4 ms·
There's a lot of valid criticism, but rising prices is... not quite accurate. Compared to the inflation of the last 25 years, prices for games have stayed almos
by TonyTrapp 4y ago
There's a lot of valid criticism, but rising prices is... not quite accurate. Compared to the inflation of the last 25 years, prices for games have stayed almost constant, so relatively speaking they are a lot cheaper than they used to be (despite the ridiculously large team sizes and production value of modern AAA games). If games kept up with inflation, your average AAA game price would be more than 100€ and not 60-80€ these days.
- ethbr0 4y agoShould digital goods be indexed to inflation/TAM_growth, to normalize for population growth?
- tgv 4y agoSince all costs are personnel, yes.
- izacus 4y agoWhat do you mean? This is a digital downloadable good and their sales have grown massively, bringing in massively more profit with the same team sizes. Even if teams grew, the gaming market has outgrown that by several sizes in last years. The profits these publishers have recorded in last years are staggering - raising game prices is pure fleecing.
- ethbr0 4y ago> raising game prices is pure fleecing My curiosity is that there's some normalized change in game pricing, but it's really dependent on both inflation and increased size of gaming market. Since unit costs are so low for digital goods, if you have +5% inflation over a period and +15% gamers, the price of AAA games technically should have gone down to maintain profits. (Assuming you hold development costs static, which isn't true but simplifies the problem) I'm not sure what that inflation-TAM number would be. Maybe games are getting "more profitable" (at the same price point), maybe less.
- tgv 4y agoSince there's almost no cost to the production of a sold item, all costs are salaries, social benefits, office space. Things that correlate directly to the number of people working. All these costs rise with the inflation. You're right that more sales could mean lower prices, but I don't know the numbers. I would not have assumed CoD is so much more popular now than 10 years ago.
- selykg 4y agoIt's sustainable because the gamer demographic has grown tremendously in the last 25 years as well. Bigger market, means more people buying AAA games in general, which allows for a larger budget without increasing the price and still being able to get a profit out of it. That said, I'm not personally a fan of the latest generation having price increases. I went from buying games when they came out to just waiting until the games are half off and only buying games on release when there's a vital story I don't want to have spoiled for me. But 90% of my purchases are now only when the game is 50% off or more.
- kipchak 4y agoGames have also come up with additional monetization methods to increase the overall spend past $60. Things like DLC, Season Passes, Loot crates and now battle passes have increased the potential spend as a price discrimination strategy. CoD for example has "Cod Points", which are used to buy battle passes or skins putting the price at somewhere between $60 and thousands, somewhat similar to the approach mobile games take.
- croutonwagon 4y agoThey also increasingly seem to be released in various broken fashions. AAA are not quite as bad at the perpetual "alpha"-ism, but still, many are quite broken at launch. Things cyberpunk, BF 2042 in the same genre etc.
- NoPicklez 4y agoI think there's an important point to make that if games haven't kept up with inflation and neither have our wages, then the price hasn't changed.