Games have been the same price for over thirty years, they’ve not changed with inflation and production costs have skyrocketed. To an extent the increased market has helped keep costs down for the consumer but it’s not unreasonable to see prices shift upwards.
What about the cost of disc media that’s absolutely disappeared? That was a huge chunk of the overhead. Logistics to get the copies to all the stores, etc.
Now it’s just electricity and servers to download from.
Do you ever notice that no one ever talks about all the advancements that saved money? Of course not, cause then they’d never be able to justify continually hiking the prices up.
I am genuinely not trying to sound like a studio apologist, because there are myriad reasons to be upset with them, but y’all need to think these arguments through a little better. I haven’t pulled up any numbers, but are we really going to pretend that the cost of producing a game in 1990 is even remotely comparable to that of a modern day AAA game? The fact that video game costs have remained relatively steady and even decreased in some cases for decades should be astonishing.
Lots of games today force some sort of online element (ex. Cloud saves, workshop content, multiplayer, etc.) I wonder how much that costs them to maintain. I can’t imagine it’s that significant if they are dealing with multiple single player games.
Eh, to me I usually just convert it to $ per hour of enjoyment. Will I get 10 hours of enjoyment? 100? 1000?
If it’s a great game and I think I’ll get 1000 hours out of it, even if it’s $70 that’s like $0.07 per hour.
Compare that to paying $30 to go see a 1.5 hour movie at the theater and you’re doing pretty darn good I think. Even if you only get 10 hours out of it thats $7 an hour for entertainment vs the $20 an hour for a movie.
I’ve paid 15 dollars to play risk of rain 2 for 500 hours. I gurantee you there is no triple A studio in the world that would get that many hours out of me nor would their game be even double that price
Do you really get that vibe? I feel like a lot of people refer to Bethesda games as a buggy mess. There’s the whole Bugthesda thing.
I think all the mods designed to improve performance have helped the reputation a bit but I still wouldn’t play Fallout New Vegas on a PS3 due to the bugs.
Maybe I’m just old but $70 base is too much for any game let alone one from a studio with known issues
Games have been the same price for over thirty years, they’ve not changed with inflation and production costs have skyrocketed. To an extent the increased market has helped keep costs down for the consumer but it’s not unreasonable to see prices shift upwards.
What about the cost of disc media that’s absolutely disappeared? That was a huge chunk of the overhead. Logistics to get the copies to all the stores, etc.
Now it’s just electricity and servers to download from.
Do you ever notice that no one ever talks about all the advancements that saved money? Of course not, cause then they’d never be able to justify continually hiking the prices up.
I am genuinely not trying to sound like a studio apologist, because there are myriad reasons to be upset with them, but y’all need to think these arguments through a little better. I haven’t pulled up any numbers, but are we really going to pretend that the cost of producing a game in 1990 is even remotely comparable to that of a modern day AAA game? The fact that video game costs have remained relatively steady and even decreased in some cases for decades should be astonishing.
Pick a different argument.
Lots of games today force some sort of online element (ex. Cloud saves, workshop content, multiplayer, etc.) I wonder how much that costs them to maintain. I can’t imagine it’s that significant if they are dealing with multiple single player games.
Probably not as much as the money they derive from the live service model.
Businesses do what makes them the most money.
Steam is more expensive than discs.
The customer base has increased more than a thousandfold. If anything prices should go down.
Eh, to me I usually just convert it to $ per hour of enjoyment. Will I get 10 hours of enjoyment? 100? 1000?
If it’s a great game and I think I’ll get 1000 hours out of it, even if it’s $70 that’s like $0.07 per hour.
Compare that to paying $30 to go see a 1.5 hour movie at the theater and you’re doing pretty darn good I think. Even if you only get 10 hours out of it thats $7 an hour for entertainment vs the $20 an hour for a movie.
$30 for a movie is insane
I’ve paid 15 dollars to play risk of rain 2 for 500 hours. I gurantee you there is no triple A studio in the world that would get that many hours out of me nor would their game be even double that price
Fair expectations from a complete adult /s
what’d you mean?
Smash Melee cost $86.48 on release when accounting for inflation.
I always found it kinda funny how gamers rage about the poor quality of games, but bugs with Bethesda is almost an expectation
Do you really get that vibe? I feel like a lot of people refer to Bethesda games as a buggy mess. There’s the whole Bugthesda thing.
I think all the mods designed to improve performance have helped the reputation a bit but I still wouldn’t play Fallout New Vegas on a PS3 due to the bugs.