4 ms·

Gaming is getting too expensive. This feels like sort of an accident of complex systems. Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocket

Gaming is getting too expensive. This feels like sort of an accident of complex systems. Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocketing. But, some of the most fun games in the world were made 30 ago. From a pure "can we have good entertainment?" standpoint there's no reason for this cost creep. In practice, companies are pushing it, and although it probably does not apply to the HN crowd, but consumers are also demanding better graphics. The industry and its fans are its own worst enemies. However, if you don't go bonkers over recent AAA games, gaming has never been more accessible or cheaper. I didn't buy a game this steam sale for more than $3, and each game would run on more or less anything.

aprilthird2021 3mo ago
I do wonder if a studio that made a lot of smaller games with less technical specs but spent all the money in fun gameplay design and character design and stories would outcompete major AAA game studios. I think I'm just describing mobile game studios pre-gachafication
- alex43578 3mo ago
  I think you’re also describing the indie/lower-budget scene that does very well on Steam. There’s plenty of games that break out via streaming, for instance.
- trial3 3mo ago
  this is sorta the Blumhouse model
- dashmeet 3mo ago
  Isn’t this Nintendo? Pretty sure they’ve proven that you don’t need the latest in graphics (always a generation behind) to make engaging games.
- everdrive 3mo ago
  It's very interesting. I played that new-ish Marvel: Cosmic Invasion game and recently played Fight 'N Rage. I believe both are built in the exact same game engine. Fight 'N Rage, which is undoubtedly the better of the two games (although both are quite fun) had a tiny roster. I think there was a single primary developer, and then one guy did the music and maybe 1-2 other people helped with things. The Marvel game was made by a "real" studio and had tens (hundreds?) of staff to build what was effectively a slightly lower quality game. (although the Marvel game had a much smaller staff than anything like a modern AAA release.) Famously, Doom and Quake were made by quite small teams. I don't know what the answer is, but there just seems to be unavoidable bloat all around. Staff, cost, complexity, system requirements, etc.
  - BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
    > Doom and Quake were made by quite small teams Doom came out in 1993, all teams were "small" by 2026 standards.
- BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
  What do you mean by "outcompete"? There've been some extremely successful small-studio games recently (the one that comes to mind is Silksong, which dropped last September)
CodingJeebus 3mo ago
I think it's a function of growth at all costs (or to put more bluntly, capitalism). TVs need to continuously improve to keep selling, as do video game systems, etc. And graphics are the easiest benchmark to advertise progress, but also some of the most taxing systems to build because they're so complex that there are huge markets of commercial game engines to address this. Good gameplay requires taste, nuance, experience. Things that are hard to quantify if you're an MBA.
- parineum 3mo ago
  > TVs need to continuously improve to keep selling All while getting cheaper in the process. Thanks capitalism!
  - CodingJeebus 3mo ago
    Getting cheaper due to mandatory spyware that requires networking knowledge to properly isolate and disable. Thanks capitalism!
    - mediaman 3mo ago
      That's annoying, but it's not why scaled manufacturing is lowering unit costs of panel production. Look at bare panel prices, they've followed the same cost curve down. The same problem exists in the airline market. Airline ticket prices are historically very low, but people complain about seats, fees, and so on. But then they keep buying the absolute cheapest ticket. What consumers say they care about, and what they actually care about, are not the same. Otherwise they'd pay more for the less irritating product.
      - happymellon 3mo ago
        > But then they keep buying the absolute cheapest ticket. I would love to shop around and find seats that give me the things that I want without having to spend more on extra fees, but the model they have now is to basically show me the nickle and dining seat, and then pay to upgrade it to the fee free version.
tayo42 3mo ago
>But, some of the most fun games in the world were made 30 ago. This is true for every entertainment medium. Time filters out all the crap made so your left with a few timeless hits. Especially 30 years ago and in gaming? Though to pick on 1996 , I just looked it up, that was a pretty crazy year of games in hindsight.
- tcmart14 3mo ago
  Yup and in 30 years from now, people will be saying the same for the last 30 years. For every Ocarina of Time there was hundreds of no names based on movie gimmick games that are forgotten about. For every Super Mario there was a hundred ET games on NES.
- quickthrowman 3mo ago
  The mid to late 90s were incredible for video games. 1998 in particular might be the most impactful year of video game releases ever, tho 1996 is damn near as impactful as 1998. Probably the fact I was a teenager during this time colors my view substantially haha. 1996: Mario 64, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Duke Nukem 3D, NiGHTS, Crash Bandicoot, Quake, DOA/Soul Edge, Pokémon Red/Blue, Civ II 1998: Zelda OOT, Marvel vs Capcom, Castlevania SOTN, Metal Gear Solid, StarCraft, Half-Life, DDR, Baldue’s Gate, Mario Party, Grim Fandango
nazgulsenpai 3mo ago
I hear people complaining nonstop about the state of gaming but man, I stopped playing AAA years ago organically and started playing AA and indie and it's been wonderful. Between Steam & GoG sales and using Epic Game Store only for all of their free stuff, my backlog grows and grows. Obviously this is subjective, but try some of that $5-10 stuff on Steam or GoG and you might be surprised how much there is to play out there. I'm playing Dread Delusion right now and it is amazing (estimate I'm 50% done but playing blind), Wicked Seed before that, Deformed before that, etc.
- jsbisviewtiful 3mo ago
  I’ll pick up a AAA game every few years and only after it’s on steep sale. This method has been working well for me but I’ve also considered myself as having my foot out the door for being a “gaming enthusiast” for 5-8 years now. I got tired of AAA games being so much money and not being very fun. Most recently, finally bought GoW Ragnarok for like $26 USD, ended up really not liking it and putting it down after 8 or so hours. Hurts a lot less when on steep sale. I play a lot less than I used to thanks to cost, game quality and time - and the PS5 will be my last Sony console, regardless of the newest happenings. It’ll be PC and maybe a Nintendo console here and there unless prices go up even higher next gen, at which point I’d be done with consoles entirely and just use Steam and probably play indie and older games only. The industry just isn’t what it used to be.
mhurron 3mo ago
Gaming was always an expensive hobby. But this - > Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocketing Is unrelated. AAA Gaming companies relied so heavily on technical improvements when things were new and genuine leaps in ability that when we hit the graphics are good enough instead of just making great games that are fun, they had to do stupid graphics tricks. Did every strand of hair need to be individually rendered to act as real as possible so the one guy who is dissecting ever frame would be happy? Did that horses scrotum need to be animated at all, let alone react to the environment? Did that thing that basically no one will ever see need to be created over the course of 9 months? These stupid, pointless things to try and chase the same technical breakthrough selling points they had 25+ years ago are one of the major things driving the development costs. Then of course there's the, 'ya whatever, you'll still pay for it, fuck you'[1] that publishers are latching on to. [1]https://youtu.be/vBG3OYSa3YQ?t=50 https://youtu.be/vBG3OYSa3YQ?t=50
- gibberish678678 3mo ago
  > Did that thing that basically no one will ever see need to be created over the course of 9 months? As an engineer, I worry so much about writing perfect code even when I know it is temporary script for one off job. In my home, I painted top of the doors that no one will see. But I know it is painted. It is nice that people care about these small things.
  - malfist 3mo ago
    There's a difference between caring about the small things and caring about things that don't matter at all. Look at city skylines 2. Every tooth in every person is individually rendered. Why? Every house hold budget is tracked and managed. Even though you can't do much about it. Lots of technically advanced simulations are going on in that game to build the most advanced simulation. But people don't play a game became its simulating a city accurately right down to individual teeth in every citizen. They play a game because it's fun.
  - danaris 3mo ago
    And how long did painting the top of the doors take you? How much money did it cost? Because I'm willing to bet it wasn't 9 months and millions of dollars.
onion2k 3mo ago
consumers are also demanding better graphics I don't think many consumers (outside of hardcore games) could tell the difference between the graphics of a game from 10 years ago to the graphics from a game of today. Things have hardly moved on at all. As an example to illustrate the point: GTA:V is 13 years old.
- everdrive 3mo ago
  I could be wrong, but my personal impression is that much like on HN, it's the enthusiasts who are quite into niche stuff like indie games and bemoan the graphics race, where as the silent mass of "average" gamers are more like "oh man, the new Call of Duty has even better graphics! I can't imagine playing the old one anymore."
  - xboxnolifes 3mo ago
    The average gamer is buying Fifa and Cod every year, but that doesn't mean it's because of the graphics. I'm not convinced that a change in graphic fidelity had any meaningful impact in their sales for the last few years. The big problem with AAA studios is that they are basically just investment vehicles, and they are big investment vehicles. So, only big successes matter, and they can only get big successes by trying to go all out and pray to become the next big thing. Moderate success is not enough. Huge returns on investment on small investment is not enough. They have to spend tens/hundreds of millions and return billions. Once they get a success, they have to milk it. They are getting eaten by Roblox and dozens of indie developers eating up customer time and accepting more moderate success (Huge success for a small studio, negligible for a large one). And more accurately, the average gamer (by market spend) is only playing mobile games.
- revolvingthrow 3mo ago
  > I don't think many consumers (outside of hardcore games) could tell the difference between the graphics of a game from 10 years ago to the graphics from a game of today My half blind aunt could probably tell the difference between the graphics of a game from 2016 and 2026 if you put them side by side. Were video game graphics "good enough" for a while now? I’d say yes, with the exception of vr. But to say there has been no noticeable improvement over the last 10 years is silly. GTA 6 is coming out soon. I’d invite you to actually compare the visuals of gta 6 vs the original gta 5 from 2014 that was released for ps4 (rather than the 2022 enhanced version for consoles or 2015 version for pc which shouldn’t be compared to non-pc gta 6, since 6 for pc will also get a significant facelift).
password54321 3mo ago
It is not really about graphics as it is about the scale of a game. Many studios don't even create their own custom engines like they used to to push the most out of hardware and use Unreal Engine. Games take long now because they are much larger in scope and are typically open world. Even the sequel to Breath of the Wild took 6 years and the graphics aren't exactly staggering but the scope of these games have improved a lot which isn't a bad thing. You can get lost in some for dozens of hours. I would imagine studios like From Software even enjoy the ambition of creating games like Elden Ring.
TulliusCicero 3mo ago
> Gaming is getting too expensive. Gaming is so much cheaper than when I was growing up that I'm kind of blown away. SNES games went for $60-70. That's like $130-150 in today's money. And they usually had less content than today's games, even if you never do microtransactions today! In contrast, major AAA titles today are half the price, and you can find indie games packed with content for a paltry $20. Hell, with Steam sales, you can find them even cheaper than that! Some free to play games like Dota 2 make all of their core gameplay content free! If you check when games like Quake were released, their minimum requirements were absolutely INSANE compared to today. We're talking about mid to high-end CPUs released within the last two or three years, none of this "oh yeah something lower-middle from 5 years ago is fine". Average prices for computers were much higher too (well, maybe the current RAM/SSD crisis has equalized that a bit, but other than that). Controllers? 8bitdo and the like make highly competent gamepads for $30, which would've been $15 in the 90's. You couldn't even get terrible third-party shitpads for that little back then! It's disgustingly cheap. If you want to game these days, you can spend a very reasonable amount of money on a mid-range gaming PC* and have it last at least a good 5-6 years. You can then buy games for a steal on Steam, and get surprisingly decent peripherals like gaming monitors and mechanical keyboards for almost no money. The idea that gaming is "too expensive now" is itself laughable. * Well, other than the memory crisis fucking things up, but before AI companies ate all the RAM, things were very reasonable
- GoofGarage 3mo ago
  >SNES games went for $60-70. I don’t believe you were intending to paint with a broad brush, but for others I’d like to explain where SNES game pricing was in more detail, as there was quite the range of prices depending on the game and when it was released. ———- The plain Jane SNES game was $50 at US launch in late 1991. Normal-ish ROM size (4Mbit). This included later released first-party titles like Super Mario Kart (1992). Prices went up with ROM size, and as there were higher supply costs starting in late 1993 and into 1994. So something like even LOZ: A Link to the Past was $60 (8Mbit ROM used, game a bit smaller). Mega Man X was $60 for the same reason. Final Fantasy II (IV) in the US was $65 at launch (again, 8Mbit ROM). Street Fighter II (16Mbit) was $70 in 1992. Then there’s larger games still, with ROM prices going down then up. I believe Final Fantasy III (VI) was $75 USD at launch, but that was a 24Mbit ROM. Secret of Mana (16MBit) and Chrono Trigger (32MBit) were $80 at launch. Then you had Ogre Battle which I believe was $90, despite fitting within 12Mbit (8Mbit + 4Mbit). Another reason for $70 prices were the SuperFX chip. Stunt Race FX was $70 in the US at launch because of that chip, even though it fit into an 8Mbit ROM. Yet Star Fox was $60 was the same hardware, but launched at $60 in 1993 whereas Stunt Race FX came out in 1994 where ROM prices are higher. —- So $50 - 90, with it more in the $50-60 range at launch, and then $60 being more common through the rest of the console’s lifecycle. Special and larger games were trending towards $70 later in the console lifecycle. Then you had the few crazy games (excluding games with accessories like Lethal Enforcers) in the $75 - 90 range.
darth_avocado 3mo ago
> but consumers are also demanding better graphics. Modern games have visually worse graphics than games that came out 10+ years ago. Beyond that, the success of a lot of games recently with non AAA budgets shows that gamers aren’t demanding anything from the industry beyond playable games that don’t treat them as a perpetual revenue stream.
- bluefirebrand 3mo ago
  > Modern games have visually worse graphics than games that came out 10+ years ago My knee jerk reaction was to disagree with this, but I thought about it a bit The Witcher 3 came out 10 years ago. So did Red Dead Redemption 2 (edit: not quite, actually 8 years. Still!) A lot of games still fall short of those in the graphics department
  - darth_avocado 3mo ago
    There is a real reason behind this. A lot of games before, used to be built on custom game engines and were heavily optimized. When you build on unreal 5, optimization is poorly done or completely ignored. On top of that, reliance on upscaling causes a weird feel to the overall look.
  - wernerb 3mo ago
    Death stranding 1 and 2 also look absolutely amazing. They are not using unreal engine but their own. Not sure what magic they are pulling off there.
    - asantopietro 3mo ago
      They are using the game engine from the developer who produced the Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West games, called Decima.
  - Pay08 3mo ago
    At the same time, both of those games had an entire AAA studio behind them (you could consider CDPR to be AA), whereas most other AAA studios work on a number of projects at a time. Same reason Starfield ended up having such high visual "prowess", in lieu of talking about just graphics.
mikenew 3mo ago
Current top 5 played games on the Steam Deck are: Slay the Spire 2, The Binding of Isaac, Dave the Diver, Stardew Valley, and Baldur's Gate 3. BG3 is the only one you can consider AAA, but Larian is hardly an EA or Blizzard. The big AAA studios recycle the same formulas and push graphical quality (mostly downstream of Unreal Engine improvements) because they are risk averse. Similar to big comic-book-hero films. It's not what consumers want and it's increasingly starting to show. AAA is struggling badly while indie has been on an absolute tear the past few years.
- rickstanley 3mo ago
  On top of that, the seemingly endless remakes... Some are praise worthy others not so much. I got tired of Resident Evil Remakes, they are just recycling the same formula over, and over, and over again... Innovation has left a long time a go. Other example is the recent Assassin's Creed Black Flag "Resync" (which is a remaster with some things on top of it), I was planing on buying it, but Jesus, Ubisoft couldn't let it pass: their launcher is still there, all DLC's together cost more than the base game (and why have DLC in the first place?), the menu is has an ad for Assassin's Creed Shadows which, etc. I'm currently doing a course (I think it's equivalent to an "Associate degree" in USA) in Game Development. I feel demotivated to take part in this industry, and I think that, at least for me, it should be just on and off gig to do in my spare time, perhaps with other enthusiasts too, but I don't plan to pursue it.
- oliwarner 3mo ago
  > Current top 5 played games on the Steam Deck are... I think this speaks more to the type of games people want in their pocket. Games you can casually pick up, put down.
  - spwa4 3mo ago
    Top-5 played games off the steam deck are: Counter-Strike 2 (Valve) DOTA 2 (Valve) Palworld (Pocketpair) PUBG: battlegrounds (PUBG corporation/Krafton Inc) TBH: Task Bar Hero (obviously not AAA) I guess Valve would half-qualify as AAA? The top played true AAA game would be, imho "Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced", at the 18th place. Perhaps Ubisoft with a Assasin's creed title in the top sellers probably should be higher in the playing list. But I think it's fair to say AAA doesn't hold the steam store anywhere near as tightly as it holds the consoles. https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/US https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/US
georgeecollins 3mo ago
I feel the opposite way. My time gets more expensive and games are-- adjusted for inflation-- the same price. I know most people don't feel this way. Lots of PC games have a $100- $200 tier where you get merch or all the DLC. That's probably aimed at people like me. The point is, if your business is games you make games for the people who will buy them. No game is more fun than a compiler, even the free ones.
- ivanjermakov 3mo ago
  I'm yet to play a game that cost more than tenth of my time I've put into it. A lot of product pricing does not have a factor of "why should I spend time on this?", but entertainment industry is really hard to price for this reason.
- mingus88 3mo ago
  Yep SNES games retailed for up to $70 in the early 90s. I’m seeing gamers revolt for paying that much today for something as immense as GTA6 Back then this was more expensive, adjusted for inflation, than many AAA titles today, and the scale of those games was way smaller I won’t argue that today’s games are not expensive, but they have always been expensive. I don’t have time to do much gaming anymore but I can find a ton of good stuff that isn’t bleeding edge if i did. Patient gamers always win.
tyre 3mo ago
Even more recently, some of my favorite games are not that graphically intense. Hades and Hades II are phenomenal, for example.
ivanjermakov 3mo ago
Most modern games can be ran 1080p60 on a 5yr old gaming laptop. I also see this sentiment in cycling complaining that some modern bikes cost like a used car. If something is expensive you either don't need it or can get 80% of that for 20% of the cost.
de6u99er 3mo ago
I strongly believe generative AI is going to change this equation. Not only will it lower the cost for studios, it will also enable gamers to make adjustments to games within pre-defined parameters.
- jaredcwhite 3mo ago
  Whatever the answers are to help gaming become more affordable/keep beloved indie studios humming, generative AI is not it at all.
- ndsipa_pomu 3mo ago
  Most people have an intense dislike of AI slop, so why do you think gamers will want that?
pibaker 3mo ago
> Gaming is getting too expensive If you buy a new game every month or every week, sure. But that is not representative of all gamers. Here's a survey that shows only 15% of American gamers buy one or more games a month. Not only that, half of the gamers buy less two games a year on average. https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bhqrrxt7yyfpwguioa7rwa7x/post/3m27zezw2ek2v https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bhqrrxt7yyfpwguioa7rwa7x/po... I can't find the number of PS5 games sold per console. But I did find the number for Nintendo switch — roughly ten games sold per switch, on a console almost ten years old. Maybe PlayStation gamers are different, but Nintendo gamers are definitely not buying games frequently on average. https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.html https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.htm... I find it hard to believe that a $15 price increase on a purchase you make twice a year is going to be the dealbreaker for most people. If anything it is likely lagging behind price increases in other leisure items like dining out and alcohol. But then again, internet discourse over gaming is dominated by devoted gamers who are in that 15% so we hear their argument over and over again, instead of the silent majority of gamers who don't buy anything beyond their yearly call of duty or FIFA or battlefield instalment.

aprilthird2021 3mo ago

I do wonder if a studio that made a lot of smaller games with less technical specs but spent all the money in fun gameplay design and character design and stories would outcompete major AAA game studios. I think I'm just describing mobile game studios pre-gachafication

alex43578 3mo ago
I think you’re also describing the indie/lower-budget scene that does very well on Steam. There’s plenty of games that break out via streaming, for instance.
trial3 3mo ago
this is sorta the Blumhouse model
dashmeet 3mo ago
Isn’t this Nintendo? Pretty sure they’ve proven that you don’t need the latest in graphics (always a generation behind) to make engaging games.
everdrive 3mo ago
It's very interesting. I played that new-ish Marvel: Cosmic Invasion game and recently played Fight 'N Rage. I believe both are built in the exact same game engine. Fight 'N Rage, which is undoubtedly the better of the two games (although both are quite fun) had a tiny roster. I think there was a single primary developer, and then one guy did the music and maybe 1-2 other people helped with things. The Marvel game was made by a "real" studio and had tens (hundreds?) of staff to build what was effectively a slightly lower quality game. (although the Marvel game had a much smaller staff than anything like a modern AAA release.) Famously, Doom and Quake were made by quite small teams. I don't know what the answer is, but there just seems to be unavoidable bloat all around. Staff, cost, complexity, system requirements, etc.
- BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
  > Doom and Quake were made by quite small teams Doom came out in 1993, all teams were "small" by 2026 standards.
BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
What do you mean by "outcompete"? There've been some extremely successful small-studio games recently (the one that comes to mind is Silksong, which dropped last September)

CodingJeebus 3mo ago

I think it's a function of growth at all costs (or to put more bluntly, capitalism). TVs need to continuously improve to keep selling, as do video game systems, etc. And graphics are the easiest benchmark to advertise progress, but also some of the most taxing systems to build because they're so complex that there are huge markets of commercial game engines to address this. Good gameplay requires taste, nuance, experience. Things that are hard to quantify if you're an MBA.

parineum 3mo ago
> TVs need to continuously improve to keep selling All while getting cheaper in the process. Thanks capitalism!
- CodingJeebus 3mo ago
  Getting cheaper due to mandatory spyware that requires networking knowledge to properly isolate and disable. Thanks capitalism!
  - mediaman 3mo ago
    That's annoying, but it's not why scaled manufacturing is lowering unit costs of panel production. Look at bare panel prices, they've followed the same cost curve down. The same problem exists in the airline market. Airline ticket prices are historically very low, but people complain about seats, fees, and so on. But then they keep buying the absolute cheapest ticket. What consumers say they care about, and what they actually care about, are not the same. Otherwise they'd pay more for the less irritating product.
    - happymellon 3mo ago
      > But then they keep buying the absolute cheapest ticket. I would love to shop around and find seats that give me the things that I want without having to spend more on extra fees, but the model they have now is to basically show me the nickle and dining seat, and then pay to upgrade it to the fee free version.

tayo42 3mo ago

>But, some of the most fun games in the world were made 30 ago. This is true for every entertainment medium. Time filters out all the crap made so your left with a few timeless hits. Especially 30 years ago and in gaming? Though to pick on 1996 , I just looked it up, that was a pretty crazy year of games in hindsight.

tcmart14 3mo ago
Yup and in 30 years from now, people will be saying the same for the last 30 years. For every Ocarina of Time there was hundreds of no names based on movie gimmick games that are forgotten about. For every Super Mario there was a hundred ET games on NES.
quickthrowman 3mo ago
The mid to late 90s were incredible for video games. 1998 in particular might be the most impactful year of video game releases ever, tho 1996 is damn near as impactful as 1998. Probably the fact I was a teenager during this time colors my view substantially haha. 1996: Mario 64, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Duke Nukem 3D, NiGHTS, Crash Bandicoot, Quake, DOA/Soul Edge, Pokémon Red/Blue, Civ II 1998: Zelda OOT, Marvel vs Capcom, Castlevania SOTN, Metal Gear Solid, StarCraft, Half-Life, DDR, Baldue’s Gate, Mario Party, Grim Fandango

nazgulsenpai 3mo ago

I hear people complaining nonstop about the state of gaming but man, I stopped playing AAA years ago organically and started playing AA and indie and it's been wonderful. Between Steam & GoG sales and using Epic Game Store only for all of their free stuff, my backlog grows and grows. Obviously this is subjective, but try some of that $5-10 stuff on Steam or GoG and you might be surprised how much there is to play out there. I'm playing Dread Delusion right now and it is amazing (estimate I'm 50% done but playing blind), Wicked Seed before that, Deformed before that, etc.

jsbisviewtiful 3mo ago
I’ll pick up a AAA game every few years and only after it’s on steep sale. This method has been working well for me but I’ve also considered myself as having my foot out the door for being a “gaming enthusiast” for 5-8 years now. I got tired of AAA games being so much money and not being very fun. Most recently, finally bought GoW Ragnarok for like $26 USD, ended up really not liking it and putting it down after 8 or so hours. Hurts a lot less when on steep sale. I play a lot less than I used to thanks to cost, game quality and time - and the PS5 will be my last Sony console, regardless of the newest happenings. It’ll be PC and maybe a Nintendo console here and there unless prices go up even higher next gen, at which point I’d be done with consoles entirely and just use Steam and probably play indie and older games only. The industry just isn’t what it used to be.

mhurron 3mo ago

Gaming was always an expensive hobby. But this - > Budgets for games are skyrocketing, graphics requirements are skyrocketing Is unrelated. AAA Gaming companies relied so heavily on technical improvements when things were new and genuine leaps in ability that when we hit the graphics are good enough instead of just making great games that are fun, they had to do stupid graphics tricks. Did every strand of hair need to be individually rendered to act as real as possible so the one guy who is dissecting ever frame would be happy? Did that horses scrotum need to be animated at all, let alone react to the environment? Did that thing that basically no one will ever see need to be created over the course of 9 months? These stupid, pointless things to try and chase the same technical breakthrough selling points they had 25+ years ago are one of the major things driving the development costs. Then of course there's the, 'ya whatever, you'll still pay for it, fuck you'[1] that publishers are latching on to. [1]https://youtu.be/vBG3OYSa3YQ?t=50 https://youtu.be/vBG3OYSa3YQ?t=50

gibberish678678 3mo ago
> Did that thing that basically no one will ever see need to be created over the course of 9 months? As an engineer, I worry so much about writing perfect code even when I know it is temporary script for one off job. In my home, I painted top of the doors that no one will see. But I know it is painted. It is nice that people care about these small things.
- malfist 3mo ago
  There's a difference between caring about the small things and caring about things that don't matter at all. Look at city skylines 2. Every tooth in every person is individually rendered. Why? Every house hold budget is tracked and managed. Even though you can't do much about it. Lots of technically advanced simulations are going on in that game to build the most advanced simulation. But people don't play a game became its simulating a city accurately right down to individual teeth in every citizen. They play a game because it's fun.
- danaris 3mo ago
  And how long did painting the top of the doors take you? How much money did it cost? Because I'm willing to bet it wasn't 9 months and millions of dollars.

onion2k 3mo ago

consumers are also demanding better graphics I don't think many consumers (outside of hardcore games) could tell the difference between the graphics of a game from 10 years ago to the graphics from a game of today. Things have hardly moved on at all. As an example to illustrate the point: GTA:V is 13 years old.

everdrive 3mo ago
I could be wrong, but my personal impression is that much like on HN, it's the enthusiasts who are quite into niche stuff like indie games and bemoan the graphics race, where as the silent mass of "average" gamers are more like "oh man, the new Call of Duty has even better graphics! I can't imagine playing the old one anymore."
- xboxnolifes 3mo ago
  The average gamer is buying Fifa and Cod every year, but that doesn't mean it's because of the graphics. I'm not convinced that a change in graphic fidelity had any meaningful impact in their sales for the last few years. The big problem with AAA studios is that they are basically just investment vehicles, and they are big investment vehicles. So, only big successes matter, and they can only get big successes by trying to go all out and pray to become the next big thing. Moderate success is not enough. Huge returns on investment on small investment is not enough. They have to spend tens/hundreds of millions and return billions. Once they get a success, they have to milk it. They are getting eaten by Roblox and dozens of indie developers eating up customer time and accepting more moderate success (Huge success for a small studio, negligible for a large one). And more accurately, the average gamer (by market spend) is only playing mobile games.
revolvingthrow 3mo ago
> I don't think many consumers (outside of hardcore games) could tell the difference between the graphics of a game from 10 years ago to the graphics from a game of today My half blind aunt could probably tell the difference between the graphics of a game from 2016 and 2026 if you put them side by side. Were video game graphics "good enough" for a while now? I’d say yes, with the exception of vr. But to say there has been no noticeable improvement over the last 10 years is silly. GTA 6 is coming out soon. I’d invite you to actually compare the visuals of gta 6 vs the original gta 5 from 2014 that was released for ps4 (rather than the 2022 enhanced version for consoles or 2015 version for pc which shouldn’t be compared to non-pc gta 6, since 6 for pc will also get a significant facelift).

password54321 3mo ago

It is not really about graphics as it is about the scale of a game. Many studios don't even create their own custom engines like they used to to push the most out of hardware and use Unreal Engine. Games take long now because they are much larger in scope and are typically open world. Even the sequel to Breath of the Wild took 6 years and the graphics aren't exactly staggering but the scope of these games have improved a lot which isn't a bad thing. You can get lost in some for dozens of hours. I would imagine studios like From Software even enjoy the ambition of creating games like Elden Ring.

TulliusCicero 3mo ago

> Gaming is getting too expensive. Gaming is so much cheaper than when I was growing up that I'm kind of blown away. SNES games went for $60-70. That's like $130-150 in today's money. And they usually had less content than today's games, even if you never do microtransactions today! In contrast, major AAA titles today are half the price, and you can find indie games packed with content for a paltry $20. Hell, with Steam sales, you can find them even cheaper than that! Some free to play games like Dota 2 make all of their core gameplay content free! If you check when games like Quake were released, their minimum requirements were absolutely INSANE compared to today. We're talking about mid to high-end CPUs released within the last two or three years, none of this "oh yeah something lower-middle from 5 years ago is fine". Average prices for computers were much higher too (well, maybe the current RAM/SSD crisis has equalized that a bit, but other than that). Controllers? 8bitdo and the like make highly competent gamepads for $30, which would've been $15 in the 90's. You couldn't even get terrible third-party shitpads for that little back then! It's disgustingly cheap. If you want to game these days, you can spend a very reasonable amount of money on a mid-range gaming PC* and have it last at least a good 5-6 years. You can then buy games for a steal on Steam, and get surprisingly decent peripherals like gaming monitors and mechanical keyboards for almost no money. The idea that gaming is "too expensive now" is itself laughable. * Well, other than the memory crisis fucking things up, but before AI companies ate all the RAM, things were very reasonable

GoofGarage 3mo ago
>SNES games went for $60-70. I don’t believe you were intending to paint with a broad brush, but for others I’d like to explain where SNES game pricing was in more detail, as there was quite the range of prices depending on the game and when it was released. ———- The plain Jane SNES game was $50 at US launch in late 1991. Normal-ish ROM size (4Mbit). This included later released first-party titles like Super Mario Kart (1992). Prices went up with ROM size, and as there were higher supply costs starting in late 1993 and into 1994. So something like even LOZ: A Link to the Past was $60 (8Mbit ROM used, game a bit smaller). Mega Man X was $60 for the same reason. Final Fantasy II (IV) in the US was $65 at launch (again, 8Mbit ROM). Street Fighter II (16Mbit) was $70 in 1992. Then there’s larger games still, with ROM prices going down then up. I believe Final Fantasy III (VI) was $75 USD at launch, but that was a 24Mbit ROM. Secret of Mana (16MBit) and Chrono Trigger (32MBit) were $80 at launch. Then you had Ogre Battle which I believe was $90, despite fitting within 12Mbit (8Mbit + 4Mbit). Another reason for $70 prices were the SuperFX chip. Stunt Race FX was $70 in the US at launch because of that chip, even though it fit into an 8Mbit ROM. Yet Star Fox was $60 was the same hardware, but launched at $60 in 1993 whereas Stunt Race FX came out in 1994 where ROM prices are higher. —- So $50 - 90, with it more in the $50-60 range at launch, and then $60 being more common through the rest of the console’s lifecycle. Special and larger games were trending towards $70 later in the console lifecycle. Then you had the few crazy games (excluding games with accessories like Lethal Enforcers) in the $75 - 90 range.

darth_avocado 3mo ago

> but consumers are also demanding better graphics. Modern games have visually worse graphics than games that came out 10+ years ago. Beyond that, the success of a lot of games recently with non AAA budgets shows that gamers aren’t demanding anything from the industry beyond playable games that don’t treat them as a perpetual revenue stream.

bluefirebrand 3mo ago
> Modern games have visually worse graphics than games that came out 10+ years ago My knee jerk reaction was to disagree with this, but I thought about it a bit The Witcher 3 came out 10 years ago. So did Red Dead Redemption 2 (edit: not quite, actually 8 years. Still!) A lot of games still fall short of those in the graphics department
- darth_avocado 3mo ago
  There is a real reason behind this. A lot of games before, used to be built on custom game engines and were heavily optimized. When you build on unreal 5, optimization is poorly done or completely ignored. On top of that, reliance on upscaling causes a weird feel to the overall look.
- wernerb 3mo ago
  Death stranding 1 and 2 also look absolutely amazing. They are not using unreal engine but their own. Not sure what magic they are pulling off there.
  - asantopietro 3mo ago
    They are using the game engine from the developer who produced the Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West games, called Decima.
- Pay08 3mo ago
  At the same time, both of those games had an entire AAA studio behind them (you could consider CDPR to be AA), whereas most other AAA studios work on a number of projects at a time. Same reason Starfield ended up having such high visual "prowess", in lieu of talking about just graphics.

mikenew 3mo ago

Current top 5 played games on the Steam Deck are: Slay the Spire 2, The Binding of Isaac, Dave the Diver, Stardew Valley, and Baldur's Gate 3. BG3 is the only one you can consider AAA, but Larian is hardly an EA or Blizzard. The big AAA studios recycle the same formulas and push graphical quality (mostly downstream of Unreal Engine improvements) because they are risk averse. Similar to big comic-book-hero films. It's not what consumers want and it's increasingly starting to show. AAA is struggling badly while indie has been on an absolute tear the past few years.

rickstanley 3mo ago
On top of that, the seemingly endless remakes... Some are praise worthy others not so much. I got tired of Resident Evil Remakes, they are just recycling the same formula over, and over, and over again... Innovation has left a long time a go. Other example is the recent Assassin's Creed Black Flag "Resync" (which is a remaster with some things on top of it), I was planing on buying it, but Jesus, Ubisoft couldn't let it pass: their launcher is still there, all DLC's together cost more than the base game (and why have DLC in the first place?), the menu is has an ad for Assassin's Creed Shadows which, etc. I'm currently doing a course (I think it's equivalent to an "Associate degree" in USA) in Game Development. I feel demotivated to take part in this industry, and I think that, at least for me, it should be just on and off gig to do in my spare time, perhaps with other enthusiasts too, but I don't plan to pursue it.
oliwarner 3mo ago
> Current top 5 played games on the Steam Deck are... I think this speaks more to the type of games people want in their pocket. Games you can casually pick up, put down.
- spwa4 3mo ago
  Top-5 played games off the steam deck are: Counter-Strike 2 (Valve) DOTA 2 (Valve) Palworld (Pocketpair) PUBG: battlegrounds (PUBG corporation/Krafton Inc) TBH: Task Bar Hero (obviously not AAA) I guess Valve would half-qualify as AAA? The top played true AAA game would be, imho "Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced", at the 18th place. Perhaps Ubisoft with a Assasin's creed title in the top sellers probably should be higher in the playing list. But I think it's fair to say AAA doesn't hold the steam store anywhere near as tightly as it holds the consoles. https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/US https://store.steampowered.com/charts/topselling/US

georgeecollins 3mo ago

I feel the opposite way. My time gets more expensive and games are-- adjusted for inflation-- the same price. I know most people don't feel this way. Lots of PC games have a $100- $200 tier where you get merch or all the DLC. That's probably aimed at people like me. The point is, if your business is games you make games for the people who will buy them. No game is more fun than a compiler, even the free ones.

ivanjermakov 3mo ago
I'm yet to play a game that cost more than tenth of my time I've put into it. A lot of product pricing does not have a factor of "why should I spend time on this?", but entertainment industry is really hard to price for this reason.
mingus88 3mo ago
Yep SNES games retailed for up to $70 in the early 90s. I’m seeing gamers revolt for paying that much today for something as immense as GTA6 Back then this was more expensive, adjusted for inflation, than many AAA titles today, and the scale of those games was way smaller I won’t argue that today’s games are not expensive, but they have always been expensive. I don’t have time to do much gaming anymore but I can find a ton of good stuff that isn’t bleeding edge if i did. Patient gamers always win.

tyre 3mo ago

Even more recently, some of my favorite games are not that graphically intense. Hades and Hades II are phenomenal, for example.

ivanjermakov 3mo ago

Most modern games can be ran 1080p60 on a 5yr old gaming laptop. I also see this sentiment in cycling complaining that some modern bikes cost like a used car. If something is expensive you either don't need it or can get 80% of that for 20% of the cost.

de6u99er 3mo ago

I strongly believe generative AI is going to change this equation. Not only will it lower the cost for studios, it will also enable gamers to make adjustments to games within pre-defined parameters.

jaredcwhite 3mo ago
Whatever the answers are to help gaming become more affordable/keep beloved indie studios humming, generative AI is not it at all.
ndsipa_pomu 3mo ago
Most people have an intense dislike of AI slop, so why do you think gamers will want that?

pibaker 3mo ago

> Gaming is getting too expensive If you buy a new game every month or every week, sure. But that is not representative of all gamers. Here's a survey that shows only 15% of American gamers buy one or more games a month. Not only that, half of the gamers buy less two games a year on average. https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bhqrrxt7yyfpwguioa7rwa7x/post/3m27zezw2ek2v https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bhqrrxt7yyfpwguioa7rwa7x/po... I can't find the number of PS5 games sold per console. But I did find the number for Nintendo switch — roughly ten games sold per switch, on a console almost ten years old. Maybe PlayStation gamers are different, but Nintendo gamers are definitely not buying games frequently on average. https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.html https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.htm... I find it hard to believe that a $15 price increase on a purchase you make twice a year is going to be the dealbreaker for most people. If anything it is likely lagging behind price increases in other leisure items like dining out and alcohol. But then again, internet discourse over gaming is dominated by devoted gamers who are in that 15% so we hear their argument over and over again, instead of the silent majority of gamers who don't buy anything beyond their yearly call of duty or FIFA or battlefield instalment.