Wait, whose side are these journalist on? and in the middle of a pandemic, jesus..
"It's ok everyone! $70 isnt that much really, in fact it's cheaper than ever!!!"
"It's ok everyone! $70 isnt that much really, in fact it's cheaper than ever!!!"
Let me be clear that I don't want more money going into CEO's pockets the same way I don't want government bailouts being used to pay CEO's big bonuses, but that's in institutional failure.but in the mean time let's put more money in the CEO's pockets? We can do two things at once, man. The industry deserves this push back.
And i'm not even saying you're wrong--the "demands of gamers" are kinda goofy. There's constantly complaints at the AAA level. A game looks beautiful, they start complaining about the sound design. Everything seems perfect, but they didn't put enough settings in. It's a great game, but it's not on people's toasters. People need to figure out how to maybe stop throwing so many demands out. But that's got nothing to do with prices going up another $10.
It's called common sense.
yeah first reply, need that chart up there too, going back to the 70s
b-b-but inflation
such a dumb arguement - videogames are more popular than ever, videogames also come with shittons of extra ways to make money and also, fucking lmao, all the big publishers are reaping record profits
Where do you think it will go seriously.Let me be clear that I don't want more money going into CEO's pockets the same way I don't want government bailouts being used to pay CEO's big bonuses, but that's in institutional failure.
Also I think if more is demanded of a game, expenses rise and at some point that is not tenable. Raising prices seems to make sense if that's the case.
Lol the audacity of you to say this after all the crap you've posted in this thread
Yep. That won't dissuade the corporate bootlickers though.Now plot the average working class income over that same time and you'll see why people aren't happy about having to pay $70 for games.
I'm not trying to be rude. This is a serious question. Is there any chance that some of these writers are being paid by AAA publishers to publish articles like these? Real talk.
Before anyone jumps down my throat, it's not unheard of that articles are sponsored for their content.
If only you had that same self awareness.Yes I know you don't know, as evidenced by your repeated bad faith responses.
Not for everyone. Actually there is a clear trend of market offer and development concentration. Also, more people are buying but from less developpers. So these are not mutually exclusive.
Finally, games are costing more.
10 $ difference adds up over milions of sales to absorb the 50 to 100 million $ dev cycles.
You're not giving any actual points or facts, I'm not saying I want to pay $10 more, I'm saying this is a natural response to inflation, rising game costs, more demands from gamers and a more competitive market. Everyone else including you is saying "but this won't work and CEOs will make more money." To that I continue to say maybe but some of that is an institutional failure, inflation is real and you can't cover your eyes and pretend it isn't because you live in a dream world, and yes the AAA model is broken. Something has to be done, crunch is bad, studio closures are bad, CEO's making all the money is bad. Hopefully these increases help, maybe they will, maybe the won't, but it was going to happen eventually. Spend your money how you want to.Lol the audacity of you to say this after all the crap you've posted in this thread
I think the people who ground away making MKX for $13hr should probably get paid better. The women who made $12 doing the same thing should also get raises too.Because undefined terms in a discussion aren't productive. And "better wages" overlooks the fact that on the AAA side, there is a much greater need for better work rules than better wages. Better wages don't alleviate crunch.
Game developers don't make as much as developers at tech startups, but they're not making minimum wage either. And they're also not taking the equity risk that a developer at a startup is going to make.
It's very easy to say "better wages", but without defining that, it becomes meaningless.
Fanboys would be ok with making used games illegal if their corporate overlords pushed for it.Videogame fanbases are a lot more fanboy driven than any other media. There's so many people making excuses in the name of publishers, even on Era, it's only natural to see opinion pieces like this imo. Though there's always a chance :p
We're paying rent for these companies because they can't be bothered to pay taxes and you people are carrying water to have them charge even more?
You not only pay more taxes than ATVI, your tax dollar is paying ATVI.Also this.
The fuck am I going to be happy about giving more of my money to Bobby Kotick when I pay more tax than Activision.
Game companies are posting record profits, they aren't in jeopardy of declining revenues due to inflation and game prices. They've already developed a multitude of revenue streams that don't involve raising the base game price (MTX, deluxe editions, special editions, DLC, etc.). The idea that inflation is the only or even the most important metric by which retailers and publishers set prices is absurd, it's not even close to being the most important factor for why you would raise prices. Increases in the consumer base, average wages in the market you are operating in, general consumer spend in your market segment year over year, the prices of your competitors, etc. are all vastly more important.You're not giving any actual points or facts, I'm not saying I want to pay $10 more, I'm saying this is a natural response to inflation, rising game costs, more demands from gamers and a more competitive market. Everyone else including you is saying "but this won't work and CEOs will make more money." To that I continue to say maybe but some of that is an institutional failure, inflation is real and you can't cover your eyes and pretend it isn't because you live in a dream world, and yes the AAA model is broken. Something has to be done, crunch is bad, studio closures are bad, CEO's making all the money is bad. Hopefully these increases help, maybe they will, maybe the won't, but it was going to happen eventually. Spend your money how you want to.
Now present one fact beyond 'nuh uh' or go away. Y'all haven't given one actual fact and reasoned response. These boards are nightmares for any discourse, this thread is why.
Yes! Preach it.Wheres the next graph that shows the inverse for publishers revenue and profits? You know the actual relevant one which includes MTX revenue / DLC income + accounts for the outsourcing of a lot of dev to lower wage countries and maybe even highlights some of systematic tax avoidance the big publishers use to create enormous profits for their cunt CEO's and shareholders?
Wheres that graph?
10 years ago AAA games took 2 years (average) to be developed, now they take 4-5 years, that's enough to justify higher prices
Can we have a site-wide moratorium on all things that relate to inflation and video game prices? The conversations should be non-starters when you take into account wages matching inflation, cost-of-living, and purchasing power. I feel like "games cost (x) dollars in year (y) which after googling the first inflation calculator I could find means that it really costs (z) dollars today!" arguments pop up on a daily basis, and we may as well be arguing whether or not the sun is the center of the solar system. Do several dozen of us need to dunk on the inflation argument every time it pops up?
That's a ridiculous misrepresentation of what I actually said. If anything, your comment reads like we're on a similar page here. Once these threads recognize all economic factors that go into a consumer's ability to purchase a non-essential good, that will be the starting point. It's just exhausting to see countless threads and countless comments from people who googled "inflation calculator" as if that's an accurate representation whatsoever of the mean economic situation for a consumer purchase non-essential goods in year (x) compared to year (y).You're not dunking on anything. Videogames aren't exempt from the value of the dollar decreasing over time just because you have a special attachment to them.
It's difficult to look at ATVI in particular over many years because of the big acquisitions of Blizzard then King. And yes, their revenue went up, but OTOH that number includes the revenue of the companies they acquired/merged with, and many other publishers went bankrupt since then.So lets look at a couple of things.
First let's look at earnings which are basically flat since 2000
Let's take a look inflation adjusted wage development and the picture is basically the same as 40 years ago
Now take a look at our friends at activision which revenue doubled more than 4 times since 2005
2005 $1.406 billion
2019 $6.489 billion
Activision Blizzard, Inc Revenue 2010-2023 | ATVI
Activision Blizzard, Inc revenue from 2010 to 2023. Revenue can be defined as the amount of money a company receives from its customers in exchange for the sales of goods or services. Revenue is the top line item on an income statement from which all costs and expenses are subtracted to arrive...www.macrotrends.net
Now the argument is always development is more expensive so lets have a look at how their bottom line was impacted since 2005
2005 $135 million
2019 $1.503 billion
Activision Blizzard, Inc Net Income 2010-2023 | ATVI
Activision Blizzard, Inc net income from 2010 to 2023. Net income can be defined as company's net profit or loss after all revenues, income items, and expenses have been accounted for.www.macrotrends.net
So to sum up while publishers like Activision quadrupled their revenue and increased increased their income by a factor of more than 15 consumer wages haven't really increased at all.
Looking at inflation alone to justify a price increase when all your other positive KPIs have exploded in the past two decades is hilariously misinformed at best and journalists carrying the torch for publishers just shows how awful the journalism in this industry is.
I like how you left out that Avengers cost square a ton of money due to the fact that they had to do marketing dance twice (thanks to covid, which last I checked i dont think we'd be having a yearly pandemic to drive extra costs from here on out) on top of the game simply not being up to snuff due to creative decisions and not budgetary reasons.
But I guess that wouldn't help your narrative at all huh
Turns out if you make products consumers don't like no one buys them welcome to capitalism 101
So... You think Anthem would do better if it was 10 dollars more expensive?
If your product is something the customer doesn't like, you can't really fix that with pricing.
The only thing I'll say about the old days is that it was easier to keep up with the Joneses and be across all the "major" releases while also playing jank games for goofsWe paid a lot of money sometimes yes. Mowed a lot of lawns to support my habit as a teen.
These threads get so heated but I will add one thing from an 37 year old perspective. It's never been a better time to be a gamer. We can bitch about everything under the sun but if that game I bought for big bucks back then had a bug it had a bug forever. And our options were way more limited. And I rarely remember giant sales on games like we have now. I saw someone said Amazon had Valhalla for 40 bucks a bit back. That's close to half off in under a month! Maybe my memory fails me but I can't remember popular games being 30 bucks less anytime soon after launch.
The old days weren't better. More on topic I've been on the wait train for a while now and others seem to be jumping on. It seems like everyone has been expecting this increase for a long time. Wishful thinking perhaps but hoping we can reduce crunch and pay developers a little better.
Except that the general consensus on Era was that Prey and Dishonored 2 were very good games that people didn't buy because...marketing.
I think it's clear I put up those examples to show that despite headlines of 'record profits' and 'crazy industry growth', it doesn't apply to everyone. The craft is still as risky as ever.
We paid a lot of money sometimes yes. Mowed a lot of lawns to support my habit as a teen.
These threads get so heated but I will add one thing from an 37 year old perspective. It's never been a better time to be a gamer. We can bitch about everything under the sun but if that game I bought for big bucks back then had a bug it had a bug forever. And our options were way more limited. And I rarely remember giant sales on games like we have now. I saw someone said Amazon had Valhalla for 40 bucks a bit back. That's close to half off in under a month! Maybe my memory fails me but I can't remember popular games being 30 bucks less anytime soon after launch.
The old days weren't better. More on topic I've been on the wait train for a while now and others seem to be jumping on. It seems like everyone has been expecting this increase for a long time. Wishful thinking perhaps but hoping we can reduce crunch and pay developers a little better.