$70 titles are doomed to go “the way of the dodo” says Saber Interactive CEO

Comments

• Zehzin@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So far the most popular new games thus year are a relatively small extraction shooter and a survival sandbox thing cobbled together with cardboard, string and copyright infringement

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  • casmael@lemm.ee ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    What are these games to which you are referring? I am but a poor peasant farmer and know little of the duke tophits of the duchy of vidyagaem

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    • hswolf@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      he talking about Helldivers 2

      and Palworld (not sure about the copyright infringement take tho)

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• ChocoboRocket@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I haven’t played Baldur’s Gate 3, but the game seems to have done quite well by being a well thought out and executed game.

  I tend to avoid advertising as much as possible, so I mostly hear about stuff through Lemmy/reddit and have no idea if there was a massive budget for commercials, events, billboards etc etc.

  It’s pretty rare that a really good game/movie slips through the cracks, not saying that these companies shouldn’t advertise - but a quality product will end up advertising itself through word of mouth.

  Would be pretty interesting to see what kind of games companies would produce if most of the marketing budgets were largely spent on improving game quality and experiences instead.

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  • Itsamelemmy@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I have ads blocked everywhere, so I don’t know if BG3 had traditional advertising. I do know they focused a lot on the voice actors with YouTube stuff like them playing table top D&D.

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• InfiniteFlow@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  How about, instead of spending millions on marketing and exercises or graphical virtuosity that do nothing in terms of playability, innovation and fun, focusing on what matters and do games where $70 still turns a huge profit?

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  • FMT99@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You can’t predict the value of a new, creative, interesting title. You can predict the value of a well-known franchise, standard, tried-and-true release. But they may have overestimated the value slightly when they upped standard pricing to $70, time will tell.

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  • shani66@ani.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    As far as advertising goes you don’t need anything more than a few grand and a good pitch to a YouTuber or journo

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  • Mikufan@ani.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If you’d just focus on the game itself an make a very small advertisement campaign so people know it, it woul be very profitable at 30 to 40 [currency]

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• PrinceWith999Enemies@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I think this is the same thing streaming media companies are realizing. When it was just pretty much Netflix, media companies would license them their content and Netflix would get their subscription fees. Then the media companies decided that they could earn more by cutting out the middleman and producing their own content.

  This created a headwind where companies established departments for producing content for streaming and funded them generously. However, the fragmentation on the consumer end ended up splitting the market such that it became unprofitable to run at those levels - everyone wanted $10 per month to subscribe to their dedicated service, and looked to in house productions to drive consumer loyalty. That, predictably, fell apart and now they’re increasing fees, cutting down on family accounts, and cutting productions.

  I think that the massive layoffs we are seeing in the gaming industry is a similar reaction. Game budgets have become bloated to the point of being unsustainable. I feel badly for the devs and staff affected by the contraction, and I remain impressed by the size of the game market overall, but at some point, like streaming media companies, you have to realize there’s only so much pie to go around. The size of the pie does grow, but the expectation of demand has significantly outpaced demand.

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  • luciferofastora@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Isn’t it a recurring pattern with rapid growth in kew industry sectors? The industry eventually outpaces the actual market, is carried on for a bit by momentum, and then finally the bubble between what they’re investing to get and the actual earnings grows too large and starts deflating, so investors start trying to cut the losses. And it’s the workers that pay the bill, because they suddenly need a new employer.

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• mp3@lemmy.ca ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So the price will go down, right? Right?!

  I’m mostly into indie games nowadays and I never pay 70$ for a single game, and if it’s a mainstream game I really want I wait for a sale.

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  • Ethalis@jlai.lu ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I honestly thought that was what the headline meant before reading the comments. Paying 70 bucks for a single game sounds wild to me when all my favourite games from the last few years have cost me less than 40, and sometimes less than 20

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    • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I think that is partially what he’s saying. When you price a game at $70, it means that people will have higher expectations of it then a $20-40 game. You’re even expected to justify why it’s worth $10 more than a $60 game.

      So you have all these AAA games that had huge budgets, and are being priced at $70, but because of the budget it’s highly risky for the company if it fails. But the high price also means higher expectations, and high expectations/hype will sink a game if it doesn’t live up to those expectations.

      Basically you can sell a game for $30, and people will enjoy it for what it is. Sell a game for $70 and it better be perfect.

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    • Itsamelemmy@lemmy.zip ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The article doesn’t really say pricing will go up. Just that the current AAA $70 isn’t sustainable. Even says he doesn’t want to sell their next game at $70, but is afraid of it being perceived as a lower quality game if cheaper. I think hellblade 2 will be a good test if a cheaper game price is seen as a negative. Personally, I loved 1, with their AA idea. Which is just AAA quality, in a shorter length. After the first hellblade, I was really hoping we’d see more high quality games releasing at different price ranges. Seems only indies, really move away from $70 though. I just beat immortals of avalon on ps+, and I think that would have been a perfect example of a game that should have released at $40. It wasn’t worth $70, but was a pretty fun experience for the right price.

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• cordlesslamp@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Just stop spending millions in making games photorealistic where it doesn’t need to.

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• randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Everybody who plays videogames has had this experience

  Pay 70$ for a game:

  • it’s digital only
  • comes loaded with Micro transactions
  • grinding mechanics that have a pay to skip function
  • single player campaign: 13 hours
  • buggy and unfinished glitches and freezes
  • PC port locked at 30fps, runs Denuvo.
  • gets removed from my library in a few years because “It’s too expensive to maintain and licensing reasons”

  “I’m never getting ripped off like this again”

  STUDIO executive “I wonder why no one wants to buy these games… Must be the price.”

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