I mean it makes sense to some degree, game prices haven’t really risen that much over the last 20 years. Despite that there are other revenue streams (monetization mechanisms like mictotransactions and DLC), development costs have gone up a ton. It’s a tough one, everything else is also going up in price.
[citation needed]
3) The industry needs to increase volume.
While I agree, we don’t really live in a society where that sort of thing happens when you’re a publicly traded company and the expectation is to always increase profits. Not trying to be smug but it’s the reality of it. It’s insane.
This was obviously due to COVID
Cosigned. I don’t need cutting edge, I just need good enough.
Capcom games do not cost $70, they cost $60. They still use the old pricing structure, though there are are $70 deluxe editions, but most people are not buying those. Of course, it might translate to $70 in some currencies, but those discrepancies exist in general.
Genuine question, what's the source on this?
DLC at least, is extra revenue, but also extra development. So it's just a fractional version of any issues with game development costs as a whole.
Still way way lower cost than $60 games became the norm.
It's an assumption, but it's a fairly logical one. Special editions of games are not bought as much as standard editions for ... any game, really, and we do know that from physical and digital tracking. Also, pretty sure Capcom themselves (maybe even in this same article? I don't remember, this was already talked about a few days ago on Discord) have said their ASP for games is too low.
Special Editions are quite different, both in price difference and shelf presence, from digital deluxe versions that are sold right next to the standard editions for a relatively small upcharge of usually $10. An ASP that's too low could also be caused by aggressive discounts. I can believe that it's not the majority of people buying deluxe versions but I'm asking because I've never seen any data on the extent they're bought.
My sentiments exactly. Corporations can afford to sell games cheaper and pay their employees more. They just want to invest every single revenue in profit margin, increase stock value, buy bsck stocks and increase their productivity bonuses.
Finally, tieing that to paying staff is gross. It’s not the price of the games that’s doing that when you’re still raking in the profits. When a game sold over a million copies back then it was a huge smash hit, now the big sellers hit much higher than that as the audience has increased, on top of DLC and expansions and special editions. The monetisation is not comparable, and wages haven’t increased that much. I paid ~£50 for MH Rise and then another £30 on top of that for Sunbreak. I was happy to do so. But don’t blame customers for multimedia multinationals not wanting to pay good wages.
Gaming is a lot bigger today, yes. But as Capcom dude says "Development costs are around 100 times higher than they were in the days of the Famicom (NES)". Software sales haven't increased THAT much. Breath of the Wild was a smash hit for the franchise and sold 5x the NES original, but probably cost more than 5x to make.
I wish we had more data on this too, trust me. Most digital store fronts (as in digital units, not online retailers) don't split digital deluxe editions from their normal editions. The only store that might do it that I know of is the Eshop, because games usually have separate entries per edition (and even then, it depends on if the publisher has a separate entry or just lists the edition as DLC). But curiously, when I look at top 15's for the month I don't see many special editions in prior years, so maybe it's just for pre-orders even on Switch? (actually, it might just be that these editions are so low they don't even chart in the monthly sales)
Sure, but video game companies have been posting record profits in their financial reports. These companies aren’t hurting for money, and frankly I don’t think that even 1 dollar out of that added $10 is trickling down to the workers.
I'm surprised digital deluxe editions that cost $20 more and offer access a week early aren't industry standard for all AAA games. It's free money out of impatient suckers and pushes them to buy games digitally where the publisher gets a bigger cut.
I don't wanna be called a sucker
Me too! I bought the digital version of the SMTIII HD Remaster on Switch because of thisI don't wanna be called a sucker
No, they don't. It's called inflation. Yes, game development is far more expensive than ever, but if you account for inflation during the 80-90s and the fact that far fewer people played video games back then, I don't believe it's that big. There are more potential customers.
And all of this is on top of being cheap with labor by using contractors and long periods of unpaid overtime. When multiple companies are announcing 30% raises to their staff the response should be "wow they were underpaying people that much?!".
Well, the Japanese game industry has now begun to come up against something that is unique to vidya compared to most other industries, in that it has FAR more demand for labour than supply of new labourers (whereas the supermajority of other industries have an inverse issue there that they can and do exploit). These wage increases are moreso because of a highly competitive labour landscape in Japan right now than bad salaries (though I'm sure there's bad salary issues at some places, as well).
I work in public accounting which is facing a similar dilemma. The lower end staff at a lot of firms were being underpaid and over worked which lead to burn out. This was fine when there was tons of people going into the profession and you heard a lot of "it's not a career for everyone" nonsense to justify the long hours. Now that people aren't going into public accounting to provide enough fresh meat for the grinder, there has been a scramble to raise wages across the board and reduce required work hours. Even in just the past 7 years the starting Salary has gone up nearly 50% for entry level and required billable hours is down almost 100 hours.
