Unpopular opinion? Want games without micro-transactions? Retail prices for games need to go up.

NickJames said:
So then how do Amazon and Best Buy make profit with their Gamers Club/Prime discounts? I pay $48 on new $60 games. The membership for Gamers Club is $20 for 2 years. That would mean after buying 2 maybe 3 games Best Buy is taking nearly 20% losses on each game they sell.
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Yup, your math is correct.
 
NickJames said:
So then how do Amazon and Best Buy make profit with their Gamers Club/Prime discounts? I pay $48 on new $60 games. The membership for Gamers Club is $20 for 2 years. That would mean after buying 2 maybe 3 games Best Buy is taking nearly 20% losses on each game they sell.
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That's part of the loss leader strategy. BB and Amazon will lose money on those games, but you're paying a monthly or yearly fee in order to use it and they also hope you spend a lot more money on the other things they actually make a good profit on. Loss leader is fairly common in retail markets. Take a loss on one product in order to make money on other, higher margin, products.
 
Pandora's box is already open, dlc practices and especially micro transactions are not going away no matter how much the price of the base game goes up. As soon as EA, Activision ect. saw the profit margins from shitty mobile games that used mechanics that required lots of grinding or gambling were raking in from whales dumping their life savings into them there was no turning back.
 
Verge said:
On a new release game, you are talking maybe 1-2 dollars of profit. I'm stating this as a fact btw, verifiable at a fortune 1 company :) There are many things sold with no margin, literally thousands of items. After transaction fee's, some are actually sold for negative margin.
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It's been a little while but I remember reading an article about small, independent video game stores that did talk about prices. Those small stores could get anywhere from about $5 to $11 in savings for new games. The $11 was only if they had ordered hundreds of copies of a game from the distributor. Now factor in other costs yeah profits could go down to a few dollars per game. Is it not reasonable to think that the big box stores and the "Wal-Mart" companies are liking seeing much lower costs through their bulk orders though? I figured the 20% discount was probably putting Best Buy and Amazon at the edge of their cost. Probably not a terrible deal though if they lose $1-2 per game that way since it would take a customer buying quite a few games in two years to make up the lost revenue. Though the customer only needs to buy ~3 games in that period to have it pay for itself. Though it seemed a repeated theme that the real problem was how quick the publishers are to drop the MSRP of the games.

I do also remember the article said those prepaid cards usually resulted in losses though. I think the example was a $30 Xbox card cost them $29.90.
 
Derangel said:
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. DLC and microtransactions have NOTHING to do with game cost. They are 100% about extra money. Studios are bringing in record revenue and spending LESS on game development then they have in the past decade. So, no, game cost does not have to go up, publishers just have to not be assholes. Game cost going up would simply mean we're paying more while anti-consumer practices are still in place and will still continue to get worse. Raising the price will chance NOTHING AT ALL. Stop buying the bullshit spread by publishers, they're never going to be honest.

By the way, NES games (at least in the US) ranged between $30-$50 depending on cart size. SNES was $40+. $50 didn't really became the defacto standard until the PS1, Saturn, and N64. Which stayed that way until the 360, when it went up to $60.
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Just want to make something very clear to all those saying "Games have gotten way too expensive to make!!", that is not true...at all.
 
Azureth said:
Just want to make something very clear to all those saying "Games have gotten way too expensive to make!!", that is not true...at all.
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This video has several flaws though. It argues that costs are going down. But then it states that companies make fewer games with less variation in the game and more grinding. Fair enough. But he's excluding the mobile platform games and then goes on to state how microtransactions are maintaining the company. OK, so what if you remove microtransactions from the game? He gives one example of a successful game that didn't have microtransactions. Yes, there are games which succeed without them, but what about all the other games which aren't nearly as successful? Well, at the beginning of the video he makes a statement that it's hard to judge because we just don't have data on non successful games.

The video was pretty much pointless from a grand scheme of things. Though, I'd love to see a detailed look at financials for every game a company makes, and not just the most successful, albeit it's hard now that the big 3 companies put out like 2-3 games a year now, and they're all just the yearly sequels of top sellers.
 
I would like to see the data that shows how many games were sold back then vs how many are sold now.

Once the game is programmed/created it doesn't cost a whole lot to put them on discs or to have them available for digital download.
 
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zamardii12 said:
I'm 31 years old and have been playing games since I can remember. Back when I had a NES in the early '90s, games retailed for around $50 which (from Google searching) is around $90 in today's money. Think of the production values and increasing cost that has gone into making games these days. The costs of videogames have not gone up like other things over the years with similar trends, and I think we have to be mature and acknowledge this fact.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 without a doubt has way more content than the first game including a Single Player campaign, but you can still buy that game for $60. So what am I saying? I am saying that I am willing to pay a higher standard price for videogames if it means that these micro-transactions practices are vastly reduced or preferably just abolished altogether. I think at this stage of the evolution of video-gaming that is a fair trade-off. The increased upfront cost of a game could also stop the problems of Day 1 DLCs and maybe paid DLCs altogether.

Over the years many people have complained about cookie-cutter games and studios not being original anymore with new ideas, well with increased production costs and a flat-cost for games the incentive is to make the most back on their initial investment so they play it safe. EA wasn't always evil... in-fact I am playing through Dead Space right now (which I never finished) and I remember Dead Space being a risk for EA, but the guys at EA Redwood Shores (which became Visceral after Dead Space's critical success) convinced the higher ups to take a risk (I remember reading about this in a gaming mag from a while ago). Even though the original Dead Space was not a commercial success for EA it was a critical enough success that EA approved the sequel and Dead Space 2 became a commercial and critical success for them.

My point in that story is that I remember a time when EA had been great and I still think they are (their games not the company) in many ways b/c for the most part I enjoy their games whenever I do buy them (which is rare), but I think a way to foster a better atmosphere in the future of gaming is to pay more upfront money. People will read that and think it's insane that I WANT to spend more money, but that's not the point. The point is that despite inflation, video games have stayed at the same price for the better part of 30 years while production costs have increased and that to me is insane. A lot of people may disagree, and I know others will counter with the fact that there are other developers who can create "complete" titles without the need to resort to micro-transactions but I would say to that that development costs are different for every title, and perhaps for games such as SW: BF 2 it would make more sense since EA knows it'll sell b/c it's Star Wars and there is a lot more content packed-in.

TL;DR: Video game prices have not increased with inflation for 30 years despite increasing production costs. To possibly mitigate future micro-transaction problems, would you be willing to pay a higher bottom-price (say $80 as opposed to $60) for a game upfront to have a more complete experience?
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Derangel said:
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. DLC and microtransactions have NOTHING to do with game cost. They are 100% about extra money. Studios are bringing in record revenue and spending LESS on game development then they have in the past decade. So, no, game cost does not have to go up, publishers just have to not be assholes. Game cost going up would simply mean we're paying more while anti-consumer practices are still in place and will still continue to get worse. Raising the price will chance NOTHING AT ALL. Stop buying the bullshit spread by publishers, they're never going to be honest.

By the way, NES games (at least in the US) ranged between $30-$50 depending on cart size. SNES was $40+. $50 didn't really became the defacto standard until the PS1, Saturn, and N64. Which stayed that way until the 360, when it went up to $60.
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I agree with you. DLC and microtransactions have nothing to do with a game's initial cost. In a way, it's in a companies best interest to bring in additional DLC content. It allows them to bring in extra revenue and leverage existing game assets to shorten development time and maximize their return on the initial investment, as well as the subsequent investments.
 
zamardii12 said:
How about folks come up with some of their own original thoughts instead of regurgitating others' arguments? It's lazy and doesn't add to a discussion.
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There aren't an infinite amount of valid arguments. There are several major ones that refute the "games should cost more" claim and they are enough. Jim condensed some of them and the video is a good summary on the subject.
 
Skillz said:
I would like to see the data that shows how many games were sold back then vs how many are sold now.

Once the game is programmed/created it doesn't cost a whole lot to put them on discs or to have them available for digital download.
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This is a great point. I would bet there's at least an order of magnitude increase in players compared to 20-30 years ago and today's $60 games sell much more units on average. Also, each additional unit costs $0 when it comes to digital sales, compared to 100% physical copies before. And I doubt Steam takes 30% from major publishers, though even then their cut is higher than before.
 
zamardii12 said:
I'm 31 years old and have been playing games since I can remember. Back when I had a NES in the early '90s, games retailed for around $50 which (from Google searching) is around $90 in today's money. Think of the production values and increasing cost that has gone into making games these days. The costs of videogames have not gone up like other things over the years with similar trends, and I think we have to be mature and acknowledge this fact.
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Production costs doesn't exist in a vacuum. They're putting that kind of money into games because they expect a return even at that rate. Microtransactions aren't a thing because prices haven't gone up. They are here, because they were looking for ways on how to get additional profit from games. And someone came up with this brilliant idea. Meannig even if the prices of games would've followed inflation to the last fraction, we'd have still ended up with microtransactions.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 without a doubt has way more content than the first game including a Single Player campaign, but you can still buy that game for $60. So what am I saying? I am saying that I am willing to pay a higher standard price for videogames if it means that these micro-transactions practices are vastly reduced or preferably just abolished altogether. I think at this stage of the evolution of video-gaming that is a fair trade-off. The increased upfront cost of a game could also stop the problems of Day 1 DLCs and maybe paid DLCs altogether.
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The market doesn't work that way, you can't just buy off microtransactions with paying more for a game. Companies have no reason to make them go away unless they stop generating profits. Raising game prices would be just adding insult to injury at this point. And it's already happening, games in regular channels in my country cost about 2x more now than 10 years ago. They used to retail around $40-45 now new AAA releases are $75-80. I was shocked when I saw that as I hasn't bought anything retail for a few years, but the last game I got was nowhere near that price.

Over the years many people have complained about cookie-cutter games and studios not being original anymore with new ideas, well with increased production costs and a flat-cost for games the incentive is to make the most back on their initial investment so they play it safe. EA wasn't always evil... in-fact I am playing through Dead Space right now (which I never finished) and I remember Dead Space being a risk for EA, but the guys at EA Redwood Shores (which became Visceral after Dead Space's critical success) convinced the higher ups to take a risk (I remember reading about this in a gaming mag from a while ago). Even though the original Dead Space was not a commercial success for EA it was a critical enough success that EA approved the sequel and Dead Space 2 became a commercial and critical success for them.
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Yes there is the factor of playing it safe, but raising the price of games is also a risk of not making ROI. That's why they don't do it. Microtransactions is playing it safe. Raising the base price is a bold move.

My point in that story is that I remember a time when EA had been great and I still think they are (their games not the company) in many ways b/c for the most part I enjoy their games whenever I do buy them (which is rare), but I think a way to foster a better atmosphere in the future of gaming is to pay more upfront money. People will read that and think it's insane that I WANT to spend more money, but that's not the point. The point is that despite inflation, video games have stayed at the same price for the better part of 30 years while production costs have increased and that to me is insane. A lot of people may disagree, and I know others will counter with the fact that there are other developers who can create "complete" titles without the need to resort to micro-transactions but I would say to that that development costs are different for every title, and perhaps for games such as SW: BF 2 it would make more sense since EA knows it'll sell b/c it's Star Wars and there is a lot more content packed-in.
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Many other things got less expensive due to market conditions, it's not some injustice against game developers, it is the market at work producing these prices. You can't offset (certainly not fully) the income from microtransactoins with raising individual game prices. Raising prices already cuts sales, by how much is anyone's guess, but it does reduce sold units there is no question about that.

TL;DR: Video game prices have not increased with inflation for 30 years despite increasing production costs. To possibly mitigate future micro-transaction problems, would you be willing to pay a higher bottom-price (say $80 as opposed to $60) for a game upfront to have a more complete experience?
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I'd be willing to pay 80 for a better game free of microtransactions and online bullshit, but I know this is not a realistic expectation.
 
I call bullshit, games were around $60 then and now, the difference, world population and distribution world wide. You are now selling a HELL of alot more games than back in the console days of no internet and stuff.
 
Honestly, when I decide to buy a game, the price is not the first consideration.

It's all about how much entertainment/enjoyment I think I will get from it.

There are MMOs where, between the box cost, the expansions, and subscriptions I've paid thousands of dollars, and even looking back at that ridiculously high all-in number, I still consider it a bargain (and likely would have spent a lot more if the prices were a bit higher).

I do balk at new games at $60, but it's not because of the price so much as it's just a new franchise or genre that I'm not sure I'll enjoy as much as other things I could spend $60 on that day. On the other hand, I've bought entire game consoles just so I could play one game.

A good game, I have no problem at all supporting. I couldn't set a static price at that though. Every experience is a little bit different. Some games I'd gladly shell out $$$ for - I pay for annual FFXIV subscription now at about $80 a shot, I play it maybe a month a year, and I still consider that a good deal. Other games not so much. I didn't feel bad about buying Destiny 1 for $25, but had I paid $60 for that I would not feel the same way at all. There are other games where, I've gotten them for free in Humble Bundles or what not, and I regret even having wasted my time downloading and running it.

There are a few practices I don't like - Day 0 DLC is frustrating. I'm ok with loot boxes and cash shops so long as they are optional to being able to play the game. I absolutely do not pre order anything any more, nor do I sign up for expansion passes or pre-paid DLC, as I've been burned too many times on marketing hype to trust the game to release with everything that is promised any more. Freemium/mobile practices vary widely, some I'm ok with, others drive me up the wall.

But in general, I've found the payment model doesn't matter nearly so much as the game - if it's a good game, I'll figure it out and get over it. And if it's not, then I won't even bother.
 
It's all about how much entertainment/enjoyment I think I will get from it.
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BINGO! too many games might only take 10-20 hours, sure it is cheaper than a night out but if it only takes you a day or night or 2 finish a game what is that worth?

I am an online FPS guy, so i get my fun with it. But i do love Civilization series since v 2, and I will pay for that game. I just paid for the latest game for $55 for the premium digital copy, because I will spend time over the next few years playing that games, so worth it to me.[/quote]
 
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Derangel said:
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. DLC and microtransactions have NOTHING to do with game cost. They are 100% about extra money. Studios are bringing in record revenue and spending LESS on game development then they have in the past decade. So, no, game cost does not have to go up, publishers just have to not be assholes. Game cost going up would simply mean we're paying more while anti-consumer practices are still in place and will still continue to get worse. Raising the price will chance NOTHING AT ALL. Stop buying the bullshit spread by publishers, they're never going to be honest.

By the way, NES games (at least in the US) ranged between $30-$50 depending on cart size. SNES was $40+. $50 didn't really became the defacto standard until the PS1, Saturn, and N64. Which stayed that way until the 360, when it went up to $60.
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Source? Because everything I've read from developers (and not publisher/marketing talking heads) seems to indicate that games cost a lot more to make these days than the did in the early 2000s.

As for the NES, inflation comes into play. That $40 in the mid 80s to early 80s is worth more than $40 today.
 
Flogger23m said:
Source? Because everything I've read from developers (and not publisher/marketing talking heads) seems to indicate that games cost a lot more to make these days than the did in the early 2000s.

As for the NES, inflation comes into play. That $40 in the mid 80s to early 80s is worth more than $40 today.
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Source is the public financial filings of various publishers. Individual games do cost more, but publishers make far less games so they end up spending less per year on game development. Yet they bring in record revenue. Mind you, this applies to publishers. Developers get fucked no matter what. They're forced into making AAA games, risking their entire business on each game, and only see a tiny fraction of what publishers bring in from crap like microtransactions.
 
Someone posted this in another thread and points out how ridiculous the claims of "games cost more than ever to make claim".

-Truth is, games are cheaper to make now than when the costs peaked 10 years ago. The reason isn't so much the costs per unit, but more that there is less IP's in development. The few that do get put out get more funding, but ultimately DLC, Loot Boxes, Season Passes, etc. fund everything as the studios make less games in total. With EA in particular, this slow decline in total IP means they have extra cash on hand to buy studios and milk them for every thing they are worth.
-EA has had 1 new IP in past 2 years, and keeps shutting down studios.
-FIFA Ultimate team P2W not only keeps EA afloat, it's their majority source of revenue. This is the reason it is spreading. This is also the reason why other publisher's are mimicking it somewhat.
-Visceral was developing a single player Star Wars franchise game. It was canceled and Visceral subsequently shut down, because they didn't monetize a loot box system like Mass Effect 3 had.




If these gambling investigations from Belgium and USA hit EA, EA is going to be hit really hard. Not just with fines, but loss of stock prices as Wall Street finally wakes the fuck up.
 
Price increases NO, Microtransactions NO. The system is working as expected simply because that's how capitalism works.

From steamspy:
2014 - 1785 games released on steam
2015 - 2991
2016 - 5028
2017 (so far) - 6710!!!

See that is why they are trying to find alternative ways to keep you spending money on their game. It's not that they aren't going to make a profit on the games they are selling it's just that even with the increase in the number of buyers over the years, the amount of competition for that money has increased by more than 4x and that still doesn't even include the console or mobile spaces which eat up even more.

So doing what the OP suggest would more than likely bankrupt the publisher. There is no possibility for a publisher to increase game prices and expect to get any kind of decent sales numbers in the current market. The best they can try to do is try to sell you on the idea that you need to buy their product and they will slowly add to it via DLC or a Season Pass to artificially bump up the price. IMHO even this DLC/Season Pass model is starting to fracture due to the weight of the competition and that is why they want to move into the loot box territory.
 
LurkerLito said:
Price increases NO, Microtransactions NO. The system is working as expected simply because that's how capitalism works.

From steamspy:
2014 - 1785 games released on steam
2015 - 2991
2016 - 5028
2017 (so far) - 6710!!!

See that is why they are trying to find alternative ways to keep you spending money on their game. It's not that they aren't going to make a profit on the games they are selling it's just that even with the increase in the number of buyers over the years, the amount of competition for that money has increased by more than 4x and that still doesn't even include the console or mobile spaces which eat up even more.

So doing what the OP suggest would more than likely bankrupt the publisher. There is no possibility for a publisher to increase game prices and expect to get any kind of decent sales numbers in the current market. The best they can try to do is try to sell you on the idea that you need to buy their product and they will slowly add to it via DLC or a Season Pass to artificially bump up the price. IMHO even this DLC/Season Pass model is starting to fracture due to the weight of the competition and that is why they want to move into the loot box territory.
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C'mon how many of those 6710 games are actually competing for the market of AAA titles? At least half is a scam or utter crap, and most of what remains is indie games, that is a completely separate market.
 
M76 said:
C'mon how many of those 6710 games are actually competing for the market of AAA titles? At least half is a scam or utter crap, and most of what remains is indie games, that is a completely separate market.
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Yes there are lots of crap games and scam games, there are also plenty of mediocre to great indie games, and they all do the same thing, they take money and time spent to play that game away from the AAA game. Even if your figure is right that half are crap and scams, that is still over 3000 games competing for those same number of users time and money. The market isn't really separate anymore simply because people can now simply hold out by playing other things waiting for price drops. Unlike in the 90s where there were fewer games being released per year so price drops could take up to a year, now there is so many releases that price drops happen within a month on some titles. Increasing the cost of AAA games won't do anything to improve their bottom lines of AAA devs in fact it will just make them sell less during the critical release times unless it's one of those highly anticipated type games everyone wants, but for everything else people will wait for a deep discount.
 
It's a good thing we have Nintendo as a counter example to the greedy publisher apologist argument the OP is peddling. Nintendo published Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild where you can complete 100% of the game for the sticker price of $59.99.

Nintendo makes games people love without microtransactions which is something EA could learn about. Not buying the "gamers should pay more" BS.
 
janas19 said:
It's a good thing we have Nintendo as a counter example to the greedy publisher apologist argument the OP is peddling. Nintendo published Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild where you can complete 100% of the game for the sticker price of $59.99.

Nintendo makes games people love without microtransactions which is something EA could learn about. Not buying the "gamers should pay more" BS.
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Let's not praise Nintendo too much. They do lock content behind Amiibo, which get expensive and hard to find as time goes on. They also made people buy a harder difficulty for Zelda. Nintendo is better than a lot of other big publishers, but they do their share of bs as well.
 
Derangel said:
Let's not praise Nintendo too much. They do lock content behind Amiibo, which get expensive and hard to find as time goes on. They also made people buy a harder difficulty for Zelda. Nintendo is better than a lot of other big publishers, but they do their share of bs as well.
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Not to mention their crackdown of people posting gameplay footage on the net. They actually think they own the rights to footage of someone playing their game. It's like Adidas claiming ownership of any footage where someone is playing with an adidas ball.
 
Micro transaction profit margin must be crazy high imo. Games that are super popular, Assassins Creed, Fifa, Counter Strike etc. They're based on a model, ie, everything is already mostly written and programmed, so I doubt the costs are going up. But idk, just spitballing here.
 
janas19 said:
It's a good thing we have Nintendo as a counter example to the greedy publisher apologist argument the OP is peddling. Nintendo published Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild where you can complete 100% of the game for the sticker price of $59.99.

Nintendo makes games people love without microtransactions which is something EA could learn about. Not buying the "gamers should pay more" BS.
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Umm Nintendo is making season passes now for games. No MT you say? What do you think amiibos are? They are screwing you just in a different way.
 
bertkelmer said:
Micro transaction profit margin must be crazy high imo. Games that are super popular, Assassins Creed, Fifa, Counter Strike etc. They're based on a model, ie, everything is already mostly written and programmed, so I doubt the costs are going up. But idk, just spitballing here.
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Io think I read somewhere that FIFA alone made somewhere around $800 million last year just in micro-transaction shit. Crazy.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Someone posted this in another thread and points out how ridiculous the claims of "games cost more than ever to make claim".

-Truth is, games are cheaper to make now than when the costs peaked 10 years ago. The reason isn't so much the costs per unit, but more that there is less IP's in development. The few that do get put out get more funding, but ultimately DLC, Loot Boxes, Season Passes, etc. fund everything as the studios make less games in total. With EA in particular, this slow decline in total IP means they have extra cash on hand to buy studios and milk them for every thing they are worth.
-EA has had 1 new IP in past 2 years, and keeps shutting down studios.
-FIFA Ultimate team P2W not only keeps EA afloat, it's their majority source of revenue. This is the reason it is spreading. This is also the reason why other publisher's are mimicking it somewhat.
-Visceral was developing a single player Star Wars franchise game. It was canceled and Visceral subsequently shut down, because they didn't monetize a loot box system like Mass Effect 3 had.




If these gambling investigations from Belgium and USA hit EA, EA is going to be hit really hard. Not just with fines, but loss of stock prices as Wall Street finally wakes the fuck up.
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Regardless of what the truth is, this is the excuse that is being trotted out by every publisher whenever people complain about being nickel and dimed: People are demanding more graphically complex games, which costs more money to develop, so we need to find new revenue streams.

People also make the argument about marketing budgets are too much in relation to the cost of actually developing and distributing a game. Marketing budgets are probably bloated, but it is all a balancing act. If you want a good ROI then you need to get the information about the game out to the public, and that costs money. If the cost of development goes up, then marketing will have a similar increase due to the need for more exposure to recoup costs.
  • Truth is, games are cheaper to make now than when the costs peaked 10 years ago. The reason isn't so much the costs per unit, but more that there is less IP's in development. The few that do get put out get more funding, but ultimately DLC, Loot Boxes, Season Passes, etc. fund everything as the studios make less games in total. With EA in particular, this slow decline in total IP means they have extra cash on hand to buy studios and milk them for every thing they are worth.
Do you have sources to back this up? I would postulate that the decline in the number of new IP is due to the increased development time. According to Ubisoft, the actual development costs for gen 7 games was $20m-$30m. In the same article, he said "next gen" (gen 8) games would double in development costs. In a followup when the PS4 and XB1 launched, Yves said the actual costs were 10% higher than he expected, implying games today cost $45m-$70m to develop from the expectation that it would double from the previous generation.

It's also been said that DLC have their own budgets separate from the base game, and I have no reason to doubt that considering the extra time it takes to make. Despite the online narrative, most DLC that adds actual content is not stripped from the original game, but developers often take care to make the game accomodating to new content if DLC is planned after release.
  • EA has had 1 new IP in past 2 years, and keeps shutting down studios.
EA is a bad example for the rest of the industry, considering they have been pushing games as a service for at least the past decade.
  • FIFA Ultimate team P2W not only keeps EA afloat, it's their majority source of revenue. This is the reason it is spreading. This is also the reason why other publisher's are mimicking it somewhat.
FIFA is an outlier considering the rabid fanbase of FIFA itself and that the demographics of sports games doesn't represent the demographics of gamers as a whole. The pushback from people as they are trying to slip it into other types of games now is a testament to this. It's arguable that EA would be out of business if it were not for microtransactions. We've seen game industry articles come out where the executives from EA are talking about new revenue streams to increase profits, not to keep the business afloat. I'm sure EA would be doing fine if they kept to the traditional business model.
  • Visceral was developing a single player Star Wars franchise game. It was canceled and Visceral subsequently shut down, because they didn't monetize a loot box system like Mass Effect 3 had.
Source on that? The official line was that players are no longer interested in linear single player narratives, not because they didn't implement loot boxes like ME3 (1, 2, 3).
 
Armenius said:
  • Truth is, games are cheaper to make now than when the costs peaked 10 years ago. The reason isn't so much the costs per unit, but more that there is less IP's in development. The few that do get put out get more funding, but ultimately DLC, Loot Boxes, Season Passes, etc. fund everything as the studios make less games in total. With EA in particular, this slow decline in total IP means they have extra cash on hand to buy studios and milk them for every thing they are worth.
Do you have sources to back this up?
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Did you watch the video I posted? I suggest you start at 11:46. ;)
 
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CaptNumbNutz said:
Did you watch the video I posted? I suggest you start at 11:46. ;)
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Okay, but where did he get this information? I went to the Youtube page and he doesn't list his sources. What is shown for production cost is a generic Excel graph anyone can make in a minute. The financial data on margins is more compelling, but that says nothing of development cost. He spends 44 seconds basically giving his opinion on the subject (13:13-13:57).
 
They can charge whatever they want and however they want, i'm still only paying for it if it's worth the asking price to me.

Charge too much and they will not sell the volumes they need to stay afloat.

I see no problem.
 
The price of games has already gone up, they just do it in sneaky fashion now. Games, like Destiny 2 for example, aren't even close to complete in the vanilla form, you only get the real game if you fork over for the season pass too. This alone makes many new games cost closer to $100.

It's not like buying real expansions to the original games either, these new titles are incomplete on release. They also lock things behind huge pay or grind walls to incentivize you to spend additional money on micro transactions. Add that to the fact that they sell more copies than ever, sell the same game across several platforms (probably with much less effort than the 90s), and have dramatically decreased distribution costs, these companies are making more money than ever.

And lastly, the budgets for AAA titles are extremely misleading. The marketing budget is often more than the actual development cost.
 
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While it is true that production costs and other costs have all gone up there is another side to the story, the number of sales has also gone up. IMO this far more than makes up for it. There are multiple examples where this is shown to be perfectly effective. For instance in my whole life the cost of windows OS has not risen, actually my personal access to it has cost less over time. Why can MS sustain this? Outside the argument they are selling your soul to Satan, they are just selling more copies because the market for computing just keeps growing. Growing into new markets, new countries, new demographics. I remember when it was the biggest deal that CS had 2.5 million players world wide. Today CSGO has sold 38 million copies. OW has hit 35 million, and EA will still make a killing on battlefront no matter how the media tries to spin it.

Next up you have distribution, a huge portion of games are sold online and require no physical media, money strait to publisher / developer.

Game prices have already gone up. What you say? Yes I stand by this statement. It used to be that you purchased a game for $40-60 and it was done. Then there were F2P models, freemium models, pay 2 win. These are all cool but now AAA studios have figured out you will pay $40-60 for a game AND eat micro transactions in a very short amount of time.

Personally I like micro transactions as long as they are cosmetic only. And I think if you hate them it is probably because you are playing games which have included a pay 2 win element. Microtransactions keep a company supporting an older game longer, as a person who likes to keep playing good games this has been great for me. Micro transactions allow some people to put a lot more money than I will into a game. Great if they want to dress up and dump $500 into the game I am all for them encouraging studios to keep supporting a game. And it keeps more players all playing the same game and not breaking them up into expansions, or versions for each year etc.... That means a larger community of players for me to play with when I only bought the base game.

I have no problem with a company trying to charge more for video games. I think some niche genre may work like this. Sometimes there are just too few players whom will enjoy a particular game for it to be profitable at a more common price. However unless this is a killer game that I am all over, like say HL3DM, or a new tribes game, it is unlikely I personally will buy it. Not going to shell out $400 for my family to play 1 game. Also not going to have much luck convincing friends to shell that out. Interestingly many of these people will spend more than that on microtransactions. Fine, the human brain is what it is.
 
Just to paint the picture here is the profitability for EA and Activision

http://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=EA
http://financials.morningstar.com/ratios/r.html?t=ATVI

Activision even pays a dividend =] They are doing fine.

What game devs really want is a no risk market, which doesn't exists. They don't want to think about ever losing money on a crappy game. They just want to you know make a little money on a bad game and a whole ton of money on a good game. But that's not how the market works. Some games need to fail.
 
rudy said:
These are all cool but now AAA studios have figured out you will pay $40-60 for a game AND eat micro transactions in a very short amount of time.
Click to expand...
Lets not forget $40 for season passes, DLC not part of the season pass, oh and tiers (silver gold etc)
 
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