Games Should Not Cost $60 Anymore - Inflation, Microtransactions, and Publishing - Extra Credits 

Extra Credits So the games appear cheaper than what they really are.

gta is a huge game franchise so not the same.

Do you know the Paradox studios? They have a game called Europa Universalis 4 and it has 300€ DLC'S and Unit packs. (combined)

PANDA PANDA Check out the Games you might not have tried series from the channel. Theres pretty much a Paradox game on all of 'em.

This is far too light on details for me to agree with your conclusion, but I will take it as a starting point.

In Canada myself. When I bought Fallout 4, I would have paid $80 for the base game. (Got it bundled with my Xbox One, so saved a little money.) That said, I paid $48.99 for the season pass. An American friend of mine, who bought the season pass at the same time I did, paid only $25 USD. Even with the conversion rate, that would only come out to around $31 CAD. My Portuguese friend spent €60 Euro for the season pass at the time. (Roughly $75 USD, as of current conversion rates.) What.

In my country, the taxes for imported stuff are so high that we've been paying the rough equivalent of 125 dollars per game for the last ten or so years. This has caused a HUGE wave of piracy in gaming over here. Prices have only gotten a bit fairer after Steam came along, since we(mostly) don't have to put up with ridiculous taxes anymore, and the piracy has finally been dying down over the last years.

Sir Amic Varze very very true.

come to america, we have 60 dollar games

The problem is that you are only looking at this from an economical perspective... when dealing with international trade, it also becomes a POLITICAL subject as well... and I'm going to take the same stance as TotalBiscuit did years ago: As much as a lot of bad games and trade doesn't go hand-in-hand with how it 'should be'... the problem is that trying to legislate these things would be a complete waste of time. Because after all, paying more money for day 1 DLC or a new games console that doesn't cost the same around the world, that's not the same thing as someone losing a house. Because the point is that in order to make _THAT_ kind of a change, you would need a grand jury and considering that we are also talking about international trade, you would need numbers, you would need data, you would need NGO's to agree to work on this and so on and so on... and frankly, we are still dealing with the Syrian crisis over here in Europe! I am fine paying more because I can afford it. If I can't, I *DON'T* buy a new game. There are tons upon tons of games that are really, really affordable that I refuse to buy because they aren't priced for me. I would much rather buy a game like Overwatch and know that I have a FPS game where I will 110% get everything in the game but also get loot boxes. I am fine with World of Warcraft having a subscription, an in-game store, expansions, etc. There's a difference between accepting poisonous microtransactions and badly put fourth day 1 DLC (which I will also say that they did in fact mention, you should've probably listened to the entire thing before commenting) and then blaming it on the economy... when it is a global political question... I get your frustration but seriously, do think for longer than half a second because they *DID* adress your concerns.

As I understand it what they are saying is that stuff like loot boxes and micro-transactions are how game companies are currently trying to solve the problem, so they are trying to solve it, but we as consumers have to either accept what they are doing or reject it with our wallet. We of course have no duty, and I didn't read that from the video, it was just making the point that with games as they currently are (right or wrong), they cost more than they have in the past and companies either have to up the base price or find other ways to increase revenue in order to keep up if companies continue as they are. If and how the industry should change in the current market to try and solve this problem I think would be another video's worth of content.

Sure, the customer has no duty towards the companies. But the companies don't have a duty to take *your* money. They don't have a duty to make sure *everyone* can afford their games. All they really have to do is find enough people to pay enough money to keep them going. If you don't like the current system, you can vote with your wallet; but other consumers will be doing the same, and if enough of them are willing to pay what the companies are asking for, then companies have no obligation to change.

Well said.

yea it bother me too because to me the vast majority of AAA games are not worth 60 $ . And it frame it that companies are doing this because they have no choice, when I think they do have options and they are doing this because its is the most profitable verses the risk in their mind. Whether or not it is the best course of action is another question. But I dont see the value so i dont invest (though I know most the big publishers dont care and still make alot of money)

Yeah. But they don't seem to want to consider that maybe at heart, the problem is they are shovelling too much money into development and marketing of these games. If $60 doesn't cover the costs of development, then there's two ways to interpret that. The sale price is too cheap. (current assumption, directly or indirectly. Microtransactions and the like are predicated on this being the case.) Or the costs are too high.. A game doesn't HAVE to cost $150 million to make to be successful. Plenty of examples around of games 1/10th that cost doing well, and sometimes as well as the super-high budget titles do.. But no, shoveling more money into the production, then being stuck having to recover that somehow is clearly the only option...

Ikr

In Switzerland it’s about 90 Fr too Actually

Here a year or two later from Canada, where the big games are $79.99 with about 13% tax - and have been for a few years now. But that's probably around $60 American

It's also pretty expensive in New Zealand.

100$ here

And here we are in 2024 and games are doing just that. I always check in on this video to see how it gets more and more out of touch as the years go by.

​@@gundammon You're forgetting that in the 2020's we've kept having inflation creep up. They're still essentially selling the game at a loss in order to hopefully sell more micro DLC's to really bring home the money.

@@8xottox8 Inflation does not mean that wages have gone up, though. This kind of excuse ignores the simple fact that there is no price at which someone will get the "full experience". Game costs $60? Still has DLC. Costs $70? Still has DLC. There is no guarantee, or evidence, that charging more for games will reduce/eliminate DLC after the fact--which is counter to the argument the video is making. It's not on the consumer to just shrug and take the responsibility on themselves to pay more.

"no one asked for" Pfffftttt how stupid do you have to be to think no one cares for 4K holy shit graphics? Try checking comment sections of most AAA games lol

we already have all these pre-orders and "ultimate platinum digital deluxe editions" for often double to cost of the base game or more. So it's already more expensive than 60 dollars.

You're right if they get away with a $70+ base then the dlc, micro transactions, and lot boxes requiring premium currency will just get worse

Blah They want their cake and eat it too, that is all there is to it.

Not only that, but there is something in economics called the price-demand curve. As the price of a product goes up, demand goes down. All that raising the price of games would do is make fewer people buy them. Now of course, if the net revenue is still higher despite the decrease in demand it won't matter. But it won't be a linear increase in revenue like some people seem to think.

I would think it has more to do with accessibility to keep the price at $60. To have more potential buyers of dlc and loot boxes that will more than make up the $60 price tag. Also I don't think there will be a company that is willing to take that first step without massive backlash from both the consumer and the competing companies.

The underrated truth right here ...

Yeah

Salaries are not the only cost of making games. Not even the biggest of them

@@dexter2392 Unless you count the executives

oh you'd rather wait an eternity to include everything.

@@GiordanDiodato Yes 100% yes

So youre willing to buy an 80$ game for the "full content"?

Developers would be happy to oblige, provided you spend an extra 10-20 dollars

Lapse Dilationdrive No. I don't pay $80 for Nintendo's content. You're just a sucker who'll eat out of EA's hands because they tell you it's the only logical way.

Games need to cost more or the industry has to resort to predatory practices... (glosses over the part of the world where they do cost more and those same practices are applied) It's nice we got a shutout (NZ'er here)... though it completely undermines the video if you give us any more than that.

a big part of that is that we're a rather small market and we don't really get localisations. they don't change the games for us (at least not from the UK version) so even though we pay more we're stuck with whatever the larger markets dictate.

I have encountered Talen in the wild! Gasp!

who outside of Australia? New Zealand, that's who... ...we pay additional 15% sales tax

its the same price here your dollars just worth more

Yea. Extra credits was wrong. Very wrong

Wow--you mean that if a company raises prices, it will still have no impetus to do something that benefits the consumer at the cost of further possible profits? Well golly-gee, who would've seen that coming? (Well, besides everyone who understands basic capitalism).

Good thing RU-vid made dislikes void, right?

and now COD MW2 is $70 for just the base edition with microtransactions on top of that. no wonder indie gaming is taking over.

What's the last recorded dislikes on this video? At least the dislike ratio?

Lithrus just prices

Yea. I mean most Americans cant handle a 200$ unexpected expense. But they should pay 100$ for a game?

@@rzu1474 Stop buying AAA games. They are garbage anyways.

AmIgOltu not all of them

@@Gyvulys idk there are some good ones.

It is interesting to see the same issue reflected in two industries.

Then there's the indie industry, which doesn't do that sort of thing. Apparently Nintendo still does a little of this, but they also focus a good deal less on graphics.

It's really telling that the switch, which is the only system with no 4k graphics, managed to sneak 2 games in almost every top5 games of 2017, and with decades old franchises that should be really stale on top of that.

Indeed. I'm sorry, but I see no reason to pay for Destiny 2's "dancing celeb" budget or the E3 orchestra. Is that neat? Sure. Neat enough that I'd rather have that than a cheaper game or more content in my game? Nope. Not only that but I'd also argue that developers aren't just looking for "some extra revenue". If that's all they wanted, they'd have stuck with DLC expansions. They're looking for a golden goose they have to invest little to no extra work in. People aren't angry about lootboxes or cosmetic DLC because they exist, they're angry about them because the triple A scene has made it abundantly clear that they have no compunction about designing their entire game around coercing you into giving you money for them at the expense of actual, functional games you enjoy playing. I've seen plenty of games where I bought 3 to 10 dollars in DLC even after I STOPPED PLAYING simply because I spent 100 + hours on them, enjoyed them a great deal and wanted to entice the developer into giving me more of that stuff. I've also played games that were so bad I wouldn't walk across the room to touch the sequel if it was gold-plated and studded with diamonds. If nothing else, Shadow of more Dough, Starloot battlebox 2 and Destiny 2's "DLC:It's in the box" have taught me to not even CONSIDER buying a triple A title anymore before it had a month or two so the community could warn me of their predatory practices. I bought stuff in Warframe, I bought stuff in Path of Exile, I bought skins in several mmos I enjoyed playing, I own thousands of dollars worth (at retail at least :P) of DLC for games I love, but I won't spend a single dime on a lootbox if the game is blatantly designed around throttling my experience or withholding most of the good stuff unless I do.

Good points Mike. The industry is trying to create bandaid solutions for the massive budget hikes in AAA game development. A common argument is that inflation is causing this. Inflation in the US has gone up 25% approximately since this spiral began. However, the budgets have gone up to the tune of 1000% from 10-15m budgets to 100-150m. They're trying to compete with glitz and fanfare, and totally neglecting design. During this, the best selling games have all been indie games that sold themselves on their concepts being interesting to consumers.

LOL, what is this a charity? /s

Whenever someone says games don’t make enough money, one quote will always stick out in my head. “We can’t give away things in perpetuity.” In reference to a game that had been sold on two different consoles. Two generations in a row. Plus micro-transactions. (For those who may not remember this quote, the game was Grand Theft Auto V which launched on PS3/XBox 360 and was then relaunched on XBox One and PS4.)

@@WyattoonsComics Support the developers, guys! ... Though, we just fired those devs.

What price would you be willing to pay for whatever the #1 game of that year would be?

@@williamtolbert5473- $59.99 plus sales tax, same as I’ve always paid.

I mean, they have, but not enough to match inflation.

Eric Caraballoso and certainly not enough to keep in pace with all the other rising living costs.

Daniël Dekkers Yeah same

I agree. It wouldn't disappear completely, and that's something important to consider in this conversation. But it will become less egregious, a few companies notwithstanding, and it will disappear entirely in the context of smaller budget games at market price.

Exactly. They now know that people will buy it. The main goal of game studios is not to give you the greatest game, it's the same as any other company: making money.

Haha, yeah. I can't see Rockstar just deciding "Well, we've made more than enough money. Time to call it quits on Sharkcards"

It's not a gut feeling. It's pattern recognition. Some studios would remove them, but most will keep them in to make ALL the money instead of just A Lot of the money.

And going up in base price recently

@@djcloaker6387 We all saw that.

Pirating sounds even more friendly

wagie wagie get in cagie

Hit it on the head. AAA games are crying that they need more money for their increasing expenses, but I have yet to see an increase in quality to justify those increases. If anything, I feel like they may actually be, on a whole, getting worse.

With some obvious exceptions, like Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Arms, and Overwatch.

Nintendo and Blizzard are pretty much always an exception. Both companies have a very serious commitment to quality assurance in their games.

Blizzard an exception? No. Remember the Auction House? Doesn't Overwatch have lootboxes too? Some more controversial than others? Another issue with the AAA gaming industry is that we give certain publishers/devs a free pass because they made a game we like and exempting them from scrutiny.

+StigMurcielago Look back through the comment chain. I was talking about game quality, not predatory practices.

This. All of this. Just look at Hellblade and its success. Sure, a few big budget titles once in a while would be fine, but only if they were managed properly and didn't fall to sunk cost fallacy (You know, Witcher 3).

I think a lot of the money AAA games doesn't go to the development at all, it just goes to executives and shareholders

That would be insane.

Outstanding move

Decrease the graphics for more gameplay

YEEEES!

No

That style is good when its done right. As long as its a cosmetic or something that won't directly effect game play, its good. The loot box takes this idea and gives it a random chance to give something. That's horrible compared to being able to directly purchase what you wanted. Its just an attempt to get people to pay more through gambling. What if instead of choosing the item from Amazon that you wanted, you paid them a set amount and got something random from a specific department? That would crash and burn faster than a zeppelin on fire. Its terrible.

Well...even putting cosmetics behind a paywall in a game, that I paid for shouldn't be acceptable. Having anything at all gated behind a paywall in a game, that I already bought should not be acceptable

There is a solution many people aren't looking at.... crowd funding expansions, updates, or extra content. If the player base really wants it they will pay for it.

@@Gamerad360 Crowdfunding/Kickstarter did help revitalize the hardcore/isometric CRPG market. Overall though, the results have been ... uneven. Unfortunately most games will still not be raise enough funding soley through this method.

@@lycanwarrior2137 I've seen some games raise mad cash.

That said I have played games that have micro-transactions that are tempting to buy simply to support the developers in making the game, so I wonder if that might be the solution to this?

Glad to find another Australian, I’d love to pay $60 for a game

I agree that paying the 'Australia' tax on things here gives us a pretty bum deal, and the high cost of living in any major city here. As a counter point though, our minimum wage is $20+ so it would only take someone ~ 4 hours to afford a game while with no standard minimum wage in the US, people might have to work 10+ hours to afford a $60 game.

That's economics, I guess.

Mikado As another Australian, there are plenty around for that or less. You just have to look outside of the sphere of the AAA companies. Quite often they are better anyway. And no, I'm not just talking about indie games that maybe 2 people spent 5 years working on for free just for the love of it.

Like he said though, the further your delay DLC the less people will buy it

Total War:Warhammer

Have you heard of glorious over 20 dlcs to eu4?

@@twojstarypijany3182 Unfortunately yes. I have more than a few, but considering I got everything on sale, it's all totaled to about $40.

And, it probably will. Unless the AAA studios can do more with less, in other words, scale, which is what a lot of bigger businesses do to keep products out there when they don't expect a large return to continue.

That's my line of thinking too. There do continue to be games that make great use of high budgets, like Horizon, RE7, For Honor and such. But it also seems like a lot of publishers are needing DLC, loot boxes and so on to cover the costs of marketing more than the development. Destiny really soured me in that regard.

I mean, if that's the case then there are a lot of games that will go away with that. And while you or I may not care about those games, a lot of people probably do. Not everyone enjoys Indie games, unfortunately customers are fickle

The issue is that we are so used to seeing huge AAA games or small indie games that we forgot there could be something else in between. In fact, there could be many things else. think about your favourite childhood game, it could probably be created now by a much smaller team than back then. New tools and more experience have made it possible to create grand, epic adventures without needing to invest the budget of a small country into it. If EA, Activision, Ubisoft and all the others suddenly crash and burn, we won't be left only with Stardew Valley.

Exactly. "AA" games made by mid-sized studios are an excellent solution to the problem of delivering experiences that still have that AAA feel while cutting out anti-consumer monetisation practices and shipping the product at a more affordable box price. Hellblade is perhaps the best modern example of this. So many AAA games bloat themselves with feature creep, pumping huge amounts of money into additional systems and layers of fidelity that have rapidly diminishing returns. Perhaps your game doesn't need a crafting system. Perhaps it's not a good fit for a multiplayer mode. Maybe you can break up this enormous open world into a few smaller areas that are a lot less resource intensive. Forty hours of gameplay? How about we just aim for twenty, and scale the price back to $30 instead of $60. The profits will be a lot smaller, but so will the budget, and then maybe you can invest in more of these projects at once to make up the difference and secure more consistent returns in the long run. Obviously not every game has to (or should) be like this, but if AAA publishers diversified their portfolios by looking into smaller teams and mid-sized projects, then perhaps they wouldn't feel the need to rely on titanic franchises punching their customers in the face with expensive, artistically compromising, ethically dubious monetisation models on top of their box price. And even if they did, they'd probably garner a lot more consumer goodwill from their smaller projects than they have right now.

EA made 800,000,000 just from the "Ultimate Team" feature in their sports games. And that's in the last year, with a steady rise in revenue since its launch. They make far more money than they need, and far more than they'd get from a 10 dollar price increase. They don't need them, they just want all the money.

I'm going to say yeah, there will still be predatory practices even if we paid $70+. The reason is that DLC, lootboxes, and WAJ make money. If you want them to stop doing that, then you need to do more than just make RU-vid videos saying "stop doing that!". You need to vote with your wallet. Stop purchasing lootboxes. Only open them when you gain them for free. See a fancy skin for a character you want? then go without it. Get something you can sell on the marketplace on Steam? Then just hold onto it or delete it - don't sell it cause remember Valve takes a cut off of steam sales. Valve pushed away from video games partly because they made way mroe money off of TF2 and DotA 2's Worthless Aesthetic Junk than they ever would making actual CONTENT.

idk man, that sounds very entitled from you

@@Lanay_ That's not entitlement, that's the basis of the capitalist system

@@ferociousspark4166 so, you are saying that a expensive to make/find product with low stock should cost less, if this is the basis of a capitalist system then diamonds would cost 0.90¢

@@Lanay_ No, I'm saying that if you can't supply people with something they want, you go out of business. Diamonds are expensive both because people want them and they're rare. But, if nobody wants them and they're expensive, it's not the consumers fault that they don't want to buy a diamond

@@Lanay_ I want to believe you're trolling.

And DLCs and extra monetization are still a thing.

And even in canada newer games are $90 dollars that is way more expensive than the game price in America

The businessmen pushing for these aren't morons (mostly). They can see that these practices are very easy to hate and are awful for marketing. They know that games which proudly and prominently avoid such things like _The Witcher 3_ are widely beloved (and more importantly purchased). They realize that making their games the way they are hurts sales. They do it anyway though. Because they feel like they need to, because just the upfront price of a game isn't making them enough revenue. Now of course there's no such thing as too much revenue, but widening that initial profit margin will definitely keep them from pushing these practices anywhere nearly as hard as they have been recently.

+VitalVampyr They already turn a tidy profit without lootboxes, have done for years. EA even assured investors after suspending lootbox sales in Battlefront 2 it wouldn't impact their bottom line. They make enough money to be profitable, they make A LOT of money. But that's not enough, they want ALL the money. They want to amass a pile of money so gigantic they can climb to the top and personally laugh in God's face for being *so FUCKING POOR.*

The Witcher 3 has No DRM. You'd think this would lead to an increase of piracy. It did. It also led to an increase of sales FROM those Pirates. Its almost as if we as people will pay for products we enjoy. Nay, they simply do not care about producing a quality product. They care about producing an "acceptable" product and then garnishing it in silk and fine textiles. With a pretty bow too.

The people who buy games based on their graphics drive the need to keep increasing graphics, it has been shown that graphics play a massive part in whether a game is profitable or not. Part of the reason there is such a bigger market for gaming is due to the increase in graphics, just because you think its useless doesn't mean it is. So you want price drops and cost cutting, ok seems like you only want indie games then.

@@kyzantia8884 Or you could go with an art style, which would lower the graphical costs and lower the requirements needed from users to play the game, which will increase the amount of users that can play your game and still have a very pretty game that will still look pretty a decade later, while the "realistic" looking game will look ugly by comparison to the current graphics. Nintendo is doing pretty well without ultra-realistic graphics, though that could be chalked up to a loyal fanbase.

@@Maxwell_Twistthat’s really reductive especially in the modern era. People demand and love high fidelity gaming. Red dead redemtion 2 and god of war , for example, thrive off the high fidelity AAA look. Most art styles that you seem to referencing which seems to be highly stylized just wouldn’t fit most of these established AAA games. Another point is that realistic games have reached a point where I don’t think they’ll age much. Will red dead redemption 2 in 10 years look like the original tomb raider? If it does then something massive will have changed that shook the foundations. But, most likely, we’ve likely just hit one of the peaks of high fidelity where everything just looks decent.

@@helloworld-jv7nc I mean, people have been thinking we've hit the peak of x technology for decades now, but that expectation is constantly shattered. Also, While some people do care about high fidelity graphics, I doubt their care about being able to count the amount of chin hairs a character has or the number of individual blades of grass for more than a passing moment or when they need to hype up their game somehow. Will the games he have now look bad in the upcoming years? Well, I'm not really the best person to answer that, since I think the original Halo still looks pretty good while there are others that think it looks bad. Notably though, you didn't even attempt to address the point about the cost for the gamers having to get better equipment to run the games, which is a decent argument for stylized graphics. Graphics cards are extremely expensive if you want to get into the realm of high fidelity graphics games. Out of the top 10 best selling games (excluding Wii Sports for obvious reasons), 5 of them have stylized graphics. Out of the top 20, 15 have stylized graphics. Top 30? 24 of them are stylized. Top 40? 28. Top 46? (The list shows the top 50 games, and since I had to exclude Wii Sports and now Kinect Adventures and Duck Hunt (just in case) since they were sold as a bundle with other things that people were trying to buy, I won't include them. I also excluded a second mention of Tetris on the list) 31 games that are stylized. Out of the 15 more realistic graphic games, 8 of them came out after 2014. Even going with the idea that all of the Nintendo games on the list are just from super loyal fans buying them (and still not don't that for the more realistic graphics games) you're left with 14 games that go for stylized graphics and 15 that don't, which just barely gives realistic graphics the edge in top 50 with them getting all the support I could give them. If gamers cared most about high fidelity graphics, you'd expect to see lots more of them there, especially with their being more gamers around than when most of these games were sold. Dad of War is a great game, but if it didn't have fun gameplay, it probably wouldn't have sold well at all. Now, if the graphics were not as high fidelity but it still had the great gameplay, it probably still would have sold quite well, or at least better than if the gameplay wasn't as fun. Story is also a big factor in things as well, especially for games like DoW. While I won't say that gamers don't know what they want like an idiot, I will say that gameplay (and story when it's important to the game) seems to matter most when it comes to how much people like a game. (The list I used is the one off of Wikipedia.) Basically, it seems like if you make a game that is fun to play (Or have a super loyal fanbase when it comes to Pokemon) and you're game will sell well. Now to be fair, there are a lot more than 50 games out there, obviously, but it does help show what gamers are looking for. Also, I may have missed the point of what you were saying completely, and if I did, then I'm sorry.

ITs not about whether or not anyone can afford them its about getting people to use their credit cards.

This, seriously. I don't even buy games these days cause they are all really bad.

But how do you sell stories when the most vocal people are the most likely to split it apart for every single "shocking scene" or a single bad character design.

Well you don't. You don't need to satisfy everyone. Just make a good game with a good story and the people who are into it will buy it and the others won't. You just can't have your cake and eat it at the same time

Have fun advertising a game that looks like it was made a decade ago.

Regular advertisement for gaming is not working anyway as even your best pre-rendered video is useless if you find hundreds of videos online about how hideous and broken the game actually is so there is almost no use in trying to impress customers with high- res images and pre-rendered game footage

I think $20 is expensive unless it's freaking Christmas.

I refuse to pay over $25 for a game.

They forgot to factor in that, despite inflation, real wages haven't gone up in decades. If AAA companies want to sell high end "cinematic" games they can market exclusively to the 1%, that's fine. The indie devs will be more than happy to produce fun games for poor people.

Youre consider very lucky to buy any game for 20$ or else you pirate them

Vast majority of indie games are $20 or less. As a result I usually buy indie games. No way I will spend $40 or more on a game regularly.

Alyssa Goss I agree

Without any solid evidence but haven't the group known as "gamers" also increassed meaning there are more costumers and therefor higher sales?

...the free to play model...

Its supply and demand, if you cant afford AAA games you should buy indie games, they don't owe you anything, just as you dont owe them anything, its your choice, have games cost the same but have them Nickle and dime you every step of the way, or have games cost more and no DLC or microtransactions.

@@unknowndane4754 Most of the growth has been in mobile games and free to play games, these being the ones that get their money through monetising the game

i feel your pain

i feel ya

GamePass

@Unlabelled Glass Jar Since obviously you are so smart why don't you tell me a way how to move out of my country and still have a relatively good life while going to University.

That's not the industry's problem.

Jamie C THANK you! Another Canadian who understands!

Maybe digital is cheaper, sorry im not Australian so I don't know.

If you're going to bring up the price in Canada, I assume you're using Canadian Dollars. 80 CAD is almost the same as 60 USD. 90 Australian dollars, which is the price of games in Australia, is also only slightly above 60 dollars. When you bring up pricing in a country outside the US, where the pricing discussed is based, then you also have to consider the exchange rate. Also, you can't include taxes in the price when the discussion is without tax as well.

wait couldn't you just order it from out of the country and save like 30$ Max 20$ Min I mean shipping from America to Canada can't be that bad can it I mean I haven't researched it but there is no way they would charge you 30$ for shipping from a neighboring country to yours when I can get free shipping from China

Nowadays they are slowly starting to be $89.99

Completely agree. If it can't survive without resorting to predatory practices, then just maybe it doesn't deserve to survive.

And the AA/Inide games is where you are going to find the most creative games, like Hellblade, Cuphead, A Hat in Time, Subnautica, Divinitiy Original Sin 1/2, and so many more. Console gaming is mostly AAA games so that market does not get very much creativity and innovation, but on the PC side there is all kinds of creativity and innovation if people get their heads out of the AAA's ass.

Great example: Hellblade

you forgot nier automata :P

But you don't represent the market. Most gamers don't mind transactions and want prettier graphics/more content. That is afterall why things are the way they are. If gamers preferred uglier, smaller games without microtransactions. Those games would be the most profitable and thats what publishers would be making. We are where we are, because gamers voted with their wallets... and this is what they voted for. THQ was a mid tier publisher afterall, making lower budget games. They went bankrupt. Because while gamers may say one thing, when it comes to opening their wallets... its clear they look for the games with the biggest fucking budget imaginable.

So your greedy to then

Exactly what I said. Exactly why we're not buying Triple A games at $60 anymore.

Absolutely.

Yeah the problem is that the general public doesn't have much more than the odd 60$ in their budget. Especially in America wages haven't been following the increase in productivity and inflation of the price of basic needs like education, healthcare and housing. In Denmark games already cost around 90$ but here healthcare and education are way cheaper as well so the average person has much more money to spare.

yeah, unfortunately elected officials haven't caught on that money doesn't trick down. it trickles up. you give the lower and middle class more disposable income, what are they going to do with it? hoard it and stockpile it? maybe a few, but most people don't want money for the sake of money, they want money so they can buy something that they actually want, like a luxury car or a bunch of new video games. The money they spend becomes revenue for businesses, which is eventually spent on other things by the people who run said business, and eventually many people in the top 1% get some kind of revenue out of this, even if it is indirectly, which helps them deal with much higher tax rates. This becomes even more effective if you provide essential things such as housing and healthcare to people, since now less of their money is going towards living expenses, which increases the demand for products since people can now afford more of them. Unfortunately, our elected officials are all short-term thinkers, and don't realize that what they are doing to gain profit in the short-term is going to destabilize the market and make income inequality worse, which gives people a reason to complain and incentivizes them to try and force change in spite of their elected officials, which can turn ugly. Capitalism would work fairly well if we had people who were planning a century or two ahead instead of people who want to gobble up as much money as they can, regardless of the consequences.

That was my first point as well. Wages have been stagnant for a long time. If the economy can stop leaving people behind, I would be willing to put up with a price hike. But even up here in Canada where the government isn't basically 100% held hostage by the ultra-rich, a price hike is painful to think about.

Dare Daemon Downsizing never solves problems

PUBG spent nearly nothing on graphics, compared to your average AAA, and yet most people don't care and its selling at AAA levels, not every game needs to be Crysis.

Lucas Ballard: Hell of a way to misuse that line. Downsizing doesn't solve problems in ongoing projects, but this isn't about ongoing projects. It's about setting reasonable budgets and scopes for new projects.

It's not about downsizing on everything. What is the point of making Call of Duty 723 : UltraModern Warfare 5 with ultra high level of graphism ? Lootboxes & microtransactions are becoming more hated by the day. Which means that business model won't last that much. Therefore, games will have to focus on lower graphic quality, but better gameplay.

The problem with simply making smaller games is if everyone starts making less impressive games but ONE company continues to sink a ton of money into 1 game, that game will outshine all the smaller games. Even if those smaller games do ok, that one mega big game will do unbelievably well. If everyone makes smaller games, then rockstar comes out with GTAVI with a mega budget, it will blow everything else out of the water. If, on the other hand, they make a GTAVI and give it a fraction of GTAVs budget, well, no one will buy it. Why buy the new GTA that looks worse, has a smaller and or less detailed city, less story content and so on, when the last one is strictly better? Actually thats another good point. Most big budget games are from a long running series like GTA, CoD, battlefield and so on. These games have predecessors to live up to. Why buy the new battlefield if its strictly worse than the last one? If you want as much content/quality of content, unless you find some amazing money saving magic, its going to cost as much as the last game. To make a sequel to GTAV thats as good as GTAV would take a loooot of money

Solution: Indie games. Free to play mobile.

I think realism is nice to have but there is no reason to spend crazy amounts of money if people will not pay for it. Besides most of the AAA game budget is not from making the game, it is overhead for marketing and other things quite unrelated to actual quality of the game.

That, and stop making video games look like cinematic movies. Cause, ya know, we play games for gameplay,. not watching a movie.

divide two PUBG has shown that customers of the game industry don't care about graphics as much as people think.

Well, it's a two-fold problem. It goes beyond just the industry; the consumer base also needs to learn to change their expectations. Dropping the "muh realistic 4k graphics" mentality and going back to focusing on gameplay and appreciating a simpler art style would help make the industry healthy again.

dgschrei i agree but i cant afford to pay anything past 60usd every week on a new game sometimes i cant buy a video games at all for a year my mother doesnt work and my dad it dead thats the reality our spending on extras was cut to almost nothing i cant afford 60usd sometimes so i stick with free or cheaper unknown games i havent bought a new game in a year or so because i just cant afford it i have to save for nearly two years to buy an xbox one which i got used and it came with somegames i gave all the madden style games to my brother game companies dont understand that some people cant afford their outrageous prices over 60usd and dlc should come with the 60usd price tag

Thank for pointing this out. When people advocate for higher game prices they don't take into account wage stagnation or at best minuscule raises in wages. They only ever talk about inflation. Inflation is just one part of the economy.

That's a fair point, and one I would like to see addressed in a follow-up episode, maybe with more depth on the perpetual games flood - a sort of "how many games can a person play" episode on balancing play/work/family and other hobbies.

When you measure two incomes by the same dollar value, you are by definition adjusting for inflation. You can buy more stuff now than you could back then, on average, including AAA games.

That's a good point, but I think they were comparing inflation percentages. At a 3.5% increase in income, the average person wouldn't be able to handle a 25% increase in game prices, especially if other goods were also upped by 25%.

I think this is an important point that needs to be reinforced. Most household incomes have been level or decreased in the last ten years, while housing and utility costs have gone up. This means people have less money sitting around for luxury items like video games. AAA studios need to understand that gamers can't afford to buy multiple AAA titles a year anymore.

Johnny Chavez : the word is "exploiting", not exploding. Not sure if you were using speech-to-text on that.

If only you knew what'll happen in the future.

@@tokyofamily8536 how do you mean?

digital releases are cheaper but steam might not be the best example, they take a hefty cut. That's why almost all big developers have their own launchers/stores nowadays.

There are laws in many places making it so physical stores can't go out of business just because digital games are cheaper

Digital Downloads are $60 because if they were cheaper, they would risk alienating the physical stores who've been selling their stuff for decades. Trust me - you do NOT want to piss off those retailers unless you're willing to compensate for major retailers not carrying your products. :( And unless Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft want to open up their own stores or risk giving online services like Amazon exclusive distribution rights for their hardware, simply put, you're going to need stores like them. Sega learned this in 1995 when they rushed the Saturn to market, shipped units ahead of time to some retailers but not all (among them, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and KB Toys)... and on top of that, dind't even inform some of them "Actually it's being moved so place your items on the desk now!" Well, the retailers that didn't get their copies or weren't told didn't like that... they were now put at a competitive disadvantage. ("Do you have the new Sega system?" "No" "Oh then I'll just go to your competitor.") KB toys decided to drop SEga from their lineup. Retailers do this all the time - if their distributor or producers who rely on the retailer decides to screw them, then they'll decide "Fuck you. Have fun selling your product without us!" Don't forget that the retailers *also* run ads in papers saying they have that item in stock, too... and before you say "Amazon"... Amazon ALSO takes a cut off of each sale (like STEAM), charges extra for shipping & handling, and again, you need to make sure Amazon is kept happy cause they can decide to drop you. What do you do if AMAZON drops you?

laws? where? contractual obligations between publishers and retailers maybe. But laws? That sounds crazy...

Steam does take a 30% cut

I agree, but i won't pay 60$ for toad treasure tracker or whatever if i can get fallout 4 for 20$

@@winterfallstudios7101 withstanding the fact that Captain Toad Treasure Tracker is a better designed game in every way to Fallout 4, why would anyone want to spend money at all on a game full of bugs?

@@Manganization it's 76 that's full of game breaking bugs

@@winterfallstudios7101 Toad Treasure Tracker is only 40$ retail. Nintendo doesnt sell every game at 60$.

Less graphics, more gameplay

David Studený Assuming they actually keep the servers up longer for games that are useless when they shut down.

Yellow Personality Core i agree

EA's games $120.

Absolutely. The industry has discovered the revenue stream of micro transactions and loot boxes. No way that they would discard that in favor of honest upfront single payment. It’s the same as the way airlines sell tickets, everything that used to be included in the ticket are now ‘unbundled optional extras’ to keep the headline price artificially low.

That's how much games cost in Canada. $79.99 for all new games. And with tax that comes to around $100. That's a tough pill to swallow for me. Especially considering most AAA games are now lackluster and are unfinished with tons of DLC coming after to "complete" it and micro transactions and the games themselves are short.

Keiya Bachhuber I don't play any of the AAA games right now except Witcher 3, and I could honestly have been happy with the game world being half the size it is. The problem with EC's analysis is AAA-myopia, an inability to see beyond huge companies making huge profits or huge losses. We need to lend our support to smaller, tighter, less spectacle-driven AA studios, mid-size developers who produce good (not huge) games. For every Destiny 2 debacle there's a Warframe success story.

Even if you only play indies, you profit from the existence of the AAA industry. There would be far less indie devs around if the huge publishers hadn't expanded the gaming market and made game developer a valid career choice.

This industry needs to be تطهير . Saved.

Sure but the question is what are big publishers bringing to the table now? Please don't misunderstand me but after Lootboxes shady business tactics and questionable marketing strategies I don't see anything the AAA Industry does to advance the medium.

AAA companies honestly have nothing to offer to me, as a cheap person and someone with great interest in strategy/historical strategy then the AAA and their usually generic blandness have no interest to me. Weirdly enough the game I do play occasionally releases dlcs that change/update the game with a certain focus and they cost 10-20 euros and I get 10 times the joy out of that than I would a AAA game that after I bought, it tried to force me to pay extra for it

Blu rays decreased in price because its easier to make them now. Tickets sales can stay the same because supply and demand increases. They do try to do things like special theatre rooms that cost more and have better chairs.

@@wPJyat I can definitely see blank blu-rays decreasing in price, but does blu-ray movies cost less? Movies are also more expensive to make, if you want them to look really flashy.

@@wPJyat Yep, but I have seen quality in games going down ( by quality i do not mean graphics, I mean gameplay, story etc.) Rushed out games do not bring any extra value to the consumer, better chairs on the other hand at least for me, do.

Time.

Tsar Marklovski Same thing goes for eh game industry. Now most games are sold online so that’s less money spent one disc and distribution. Also more people than ever are playing video games. It’s the most profitable media.

Wait until you see their nazi video

Frog Glen ikr?

yea i clicked just to dislike this utter nonsense

Extra Credits lost their friggin' minds.

Sergeant Sniper They used to be so wonderful. I guess there were some big staff shakeups behind the scenes over the last couple of years?

what game are you playing that forces microtransactions on you

@@gasternecross Pay 2 Win games.

@@Hypogean7 you don't have to pay to win in those games tho .

but horizon zero dawn or god of war? Those deserve 100$ by far

@@necrago yeah, for a hundred dollers you can get several good indie games.

That's like every AAA game lmao. I usually only buy indie games because there companies tend to be good and actually listen to there community. Not to mention there way cheaper and some have 10x more content too.

Amen brother.

He’s just another dev simping for the industry to increase his salary

How many games got rerelease? Dlc? Remasters?

MorteTheSkull What no one is saying is that Hellblade is an exception: the dev team is all formed from veteran devs that have worked on AAA before and that the game took some time to be developed. Most studios don’t have entire teams made from rockstars.

The cost of producing a game is higher than ever and it doesnt seems like developers are doing anything about it but to charge more, instead of implementing a billion microtransactions developers should find a way to manage cost effectively, the only company i've seen taking measures against this(ironically since they implement a billion microtransaction) its EA with their Frost engine, making a universal engine for all of their games should lower cost, devs should make better strategies

Nohara Loco How do you know what a game costs to develop? Are you in the industry? Do you have a business degree or any obscure knowledge that proves $60 per game is enough for every situation?

Nate River This, pretty much. For some games, reinventing the wheel is necessary. But if you're building a game that's workable on pre-existing engines, find one that works best for the intended use and license it

How do I know that? Maybe because its something every developer has said? Besides when a game needs to sell 2 millions copies to be profitable obviously means game development cost have raisen...

HORIZON ZERO DAWN! The fact that that game is on the market AT ALL proves you wrong because it's the MOST ORIGINAL IDEA that the AAA world has seen in YEARS!

Don't buy em mate.

Bro you do know that game makers have to make wages right? It's not like a single person is making this games. It's teams of hundreds of people all needing high salaries for the years of hard work they out into the game. Combine that with the cost of advertising and the money the company takes to keep running (+ some) 30 dollars is way too little I wish we could get games for cheap again but unless something big happens it's not possible

@@PossessedPotatoBird then why dont game wages have increased most of the bugget dosent even goes to the dev its goes to advertisment

@@PossessedPotatoBird Yet F2P games exist?

@@DD-fs7pg because they have ads…

Movie ticket price raise 2-3x as before

I agree. There seems to be an underlying assumption here that we, the consumers, somehow owe game publishers and developers something. We don't. If a company produces a massively expensive game and then cries "we need you to pay more because it cost so much to make" that's fine, but if we as consumers don't buy it, it isn't "consumer fault". It is not our job to bail them out. Quite the contrary, if a company is producing something that cannot be supported on the market without predatory business practices to prop it up, it deserves to be punished for that so that said behavior will no continue in the future.

THE D wasn't production for GoT insanely expensive...

One thing, production cost are usually around $100 million for games and movies. This isn't a counterargument, I'm just a nerd.

Yes movies cost as much to produce, but theater tickets are sold way more often. For comparison in the last year 1,223,462,885 movie tickets were sold. Now compare that to the number of sold games. Even when you count the sales of every best selling game ever released together, it will not match this number. And the ticket price was raised 14% from 2007 to 2017, inflation not included. Also when you compare the price to hour ratio, movies are way more expensive. Let's just say a movie ticket cost you 10$ and the movie is 2h long, so you would pay about 0,08$ every minute. When you pay a 60$ game that plays for 20h you pay 0.05$ every minute. And now play a RPG like "The Witcher 3" which takes about 150h. While i definitely would not say that the length of a game makes it more worth your while, it is cheaper in $ per hours of entertainment. Yes Steam takes about 30% of every sale they make. While they publish games on their own platform e.g. Origin or Uplay, the very vast majority buys it over steam because it has a monopoly on PC gaming. Sony and Microsoft also take cuts, but i don't know how much that is, they also charge them 10$ of licensing fees per copy. That is why PC games cost 59,99€ here where i live and console games 69,99€. So while the statement that games make more money per sale is correct, movies can only afford such prices because they sell so ludicrously more tickets compaird to salesfigures of games. I agree partially that the market will be saturated with this kind of games. While there is evidence, as example Titanfall 2 that was dwarfed in between Call of Duty and Battlefield 1, the market also grows by the minutes. And those who are new in the market, are not saturated with this kind of games. But those does not make the market, that much i know. Just wanted to add a little to your argument. Sure DLC, micro-transactions and loot boxes wouldn't go away, because they are established as of right now. I won't deny that many publisher implemented them out of greed, but i would argue whether those kind of mechanics would work or not, if you would have just increased the base price to 85$ or something around that figure. Because then the consumer would know that it can't be justified with development cost, because those are covered with the increase in base price.

Pretty sure the artstyle helped people ignore the weaker graphics. Devil Third, another Wii U game, was lambasted because it looked like an "Xbox 360 game". Most gamers will not tolerate previous gen graphics, unless the artstyle can disguise it.

One could argue this is a problem the industry brought on themselves. After all, they kept pouring money into their games in hopes that spending more money meant they'd get more money back, and as such, many games tried to win more players by spending millions on the latest graphics, and then everyone ran to do the same in this twisted "my dick is bigger than yours" graphic race. Now not only people expect every game to have realistic graphics, but everyone was laughing at Nintendo for being the only one that was "two generations behind" in this graphic race. Nowadays all games have incredible graphics, so we're not only used to this, but we expect games to have such high graphics. This is their fault, not ours.

nintendo is no longer AAA. Say what you want about the consoles and the games but they had already lost the war and are doomed to be left out of the equation. Maybe that's why Nintendo the company isn't dead yet, if they had already lost financialy, why don't put more focus on the quality of the games themselves? It's the pure and bulk will to make good games that help them recover almost immediately from the botw DLC backlash. No matter whst happens, fans would always support Nintendo for their games. So, if the gaming industry is doomed to die, so be it. I think it will be better off with nothing but Nintendo and a sea of flash/unity developers competing solely on their game's quality.

You got it! Few triple a games are any good, if going by public opinion. Good graphics ≠ good games. Nintendo is showing the way here! I had loads of fun on my DS Lite despite its 192p (yes you read that right, 192x256) graphics. And now we have ten times that much and still dont get enough. smh.

Thhhiiiisssss. Even at this point if the entire gaming community said wed pay an extra 20; we would still have a flood of paid dlc, loot boxes, etc. Because its already lucrative. Unfortunately the entire industry; both consumers and producers just trapped themselves.

Enough money means break even and that means no growth

I would buy a game that has Duke Nukem and Courage the Cowardly Dog in it!

You realize that fewer AAA games almost certainly means fewer Titanfalls and Wolfenstiens, not fewer Call of Duties and Battlefronts?

Or Titanfalls and Wolfensteins that have more modest budgets but aren't pressured to appeal to the broadest possible audience.

Once the producers learns what games that TRULY brings money in the long run, they'll start making CoD: Wolfensteins, if you get what i mean. (The wrapping of CoD, but the quality of Wolfenstein.)

Oh I would love more niche games, whatever the niche.

RE8 was 60$

@@Chuked yeah my man hit me with one of the exceptions, sure!

@@rafaelsantos1497 life is strange true colors is $60

@@Chukedwow gee weez tell me more

@@rafaelsantos1497 rust console edition is $50

Yeah, it's a bit naive that publishers would stop their secondary income sources just because they get a bit more from the primary ones. It's about appeasing investors and shareholders. If they could get away with adding 50% to a game's retail cost, and still pull off the same practices, they'd gladly do it.

It's similar to how if a publisher has their own digital marketplace that they completely control, they're not going to lower their prices even though it costs less to run it than physical goods or putting the game on steam.

Brendan Geormer They don't want some of the money, they want ALL of the money.

They are making 600 mln $ each year...

+otakon17 >see ISPs

Unless it's something like HearthStone where the game is actually design around it. And also have the ability to trade what you get from the loot box helps.

I totally get you man. I'd much rather just pay a couple bucks to get the thing I want, like how leauge of legends does it, rather than roll the dice to hope to get it like in overwatch

Save that argument for the inevitable Lootbox video. Unless bundled or in a season pass, I'm sure you can choose what skins and bonus content you want through microtransactions and standalone dlc.

How about we get it for free like in the good old day just by playing the game

league of legends also make you pay for champions tho, which can give you a competitive advantage and reduce your enjoyment of the game. more a fan of how it is done in dota2. all game content is free, all you pay for is cosmetic items. you have loot boxes there, but it is also possible to trade items and sell/buy the ones you want from the steam market.

I dunno man, I'll take your word that shiny new AAA games aren't worth their price to you, but I think the insightful question is "is competing in the graphical arms race worth the cost to game makers?" And I gotta imagine that if the actual market research they do showed it wasn't worth it then they wouldn't be doing it.

Lyinar Baeldeth They lost 10% of people like you to gain like, more than that amount back. Sorry to say but from a buiesness perspective minorities don't really matter when your audience is that huge.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

You echoed my thoughts, exactly. Thank you.

Everyone seems to assume that making an “engaging” game with “good story” somehow costs no extra money. Just as much time and money, if not more, is required for designers to come up with a good story and gameplay elements.

Wow your soooo clever, your right, games should be free and anyone who says otherwise is just being greedy.

@@kyzantia8884 Here’s a crazy concept: did you know that there are numbers between 0 and 60?

​@Kyzantia 888 Here's another crazy thought. How about company's like EA and Take Two not try to nickel and dime their consumers for cut content and otherwise items in the game that would be better locked behind a progression wall instead of a pay wall?

When you're specifically talking about the inner design of the game, sure, but you need to understand that these games take tens of millions of dollars to produce and a ton of effort. Sorry, but the fact you're complaining about micro transactions with the game being, all things considered, relatively cheap, it just comes across as disrespectful.

Nobody asked EA to spend tens of millions of dollars on Battlefront. If they knew it would cost too much to make, they shouldn't have made it. Also, disrespectful? To who? The lizard people who run the AAA games industry? Or the corporation itself?

They calculated that they would make enough profit to make up for the millions of dollars. Trust me, the people making these decisions are not idiots and the decisions aren't just left to one employee in case there were idiots there. Disrespectful to the people who work long and hard days to make the finished product and could be potentially disrespectful to anyone in the game developing community.

You do realize that at 60 dollars a pop(and we all know some got the more expensive versions) multiplied by the 9 million in sales is 540 million dollars. That is way more than the "tens of millions of dollars". The real insult with battlefront 2 was that they put a pay to win system in place that you would topically see in a BAD free to play game and then made the grind to unlock things artificially long to encourage players to purchase items instead of grinding for them. Someone on reddit had done the math based off the numbers before they tweaked them after the outrage and it was going to take more than 4000 hours of play time to unlock all of the heroes/upgrades and that is just crazy.

the developers will do what the higher ups in the company tell them to. and the disrespect is only aimed at those higher ups and it's well deserved, don't create a strawman here. also not implementing the systems of microtransactions, loot boxes etc. would have cut the cost of the game. the simple fact that there are still aaa games with no MT or LB that are still making money is enough to counter any argument in defense of these systems.

Holzkohlen Best comment ever!

Holzkohlen You haven't played New Vegas? Go get it! It's like less than 20 GOTY.

Kiwi by birth, but raised in Australia

@@SilverGamingFI that's what i was going to say

And they had a tiny player base.

And people called them severely overpriced then. Sega was always second-banana, so their competition wasn't fierce enough to force Nintendo to reduce prices. It wasn't until Sony released the PlayStation and became wildly popular that game prices really dropped. Which perfectly illustrates why this video's argument is nonsense. Game prices will stay high if nobody creates any competition.

In Canada, we already pay 80 for a AAA game (And of course, tax makes it 90) and yeah, wages aren't exactly better than they used to be.

This is why raising minimum wages are generally associated with economic growth (within reason). People who are broke are aren't good consumers.

That's really a problem with any luxery item. Some people simply can't afford it. That doesn't mean that it should just be sold at lower prices though. After all, the game companies are still that, companies. They need to make a profit (and one as big as possible) to keep the shareholders happy. Also, there are still plenty of people that can (and do) buy games without it having much impact on their lives.

I live in Bulgaria (remember in europe) and a AAA video game costs about 1/8 of my montly wage. and about 1/4 of the minimal wage.

Hot take: If you're working minimum wage, a videogame being expensive is probably the least of your worries.