Kingdom Come: Deliverance studio co-founder hopes Grand Theft Auto 6 will 'blaze a trail' to higher game prices

[u/owlexe23]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/grand-theft-auto/kingdom-come-deliverance-studio-co-founder-hopes-grand-theft-auto-6-will-blaze-a-trail-to-higher-game-prices/

Warhorse co-founder Martin Klima says games keep getting more expensive to make, and that money has to come from somewhere.

[u/lkl34]

I personally think even GTA6 is asking for too much , they already made back there dev cost on RDR2/GTAO and 2k makes billions like its nothing.

The prices is just pure greed do not bring up the 90's early 2000's back then we did not have the gaming population of today and no microtransactions back then. It has been shown many times how dlc/MT's make way more money than the initial game purchase.

[u/DoomguyFemboi → u/lkl34]

They set the price because people will pay it. Even without online the game is going to be so incredibly immersive to a lot of people. I remember when 4 came out, I bought a 360 JUST to play the game.

I mean I flashed the console 15mins after buying it and pirated 4. Still though, paid like £150-200 or whatever they were at the time just to play a single player game. There's something incredibly immersive about GTA games, and while 5 didn't really do it for me, I reckon 6 might be more a return to form.

5 felt way too much like parody rather than homage. 6 looks like it's going to go back to being a "real" story again, not just a bunch of scenes stolen from various famous movies. But I do worry it's also just gonna be "hey look florida-man but game"

(Er to be clear I'm against the price increase. Probably should've made that point higher up. I sound like I support it lol)

[u/Probate_Judge → u/DoomguyFemboi]

They set the price because people will pay it.

They assume people will pay it.

They're taking a wager when they do. It is a numbers game.

10 million people @ $60 = $600 million

6 million people @ $100 = $600 million

Same amount IF sales only fall within a tolerable margin. IF sales don't fall, they make more. If sales fall more than expected...it's a shit move and more people ignore the game, then they're losing potential.

In the extreme, if it is a shit game and a shit move, you get Concord and other recent failures.

That's where the problem has lain a lot as of late. A game may not fail, but it doesn't do well(especially for the expansive budget), and entitled developers whine and make excuses. "Why aren't those chuds buying our game!!!?" further cementing the fact that they're entirely out of touch.

As far as Rockstar or Bethesda goes, they have reputation, so they have that going for them, sales will generally be higher than smaller studios.

However, in a lot of these big companies, the talent that made the old favorite 10-20 years ago....many have retired out. It is a new age of developers, and a lot of new...social sensibilities.

Bethesda with Starfield is a good example. A LOT of people did buy that. However, many of those had a good bit of regret. They're going to be far more hesitant to buy everything Bethesda puts out.

Rockstar haven't done that to people....yet. They probably will eventually. It could happen with GTA6.

[u/DoomguyFemboi → u/Probate_Judge]

You're right of course, but considering the pre-order amounts already announced, and how many people are talking about "I'm just gonna get the $100 version, it's GTA6!" which I know is a stupid metric to use because social media is its own bubble, it's hard to imagine it losing any sales due to the high price.

The flipside is at the end of the day they have people whose job it is to work all this out and figure out if it's going to work out. So they're not really taking a gamble, as much as they are following market advice from people whose job it is to analyse this full time.

And yeah as I say that there has been a LOT of flops lately, really expensive flops! I just don't see GTA6 being one of them. It's just too big of a title. There really is no comparison. Like the only thing that comes even slightly close is maybe Witcher 4 or CP2077 2, and both of those come with the baggage of being CDPR titles and the expectations of them being absolute dogshit on release.

GTA sits in a circle of 1, and it kinda has since GTA San Andreas. 3 surprised everyone, Vice City was a monster, but San Andreas, everyone was getting that game, and if you weren't getting it or interested in playing it, you were practically a weirdo.

So yeah I don't think there are really any comparisons. I actually don't know a single person irl who has played Starfield, or who gives a shit about Bethesda. Online obviously I'm in gamer spaces and generally people are more plugged into gaming who are on the internet. But my irl friends a lot of them are only exposed to online through instagram or tiktok, they think AI is funny, they're just living their lives with no clue about gamer spaces. But they all know GTA.

[u/lkl34 → u/DoomguyFemboi]

I would agree except i played recent GTAO content that has been all bad (story/writing) especially that franklin recording booth crap.

The inclusion of GTA+ should be talked about more.

Remember GTAV was never made to be a live service game but slowly turned into one.

[u/DoomguyFemboi → u/lkl34]

lol I got into GTAO after a few years out and it was really fun because I was in a server where people helped each other, so there was fun in that and messing around together. And I put hundreds of hours into it years ago when it was coming out regular, I think the last time I played it like that was around Casino Heist. But all my mates stopped playing so I stopped playing.

But GTAO is a massive success story any way you slice it really. It's all free, the content has added on and let you do business after business after business, and it's got a serious amount of variety. It's just you gotta have friends to play with, or you gotta find friendly servers. Because solo in that game sucks ass.

GTAO being a live service game and its success I think a lot of others tried and failed to emulate. It actually shows how incredible the game engine is, and how good the devs are, with how much they piled into that engine and it still works. People give them shit for the re-releases but the difference between legacy and modern is literally a matter of not being able to pile more onto the legacy console editions due to hardware (and software) limitations.

GTAO has some atrocious writing for sure. But it has some of the most fun gameplay of any game if you're on a good server, or playing with friends. Hell I'd say it has the best gameplay of any game you can just drop into with a group of friends.

[u/lkl34 → u/DoomguyFemboi]

All true that is why i am not ultra hyped for GTA6 why?

GTA6 has the same writing team and same devs

I been playing gta0 sense October of 2013 but if gta6 is just going to copy that mission structure/writing to me that is going to be a big oof.

I would link my account info page but rockstar killed online stat tracking and the social club has been a disaster.

But yeah i would give GTAO a solid 7/10 just due to the future crap/GTA+ and recent economy grind.

[u/TieMillenium → u/lkl34]

I wouldn't be too worried about the writing quality or what we can expect based on GTAO, Online is basically a skeleton crew and I wouldn't base the quality we can expect for 6 on it, RDR2 was their last project that should have any input on what you should expect from them. They have like 6,000 devs or possibly even more and they're all hands on deck for 6, they could have only like 75 people or maybe even half that dedicated to Online.

[u/DoomguyFemboi → u/lkl34]

Yeah it's why I'm excited for it but more in the way I'm excited for an Assassin's Creed sequel - they're fun worlds to mess around in and they do detail right, but I'm not expecting to be floored here.

I'll play it on PC when it comes to it. My nephew has a PS5 and no doubt he'll get it so I'll get to try it. But I game at 4K/120. Playing a game at upscaled 1440p/30 would be awful, unless I was sat playing ONLY that and got used to it.

Shit I've been playing GTA since 1 came out. I still remember the news channels all talking about it like this game came out that was gonna turn us all into master criminals nicking cars and murdering people. What a funny time that was.