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Polygon: Spending 60 dollars on a game doesn’t make sense anymore
- Thread starter Proven
- Start date
Ok but 6 AA games a year isnt what people would expect from a first party, and that's not even taking into account the 10's of millions they spend to get 3rd party games on the service. MS doesnt get the whole $10 per month, far from it.
Fuck that noise.
I hate subscription services. I'd rather spend full price for a game and completely own it, not rent it. I don't buy games every month. In fact, I've only bought 4 or 5 games this entire year and not all of them were up to $60, so this idea that of "saving" money by subscribing to a streaming or rental service doesn't apply to me. I have such a huge backlog of games that I could go well into next gen and still have tons of new games to play from my back catalog. I like owning my games and paying full price for them, I already have enough subscription services I pay for, I don't need PS Now, EA Access, Ubi Play or GamePass in my life.
I also like playing high quality AAA blockbusters like CP2077, God of War, Horizon, Spiderman, UC4, TLOU 2, etc. and $1 a month won't be enough to fund games like these. A sub model like GP works well for AA/AAA microtransaction heavy games but it has yet to prove itself it can sustain the rest of the AAA gaming industry in the long term, and I don't think it can.
I hate subscription services. I'd rather spend full price for a game and completely own it, not rent it. I don't buy games every month. In fact, I've only bought 4 or 5 games this entire year and not all of them were up to $60, so this idea that of "saving" money by subscribing to a streaming or rental service doesn't apply to me. I have such a huge backlog of games that I could go well into next gen and still have tons of new games to play from my back catalog. I like owning my games and paying full price for them, I already have enough subscription services I pay for, I don't need PS Now, EA Access, Ubi Play or GamePass in my life.
I also like playing high quality AAA blockbusters like CP2077, God of War, Horizon, Spiderman, UC4, TLOU 2, etc. and $1 a month won't be enough to fund games like these. A sub model like GP works well for AA/AAA microtransaction heavy games but it has yet to prove itself it can sustain the rest of the AAA gaming industry in the long term, and I don't think it can.
I play betas, ps+ games and free battle royal games.
As an online shooter game player (and rocket league), I no longer need to spend more than a ps+ sub to be happy. The indie and solo games I get with that provide all the variety I need to take a break.
As an online shooter game player (and rocket league), I no longer need to spend more than a ps+ sub to be happy. The indie and solo games I get with that provide all the variety I need to take a break.
meh I spend 60 dollars if I don't want to wait months to play the game just like I spend money on movie tickets when I don't want to wait months for it to be available on a streaming platform. it makes sense so long as you enjoyed it and of course, assuming you didn't spend your last dime on it
and often the devs just get the funding for the project and a small percentage/royalties. the rest goes to publishers.
edit: maybe bonuses if you hit your milestones/release date
seriously lol, like I have to ask: do the people that say they just been playing gamepass all year and bought zero games have any standards?
Even with subscription services to hide the $60 price tag, how do paid package games become THE thing the way Halo 3 or CoD4 was when they are competing with such high quality free games playable on many more devices? Maybe it's time to start giving away multiplayer and an episode of the campaign away for free like the shareware days.
I'm not an economist or anything, and people have made good arguments rebutting that games should cost more, so I'm not going to try.
I'll just say that it can cost nothing but time to make a near AAA quality game today. You can make a big seller without even knowing how to fully program (just scripting). A single person can make thousands (millions?) without the aid of even a publisher, physical media distribution, etc.
Costs to make a game have gone astronomically down since the 80's and 90's. Not to mention costs of living have gone up considerably (you could see the doctor without losing your ass in the process).
Just look at how much money these companies make year over year. It's like how computers got cheaper over time. The cost to make them went down and so did the prices.
Er...I mean sure but it's also a legal right. It's still functionally real.
Video game prices haven't risen because publishers don't want to price themselves out of the market. Wages are pretty stagnant and raising the base price would just lead to a sharp decline in sales.
The whole existence of Deluxe editions and season passes is based around getting more money out of consumers who have the means and willingness to pay more without pricing out the average consumer.
If publishers thought raising prices was a good idea, they would do it. There is no rule stopping them. They aren't doing it because it's a bad idea.
So do I, I also rent movies instead of buying or going to the theaters, I'm sure they enjoy my money too. The idea of XGP is subscriptions for either $10 or $15, which in the longer term makes them way more money, then a single buy it now price. The market is headed that way whether you think they can make money off it or not.
Eehh. a single person can make a game, but the scope of AAA games these days you need teams of hundreds of devs costing up to a few million a month in wages alone (people don't work for free and when it comes to the AAA industry, they often live in dev hub cities with high living costs) and the scary part is that wages typically arent great unless you are a director/management or programmer/engineer and even then they would make almost twice as much in any other tech industry.
Dev cost have not gone down, budgets of 100 million dollars to develop a AAA game are the norm.
Tools being easier making it more accessible for small groups of people (indies and solo devs) to make games give the illusion that development got cheaper. in reality it didn't.
You say this like packaged $60 titles aren't selling millions of units every year. Look at Spider-Man or Red Dead 2. Hell, even games like Minecraft sell a ton at retail.
I'm sorry but GamePass hasn't proven this to me yet. It may work for MS but MS also happens to be one of the richest companies in the world, and their AAA output this gen has been rather weak compared to Sony and Nintendo's. Sony and Nintendo have been charging full price on their games for decades and I'm currently more than happy with their model especially since I get to own their games and not rent them.
Jim Sterling has actively argued against this point and has said that games cribbing their monetization mechanincs from F2P games should, in turn, be free.
They're right. There's just so much shit to play, why bother with a day 1 release. I have a few games I'm already involved in, I can wait a few months.
I remember paying like $80 US for Street Fighter 2 for the SNES around '94 -- and it wasn't even at launch. We're damn spoiled.
honestly the difrence between 50 and 100 mill doesnt raise the quality of the game much. my game of gen is still neir anamata, which cost 16 mil to make. I know I am in the extreme minority, but I would take 5 neirs of just about anything coming out of the AAA space.
Yeah that's true, the scope of games is pretty intense these days. Not even counting millions of assets compared to the past. Though look at Death Stranding. I think Kojima said his team was like ~80 people. I'm sure it'll show in some ways, but that's still pretty good.
His team are working 42x harder than a normal human due to the insane working expectations of Japanese and because they are all of their faces on monster energy drink
For me there is no one blanket "game" value. It all depends on my own perceive interest in a case by case basis. I may have no problems paying $100 or more for P5R, but will balk at paying more than $25 for Division 2. So even if a game is on a service and I played it for cheap, if I really love the game I may buy it down the line. And also their artbooks. You get the gist.
Big budget AAA games are made by hundreds and hundreds of people slaving away for long hours for years, especially during crunch. Sure there are many ways we can all save a ton of money nowadays as consumers but bottom line is game development is costly and compared to other hobbies/ entertainment mediums, video games are relatively really cheap already.
Nobody has any right to tell others how much or how little to spend on a game, but personally I would gladly pay more than $60 full price if it can circumvent monitization, since I already buy quite a few on games day 1 at $60 to support the devs/ games that I really care about.
And this has what to do with my point?
This is a topic arguing there's no reason to pay full price for a game. That is the point I am refuting. You pointing out that people would be unwilling to pay what games would be if they kept up with inflation and thus devs don't raise prices isn't refuting that point.
Whatever. Every game is different. Every person is different. Sometimes to me it doesn't make sense to pay $60...and sometimes it does.
What if I want the game NOW as opposed to a month from now? What if I just want to make sure to support someone/thing I really like?
I'll agree Gamepass is a pretty cool thing though if that's what she wants to say.
What if I want the game NOW as opposed to a month from now? What if I just want to make sure to support someone/thing I really like?
I'll agree Gamepass is a pretty cool thing though if that's what she wants to say.
I have no problem with the prices of games. I think even just solid and janky games are still worth 60, if you get a lot of fun out of them. And I would easily pay 100 for top tier quality games. I also like to buy day 1, to support my favorite publishers, developers, series etc.
I know what to expect from a game that I buy Day 1 and looking forward to play. I rarely get disappointed.
But i don't buy or play games which are "Games as a service" and full of micro transactions. They are often not worth the full price to me.
The biggest problem that makes me angry, is how the money goes to the wrong people. Wish all the talented developers and artists would get see much more of the money. Instead we often have the greedy and insane higher ups of some(mostly triple A) publishers, getting richer every day, no end in sight.
I know what to expect from a game that I buy Day 1 and looking forward to play. I rarely get disappointed.
But i don't buy or play games which are "Games as a service" and full of micro transactions. They are often not worth the full price to me.
The biggest problem that makes me angry, is how the money goes to the wrong people. Wish all the talented developers and artists would get see much more of the money. Instead we often have the greedy and insane higher ups of some(mostly triple A) publishers, getting richer every day, no end in sight.
from experience a core team sits often around that numbers (projects I worked on sit between 50 to 70 people for a core team) but then close to release it is common to expand drastically with contractors to get the work done on time. Also you can see with death stranding, looking at the world that most of it is procedural generated terrain/foliage placement etc. Its a smart approach, with most work going into coding the various interconnecting systems and less custom story events and containing those to the scripted in game cutscenes.
anyway, the thing is, when you mention that it takes nothing but time, you have to realize that when you talk about a studio, time cost money in terms of wages/taxes/studiospace/licenses for tools and depending on the studio often snacks/food and drinks
Sweet. I too enjoy owning my games, but I also rather own my movie rentals, but price doesnt allow that to happen, gamepass lets me play newest games at 15% of cost and much more. I'll stick with it.
I'm glad GP works for you and I'm sure it works for many others as well but like I explained in my previous posts, it's not something I have any interest in supporting. I rarely go back to watch movies after I've seen them the first time so for me a rental/sub service works well there, and even then I end up buying the movies that are my favorites. With games, it's very different for me. If I enjoy a game I'll go back to play it repeatedly over the years, so you can see why owning games is way more important than owning movies for me.
While I may watch a favorite movie of mine 4 or 5 times, a favorite game of mine I go back to play hundreds of times over the years. A game rental service like EA Access, PS Now or XGP doesn't work for me because over time games are rotated (although I have to give MS credit for keeping their first party games on XGP permanently). I can't go back a decade later and be guaranteed that my favorite game is still on the service like I can do with my older games on retro consoles.
I would agree with you. AAA doesn't mean how good a game is, it is often higher production value, putting most effort into better graphics since that is the easiest to effectively scale up, which is also where you see most time/money being spent in art assets when you talk about the AAA industry
I only buy a few day 1 releases a year, but in principle I am uncomfortable with the subscription model.
I have been subscribed to pd+for years. I like the idea of our, but I have barely played any of the games (few hours at most).
Likewise I subscribed to gamepass for pc, and I think I have on played the gears remake, so definitely not getting my month's worth.
From my perspective it is worse for consumers and worse for devs.
I have been subscribed to pd+for years. I like the idea of our, but I have barely played any of the games (few hours at most).
Likewise I subscribed to gamepass for pc, and I think I have on played the gears remake, so definitely not getting my month's worth.
From my perspective it is worse for consumers and worse for devs.
You get a20% discount on games leaving the service, buy the games you want to replay.
I dream a future where I can subscribe to a service for ~$100 a year and have all games available
i Love Gamepass excellent service has saved me a lot of money over the past year or so but I do have a concern about the way the industry is headed.
What happens if Microsoft gets all the big 3rd party games on gamepass along with most of the indies they get day one and the other distributors who aren't on gamepass go the EA route and start their own service?
Will people still buy 3rd party games on PlayStation and Steam or will they wait for them on Gamepass or to come to the Distributors subscription service?
Xbox and Sony both make a bulk of their money from the 30% they get from being platform holders Microsoft obviously is a trillion dollar company but Will they want to keep investing the type of money to become the Netflix of gaming in the long run or will they grow tired and say it isn't worth the hassle.
Will Sony be able to survive without the decreased 3rd party revenue stream being they are the primary bread winner for the company.
these are things that concern me about the future. I love The subscription service model but are they realistically sustainable or are they fools gold that will come back to bite the companies and us consumers in the ass long term.
What happens if Microsoft gets all the big 3rd party games on gamepass along with most of the indies they get day one and the other distributors who aren't on gamepass go the EA route and start their own service?
Will people still buy 3rd party games on PlayStation and Steam or will they wait for them on Gamepass or to come to the Distributors subscription service?
Xbox and Sony both make a bulk of their money from the 30% they get from being platform holders Microsoft obviously is a trillion dollar company but Will they want to keep investing the type of money to become the Netflix of gaming in the long run or will they grow tired and say it isn't worth the hassle.
Will Sony be able to survive without the decreased 3rd party revenue stream being they are the primary bread winner for the company.
these are things that concern me about the future. I love The subscription service model but are they realistically sustainable or are they fools gold that will come back to bite the companies and us consumers in the ass long term.
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Such an idiot. Now enjoy this new and very high quality video game. Prepare for massive amounts of fun and enjoyment.
You did it to yourself, man.
I wonder what this would mean for game budgets, development time, and microtransactions if everyone decided 60 dollars was too much. I don't think everyone wants this future. I definitely feel like things are about to get ugly.