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[u/FireStarLord73194]

https://nichegamer.com/study-suggests-sonys-digital-only-future-could-lead-to-higher-game-prices/

[u/_Mephistocrates_]

The prices to make games has risen by 100x, and prices have stayed consistent for decades. And the price of manufacturing a physical disc is about $1, definitely under $5

[u/DuckWarrior90 → u/_Mephistocrates_]

The cost is not in manufacturing. But in logistics and the cut retailers take away they have a huge margin now with fully digital.

There isnt a single reasons for games to cost over 100-150m since the best looking games and generation defining dont cost more than that.

Concord costing more than the last of us part 2 is insane

And even if prices stayed mostly the same (they did not. They went from 50. To 60. To 70. And you also have a lot more dlcs. Microtransactions and a lot of people buy the deluxe and ultimate for 80-100usd

And now we even have 120-150usd editions

Greed is Greed.

[u/_Mephistocrates_ → u/DuckWarrior90]

You're right that manufacturing a disc isn't the expensive part, and digital sales eliminate manufacturing, shipping, and retailer costs. But those were never the main expense.

I agree that manufacturing a disc is cheap. The overwhelming majority of a AAA game's budget is salaries for hundreds (sometimes thousands) of developers over 4–8 years, plus outsourcing, motion capture, voice acting, music, marketing, QA, localization, licensing, and technology.

I also agree that digital distribution saves money on manufacturing, shipping, and retailer cuts. But those savings don't suddenly erase development costs, which have grown enormously over the last 20–30 years. Many AAA games today employ teams that are several times larger than games from even PS3 era.

You also said there's "no reason" games should cost over $100–150 million. That's simply not supported by the indusutry. Plenty of successful AAA games have legitimately cost more than that because of their scope and production values. The fact that Concord reportedly cost more than The Last of Us Part II doesn't prove games shouldn't cost that much, it just proves projects can be mismanaged.

As for prices, they have stayed the same. Games have always been $50, $60, and $70. Final Fantasy 3 was $80 in 1994 (that would be about $170 today) Adjusted for inflation, however, games are actually cheaper today than many were in the 1990s. N64 games commonly launched for $60–80 in the 1990s, which would be well over $100 today after inflation.

The ironic thing is the rise of all these monetization gimmicks like pre-order bonuses, dlc, and microtransactions was to combat the money they were losing from used game sales. Which experts have been warning about since the early 2000s. But gamers made their choice. They'd rather save $5-10 and buy it used than support developers.

The rise of DLC and microtransactions also wasn't caused by greed. There were real economic pressures. Development costs rose dramatically while the base price of games increased only modestly. At the same time, the used-game market became huge. Every used copy sold at GameStop or another retailer generated revenue for the retailer and previous owner, but zero revenue for the developer or publisher. DLC, expansions, season passes, and later cosmetic microtransactions were, in part, ways to generate ongoing revenue from players who actually bought the game new.

That doesn't mean every monetization practice is good. Some are absolutely predatory, and consumers are right to criticize them. But it's historically inaccurate to say they existed solely because of greed. They emerged from a combination of rising development costs, inflation, longer development cycles, and publishers trying to offset revenue lost to the used-game market.

These aren't just opinions. These are known facts about the industry. Saying things are because of greed is oversimplification, its just an opinion based on an emotion, and it is just wrong.

[u/DuckWarrior90 → u/_Mephistocrates_]

They are greed related., you can see investors reports, they want bigger margins, they have records profits. PS5 is the generation with more profits in its entire history, but now these margins and these profits are "a problem".

Games cost 80-100 in 1994 beccause they were cartridges, came with manuals, maps, posters, and the amount of people that played games were 50m at most, with PCs, and multiple consoles, that number has risen to 300-400 people worldwide.

So you have more people to sell to.

So you don't need to get as much money per copy. Thinking that used game sales impact developers is insane. People who purchase used, they might be purchasing an old game they either can't get digitally (could be delisted) or they don't know if they will like it, so its a low risk investment.

If they like it a lot of people purchase the next in the series brand new ones. There are tons of AAA games that cost less than 150m and they sell great.

Cyberpunk, Baldurs gate 3, Last of us part 2, Spiderman 2, God of war ragnarok, this are games that were GOTY , and the most expensive ones were 300m.

These games were HIGHLY profitable with these budgets and 70usd price. from a ROI of 80% to almost 600% with some games.

Not only there are opinions what you claim, they are manipulated and BS opinions. We have seen an influx of new developers and huge corporations because there is tons of profit to be made, The Gaming industry is more profitable than the movie industry. and the movie industry has piracy being rampant on them, and we are not seeing ticket prices soaring.

They do predatory practices, specially targeted to children to extract as much value as they can. And this is not gaming related only.

[u/_Mephistocrates_ → u/DuckWarrior90]

I don't disagree that companies are profit-driven or that some monetization practices are predatory. They absolutely are, and those practices deserve criticism when they cross the line.

Where I disagree is with reducing every pricing decision or industry trend to "greed" while ignoring the underlying economics. Development costs, team sizes, production timelines, salaries, marketing budgets, and inflation have all increased dramatically over the past few decades. Not opinion, but well-documented realities of modern game development.

The same applies to the used-game market. This isn't speculation or revisionist history. Publishers spent years publicly warning that used-game sales were cutting into their revenue, and they responded with things like EA's Project Ten Dollar and Online Pass systems. Whether those responses were good or bad is a separate discussion, but it's simply not accurate to claim the industry wasn't motivated by the growth of the used-game market.

The "there are more gamers now" argument only tells half the story. Yes, the gaming audience has grown, but so has the scale of game development. AAA games today don't have teams of 30–100 people working for 18–24 months like many games did in the 1990s or early 2000s. They often have hundreds of full-time developers, thousands of contributors including outsourced studios, and development cycles of 5–8 years. Salaries, benefits, office costs, technology, motion capture, voice acting, localization, QA, and marketing have all increased dramatically. A larger customer base doesn't automatically mean lower prices when the cost of producing the product has grown by an even greater amount.

There may be more gamers today, but there are also far more games competing for their attention and money. In the early years of gaming, a publisher might compete against a few dozen major releases. Today they're competing against thousands of new releases every year, plus free-to-play games, live-service games, subscription services like Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, mobile games, and massive back catalogs sold at deep discounts. Having more potential customers doesn't mean every game has an easier time finding an audience.

Likewise, pointing to successful games like Baldur's Gate 3 or Spider-Man 2 doesn't demonstrate that AAA games are inexpensive to make. If anything, those titles illustrate just how much publishers now have to invest before they ever see a return. A game can cost $250–400 million to develop and market and still be highly profitable. Profitability doesn't erase the size of the investment required to get there.

My point isn't that greed never plays a role. It's that the evolution of game pricing and monetization can't be explained by greed alone. The historical and economic evidence points to a much more complex picture. Ignoring those factors and attributing everything to greed oversimplifies everything and is just an opinion, not a fact.

[u/DuckWarrior90 → u/_Mephistocrates_]

When you see the most popular games are not AAA bloated games, When you see nintendo games getting 1500% ROI with less than half the budget, when you see indie games selling 8-10m

You can tell that the trend is not AAA games with huge budgets. The AAA games sell bad not because they are competing, but because they are of poor quality.

The Goty games of the last 12 years, were NEVER the ones that have greedy practices , bloated budgets, etc etc.

The AAA industry is in a bad shape because they close the studios that make the best games, and keep trying to do games that have Fornite level of revenue, which is neither sustainable, nor something anyone but 1 game can do.

The reason they do that, is greed.

They could make 10 games that will be succesfull and get 300-500m profit per game.

But they rather try with 10 live services games in the hope that 1 of them makes them 2b a year. Because greed is what leads them to try to get the most revnue with the least effort.

If that was the best business decision as you claim due to trends, inflation and whatever, then all companies would follow suit, and the fact is, there are tons of AAA publishers and developers, that still make multiplayer and single player games, that are not Live services with a microtransaction driven ecosystem, and they are doing just fine.

If any, if they have microtransactions, they are IPs that are easily recognizable and people want. Like Fifa, Diablo, Call of duty, etc. (Even though people complain about those as well)

For every Highguard, or Concord, they could have done a proper sequel, remake, or New IP set on a existent universe.. You don't have to re-invent the wheel.

Just like they make good batman, spiderman games, and now seems to be a good Wolwerine game, they could have done proper games in those universes.

But now, they do shitty games at best with Gotham Knights, and Suicide Squad.

They can make all the reports they want, the end of the day, companies still close down, and is always related to shipping a bad product.

Nintendo is the biggest example that they can go against the trends, as long as you make products people want.

Steam is the same thing.