TOTK was sold for $70 but then just a few months later was going on sale for less than $60. I think that most people just don’t want to spend that much on just a video game. No matter how fun or long it is 🤷♂️
Some things you missed: 1. Yes, videogame prices have stayed around $60, but the market for videogames has grown astronomically since the 90's. You have many more people that can buy your game compared to the 90's and get more money from the larger market. Also digital distribution has cut down on production/distribution cost and increased the area of where you can sell your game. 2. Modern games have alternate monetization strategies. Games with cosmetics make more money from cosmetics than the game's price tag. There's also paid DLC. That doesn't even mention the "ultimate edition" / "play early" edition. The "reasons" for higher price of games: 1. Larger development teams. - You hired too many people and bloated your team because your game had an unrealistic scope? Not a reason to increase prices. The dev of Space Marines 2 just mentioned how modern dev teams can be bloated and that's why their game was good: they had a realistic scope with the right sized team and they made a good game. A corporation mismanaging their internal structure is not my problem and I don't want that cost put onto me. 2. High-Quality Graphics - Graphics have reached a point of diminishing returns. It is pointless to chuck millions of dollars at a game just so we can see the individual hairs on Aloy's face. Did Stardew Valley spend millions on graphics? Do consumers want or even care about minor graphical differences, or do we just want a good game? I still play N64 games because they are good games, and I could cut myself on those jagged polygons. 3. Voice acting and cinematic storytelling - Stop hiring big name actors for video game roles. It breaks immersion and costs astronomically more than just paying a decent voice actor. You can tell a good story with a small budget, shut up with that shit. 4. Multiplayer and live services - I hate live services, everyone has had enough of these, they found their one live service game and have moved on; nobody has time for 10 live service games. Just because you want your game to be an infinite money printing factory doesn't mean you should increase the price tag of the game. I play plenty of games without multiplayer. If you add multiplayer to your game, that's on you. You should be able to accommodate online play, we've done this since before the first Xbox, don't act like this is a new thing. If you plan to have multiplayer in your game, factor it into the budget. Also: Not everything needs multiplayer. 5. Marketing - Spend less on marketing. Don't hire Keanu Reeves as a voice actor. The best advertisement for a game is word of mouth by being a good game. How did that marketing budget help Concord? You can spend a billion dollars on marketing and if the game's bad, gamers will find out the game is bad. All I hear is corporations saying, "Waahhh, games cost too much to make, give us more money." But most of the stuff they're spending their budget on doesn't improve the game, and is actually a problem on their end. Marketing costs too much? Market less and smarter; sponsor a few TH-camrs instead of buying a Super Bowl ad. Dev teams too big? Work with a smaller team and a tighter scope. High graphics too expensive? Actually use a decent art style and it'll still look good (Windwaker) even with less graphical fidelity. Live service too expensive? You didn't have your monetization strategy figured out then. I'm sorry it's not free to build a money printer. All of this could be rectified if the companies got their heads out of their ass. If you think that endlessly throwing money at something results in a better product, look at the reviews for "Skull and Bones," the first AAAA gaming experience. Sorry for the paragraph, you just missed a few things.
the root of the problem is they’re trying to turn gaming into blockbuster movies but for gaming That’s why they’re making all these big moves and failing cuz they’re setting unrealistic goals Like spending almost half a billion on a new game and thinking it’ll sell like crazy Like you said Concord is a good example of what not to do and how to avoid big fails But these people don’t read the suggestions of the little guy The ones who know what they’re talking about like TH-camrs and hardcore gamers They’ll just do whatever they want and they’re gonna keep scratching their heads thinking “ why aren’t we making money on these new huge games? “ At this point the only thing we can do is chill Buy the good games and let the trash ones fail. That’s how we get a message to them to correct course.
My biggest issue is I dont want to pay $70 for games (a) I cant own physically (b) that require an online connection to play (c) loaded with MTX for everything (d) could be taken away based on whether or not it sells well enough (e) even if on drive, it needs server validation I stay with Nintendo games bc they can be played off the cartridge & 99% of the time, what I buy, I own and can play whenever
That's a huge part of it though. Lmao Wood is way off on this. If gaming companies started to sell games at what they think they are worth, games would cost $300 each and they would be broken and full of microtransactions. Gaming would die so fast its not even funny. Don't let the rich corporations make you believe they got rich for doing what's right for consumers. They didn't. Don't be a sucker.
Alright, but what about owning the product i buy? Im not spending $70+ for a game that i get to own for a year then the devs remove it completely, whether thats digital or physical.
I don't get why so many people are fear mongering like all your games are being deleted left and right, name even a few triple a titles that have been removed from peoples libraries aside from the crew which was an old ass game where the servers were being discontinued anyway, im curious. Don't get me wrong, people should definitely be more aware of their ownership of digital stuff, but im so tired of hearing this same BS for the 294759382047485th time, like we get it.
Thats not always true, I have games that are dead and the devs went under and the game still exists in my library. The only way you can remove it is manually request it to be removed from your account.
The problem with letting companies charge more is they will just take advantage of it. We have already seen it with COD and NBA2k. They raise the price to $70 but still have microtransactions as if it's a free to play game. If they raise it to 100$ per game I would be happy as long as they guarantee no microtransactions. They also might end up making less money since less people would wanna buy it at $100. it's a double edged sword.
rent prices are the way they are because landlords can charge whatever they want for it. i cannot imagine a world where big greedy corporations won`t abuse of this system and just drive their prices way up
The difference with rent though is supply and demand. If there’s a shortage of housing, people still need somewhere to live so will pay increased costs to greedy landlords. There isn’t a shortage of video games, and sales almost always decline after a while, even for successful games, so if someone decides to release a game for £300 and hardly anyone bites at that price, they’ll just reduce the price. I think the only thing this could lead to is buying less games at launch for a lot of people, but there’s only a handful of games I do that for and generally am happy to wait a little bit. If it means a move away from micro transactions and studios not releasing games with a ton of bugs because they’re limited on what they can charge and want to know they’ll get a return, then I don’t mind this in theory.
@@MrTombangham no its not there are milions of appartments that have been build that are empty but are charged too high to to live in any they rather destroy it then lower the price with supply and demand prices should be going down but insted prices are going up for no reason but to add to allready insane amounts of intrests of billioens trillions that companies are flushing down the toilet
The funny part tho is...there is no official regulation of game pricing. It's a price standard the industry has put on itself. They could price it whatever they wanna price it, technically, no law is stopping them. Yet they aren't - why? My best guess is nobody wants to be the first to do it because you're always the one to get the bad publicity. Also, they're not sure how much people are able and willing to pay so every increase could mean lower sales. So the thing here is - people need a place to live. It's a necessity. So if people have any way to afford it they WILL pay for it because they have to if there is no cheaper option, unless they wanna be on the streets. People do not need video games. They can more easily decide not to buy them without any dire consequences. And therein lies the difference and that's why game companies aren't as liberal with their price increases as you would expect them to be.
If a company priced their game at $100 and not a lot of people bought it because it was too expensive then they wouldn't do that again. Rent and utilities are needs and people have to pay for them so they can charge high prices and get away with it because people need that stuff to live. They don't need video games so if people can't afford them, they go away.
men I feel you every time I buy something expensive I think ¨I can buy a video game at this price¨ but don't say anything because I know that my family will say ¨stop comparing every thing with video games ¨ or ¨you only think in video games¨
I've been saying this for so long. Video games are one of the only industries that have stayed inflation proof for the consumer for decades, meanwhile the cost of developing AAA releases has increased many times over. When I was a kid in the 90's , a new AAA release was $50 which is like $100 in today's money. So I don't mind paying $70. I am glad we aren't paying $80+. Also, the thing people forget is that back then, every game cost $50 no matter what it was. Now we have a range of indies that cost like $20-30 and AAA titles that are $60-70. That's way better than we had it 30 years ago.
Games back in the 90's were complete with minimal bugs. There were no ingame real money shops, you got 100% of all content included in the first and ONLY price.
Pokemon red and blue are notorious for their bugs, some of which are incredibly fun to mess with... the mew glitch, 6th slot item multiplying, missingno, the special Stat pokemon glitch etc. Links awakening had a super fun screen jumping glitch where you press select as you transition from one screen to the next and you'll be on the opposite side of the next screen. You can get places you normally couldn't and even phase into walls and such, really fun.
Games were much shorter and there were still many bugs. Btw, you can get a 100 hour game like botw now for less than what mario 1 cost ($49.99 in 1985 = $146 in 2024) back in the day (you will have seen al levels in less than 2 hours)
I'm not trying to be rude but have you seen those games you say have minimal bugs? The state they are in right now has many glitches which can be abused by the user for speed running the game in a very short amount of time to the point that a 2 hour long game from back then can be only 10 minutes by abusing those glitches. The games back then were very limited so there was a lot of corner cuttings to keep the games running at a reasonable frame rate, while the game can be played normally while encountering not that many game breaking bugs there is still many game breaking bugs that you can abuse intentionally, and in the case of Super Mario 64 there is many invisible walls randomly in the way which has caused me great annoyance at times and the game also had game breaking bugs that you could abuse.
The increased cost is typically covered by the massive increase in consumers as the market is leagues bigger than it was in the 90s. If they were to charge more, the average consumer would have to adjust by purchasing less, so all you would do is further concentrate profit into games that are low risk with lots of content and could actually lower profits in certain circumstances. You also run the risk of shrinking the market. If publishers believed they could profit from charging more, they'd probably already be doing it.
I've been saying this for years. We're VERY fortunate that market pressures to keep prices low have been as strong as they have been. Games used to be really expensive back in the day, and it was only because market SIZE expanded so much that having today's low prices work at all. I think it's good for us to keep complaining about prices to keep that pressure on folks, BUT we should also encourage companies to actually charge based on relative game value, both higher AND lower. As with any pricing strategy, though, so much is about good guesswork based on market research and experience.
I will rarely buy a new game at full price now. I will wait for the game to have all updates and be complete. By that time it's already discounted to $40-$50 (usd) at that point.
Well if you want quality games, you will have to pay, we want big maps, good story, good graphics, well optimised, voice acting, no bugs, good mechanics, all that at a low price, it is simply not possible, they take a gamble for every game they make, they do not want to break even, they want to do profit to which is very understandable, so they can take on bigger and more ambitious projects, and have some security in the bank, so that if a game flops they can still survive. Games get more and more complex, that takes time, effort and a lot of money, we ask for more and more from developers, but we don’t wanna pay more, so basically we ask them to do it for free, out of greatness from their hearts. I know cheaper games would benefit me, that does not make it possible, logical and right.
@Xamentle here is the thing. Companies are already doing what Woods is suggesting in the video. $70 is just the base price. Star Wars Outlaws got released at several price points. (70, 90 and 120), and it sold poorly.
@@Xamentle Sure it's possible. I've been doing it for years. Just wait a little while. Games go on sale all the time and if you wait long enough you'll also get the best version of the game with all the DLC and patches. The industry punishes early adopters with broken overpriced games. It rewards those who wait with cheaper more complete games.
Also, another thing I wanna add that I think a lot of people feel to realizes that when you see what people are writing you’re assuming that they’re angry or whatever when you’re only reading words and you don’t really know the body language or anything like that that they have while typing so try and keep it in mind if there’s some spicy ones out there
When I was in high school, starting to make my own money in 1993, I was making ~$4.00 an hour net. My son, who just started making his own money, is making about $16/hr net, which is the minimum wage around here. It would take me working ~18 hours to buy a $70 game. My son only has to work about 5 hours to afford a $70 game.
The reality is most people would pay $100 for GTA6, or at least enough that it would make it a more lucrative decision for Rockstar. Most games aren’t GTA though and should try to reduce costs. Shorter more focused games, removing unnecessary modes, prioritizing 1440p instead of doing all the work to generate 4K assets, etc.
The ratchet and Clank is an interesting point. Because $70 dollars for 8 hours of gameplay doesn't sound like something I'd want to pay. I guess I don't value performance enough. I do value narrative, gamelength and voice acting, so Tears of the kingdom I would've easily spent $80 on.
The issue I have with this is at the time this game was best looking, best performing (in terms of how it runs) game ever made. It was easily a 70 dollar game cause it’s repayable and has new game plus. I can’t stand the argument short games can’t be 70 dollars look at how triple a the visuals and performance and sound effects are.
My issue is that the price is $70 for a digital license and $70 for a physical game. Also, I have no problem if prices go up as long as they come out complete (no patch needed and no game breaking bugs). If that is the case I'm all for it. However, I will never pay $70+ for any game that's broken or can't have a stable frame rate.
This is a cursed cycle though. Yes; this would be ideal, but the devs are forced to release the games early because there’s not enough money to fund it for another year.
These generation I got a PS5 on 2022 and a Series S on 2020, plus the Switch. Other than the Switch. I barely play any console. I am 40 this year, and I have people depending on me and a bunch of other responsibilities. I still love videogames, but I am not sure it I will be paying $700 for new consoles, let alone when they go on "sale" at $550 in the future. These companies need to learn how to budget and provide value to gamers, like Nintendo is doing.
I am fairly certain that the people complaining about prices have majority digital games. What yall don't seem to realize, and Wood outlined perfectly, is that video games have not experienced inflation. It is cheaper than ever to own a console AND games. The reason why games suck on release is because they won't charge more. Everyone talking about how they make 4x the profit must forget that they do still have to pay the developers. It can also cost over a million dollars a year to host a single game. If games get cheaper, developers will not get paid, so then no one gets games. Think about others before you cry about your wallet.
“You don’t have to buy a game” I think this is the main takeaway here. Capitalism is screwed up and price gouges in many ways (when it comes to food, medicine, gas, etc.) but when it comes to purchasing luxury items, let the free market do its thing. At the end of the day, there’s always the option to play a different game or buy older games at a discount, or to read a book or watch tv or go outside. So many entertainment options.
I agree completely. People want games to stay cheap, keep out microtransactions, AND be very high quality. That is just unrealistic. Its a product. Games take immense amounts of time, money, and effort to create. Game developers are putting so much on the line when making a game.
I disagree on many levels. First of all, one very important data point is totally missing here. The number of buyers (and therefore the revenue). The market got bigger (more people buying more games), so prices could hold and companies made more revenue. I am astounded that you're not talking about this point and just wonder about how prices and development costs. Secondly, the free to play model, resting mostly on whales / big spenders and often times just ripping people off should not serve as a role model to just raise prices for everyone because the "normal game buyers" should be as profitable as those sometimes very questionable business models. IMHO, more regulation is needed in the free to pay (or micropayment) sector to stop this price and revenue spiral with gambling. Not the other way around. Judging the value of a game is hard and quite individual. So yes, it's not just about the hours one could spend. But there is an individual limit for everyone what still feels fair. Replay value also is part of it. IMHO, the current state of the gaming industry has so very little to do with the 70 dollar price tag and is much more complex. There's miscalculations about staff sizes due to the pandemic, companies spending billions of dollars buying up gaming companies (which we gamers have to pay in the end), business people making wrong decisions, risk aversion, and so many other things. To me, it's just naive to believe a higher price tag will solve any of the current problems and takes a step to a general better industry overall.
Okay, here's my take as both an indie dev and as someone with a currency that's way bellow the dollar. As a developer/freelance artist for indies, it's really hard to aim for big games because development takes too long, paying people properly is not easy if the development takes too long and the expectations are too big for anything to be worth a big price, which I honestly think will hurt the industry down the line, for the business to do well, honestly games should charge more since technology doesn't just make stuff easier, just makes people expect more. As an Argentinian where my minimum wage is less than 300 bucks, it's kind of a lot, I could go out with five friends for pizza and we'd spend less than 50 bucks for it. The game industry honestly should be able to adapt to regions for prices too, but it just can't since people have tried to just get international credit cards for cheap prices. Steam games here are now just locked in USD, we need extra apps to even know how much games will cost with added taxes, so by all means it's impossible to pick a side with undeniable argument to how much prices should change.
@stakesishigh8443 No but they're always chasing impossible profits. I read an article where Tomb Raider made tons of money 2-3x it's budget but it was considered a failure. It's ridiculous
Im okay with games costing more if it means quality goes up, make them 70, 100, 150, fuck it maybe even 200, but higher costs require higher standards.
Using N64 games as an example is a bit disingenuous when making this point, they were notoriously expensive for the time. Compare the prices to ps1 games and the gap after inflation is not really that far apart.
Games that are completely polished and mostly bug-free? Sure, £70 is perfectly fine for me. If Switch 2 titles jumped to that price but maintained Nintendo's general polish and care, I would still gladly buy them. The problem is that a lot of modern releases don't fall into that category, not even close. Broken at launch, requires months to get to a playable state and often have overly expensive DLC/microtranstacions on TOP of the initial asking price and ongoing issues. To be frank, most modern releases don't even deserve to be £30 at the embarassing state that they're releasing right now. They can have their £70/$70 when publishers get their heads out of their arses and allow their developers to actually finish their games.
It's hard for me to judge I mostly play single player games and I usually buy them a year after release, but I bought FF7 Rebirth, FF16 and new Zelda and they were all playable and without bugs.
Idc that the price hasn't been raised in a long time. The amount of people who buy games and play games has also gone up *substantially* Most people play games these days, back then when I was a kid in the early 2000s it was mostly just the nerdy types playing games. And this is without mentioning all the bs monetization with micro-transactions happening
They need to spend much less on development and screw the photo realism. There is no way in the current economy that they could increase the price. The first publisher to try $80 will be criticized out of existence.
I think one point your missing. Back in the 80’s 90’s there were very few adult gamers video game were for mostly children. We had no internet , you had to go to a shop and there was not a huge catalog of games so £50-£60 was the price of a game. NOW we have the internet and an overwhelming choice of games from 99p upwards. Company’s can’t raise the prices as people will be satisfied with the massive choice of cheaper great games, plus back in the 80-90’s we had a LOT more time to play games, now with smart phones, Netflix etc….the competition is massive for these AAA titles, if they charged more than£50-£60 people can’t afford it and can buy cheaper games. A big majority of us don’t have disposable cash. I think wood forgets this sometimes. We watch him and others to enjoy parts of gaming we can’t all afford.
Hot Take: Not every game has to be this $70 Open World Experience with everything crammed into it, I'm fine with getting smaller games in between that are worth playing instead of trying to be the biggest marketting gimmick for an empty game. Nowdays I spend $40 AT MOST on games nowdays since they get on sale a few months after realese, or are cheaper second hand... even Nintendo ones. I can't afford spending $70 every month for a game I may or may not like. Thats why the only games I mostly buy at launch now are Mario or Zelda (in a place where they are $50 instead of $60-$70)
I get everything you're saying but at the moment you also have the likes of the Pokemon Series that has every game ever made staying at that $70 mark and even if it goes on "sale" it doesn't really drop at all. but yes absolutely we as consumers have to recognise the effort that goes into making the games we all love and that the work behind them needs the financial support to keep it all going, otherwise who knows how long and how sustainable it will be
I´m from Colombia, where the minimun salary a month is 303.51 USD as today, fortunate I earn a little bit more, but to many people have to live with that amount, and to have any kind of original games, any console, any way for entertainment in the house after food, services etc, it´s a luxury. So please do not encourage the rise of prices in games. Simple math says that if you charge 60$ per person and sold 10´000.000 copies of that game, that is already 600´000.000.
Spiderman 2's budget was £300,000,000 and GTA VI budget is apparently over £1,000,000,000, so I don't think that 600,000 is going to do much. And if you watch the video the point is to allow dynamic pricing, instead of every game being $70 when it could be cheaper and do better, or be more expensive and come out in a better state. A meal at McDonald's for two people which is "cheap food" is like £25. And for the price of doing this 2-3 times you can get a big triple A big budget game. I wish games were cheaper too but it's hard when everything has increased in price besides games. I think some sort of dynamic pricing would be a good solution to make some games cheaper and increasing the quality of other games. You can always buy games second hand/on sale or from sites like CDkeys if you don't want to pay full price, which is what I do most of the time.
There used to be a deluxe physical version for $20-$30 more and a ton of people would buy that. Include a map, steelbook, cards, etc. that was always an easy way for publishers to get more money. Now it’s buy the standard edition or spend $200+ to get a statue.
I personally like to rationalize most video game purchases against movie theater prices. A movie today costs like $20 for 2 hours of entertainment? A $70 game for something seems less insane when I frame it that way depending on what type of gaming experiences you value and how many hours you plan to put into it With the Cyberpunk 2077 example, I was only able to play after the major update so I totally understand the frustrations of the people there from the start with an unfinished game, but I arrived at a point I thought it was more than worth it to buy the game + DLC. And for things like Zelda or Pokemon I will always be willing to shell out (I am who I am idc) where other games I would be more skeptical or be more impacted by reviews before buying. I've noticed that I'm more willing to wait for sales than ever before just so I can feel out the value - the "first day" hype has died out for me with most games because of the pricing
I think some of the reasons why games stayed at $60 and only went up $10 after wanting to raise prices for so long is: 1. The price of everything else has risen and they don't want to be one of the first expense thrown out (i.e. like funko pops) 2. The price of games being so high in comparison back in the 80s and 90s had to do more with the costs of the physical production of the games. Cartridges with their own chips were way harder to produce than discs, let alone a digital download. 3. The rise and success of Microtransactions. Raising the price of the initial entry point stops a lot of people from coming into their in-game shops. for example, if an amusement park earned far more money from in-park gift shops than from ticket sales, it'd make sense to test out lowering the ticket prices to get more people in the park and into the gift shops. Biggest example of a game doing this is with The Sims 4 going free to play after several years of making expansion packs that the base game was a clear pale in comparison to the experience with $60 worth of DLC that'd suit more to your tastes. 4. Nearly everyone has a backlog of games from spending on bundles or from stopping mid-game because some came up. New games have to compete with the consumer's unfinished history. I think the "Quadruple A" games that are pushing so hard to raise the price should just go all out. Not because I think it's a good idea, but instead I want them to fully admit and show what they want and fall flat on their face as they trip over their own greed and ego. Because while games have gotten cheaper over time in comparison to everything else, they've also gotten much cheaper to develop with time passing as more technology and knowledge gets developed and shared. However I feel a lot of the funds and time developing "Quadruple A" games is spent on excessive and needless features, like overly detailed textures and models, alongside incredibly unnecessary details all for the sake of "Realism". Which from what I know comes from a very long, industry-wide insecurity, from Developers, publishers, and Consumers/Players alike. That insecurity deriving from being seen as "childish" and being the youngest form of art/media.
Honestly, i think you're 100% right. We live in a free market economy. Unless it's an essential item (food, water and so on), why shouldn't a company be able to charge whatever they want for a product? Its up to the consumers not to buy it if they deem the price too expensive. If the consumer deems the price of a game too high, it wont sell. If the consumer is willing to pay $200 for a game, why shouldn't the company be allowed to charge that? If its too much for you, then wait for a sale. (Im cheap and never pay full retail, but that doesn't mean a company shouldn't be able to charge it) You're spot on that everything else has risen a lot more than games have, and games provide a great bang4buck entertainment value. No one NEEDS video games. If its too much, dont buy it. Wait for a sale. I also never knew companies weren't allowed to charge what they want. Thought it was just an unwritten rule
They are allowed to charge what they want, but it's not popular with gamers to charge extra. Nintendo got away with it with Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but you could actually get it much cheaper very easily. People may say that the new Star Wars Outlaws game failed for other reasons, but if you saw how much some of those complete bundles costed, it was absurd. You're pretty much paying 90 dollars now if you want day 1 access (considered early access, but that is just marketing-- the day the game is available is launch day). They are finding more and more ways to devalue the 70 dollar option, and the thing is, they never quite justified that price point to begin with. If these companies fail, it's because they're greedy and insatiable. Make a good game like BG3 and win.
I really like your opinion on how the price should equal the value. It really opens up me to a different point of view, and I want to continue in a different tangent: I prefer games that are more expensive with little to no in-app purchases over less expensive or free games that are filled to the brim with microtransactions. It really makes a difference when you pay the price to play and get a great game that requires no extra paywalls. I honestly can’t thank the people at Nintendo for making most of their modern day games available at the $60 price range. (If you couldn’t tell, I’m really starting to like this channel!)
Think of it like this. In Australia it cost $100AUD or a bit over to buy a game like the silent hill 2 remake. And if you want multiple games like metaphor and sparking zero that’s gonna cost you $300AUD. Not many people have that kind of money to spend on games when having to pay taxes and products for sustainable living. And if you like all of these franchises and want all these games and are worried if you don’t pick them up day one and the physical sells out, we’ll it’s bad luck. Then you open a social media app and see all these content creators buying like six games every week. It’s insane, some people need to touch grass
Video games are way more mainstream and publishers move so many more units than they did 20-30 years ago. That's the primary reason we're only paying slightly more for games than we did in the 90's. They may take longer and require more people with higher salaries to develop, but they sell way more than they used to. We should also take into account that physical copies of games only account for roughly 10% of sales anymore. That saves publishers a decent chunk of change. That being said, game development times are just getting longer and longer which requires more money to sustain development teams. If I'm getting higher quality experiences, I'll pay a higher price for games I'm genuinely interested in. I can wait for sales or used copies for the rest.
I’ve gone back to playing older games and battling the backlog. Any upcoming or recently released games I’ll just hold off a time until updates are all sorted and prices have dropped in sales. Easter, summer and November discounts are normally the better time to grab a decent gaming deal.
You make a lot of good points. Here in Canada new games are around 80 bucks after taxes. The real key I feel is the quality of the game and what you get out of it. I paid around the standard price for a game I’ve played 11times or more then there is other games you can play infinitely like Mario party that you can easily get your moneys worth. It can depend on the player too but if the game genuinely isn’t fun to play then it’s not going to be worth that price. I feel you did a good job at being fair and taking a deep look at this subject and you really got me thinking myself. A game like GTA6 could be worth 100 dollars and a lot of people would still buy it because rockstar has that good reputation with their games. Meanwhile you get some developers who rush it or go with alot of micro transactions. Indie devs are great because they focus on their vision for that game and not the marketing and you can enjoy those games too for that lower price. But anyway I’m rambling… Basically good job wood on another great video. Thanks for giving me something to think about.
I've always felt this way. People spend $20 to rent a 2-hour movie VOD. I spent $50 for RDR2 and played it for 100 hours. I think the cost-per-hour-of-entertainment on video games is amazing. It's the best bang-for-your-buck in entertainment there is.
for sure tho one of the things about video games is the fact the higher prices sometimes force people to pick and choose and with the advent of f2p it's harder to justify. It's a conundrum especially with these higher budgets. That's why i don't necessarily mind some monetization practices cuz they need to make up for it. I'd rather the barrier entry be lower (tho i guess thats where sales come in) and publishers use other methods to get money but the industry first needs to solve how to make the current path viable
I personally believe that the price of games aren't expensive enough to compensate all the developers that put in a lot of work and some overtime to produce the game that you know and love. Sure, if you are a solo indie developer then the price point around $15 is a perfectly reasonable price point but companies have a lot of moving parts and people working for them to deliver your product so I personally believe it does make sense for it to be more expensive but I also do believe that most of the money from that expensive price is going towards the company rather than properly compensating the developers for their work, so what we really need is to have companies start compensating their developers more rather than pocketing 90% of the games price for themselves then it would be much more reasonable for it to be priced so high rather than them pocketing the money at around 4x the amount their developers get. Your reasoning is fair but lacks thought for the poorer countries which aren't capable of paying for those types of games due to their economy, usually in this case you would make the prices lower for the poorer countries as it decreases the amount of people that cracks the game which is a net positive even after taking into account the people that will abuse the lower price point with a VPN but companies don't do this because of greed so they want to maximize the amount of profits *they* get not the people that are getting overworked making the game for them, anything to please their stockholders I guess...
You have to remember that a lot of these video games CEOs especially the big ones like EA and Ubisoft and Bethesda and how much money they actually make per year while they lay off their developers is absolutely insane so the conversation of whether or not the cost of a game needs to be raised is a ridiculous notion in this day and age of American capitalism in the video game industry.
Yeah, games might cost $70 upfront, but for those who can pay more, companies hide extra costs behind deluxe or premium editions. You get a few extra skins or perks, and plenty of people go for it (Black Ops III - Zombies Deluxe is 100 bucks, or Shadow of War: Mythril Edition - 300 (and you cannot tell me that plastic figure cost 230 dollars to make)) The thing is, companies can’t just raise base prices above $70 because of competition-they wouldn’t sell. So instead, they offer these pricier versions for those who want more, which is smart. Honestly
Games are worth whatever we’re will to pay. I for one wait for sales or buy any of the thousands of Indy games to play. $70 is simply not worth it for me since they go on sale physically shortly after.
Indie companies still selling games at $20. AAA companies charge $60-70. And some games like Madden just sell the same game with a roster update every year.
@glovesgunpla compare to other things you buy for 100$ and you'll see it's not that much asking. Of course depends on the game, I don't mean 10-20h games. 10y in dev games tend to be very long 50-100h rpgs. So you pay 1-2$/h. In comparison to 1 or 2 times eating out as Wood says...
i get where you are coming from on the price going up to make for a better game, and the 10 bump in only the last decade...but, the systems we play one them are now getting higher and higher, maybe i am just one of those that did not jump when all the console makers said, ( here is my new machine, now buy games) i already saw this trend, and it did not end well for some, and other say that one company brought us out of the dark, that may have been the 80's, but there were a ton of console makers in the 90"s that threw their hat in the ring, and wanted us to pay for there high priced console and games. those that sold at a cheaper price and games at cheaper price survived, the second crash, now we have three. to choose from, games from the 90's where expensive, because, they were so many to choose from and not really knowing what was the best one to have. not everyone could buy every console. remember Dreamcast, 3DO, The Jaguar, even Neo Geo, if you lived in a bigger city. also not internet, did not have tubers telling us, hey buy this or this suck, or this game is not worth the money....i know you in your 30's but i am in my 50's, even tho i may live in an area with not that much advertising or access to these systems, i did have other ways of finding out about them. if i wanted a game, or system it was gonna cost me more then what is selling now, 700 is nothing to what was being sold by stores back then.
I agree with 90% of what you said and I 100% want to give you your flowers for having the bravery to say it in an online space where even a popular opinion is bound to get attacked, let alone an UNpopular one But that said, my answer to SHOULD some games cost more than $70 is different than COULD they. What do I mean by that? >> based on how much it costs to make games, how long it takes, and how devs should be compensated, these games SHOULD cost more. But with the sole exception of GTA VI maybe, they can’t charge triple digits for a base version of the game In a world where audiences have been conditioned (by music, movies, shows, and now F2P games) to expect freemium/streaming models as the pricing norm, there’s already friction from the start with that base $60-70 price. Add onto that any price that adds that second zero to the price tag, the perception becomes that it’s too much for a one time, in the moment purchase. It doesn’t matter that the same $70 that may buy your family 2 hours at the movies may also buy that same family 20 years of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (I kid… but only slightly) - it becomes a knee jerk perception of too much
The skateboarding industry is sadly seeing this too. The cost to manufacture decks and skate gear is going up, but the price is staying the same to keep the consumer happy. As a result, a HEAP of skateboarding companies are closing or going through major staff downsizes. Money sucks, man...
Back when games went for $50 and $60 there was a lot of money put into brick-and-mortar stores for people to be able to buy a physical game. You have to remember that nowadays everything can be purchased digitally which is a majority of how people get their games these days whether we like that or not but publishers are saving money by not having to supply brick-and-mortar stores with physical copies as much as they did in the past. Publishers are actually saving money by not making as many physical copies because the majority of their money is made through digital versions which costs basically nothing.
I don’t think $70 for a full game is the issue. $70 for an unfinished game with less features than its predecessor is the real kicker. On top of which $70 + $20 and even $40 battle passes are criminal.
Be PC Gamer, wait for low low prices or even free giveaways. Having a Non-Gaming Amazon Prime Family Member has worked out great for me. (The problem with rising game prices is they'll still gouge you with microtransactions and other add-ons, changing it to $70 didn't change that one bit)
As a speedrunner I honestly have to agree with you here. I've spent around 7K hours in Super Mario Odyssey so the thought that the game only costed me $60 is always a bit crazy to me. I just wish it was more balanced (ex. a game like Mario Tennis Aces shouldnt cost the same amount as something like Odyssey, etc.)
I agree with your point, but on the other side - do you think that best and expensive to make movies should cost $50 per ticket while less popular and niche $15 for ticket? That will crash all movie industry in a year, completely erasing all ventures and risky projects.
Nah I gotta disagree. I do see where you're coming from, but like, actually wanting to pay more is wild to me. Especially as the video game industry is literally the the biggest entertainment industry, it's an absolute behemoth, it generates more money than anything, and these companies do not need an extra 30 bucks off any of us. I know people who literally do not buy games anymore, they just wait to see what comes on Game Pass or the EA subscription thingy, yet we who buy games should be paying more to help these companies out? I just don't connect with it. Maybe I'm just speaking out of scorn because of my position, I've got a wife and a mortgage, so I can barely afford these AAA games as it is, so to pay more would just leave me completely checked out tbh, especially as consoles themselves cost small fortunes these days, even controllers cost about the same price as a game. Plus, microtransactions are gonna be here no matter what, we can get all the new interesting IP we want, but Fortnite, COD and FIFA Ultimate Team are still gonna be at the top of the charts, regardless of game prices, and these companies see that and what a slice of it. I know gaming is a hobby, it's a luxury, if you can't afford it you don't have to buy it etc, but idk that just feels so excluding to me, like for arguments sake, let's say prices are raised to £100. To buy a kid a PS5 Pro with a new game, and an extra controller, you're talking close to £900. Nearly a GRAND for gaming. Just no man. I know we all want gaming to be better, but I just struggle to accept that in the most lucrative entertainment industry in the world, that change has to come from... the consumer. P.S. I thought the UK was bad, but this video taught me that prices in the US are pure chaos. $50 for 2 sandwiches, 2 bags of crisps, and a drink? The Tesco meal deal would blow your mind.
The game industry is so messed up right now that if games were more expensive that money wouldn't go into making a better game or treating employees better and there would still be be the massive layoffs every year, the money would all get siphoned to the top with the CEOs and shareholders.
Im gonna be honest as someone from a third world country, 70$ is just an absurd price for any normal person here. Paying 400+ for an videogame when our minimal wage just recently got updated to 1,8k in our currency feels horrendous. The console itself is already an huge investment for us, with this current generation being in the house of 4k, but on top of that having an 400 extra bill per game is just horrible. It doesn't surprise me the majority of people go for xbox or only playing PC games here, Xbox at least has game pass for an affordable price and PC games actually try localizing the prices
There is so much unfair money the world want from you, you think they ever let you off once ? If they ask me to pay when I shouldn’t pay, then why should I feel guilty for underpaying them anyway
When all Sega Megadrive and SNES games were £40, there was no difference in price between a great game vs the hundreds of crap games. We just had to rely on magazine reviews to steer us right. Anyone that completed Super Mario World knows you had to sit through the credits for ages while so many names scrolled up the screen.
Here in AU, where we have a housing crisis and shops are price gauging to the extreme. Just cause a donut costs the same as a AAA video game, doesnt mean the game is cheap. Usually means everything else is too expensive. Even if you get 3 jobs now days, sometimes you gotta decide whether rent or food is more important. Maybe we can splash out on a $20 game, maybe 1 $60 game every 6 months if we're lucky. But just adding more to that, takes more away from the rest of the already tight budget.
I think it all depends on how much use/fun you get out of the game, which of course is gonna vary. When Dreamlight Valley first came out, everyone of course was complaining about the prices ($30/$50/$70) for what was then thought to be a soon-to-be a FTP game (putting current paid status aside for a different convo). I didn't want to pay for it so I was mooching off my sister's digital copy for a while. I ended up having so much fun I ended up forking over my own $50 to get my own copy and own digital perks. No regrets, I've put in 600+ hours and can easily compare that to at least $200 of fun. Similarly, I've put in 200+ hours in Stardew Valley and own that physically ($35), but if I owned it digitally ($15) I'd say it'd be worth AT LEAST $30-$40 as that game is so fun. Comparitavely, I splurged on Splatoon 3 when the game first came out ($60) and wholely regret buying that digitally as I put in maybe 40hrs into it. Got bored with it pretty quick and don't think it was worth me paying $60 for it. Woulda considered a cheaper copy physically cuz then I could trade it in/resell it when I got bored.
For me if prices go up, you have to expect higher quality. This is where the big problem has been. Many companies release $70 games that aren’t high quality and they shove in micro transactions, and season passes. With a game like Tears of the Kingdom I would pay $100 for that game. To think that game is $70 is too cheap in my mind. Make a game like that and I’ll be glad to pay more.
@@nomadicgamer9466 yeah I don’t regret the $70 for Rebirth or 16. I feel they too were worth the price. It really does boil down to quality. I’ve seen $60 games that are better than some $70 games and I wonder why they aren’t more expensive when they are clearly better games.
So many games don't justify the $70 price tag when they're released incomplete and full of bugs. The good thing about having a huge backlog of games is that I get to buy them for less after they've been out for a while. The only games that I've paid full price for are Spiderman 2, ToTK, and GOW Ragnarok. All three I bought at the midnight release.
As they raise prices it just means I start not buying any games I'm not 1000% certain I'll like, and I still end up disappointed in the end. I'll just start watching TH-cam playthroughs at that point for free.
As someone living in a country with a terrible currency exchange rate, whether a game cost $70 or $60, in the end I will still wait for a sale to drop it down to 50% off. For Nintendo, I’ll just buy the physical copies secondhand when the prices drop. That’s why I really hope Nintendo still stick to physical games for as long as possible.
I wouldn't mind paying $100 to $150 for a video game, but it would need to come with a promise. Games used to be straightforward: you paid once, and you could enjoy the experience however you chose. The issue now is that you're not just paying to play; you're paying to be trapped in a system. Developers are increasingly selling you time or perks. For example, if you pay extra, you might get to play the game a week earlier than others. Or, for more money, you can gain an advantage, essentially paying to win. And then there’s the push to spend on cosmetic items to 'look cool,' which often leaves the non-paying options looking mediocre or unfinished. This creates a serious imbalance. Why would developers put the same effort into the free aspects of the game when they can sell you premium content instead? Worse, they sometimes design problems into the game, only to offer paid solutions, pretending it's normal. What's troubling is how many people buy into this, justifying it as 'supporting the game,' when, in reality, they're being manipulated. Games don’t need excessive cosmetic items to survive, especially when those items diminish the significance of hard-earned achievements. Take cosmetic gear, for example. It used to be that you could tell how skilled or dedicated a player was just by looking at their armor or gear. Now, with paid cosmetic items, that sense of accomplishment is diluted. It also becomes confusing when low-level or new players look as impressive as veterans without earning it. This whole situation frustrates me because it feels like most gamers have forgotten what a well-crafted, one-time purchase game feels like. I'm not saying we shouldn't have new experiences, but the prices and business models companies push today are excessive. Oddly enough, Nintendo is one of the few companies that still sells games the right way: buy once, with optional DLC that adds real value. Yes, Nintendo has its flaws, but they at least handle game sales with a level of respect for the player.
What I find the most bizarre about pricing is having a game costing the same price whether it took 1y to make or 10 years. For example a Pokemon game vs Elden Ring. The profit margins on those must be so wildly different. I don't get why the prices of 60-70$ is set and cannot flucluate based on the actual cost of making the game.
I think there should be a spectrum. I already pay $90 for the premium version of a game with like a a couple extra cosmetics and a battle pass. If they just charged that price for a completed game with hundreds of amazing hours of gameplay it wouldn’t bother me.
I actually have a point to bring up that you didn't cover: replayability. I'm not so much concerned with how many hours of playtime it takes to play a game. For me, it's about how much I enjoy the game, will I replay it, and how much. That's why so often I replay older games, because to me they have more replayability than newer games. I don't see much point in paying a higher price point for a game that I'm either gonna play once and throw in a drawer, or for whatever reason I don't end up finishing and then I never go back to it. I'm happy to let game companies charge what they feel a game is worth, within reason, though, if it means that development time is longer and results in a more fantastic game that I'll replay over and over.
Maybe it makes sense for Americans but here in Brazil one new game is almost half of our salary. Games are way too expensive and are getting MORE AND MORE EXPENSIVE
Well said Wood, I agree we have been fortunate with the prices staying the same for over 20 years! Although, as many people have pointed out, the industry needs to land at a decision on whether we own a physical game we purchase or just a license to play it. And this issue has not just been in the video game industry alone, it has been in effect for the movie and music industries forever. I personally would love to see maybe a Nontendo episode where you have multiple guests such as Spawnwave, MVG, and MetalJesus weigh in on these topics. I feel it would be enlightening for a large group of your audience!
Companies like EA, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft would end up ruining up some aspects of gaming somehow in their own magical way if prices were all up the wazoo.
The fact that they can still make a profit by charging so low says a lot. Games continue to sell even after decades they fire their staff. The motivation to make a masterpiece of a game is not so they can sell it for more, rather they want to be able to sell it for longer. As prices drop, it allows more people to buy it. It makes it easier for people to get off their other games to try new ones. The prices are very strategic and calculated. You’re thinking too straight forward, higher prices doesn’t necessarily mean better games, what makes for a great game is a great product accessible for all. Higher prices is just a way to further separate those that have and those that have not. Sure raise those prices, you obviously don’t care to pay more, but for everyone else, that just means, longer waits for the price to come down. Don’t be that guy, if you just wanna pay more money, then buy an ultimate collectors edition with all the fancy crap.
All games should be free, with Fortnite Dances.
WTF ! Fortnite should be Game Over along time ago !
No Fortnite please👎
Lmao no Wood
Years ago I played mostly online free games. But still spent more money than buying game. 😅
TOTK was sold for $70 but then just a few months later was going on sale for less than $60. I think that most people just don’t want to spend that much on just a video game. No matter how fun or long it is 🤷♂️
Some things you missed:
1. Yes, videogame prices have stayed around $60, but the market for videogames has grown astronomically since the 90's. You have many more people that can buy your game compared to the 90's and get more money from the larger market. Also digital distribution has cut down on production/distribution cost and increased the area of where you can sell your game.
2. Modern games have alternate monetization strategies. Games with cosmetics make more money from cosmetics than the game's price tag. There's also paid DLC. That doesn't even mention the "ultimate edition" / "play early" edition.
The "reasons" for higher price of games:
1. Larger development teams. - You hired too many people and bloated your team because your game had an unrealistic scope? Not a reason to increase prices. The dev of Space Marines 2 just mentioned how modern dev teams can be bloated and that's why their game was good: they had a realistic scope with the right sized team and they made a good game. A corporation mismanaging their internal structure is not my problem and I don't want that cost put onto me.
2. High-Quality Graphics - Graphics have reached a point of diminishing returns. It is pointless to chuck millions of dollars at a game just so we can see the individual hairs on Aloy's face. Did Stardew Valley spend millions on graphics? Do consumers want or even care about minor graphical differences, or do we just want a good game? I still play N64 games because they are good games, and I could cut myself on those jagged polygons.
3. Voice acting and cinematic storytelling - Stop hiring big name actors for video game roles. It breaks immersion and costs astronomically more than just paying a decent voice actor. You can tell a good story with a small budget, shut up with that shit.
4. Multiplayer and live services - I hate live services, everyone has had enough of these, they found their one live service game and have moved on; nobody has time for 10 live service games. Just because you want your game to be an infinite money printing factory doesn't mean you should increase the price tag of the game. I play plenty of games without multiplayer. If you add multiplayer to your game, that's on you. You should be able to accommodate online play, we've done this since before the first Xbox, don't act like this is a new thing. If you plan to have multiplayer in your game, factor it into the budget. Also: Not everything needs multiplayer.
5. Marketing - Spend less on marketing. Don't hire Keanu Reeves as a voice actor. The best advertisement for a game is word of mouth by being a good game. How did that marketing budget help Concord? You can spend a billion dollars on marketing and if the game's bad, gamers will find out the game is bad.
All I hear is corporations saying, "Waahhh, games cost too much to make, give us more money."
But most of the stuff they're spending their budget on doesn't improve the game, and is actually a problem on their end.
Marketing costs too much? Market less and smarter; sponsor a few TH-camrs instead of buying a Super Bowl ad. Dev teams too big? Work with a smaller team and a tighter scope. High graphics too expensive? Actually use a decent art style and it'll still look good (Windwaker) even with less graphical fidelity. Live service too expensive? You didn't have your monetization strategy figured out then. I'm sorry it's not free to build a money printer.
All of this could be rectified if the companies got their heads out of their ass.
If you think that endlessly throwing money at something results in a better product, look at the reviews for "Skull and Bones," the first AAAA gaming experience.
Sorry for the paragraph, you just missed a few things.
Well said
This is the comment I was looking for! Thanks for taking the time
the root of the problem is they’re trying to turn gaming into blockbuster movies but for gaming
That’s why they’re making all these big moves and failing cuz they’re setting unrealistic goals
Like spending almost half a billion on a new game and thinking it’ll sell like crazy
Like you said
Concord is a good example of what not to do and how to avoid big fails
But these people don’t read the suggestions of the little guy
The ones who know what they’re talking about like TH-camrs and hardcore gamers
They’ll just do whatever they want and they’re gonna keep scratching their heads thinking “ why aren’t we making money on these new huge games? “
At this point the only thing we can do is chill
Buy the good games and let the trash ones fail.
That’s how we get a message to them to correct course.
I don't think you're taking into consideration how much more popular and mainstream video games are now compared to back in the 90s.
My biggest issue is I dont want to pay $70 for games
(a) I cant own physically
(b) that require an online connection to play
(c) loaded with MTX for everything
(d) could be taken away based on whether or not it sells well enough
(e) even if on drive, it needs server validation
I stay with Nintendo games bc they can be played off the cartridge & 99% of the time, what I buy, I own and can play whenever
i agree, digital should be less expensive than physicals, and if there's online than the game could just shut down
Isn't the cartridge basically just a license? A validation that you own the game and just downloads from their servers?
@@WhiskerCat09 afaik the cartridge stores the game on it but you download updates from the servers, but the game works without the updates
@@WhiskerCat09you can play most Nintendo games without internet.
this all seems like an issue with digital only, there are still single player games that dont need online connection and you can get physically
Meanwhile, I feel like $9.99 is splurging during a steam sale.
Same.
Same 😂
I tend to agree with you on this but, I would have a very hard time trusting these companies for not overcharging on purpose for a better profit
That's a huge part of it though. Lmao Wood is way off on this. If gaming companies started to sell games at what they think they are worth, games would cost $300 each and they would be broken and full of microtransactions. Gaming would die so fast its not even funny. Don't let the rich corporations make you believe they got rich for doing what's right for consumers. They didn't. Don't be a sucker.
Alright, but what about owning the product i buy? Im not spending $70+ for a game that i get to own for a year then the devs remove it completely, whether thats digital or physical.
Sony proved that when the server went down and the system told me my game I paid for wasn't mine.
I don't get why so many people are fear mongering like all your games are being deleted left and right, name even a few triple a titles that have been removed from peoples libraries aside from the crew which was an old ass game where the servers were being discontinued anyway, im curious.
Don't get me wrong, people should definitely be more aware of their ownership of digital stuff, but im so tired of hearing this same BS for the 294759382047485th time, like we get it.
Thats not always true, I have games that are dead and the devs went under and the game still exists in my library. The only way you can remove it is manually request it to be removed from your account.
@@sush4nz1...74 you clearly never lost your account logins
The problem with letting companies charge more is they will just take advantage of it. We have already seen it with COD and NBA2k. They raise the price to $70 but still have microtransactions as if it's a free to play game. If they raise it to 100$ per game I would be happy as long as they guarantee no microtransactions. They also might end up making less money since less people would wanna buy it at $100. it's a double edged sword.
rent prices are the way they are because landlords can charge whatever they want for it.
i cannot imagine a world where big greedy corporations won`t abuse of this system and just drive their prices way up
The difference with rent though is supply and demand. If there’s a shortage of housing, people still need somewhere to live so will pay increased costs to greedy landlords.
There isn’t a shortage of video games, and sales almost always decline after a while, even for successful games, so if someone decides to release a game for £300 and hardly anyone bites at that price, they’ll just reduce the price.
I think the only thing this could lead to is buying less games at launch for a lot of people, but there’s only a handful of games I do that for and generally am happy to wait a little bit. If it means a move away from micro transactions and studios not releasing games with a ton of bugs because they’re limited on what they can charge and want to know they’ll get a return, then I don’t mind this in theory.
@@MrTombangham no its not there are milions of appartments that have been build that are empty but are charged too high to to live in any they rather destroy it then lower the price with supply and demand prices should be going down but insted prices are going up for no reason but to add to allready insane amounts of intrests of billioens trillions that companies are flushing down the toilet
The funny part tho is...there is no official regulation of game pricing. It's a price standard the industry has put on itself. They could price it whatever they wanna price it, technically, no law is stopping them. Yet they aren't - why? My best guess is nobody wants to be the first to do it because you're always the one to get the bad publicity. Also, they're not sure how much people are able and willing to pay so every increase could mean lower sales.
So the thing here is - people need a place to live. It's a necessity. So if people have any way to afford it they WILL pay for it because they have to if there is no cheaper option, unless they wanna be on the streets.
People do not need video games. They can more easily decide not to buy them without any dire consequences. And therein lies the difference and that's why game companies aren't as liberal with their price increases as you would expect them to be.
If a company priced their game at $100 and not a lot of people bought it because it was too expensive then they wouldn't do that again. Rent and utilities are needs and people have to pay for them so they can charge high prices and get away with it because people need that stuff to live. They don't need video games so if people can't afford them, they go away.
men I feel you every time I buy something expensive I think ¨I can buy a video game at this price¨ but don't say anything because I know that my family will say ¨stop comparing every thing with video games ¨ or ¨you only think in video games¨
yeah it sucks because its actually a pretty decent gauge for how much something costs :\
I know right, it’s kinda crazy.
I've been saying this for so long. Video games are one of the only industries that have stayed inflation proof for the consumer for decades, meanwhile the cost of developing AAA releases has increased many times over. When I was a kid in the 90's , a new AAA release was $50 which is like $100 in today's money. So I don't mind paying $70. I am glad we aren't paying $80+. Also, the thing people forget is that back then, every game cost $50 no matter what it was. Now we have a range of indies that cost like $20-30 and AAA titles that are $60-70. That's way better than we had it 30 years ago.
Can't even finish watching. Don't confuse games from the past with expensive chips in them with games in the present with inflated budgets.
I don’t think a day goes by where I don’t think “man, I could get a video game for this same price” lol
I think the industry needs to just reign in the budgets and scope of these insane AAA games.
At this point they're not even AAA anymore, they're straight up AAAA with those budgets and projected sales they expect to get
Budget yeah but scope I don't know. Gamers are more demanding and spoilt than they've ever been.
Games back in the 90's were complete with minimal bugs. There were no ingame real money shops, you got 100% of all content included in the first and ONLY price.
Games in the 90s were full of bugs, all of them, and before in the nes era it was even worse... most of the games back then were shit.
Robocop on SNES launched with a bug that made the game unplayable
Pokemon red and blue are notorious for their bugs, some of which are incredibly fun to mess with... the mew glitch, 6th slot item multiplying, missingno, the special Stat pokemon glitch etc.
Links awakening had a super fun screen jumping glitch where you press select as you transition from one screen to the next and you'll be on the opposite side of the next screen. You can get places you normally couldn't and even phase into walls and such, really fun.
Games were much shorter and there were still many bugs. Btw, you can get a 100 hour game like botw now for less than what mario 1 cost ($49.99 in 1985 = $146 in 2024) back in the day (you will have seen al levels in less than 2 hours)
I'm not trying to be rude but have you seen those games you say have minimal bugs? The state they are in right now has many glitches which can be abused by the user for speed running the game in a very short amount of time to the point that a 2 hour long game from back then can be only 10 minutes by abusing those glitches. The games back then were very limited so there was a lot of corner cuttings to keep the games running at a reasonable frame rate, while the game can be played normally while encountering not that many game breaking bugs there is still many game breaking bugs that you can abuse intentionally, and in the case of Super Mario 64 there is many invisible walls randomly in the way which has caused me great annoyance at times and the game also had game breaking bugs that you could abuse.
The increased cost is typically covered by the massive increase in consumers as the market is leagues bigger than it was in the 90s. If they were to charge more, the average consumer would have to adjust by purchasing less, so all you would do is further concentrate profit into games that are low risk with lots of content and could actually lower profits in certain circumstances. You also run the risk of shrinking the market. If publishers believed they could profit from charging more, they'd probably already be doing it.
I've been saying this for years. We're VERY fortunate that market pressures to keep prices low have been as strong as they have been. Games used to be really expensive back in the day, and it was only because market SIZE expanded so much that having today's low prices work at all. I think it's good for us to keep complaining about prices to keep that pressure on folks, BUT we should also encourage companies to actually charge based on relative game value, both higher AND lower. As with any pricing strategy, though, so much is about good guesswork based on market research and experience.
Based take
Games are over $100 here in Canada now. They were $69.99 here not too long ago. I stopped buying new when it jumped to $79.99.
I will rarely buy a new game at full price now. I will wait for the game to have all updates and be complete. By that time it's already discounted to $40-$50 (usd) at that point.
That is exactly what is going to happen in the US. They are pricing out people. Budgeting is crucial for these company
Well if you want quality games, you will have to pay, we want big maps, good story, good graphics, well optimised, voice acting, no bugs, good mechanics, all that at a low price, it is simply not possible, they take a gamble for every game they make, they do not want to break even, they want to do profit to which is very understandable, so they can take on bigger and more ambitious projects, and have some security in the bank, so that if a game flops they can still survive. Games get more and more complex, that takes time, effort and a lot of money, we ask for more and more from developers, but we don’t wanna pay more, so basically we ask them to do it for free, out of greatness from their hearts. I know cheaper games would benefit me, that does not make it possible, logical and right.
@Xamentle here is the thing. Companies are already doing what Woods is suggesting in the video. $70 is just the base price. Star Wars Outlaws got released at several price points. (70, 90 and 120), and it sold poorly.
@@Xamentle Sure it's possible. I've been doing it for years. Just wait a little while. Games go on sale all the time and if you wait long enough you'll also get the best version of the game with all the DLC and patches. The industry punishes early adopters with broken overpriced games. It rewards those who wait with cheaper more complete games.
Also, another thing I wanna add that I think a lot of people feel to realizes that when you see what people are writing you’re assuming that they’re angry or whatever when you’re only reading words and you don’t really know the body language or anything like that that they have while typing so try and keep it in mind if there’s some spicy ones out there
When I was in high school, starting to make my own money in 1993, I was making ~$4.00 an hour net. My son, who just started making his own money, is making about $16/hr net, which is the minimum wage around here. It would take me working ~18 hours to buy a $70 game. My son only has to work about 5 hours to afford a $70 game.
The reality is most people would pay $100 for GTA6, or at least enough that it would make it a more lucrative decision for Rockstar.
Most games aren’t GTA though and should try to reduce costs. Shorter more focused games, removing unnecessary modes, prioritizing 1440p instead of doing all the work to generate 4K assets, etc.
The ratchet and Clank is an interesting point. Because $70 dollars for 8 hours of gameplay doesn't sound like something I'd want to pay. I guess I don't value performance enough. I do value narrative, gamelength and voice acting, so Tears of the kingdom I would've easily spent $80 on.
You can probably get ratched and clanck for $29 on a steam sale if you don't care about playing these games on day 1. Steam has incredible sales.
The issue I have with this is at the time this game was best looking, best performing (in terms of how it runs) game ever made. It was easily a 70 dollar game cause it’s repayable and has new game plus. I can’t stand the argument short games can’t be 70 dollars look at how triple a the visuals and performance and sound effects are.
Theres than one ubisoft guy who said that games should be charged based on how long they are who people got mad at for some reason
My issue is that the price is $70 for a digital license and $70 for a physical game. Also, I have no problem if prices go up as long as they come out complete (no patch needed and no game breaking bugs). If that is the case I'm all for it. However, I will never pay $70+ for any game that's broken or can't have a stable frame rate.
This is a cursed cycle though. Yes; this would be ideal, but the devs are forced to release the games early because there’s not enough money to fund it for another year.
We voice actors like to get paid, we got to eat
These prices are pricing me out of the hobby. Not only because it is expensive, but as I am getting older, I am buying more than I am using.
These generation I got a PS5 on 2022 and a Series S on 2020, plus the Switch.
Other than the Switch. I barely play any console. I am 40 this year, and I have people depending on me and a bunch of other responsibilities.
I still love videogames, but I am not sure it I will be paying $700 for new consoles, let alone when they go on "sale" at $550 in the future. These companies need to learn how to budget and provide value to gamers, like Nintendo is doing.
I am fairly certain that the people complaining about prices have majority digital games. What yall don't seem to realize, and Wood outlined perfectly, is that video games have not experienced inflation. It is cheaper than ever to own a console AND games. The reason why games suck on release is because they won't charge more. Everyone talking about how they make 4x the profit must forget that they do still have to pay the developers. It can also cost over a million dollars a year to host a single game. If games get cheaper, developers will not get paid, so then no one gets games. Think about others before you cry about your wallet.
“You don’t have to buy a game” I think this is the main takeaway here. Capitalism is screwed up and price gouges in many ways (when it comes to food, medicine, gas, etc.) but when it comes to purchasing luxury items, let the free market do its thing. At the end of the day, there’s always the option to play a different game or buy older games at a discount, or to read a book or watch tv or go outside. So many entertainment options.
I agree completely. People want games to stay cheap, keep out microtransactions, AND be very high quality. That is just unrealistic. Its a product. Games take immense amounts of time, money, and effort to create. Game developers are putting so much on the line when making a game.
I disagree on many levels.
First of all, one very important data point is totally missing here. The number of buyers (and therefore the revenue). The market got bigger (more people buying more games), so prices could hold and companies made more revenue. I am astounded that you're not talking about this point and just wonder about how prices and development costs.
Secondly, the free to play model, resting mostly on whales / big spenders and often times just ripping people off should not serve as a role model to just raise prices for everyone because the "normal game buyers" should be as profitable as those sometimes very questionable business models. IMHO, more regulation is needed in the free to pay (or micropayment) sector to stop this price and revenue spiral with gambling. Not the other way around.
Judging the value of a game is hard and quite individual. So yes, it's not just about the hours one could spend. But there is an individual limit for everyone what still feels fair. Replay value also is part of it.
IMHO, the current state of the gaming industry has so very little to do with the 70 dollar price tag and is much more complex.
There's miscalculations about staff sizes due to the pandemic, companies spending billions of dollars buying up gaming companies (which we gamers have to pay in the end), business people making wrong decisions, risk aversion, and so many other things. To me, it's just naive to believe a higher price tag will solve any of the current problems and takes a step to a general better industry overall.
Okay, here's my take as both an indie dev and as someone with a currency that's way bellow the dollar.
As a developer/freelance artist for indies, it's really hard to aim for big games because development takes too long, paying people properly is not easy if the development takes too long and the expectations are too big for anything to be worth a big price, which I honestly think will hurt the industry down the line, for the business to do well, honestly games should charge more since technology doesn't just make stuff easier, just makes people expect more.
As an Argentinian where my minimum wage is less than 300 bucks, it's kind of a lot, I could go out with five friends for pizza and we'd spend less than 50 bucks for it. The game industry honestly should be able to adapt to regions for prices too, but it just can't since people have tried to just get international credit cards for cheap prices.
Steam games here are now just locked in USD, we need extra apps to even know how much games will cost with added taxes, so by all means it's impossible to pick a side with undeniable argument to how much prices should change.
$70 is a little more than I prefer to spend on a video game... but I'm guilty of doing it 😅...
No dude. No. Most of these game companies make back their money 4x over. Its all to please the shareholders. No
Should they break even?
@stakesishigh8443 No but they're always chasing impossible profits. I read an article where Tomb Raider made tons of money 2-3x it's budget but it was considered a failure. It's ridiculous
And you think thats where they should stop, you dont know capitalism then. Everything must go up and to the right always. Always!!
@@heysupratim capitalism does not necessarily mean insatiable greed
@@sandplasma Thats what a moral compass and ethical viewpoint will make you think but Corporations dont run on that
Im okay with games costing more if it means quality goes up, make them 70, 100, 150, fuck it maybe even 200, but higher costs require higher standards.
Using N64 games as an example is a bit disingenuous when making this point, they were notoriously expensive for the time. Compare the prices to ps1 games and the gap after inflation is not really that far apart.
Games that are completely polished and mostly bug-free? Sure, £70 is perfectly fine for me. If Switch 2 titles jumped to that price but maintained Nintendo's general polish and care, I would still gladly buy them.
The problem is that a lot of modern releases don't fall into that category, not even close. Broken at launch, requires months to get to a playable state and often have overly expensive DLC/microtranstacions on TOP of the initial asking price and ongoing issues.
To be frank, most modern releases don't even deserve to be £30 at the embarassing state that they're releasing right now. They can have their £70/$70 when publishers get their heads out of their arses and allow their developers to actually finish their games.
It's hard for me to judge I mostly play single player games and I usually buy them a year after release, but I bought FF7 Rebirth, FF16 and new Zelda and they were all playable and without bugs.
@@vadym8713 Those are examples of games that can justify the higher price for those reasons.
Idc that the price hasn't been raised in a long time. The amount of people who buy games and play games has also gone up *substantially*
Most people play games these days, back then when I was a kid in the early 2000s it was mostly just the nerdy types playing games. And this is without mentioning all the bs monetization with micro-transactions happening
They need to spend much less on development and screw the photo realism. There is no way in the current economy that they could increase the price. The first publisher to try $80 will be criticized out of existence.
There has already been a game released for $80... a lot of people have bought it regardless of the price, humanity is really stupid...
I think one point your missing. Back in the 80’s 90’s there were very few adult gamers video game were for mostly children. We had no internet , you had to go to a shop and there was not a huge catalog of games so £50-£60 was the price of a game. NOW we have the internet and an overwhelming choice of games from 99p upwards. Company’s can’t raise the prices as people will be satisfied with the massive choice of cheaper great games, plus back in the 80-90’s we had a LOT more time to play games, now with smart phones, Netflix etc….the competition is massive for these AAA titles, if they charged more than£50-£60 people can’t afford it and can buy cheaper games. A big majority of us don’t have disposable cash. I think wood forgets this sometimes. We watch him and others to enjoy parts of gaming we can’t all afford.
Hot Take: Not every game has to be this $70 Open World Experience with everything crammed into it, I'm fine with getting smaller games in between that are worth playing instead of trying to be the biggest marketting gimmick for an empty game.
Nowdays I spend $40 AT MOST on games nowdays since they get on sale a few months after realese, or are cheaper second hand... even Nintendo ones. I can't afford spending $70 every month for a game I may or may not like. Thats why the only games I mostly buy at launch now are Mario or Zelda (in a place where they are $50 instead of $60-$70)
I will stop playing video games before I ever pay that kind of money for one
I get everything you're saying but at the moment you also have the likes of the Pokemon Series that has every game ever made staying at that $70 mark and even if it goes on "sale" it doesn't really drop at all. but yes absolutely we as consumers have to recognise the effort that goes into making the games we all love and that the work behind them needs the financial support to keep it all going, otherwise who knows how long and how sustainable it will be
I´m from Colombia, where the minimun salary a month is 303.51 USD as today, fortunate I earn a little bit more, but to many people have to live with that amount, and to have any kind of original games, any console, any way for entertainment in the house after food, services etc, it´s a luxury. So please do not encourage the rise of prices in games. Simple math says that if you charge 60$ per person and sold 10´000.000 copies of that game, that is already 600´000.000.
but you can do like me - buy games on discounts after few years
Spiderman 2's budget was £300,000,000 and GTA VI budget is apparently over £1,000,000,000, so I don't think that 600,000 is going to do much. And if you watch the video the point is to allow dynamic pricing, instead of every game being $70 when it could be cheaper and do better, or be more expensive and come out in a better state. A meal at McDonald's for two people which is "cheap food" is like £25. And for the price of doing this 2-3 times you can get a big triple A big budget game. I wish games were cheaper too but it's hard when everything has increased in price besides games. I think some sort of dynamic pricing would be a good solution to make some games cheaper and increasing the quality of other games. You can always buy games second hand/on sale or from sites like CDkeys if you don't want to pay full price, which is what I do most of the time.
My guy this is the channel where people don’t hate you and you come and make this video 😭
What’s wrong with this video
There used to be a deluxe physical version for $20-$30 more and a ton of people would buy that. Include a map, steelbook, cards, etc. that was always an easy way for publishers to get more money. Now it’s buy the standard edition or spend $200+ to get a statue.
Wealthy enough to move abroad. Tone deaf enough to make comparisons instead of questioning the problem of across the board inflation smh
I personally like to rationalize most video game purchases against movie theater prices. A movie today costs like $20 for 2 hours of entertainment? A $70 game for something seems less insane when I frame it that way depending on what type of gaming experiences you value and how many hours you plan to put into it
With the Cyberpunk 2077 example, I was only able to play after the major update so I totally understand the frustrations of the people there from the start with an unfinished game, but I arrived at a point I thought it was more than worth it to buy the game + DLC. And for things like Zelda or Pokemon I will always be willing to shell out (I am who I am idc) where other games I would be more skeptical or be more impacted by reviews before buying. I've noticed that I'm more willing to wait for sales than ever before just so I can feel out the value - the "first day" hype has died out for me with most games because of the pricing
Wood, I follow since many years ago. I’m really happy to see you making again this kind of videos. Regards from Spain, you have a home here.
I think some of the reasons why games stayed at $60 and only went up $10 after wanting to raise prices for so long is:
1. The price of everything else has risen and they don't want to be one of the first expense thrown out (i.e. like funko pops)
2. The price of games being so high in comparison back in the 80s and 90s had to do more with the costs of the physical production of the games. Cartridges with their own chips were way harder to produce than discs, let alone a digital download.
3. The rise and success of Microtransactions. Raising the price of the initial entry point stops a lot of people from coming into their in-game shops. for example, if an amusement park earned far more money from in-park gift shops than from ticket sales, it'd make sense to test out lowering the ticket prices to get more people in the park and into the gift shops. Biggest example of a game doing this is with The Sims 4 going free to play after several years of making expansion packs that the base game was a clear pale in comparison to the experience with $60 worth of DLC that'd suit more to your tastes.
4. Nearly everyone has a backlog of games from spending on bundles or from stopping mid-game because some came up. New games have to compete with the consumer's unfinished history.
I think the "Quadruple A" games that are pushing so hard to raise the price should just go all out. Not because I think it's a good idea, but instead I want them to fully admit and show what they want and fall flat on their face as they trip over their own greed and ego. Because while games have gotten cheaper over time in comparison to everything else, they've also gotten much cheaper to develop with time passing as more technology and knowledge gets developed and shared. However I feel a lot of the funds and time developing "Quadruple A" games is spent on excessive and needless features, like overly detailed textures and models, alongside incredibly unnecessary details all for the sake of "Realism". Which from what I know comes from a very long, industry-wide insecurity, from Developers, publishers, and Consumers/Players alike. That insecurity deriving from being seen as "childish" and being the youngest form of art/media.
Honestly, i think you're 100% right.
We live in a free market economy. Unless it's an essential item (food, water and so on), why shouldn't a company be able to charge whatever they want for a product? Its up to the consumers not to buy it if they deem the price too expensive. If the consumer deems the price of a game too high, it wont sell. If the consumer is willing to pay $200 for a game, why shouldn't the company be allowed to charge that? If its too much for you, then wait for a sale. (Im cheap and never pay full retail, but that doesn't mean a company shouldn't be able to charge it)
You're spot on that everything else has risen a lot more than games have, and games provide a great bang4buck entertainment value.
No one NEEDS video games. If its too much, dont buy it. Wait for a sale. I also never knew companies weren't allowed to charge what they want. Thought it was just an unwritten rule
They are allowed to charge what they want, but it's not popular with gamers to charge extra. Nintendo got away with it with Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but you could actually get it much cheaper very easily. People may say that the new Star Wars Outlaws game failed for other reasons, but if you saw how much some of those complete bundles costed, it was absurd. You're pretty much paying 90 dollars now if you want day 1 access (considered early access, but that is just marketing-- the day the game is available is launch day). They are finding more and more ways to devalue the 70 dollar option, and the thing is, they never quite justified that price point to begin with. If these companies fail, it's because they're greedy and insatiable. Make a good game like BG3 and win.
I really like your opinion on how the price should equal the value. It really opens up me to a different point of view, and I want to continue in a different tangent: I prefer games that are more expensive with little to no in-app purchases over less expensive or free games that are filled to the brim with microtransactions. It really makes a difference when you pay the price to play and get a great game that requires no extra paywalls. I honestly can’t thank the people at Nintendo for making most of their modern day games available at the $60 price range. (If you couldn’t tell, I’m really starting to like this channel!)
Think of it like this. In Australia it cost $100AUD or a bit over to buy a game like the silent hill 2 remake. And if you want multiple games like metaphor and sparking zero that’s gonna cost you $300AUD. Not many people have that kind of money to spend on games when having to pay taxes and products for sustainable living. And if you like all of these franchises and want all these games and are worried if you don’t pick them up day one and the physical sells out, we’ll it’s bad luck. Then you open a social media app and see all these content creators buying like six games every week. It’s insane, some people need to touch grass
All the games I buy are like $10-$30. Being an indie gamer saves you money. I've put 75 hours into UFO 50, a $25 game, and I've loved every minute.
Video games are way more mainstream and publishers move so many more units than they did 20-30 years ago. That's the primary reason we're only paying slightly more for games than we did in the 90's. They may take longer and require more people with higher salaries to develop, but they sell way more than they used to. We should also take into account that physical copies of games only account for roughly 10% of sales anymore. That saves publishers a decent chunk of change. That being said, game development times are just getting longer and longer which requires more money to sustain development teams. If I'm getting higher quality experiences, I'll pay a higher price for games I'm genuinely interested in. I can wait for sales or used copies for the rest.
I’ve gone back to playing older games and battling the backlog. Any upcoming or recently released games I’ll just hold off a time until updates are all sorted and prices have dropped in sales. Easter, summer and November discounts are normally the better time to grab a decent gaming deal.
You make a lot of good points. Here in Canada new games are around 80 bucks after taxes. The real key I feel is the quality of the game and what you get out of it. I paid around the standard price for a game I’ve played 11times or more then there is other games you can play infinitely like Mario party that you can easily get your moneys worth. It can depend on the player too but if the game genuinely isn’t fun to play then it’s not going to be worth that price. I feel you did a good job at being fair and taking a deep look at this subject and you really got me thinking myself. A game like GTA6 could be worth 100 dollars and a lot of people would still buy it because rockstar has that good reputation with their games. Meanwhile you get some developers who rush it or go with alot of micro transactions. Indie devs are great because they focus on their vision for that game and not the marketing and you can enjoy those games too for that lower price. But anyway I’m rambling…
Basically good job wood on another great video. Thanks for giving me something to think about.
I've always felt this way. People spend $20 to rent a 2-hour movie VOD. I spent $50 for RDR2 and played it for 100 hours. I think the cost-per-hour-of-entertainment on video games is amazing. It's the best bang-for-your-buck in entertainment there is.
for sure tho one of the things about video games is the fact the higher prices sometimes force people to pick and choose and with the advent of f2p it's harder to justify. It's a conundrum especially with these higher budgets. That's why i don't necessarily mind some monetization practices cuz they need to make up for it. I'd rather the barrier entry be lower (tho i guess thats where sales come in) and publishers use other methods to get money but the industry first needs to solve how to make the current path viable
I personally believe that the price of games aren't expensive enough to compensate all the developers that put in a lot of work and some overtime to produce the game that you know and love.
Sure, if you are a solo indie developer then the price point around $15 is a perfectly reasonable price point but companies have a lot of moving parts and people working for them to deliver your product so I personally believe it does make sense for it to be more expensive but I also do believe that most of the money from that expensive price is going towards the company rather than properly compensating the developers for their work, so what we really need is to have companies start compensating their developers more rather than pocketing 90% of the games price for themselves then it would be much more reasonable for it to be priced so high rather than them pocketing the money at around 4x the amount their developers get.
Your reasoning is fair but lacks thought for the poorer countries which aren't capable of paying for those types of games due to their economy, usually in this case you would make the prices lower for the poorer countries as it decreases the amount of people that cracks the game which is a net positive even after taking into account the people that will abuse the lower price point with a VPN but companies don't do this because of greed so they want to maximize the amount of profits *they* get not the people that are getting overworked making the game for them, anything to please their stockholders I guess...
You have to remember that a lot of these video games CEOs especially the big ones like EA and Ubisoft and Bethesda and how much money they actually make per year while they lay off their developers is absolutely insane so the conversation of whether or not the cost of a game needs to be raised is a ridiculous notion in this day and age of American capitalism in the video game industry.
Yeah, games might cost $70 upfront, but for those who can pay more, companies hide extra costs behind deluxe or premium editions. You get a few extra skins or perks, and plenty of people go for it (Black Ops III - Zombies Deluxe is 100 bucks, or Shadow of War: Mythril Edition - 300 (and you cannot tell me that plastic figure cost 230 dollars to make))
The thing is, companies can’t just raise base prices above $70 because of competition-they wouldn’t sell. So instead, they offer these pricier versions for those who want more, which is smart. Honestly
Thats a good point
Games are worth whatever we’re will to pay. I for one wait for sales or buy any of the thousands of Indy games to play. $70 is simply not worth it for me since they go on sale physically shortly after.
Indie companies still selling games at $20. AAA companies charge $60-70. And some games like Madden just sell the same game with a roster update every year.
70 dollars is just a mid range price for the game... but a 100 dollars is a problem
I mean some games deserve 100$. Especially if it took 10 years to make.
@@GoldChocobo77 fair, but yeah 100 bucks is very expensive to buy just for a game
@glovesgunpla compare to other things you buy for 100$ and you'll see it's not that much asking. Of course depends on the game, I don't mean 10-20h games. 10y in dev games tend to be very long 50-100h rpgs. So you pay 1-2$/h. In comparison to 1 or 2 times eating out as Wood says...
@@GoldChocobo77 well that's true and yes, it really depends on the game if it is worth the price
@@GoldChocobo77 Only if they're actually good and are completely finished products.
Great video Wood! Definitely gave me a whole new perspective! Thank you for doing what you do 😊
Wood is starting to sound like an libertarian lately and I’m here for it 😂
i get where you are coming from on the price going up to make for a better game, and the 10 bump in only the last decade...but, the systems we play one them are now getting higher and higher, maybe i am just one of those that did not jump when all the console makers said, ( here is my new machine, now buy games) i already saw this trend, and it did not end well for some, and other say that one company brought us out of the dark, that may have been the 80's, but there were a ton of console makers in the 90"s that threw their hat in the ring, and wanted us to pay for there high priced console and games. those that sold at a cheaper price and games at cheaper price survived, the second crash, now we have three. to choose from, games from the 90's where expensive, because, they were so many to choose from and not really knowing what was the best one to have. not everyone could buy every console. remember Dreamcast, 3DO, The Jaguar, even Neo Geo, if you lived in a bigger city. also not internet, did not have tubers telling us, hey buy this or this suck, or this game is not worth the money....i know you in your 30's but i am in my 50's, even tho i may live in an area with not that much advertising or access to these systems, i did have other ways of finding out about them. if i wanted a game, or system it was gonna cost me more then what is selling now, 700 is nothing to what was being sold by stores back then.
I agree with 90% of what you said and I 100% want to give you your flowers for having the bravery to say it in an online space where even a popular opinion is bound to get attacked, let alone an UNpopular one
But that said, my answer to SHOULD some games cost more than $70 is different than COULD they. What do I mean by that? >> based on how much it costs to make games, how long it takes, and how devs should be compensated, these games SHOULD cost more. But with the sole exception of GTA VI maybe, they can’t charge triple digits for a base version of the game
In a world where audiences have been conditioned (by music, movies, shows, and now F2P games) to expect freemium/streaming models as the pricing norm, there’s already friction from the start with that base $60-70 price. Add onto that any price that adds that second zero to the price tag, the perception becomes that it’s too much for a one time, in the moment purchase. It doesn’t matter that the same $70 that may buy your family 2 hours at the movies may also buy that same family 20 years of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (I kid… but only slightly) - it becomes a knee jerk perception of too much
The skateboarding industry is sadly seeing this too. The cost to manufacture decks and skate gear is going up, but the price is staying the same to keep the consumer happy. As a result, a HEAP of skateboarding companies are closing or going through major staff downsizes. Money sucks, man...
Back when games went for $50 and $60 there was a lot of money put into brick-and-mortar stores for people to be able to buy a physical game. You have to remember that nowadays everything can be purchased digitally which is a majority of how people get their games these days whether we like that or not but publishers are saving money by not having to supply brick-and-mortar stores with physical copies as much as they did in the past. Publishers are actually saving money by not making as many physical copies because the majority of their money is made through digital versions which costs basically nothing.
I don’t think $70 for a full game is the issue. $70 for an unfinished game with less features than its predecessor is the real kicker. On top of which $70 + $20 and even $40 battle passes are criminal.
Have yet to pay $70 on a videogame and never will.
I bought one and it felt dirty.
Why I’m perfectly fine spending 70 on games
Be PC Gamer, wait for low low prices or even free giveaways. Having a Non-Gaming Amazon Prime Family Member has worked out great for me. (The problem with rising game prices is they'll still gouge you with microtransactions and other add-ons, changing it to $70 didn't change that one bit)
As a speedrunner I honestly have to agree with you here. I've spent around 7K hours in Super Mario Odyssey so the thought that the game only costed me $60 is always a bit crazy to me. I just wish it was more balanced (ex. a game like Mario Tennis Aces shouldnt cost the same amount as something like Odyssey, etc.)
I agree with your point, but on the other side - do you think that best and expensive to make movies should cost $50 per ticket while less popular and niche $15 for ticket?
That will crash all movie industry in a year, completely erasing all ventures and risky projects.
Nah I gotta disagree. I do see where you're coming from, but like, actually wanting to pay more is wild to me. Especially as the video game industry is literally the the biggest entertainment industry, it's an absolute behemoth, it generates more money than anything, and these companies do not need an extra 30 bucks off any of us. I know people who literally do not buy games anymore, they just wait to see what comes on Game Pass or the EA subscription thingy, yet we who buy games should be paying more to help these companies out? I just don't connect with it. Maybe I'm just speaking out of scorn because of my position, I've got a wife and a mortgage, so I can barely afford these AAA games as it is, so to pay more would just leave me completely checked out tbh, especially as consoles themselves cost small fortunes these days, even controllers cost about the same price as a game. Plus, microtransactions are gonna be here no matter what, we can get all the new interesting IP we want, but Fortnite, COD and FIFA Ultimate Team are still gonna be at the top of the charts, regardless of game prices, and these companies see that and what a slice of it. I know gaming is a hobby, it's a luxury, if you can't afford it you don't have to buy it etc, but idk that just feels so excluding to me, like for arguments sake, let's say prices are raised to £100. To buy a kid a PS5 Pro with a new game, and an extra controller, you're talking close to £900. Nearly a GRAND for gaming. Just no man. I know we all want gaming to be better, but I just struggle to accept that in the most lucrative entertainment industry in the world, that change has to come from... the consumer.
P.S. I thought the UK was bad, but this video taught me that prices in the US are pure chaos. $50 for 2 sandwiches, 2 bags of crisps, and a drink? The Tesco meal deal would blow your mind.
The game industry is so messed up right now that if games were more expensive that money wouldn't go into making a better game or treating employees better and there would still be be the massive layoffs every year, the money would all get siphoned to the top with the CEOs and shareholders.
Im gonna be honest as someone from a third world country, 70$ is just an absurd price for any normal person here. Paying 400+ for an videogame when our minimal wage just recently got updated to 1,8k in our currency feels horrendous. The console itself is already an huge investment for us, with this current generation being in the house of 4k, but on top of that having an 400 extra bill per game is just horrible. It doesn't surprise me the majority of people go for xbox or only playing PC games here, Xbox at least has game pass for an affordable price and PC games actually try localizing the prices
Short answer: No, 70 bucks is not too cheap.
There is so much unfair money the world want from you, you think they ever let you off once ? If they ask me to pay when I shouldn’t pay, then why should I feel guilty for underpaying them anyway
Im not able to pay 50 dollars for 2 sandwiches either
When all Sega Megadrive and SNES games were £40, there was no difference in price between a great game vs the hundreds of crap games. We just had to rely on magazine reviews to steer us right. Anyone that completed Super Mario World knows you had to sit through the credits for ages while so many names scrolled up the screen.
Here in AU, where we have a housing crisis and shops are price gauging to the extreme. Just cause a donut costs the same as a AAA video game, doesnt mean the game is cheap. Usually means everything else is too expensive. Even if you get 3 jobs now days, sometimes you gotta decide whether rent or food is more important. Maybe we can splash out on a $20 game, maybe 1 $60 game every 6 months if we're lucky. But just adding more to that, takes more away from the rest of the already tight budget.
Though i do guess the employees (like me - im a dev) need money too. A win win for everyone is to make better, short games with worse graphics.
I think it all depends on how much use/fun you get out of the game, which of course is gonna vary. When Dreamlight Valley first came out, everyone of course was complaining about the prices ($30/$50/$70) for what was then thought to be a soon-to-be a FTP game (putting current paid status aside for a different convo). I didn't want to pay for it so I was mooching off my sister's digital copy for a while. I ended up having so much fun I ended up forking over my own $50 to get my own copy and own digital perks. No regrets, I've put in 600+ hours and can easily compare that to at least $200 of fun. Similarly, I've put in 200+ hours in Stardew Valley and own that physically ($35), but if I owned it digitally ($15) I'd say it'd be worth AT LEAST $30-$40 as that game is so fun. Comparitavely, I splurged on Splatoon 3 when the game first came out ($60) and wholely regret buying that digitally as I put in maybe 40hrs into it. Got bored with it pretty quick and don't think it was worth me paying $60 for it. Woulda considered a cheaper copy physically cuz then I could trade it in/resell it when I got bored.
The people not revolting against food pricing is a way bigger issue...
Since they raise the price to 70. I wait until games are heavily discounted now.
For me if prices go up, you have to expect higher quality. This is where the big problem has been. Many companies release $70 games that aren’t high quality and they shove in micro transactions, and season passes. With a game like Tears of the Kingdom I would pay $100 for that game. To think that game is $70 is too cheap in my mind. Make a game like that and I’ll be glad to pay more.
Same with me and 7 Rebirth. The quality has to be there.
@@nomadicgamer9466 yeah I don’t regret the $70 for Rebirth or 16. I feel they too were worth the price. It really does boil down to quality. I’ve seen $60 games that are better than some $70 games and I wonder why they aren’t more expensive when they are clearly better games.
So many games don't justify the $70 price tag when they're released incomplete and full of bugs. The good thing about having a huge backlog of games is that I get to buy them for less after they've been out for a while. The only games that I've paid full price for are Spiderman 2, ToTK, and GOW Ragnarok. All three I bought at the midnight release.
As they raise prices it just means I start not buying any games I'm not 1000% certain I'll like, and I still end up disappointed in the end. I'll just start watching TH-cam playthroughs at that point for free.
I stopped ages ago now buying games at full price, I now always wait for a sale.
How he thinks if they charge more the quality is gonna go up, it’s corrupted they will charge more and do the exact same if not less effort
As someone living in a country with a terrible currency exchange rate, whether a game cost $70 or $60, in the end I will still wait for a sale to drop it down to 50% off. For Nintendo, I’ll just buy the physical copies secondhand when the prices drop. That’s why I really hope Nintendo still stick to physical games for as long as possible.
I wouldn't mind paying $100 to $150 for a video game, but it would need to come with a promise. Games used to be straightforward: you paid once, and you could enjoy the experience however you chose. The issue now is that you're not just paying to play; you're paying to be trapped in a system. Developers are increasingly selling you time or perks. For example, if you pay extra, you might get to play the game a week earlier than others. Or, for more money, you can gain an advantage, essentially paying to win. And then there’s the push to spend on cosmetic items to 'look cool,' which often leaves the non-paying options looking mediocre or unfinished.
This creates a serious imbalance. Why would developers put the same effort into the free aspects of the game when they can sell you premium content instead? Worse, they sometimes design problems into the game, only to offer paid solutions, pretending it's normal. What's troubling is how many people buy into this, justifying it as 'supporting the game,' when, in reality, they're being manipulated. Games don’t need excessive cosmetic items to survive, especially when those items diminish the significance of hard-earned achievements.
Take cosmetic gear, for example. It used to be that you could tell how skilled or dedicated a player was just by looking at their armor or gear. Now, with paid cosmetic items, that sense of accomplishment is diluted. It also becomes confusing when low-level or new players look as impressive as veterans without earning it.
This whole situation frustrates me because it feels like most gamers have forgotten what a well-crafted, one-time purchase game feels like. I'm not saying we shouldn't have new experiences, but the prices and business models companies push today are excessive. Oddly enough, Nintendo is one of the few companies that still sells games the right way: buy once, with optional DLC that adds real value. Yes, Nintendo has its flaws, but they at least handle game sales with a level of respect for the player.
What I find the most bizarre about pricing is having a game costing the same price whether it took 1y to make or 10 years. For example a Pokemon game vs Elden Ring. The profit margins on those must be so wildly different. I don't get why the prices of 60-70$ is set and cannot flucluate based on the actual cost of making the game.
I think there should be a spectrum. I already pay $90 for the premium version of a game with like a a couple extra cosmetics and a battle pass. If they just charged that price for a completed game with hundreds of amazing hours of gameplay it wouldn’t bother me.
I actually have a point to bring up that you didn't cover: replayability. I'm not so much concerned with how many hours of playtime it takes to play a game. For me, it's about how much I enjoy the game, will I replay it, and how much. That's why so often I replay older games, because to me they have more replayability than newer games.
I don't see much point in paying a higher price point for a game that I'm either gonna play once and throw in a drawer, or for whatever reason I don't end up finishing and then I never go back to it. I'm happy to let game companies charge what they feel a game is worth, within reason, though, if it means that development time is longer and results in a more fantastic game that I'll replay over and over.
Sales and store credits are a great strat for getting a 70 dollar game at a lower price. Did that to get Tears of the Kingdom for 50
Maybe it makes sense for Americans but here in Brazil one new game is almost half of our salary. Games are way too expensive and are getting MORE AND MORE EXPENSIVE
Your argument is false bcause games back then sold few and they had to raise the prices up to manage the cost.
Well said Wood, I agree we have been fortunate with the prices staying the same for over 20 years! Although, as many people have pointed out, the industry needs to land at a decision on whether we own a physical game we purchase or just a license to play it. And this issue has not just been in the video game industry alone, it has been in effect for the movie and music industries forever. I personally would love to see maybe a Nontendo episode where you have multiple guests such as Spawnwave, MVG, and MetalJesus weigh in on these topics. I feel it would be enlightening for a large group of your audience!
Companies like EA, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft would end up ruining up some aspects of gaming somehow in their own magical way if prices were all up the wazoo.
The fact that they can still make a profit by charging so low says a lot. Games continue to sell even after decades they fire their staff. The motivation to make a masterpiece of a game is not so they can sell it for more, rather they want to be able to sell it for longer. As prices drop, it allows more people to buy it. It makes it easier for people to get off their other games to try new ones. The prices are very strategic and calculated. You’re thinking too straight forward, higher prices doesn’t necessarily mean better games, what makes for a great game is a great product accessible for all. Higher prices is just a way to further separate those that have and those that have not. Sure raise those prices, you obviously don’t care to pay more, but for everyone else, that just means, longer waits for the price to come down. Don’t be that guy, if you just wanna pay more money, then buy an ultimate collectors edition with all the fancy crap.