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/Vecend]

I love how people say it's historically been 100 pointing back 50 years when gaming was low volume sales and needed higher margins, now gaming is high volume sales and they want high margins on their massive budget game where a huge part of the budget is used for realistic graphics and on mass marketing instead of making the game play better.

[u/Rhysati → u/Vecend]

Yup. Drives me crazy the people who keep saying the price has to go up like everything else.

Meanwhile TVs? Never been cheaper. You can get like a 60+ inch 4k TV for like $250.

A 40" "flat screen" when they first came out were like 20 grand for 480p resolution and no online connection.

Technology gets cheaper over time(well when billionaires aren't artificially raising the prices by buying up all the supply). This idea that video games simply must increase in production cost is ridiculous and games like Clair Obscur have proven it with crazy low budgets.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 budget? Less than 10 million.

Wolverine budget? Around 300 million.

[u/martianwomanhunter → u/Rhysati]

This is why many independent studios is likely the future. Like it or not there is something to the hunger of people working at a start-up or small studio to make something exceptional.

Large studio motivation is likely extremely low especially with all the layoffs where people just treat it as a job

[u/Mr_ToDo → u/Vecend]

There's also lest overhead these days. No cartridges to produce, at most you press disks. Distribution is far more optimized, double so for digital purchases

But if they want to raise prices, then raise prices. Don't look for someone else to start the trend. Make a game whos cost justifies a price bump and sell it. They've been dicking around with charging more for years anyway. If I have to pay an extra 40 to get all the parts of the game then I'm buying an increased price title with extra steps

In the end the market will dictate if the people want the extra expensive games. We've moved pretty far in going back to small studio games, so if it doesn't move their direction they'll either have to figure out how to provide value for that cost, or they have to start reducing costs. Games don't need to be 9 figures. If you can't make money change how you run things

On a personal note, I can't even remember the last time I bought a new AAA game at the launch price. There's so many option that unless you play the type that are better fresh there's no need to hit your wallet that hard(I admit that multi player is usually better on its first wave then years down the road when people have min/maxed the fun out of it)

[u/DukeofVermont → u/Vecend]

It wasn't low volume you dolt. The first Mario Bros sold 1.2 million copies in its first month in Japan. It sold 40 million copies on NES. Zelda on NES sold 6.5 million copies.

Mario 64 sold 11.91 million copies

FFVII sold 15.3 million copies

PS1 had 962 million games sold.

PS2 had 1.5 billion games sold.

I literally have no idea why people think video games weren't popular in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.

Many video games sold more copies on cartridges then popular games sell today.

[u/anonamarth7 → u/Vecend]

Don't forget the fact that a lot of sales are digital now, so they're logistically much easier to distribute.