from publicly traded corporations are just absurdly underwhelming. They want us to think these standards are absurd so they can keep their minimal effort bullshit gravy train running. It’s not going to work anymore. That’s the free market. Adapt or die.
No Man’s Sky was an indie released at AAA prices and was a pile of dog shit. Feel like there are other games you could’ve picked…
It was another example of what is wrong with the industry today. It never should have been released in the state that it did. And despite Hello Games extensive efforts - we are still missing features that Sean, on record, stated would be in the game at launch.
I chose NMS cause it is a perfect representation of AAA project that was dogshit on release but got fixed up to a promised game much later in it’s life. It fits like a glove into “don’t buy unfinished crap on release” category.
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Always compare value and price.
More often than not, AA games seem to come with a AAA price tag.
CEO and C-suite bonuses are the biggest budgetary fat that never gets cut and is fundamentally what the excessive costs are paying for. If you want better sales, cut the wage and bonuses to said roles who do the least work and reap the most reward.
I’m sure that plays a role. But it might also be worth noting that the market is absolutely saturated. You don’t need to go out and get The Latest New Game to enjoy yourself. There are titles that are 20 years old and can stand up to anything the AAA titles will put out next week.
The marketing budget is what’s driving a lot of the prices of these bigger titles. You see a Superbowl Ad for the new Call of Duty or GTA game? That’s $5 of the sticker price right there. Sometimes firms are spending 50-100% of the actual production cost of the game to tell you to buy the game. Other times they’re just going out to the gaming mags/influencer groups and leading you with “The game is coming!!!” news articles for years at a time, hoping to build a critical mass of pre-orders to fund the next title in the pipe.
Once the game is out, though, its done. Anything you can flip it for is free money for the owner of the property. So why not re-sell the SquareEnix back catalog for $10/ea? Tune up the graphics a bit, maybe spring for a few new cut scenes. You can take a title that landed on shelves in the mid-90s and turn it into another eight-figure release just by hyping it back up again.
My rule is I’m only willing to pay a dollar for every expected hour of play, so you can imagine I buy few things at full price.
The last two games I paid full price for were Elden Ring and Mandragora. I am far more likely to pay full price for an indie title that I’m excited about than anything else, because as an artist myself, I fully understand the impact of a pre-purchase on an indie studio.
That’s generally how I follow it also. Though I add the stipulation that they’re enjoyable hours, and it’s not hardline. I know not every game can be measured that way. If it’s a particular genre or series, l might take the dive anyway. For indies, it goes even further than that. Some I track for years before release, so I pre-order as soon as it becomes available, just to support as much as I can. So $/hr is a good baseline, but it’s deeper than that.
I’m totally ok paying $30 for a ten hr game, I appreciate shorter games. But if it’s boring or unfun for a whole hour in, I’m getting a refund.
I would also generally consider £1/hour of gameplay to be pretty terrible value tbh. Truly good games are more like £0.10/hour or less
That’s fine. I don’t agree with you.
If you only look at $/hr, there are some 70 hr games which milk your time and should have been shorter, like Assassin’s Creed, and then there are short, story rich games, like Outer Wilds, which are absolutely worth it even at more than a dollar an hour.
Prefer games like Factorio or Rimworld that you can get many 100s of hours from.
People spend like $20 to watch a 2 hour movie, $1/hr isn’t that unreasonable
2 hour movies are also competing with streaming services like Netflix where people can see many more hours of TV shows and movies for less. Some just stick to youtube which requires no money and has some free movies there too.
Its like how people can drop hundreds and thousands of hours on f2p games without spending any money. $/hr valuation is outdated.
To be convinced to spend, consumer has to be convinced what a game is offering is unique to other cheaper and sometimes free alternatives. $/hr is something they will have a hard time competing with.
I don’t strictly adhere to it or anything, but I think it’s a good reminder sometimes when I balk at the price of a new game that I’m liable to spend hundreds of hours playing.
Yeah. Only reason I mention hours not being so important is because I’ve bought many games that are 5-10 hour experiences because I found the aspects like the atmosphere, story, or gameplay very compelling.
On a per hour basis The Finals has been the clear winner for me past 2 years its been out dropping over a hundred hours a year with no money spent. And enjoying more than paid multiplayer games.
To you perhaps. Cinema is less than half that cost here and even then I go less than once a year because I don’t really feel like most films that come out are worth bothering to see given the combined effort and cost.
Not to mention that not all gaming hours are equally fungible.
There can be shorter narrative games where a given hour is worth more (to me), so the higher per hour cost is justified.
Agree 100%. Played Dispatch last week and had a blast. Very short, but worth the money imo
I like some of the early access development styles used in things like Enshrouded and Satisfactory, so mostly ive been spending on games like that. I like the idea of collaborating with a player base to create a game together I think.
Oh definitely. I’ve enjoyed the experience of helping devs mold a title into something better in exchange for a lower price.
I like your dollar an hour rule though, I might use that in the future. Its funny though, my most played game was free and I have 2000+ hours in it!
Edit: I forgot rocket league was 30$ originally! Still a good deal!
Yeah, the games I’ve spent very little on I’ve put a ton of time into, like Vampire Survivors, Noita, and Dungeon Defenders.
It all depends on what you’re looking for. I’ve put hundreds of hours into games and gotten way less than $1/hr, and I’ve also had a great experience paying significantly more.
So I don’t see games in terms of $/hr, especially these days when I’m more limited by time than money. Instead, I look for unique experiences with cost being a much lower factor. Generally speaking, I spend much less than $1/hr since I buy a lot of older games, but I’ve spent far more ($5-10/hr) on particularly interesting games.
But yeah, generally speaking, I’m willing to pay more for indies than AAA titles because indie games are more likely to offer that unique experience.
…until GTA6 comes out, then all bets are off.
I wouldn’t be so sure, matey! Yaarrghh! ⛵🏴☠️🦜
Aka the market has rejected your overpriced bullshit. Adapt or die. Welcome to the free market.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a mega corporation and previously had the winning formula. You adapt to meet evolving market demand or you die.
These c suites got too comfy doing everything to only please their shareholders. They forgot that pleasing their consumers wasn’t optional. We are your money supply. If you lose us, it all comes crashing down.
And if I DO want a triple A game, I wait a couple of years and then for a Steam sale.
I don’t have the time anymore, the price isn’t really the factor. Anything new has to compete with my existing library and backlog, and other things on my wishlist. It’s a problem that’s only going to get worse, games aren’t really aging out of relevance at the rate they used to.
i almost never buy games on steam itself anymore…Even on the steam sales. The sales are a poor imitation of the great values that they were 10+ years ago, and quite frankly…the quality of games coming out isnt what it was 10+ years ago, either.
I subscribe to Humble Monthly and, eventually, get almost every game I’ve ever wanted.
I don’t even do humble monthly anymore. They’ve had periods of months and months where I don’t get anything I want to play or some obscure game that isn’t interesting. Its cheaper just to get the monthly bundle when I do see a game I want. Humble monthly was more than worth it maybe 10 years back.
i mean… you can pause your month and skip the shit you have no interest in…
I think in 10 years of being subscribed I’ve only felt the need to do it like…twice? i think
For me I’ve had to do it for more than 5 or 6 months so to me pausing isn’t worth the time.
yeah, if you’re interests are super narrow then yeah it wouldnt be good for you.
Because youre overinflated executive and managerial budgets dont justify the fucking price when games like Hollow Knight, Jump Ship, and Stardew Valley are 10x better.
No it’s the users that are the problem get more jobs idiots
Would be interesting to see the stats for revenue by game, price by volume. If someone charges 300 for a game that no one bought. Then it shouldn’t count, hypothetically.
I work in market research. Data at this level of granularity (price band view) is extremely expensive.
Around 300K per year and that would also likely only include a few retailers GameStop, BestBuy, Walmart. I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I believe Steam data wouldn’t be included.
It’s very likely Valve doesn’t share the full dataset with anyone. Maybe partial data with some of their biggest partners.
As much as it’s great to shit on triple A games, this is quite bad for the industry as a whole. Devs cannot price their game above $15 without being held to an absurdly high standard, which makes budgeting for game development extremely difficult for smaller studios. If we want the AA scene to expand and give us more great games as we’ve seen in the past few years, that’ll need to change.
Arc Raiders launched as a feature complete game, mostly bug free, well optimized, with a sufficient amount of functioning servers, and with genuinely innovative game design.
It sold incredibly well at 40 dollars. I’ve bought it 4 times myself.
Expecting every game to meet those criteria is not “absurd”. It used to be par for the industry and it still should be.
AAA games from publicly traded corporations are just absurdly underwhelming. They want us to think these standards are absurd so they can keep their minimal effort bullshit gravy train running. It’s not going to work anymore. That’s the free market. Adapt or die.
If we want that, we’d want to pay for it right?
Yah but the amount of shit games charging 3 dollars is insane. Really dragging down the median.
Each year there are only a few new AAA games that are worth full price. People be buying indie or older games on discount.
Why buy new bugged COD when you can pick up fixed up No Mans Sky?
No Man’s Sky was an indie released at AAA prices and was a pile of dog shit. Feel like there are other games you could’ve picked…
It was another example of what is wrong with the industry today. It never should have been released in the state that it did. And despite Hello Games extensive efforts - we are still missing features that Sean, on record, stated would be in the game at launch.
I chose NMS cause it is a perfect representation of AAA project that was dogshit on release but got fixed up to a promised game much later in it’s life. It fits like a glove into “don’t buy unfinished crap on release” category.