Nobody rightfully complains when Lamborghini sells their luxury car for hundreds of thousands. Gamers have been conditioned for far too long that indie games cost less than 60 and everything else costs 60. This was the fault of the industry to be sure, but it’s clear the barrier is being broken by necessity and expensive-to-make games are going to climb the price ladder and prices for games overall will stratify like many other markets.
Interestingly, that’s all Shuhei is saying here. Pay for the games you think are worth it. Games still provide a significant amount of value for their cost, even at higher price points. This is obviously true as we’ve had a decade of base game $60 and ultimate edition $90-100 with people purchasing ultimate editions and such.
Mondez@lemdro.id 5 weeks ago
Are you suggesting that AAA games are such premium, high quality products they should only be experienced by a few wealthy individuals who can afford the budget to buy them? Because that is what your analogy suggests.
dormedas@lemmy.dormedas.com 5 weeks ago
That is what my analogy suggests and I suppose how you define wealthy matters, but that’s not strictly what I mean. I just mean prices are starting to striate.
AAA game devs are spending more on games every year and then suddenly finding out their market isn’t as wide as they hoped. High upfront cost + low demand sounds like a luxury product then, no? In the before times, they would release for $60 and squeeze hard for money. They can still do that, but now - since the price dam has broken - they can release for $80-100 and get more cash per super fan and then drop price aggressively to catch others who balked at the initial price.
I’ll be clear that the problem is the AAA industry spending too much on games when they don’t need to.