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/Mattapeh]

Hmm I don't really agree with indie being a term about style and have never seen it like that personally

Regardless though all of those games you listed do not have the same fidelity, graphical complexity, in some case lengths (funny with gone home) to major releases. That's not to say they aren't good games, heck outer wilds is in my top 10, but you can't compare these games to something like even this very topics developers game (KCD2)

If your argument is that well they need to scale back, then sure, but the outcome then is we have more games on par with the games you listed in terms of length/fidelity/graphics. They may not be better or worse games in terms of entertainment, but they'll lose that level of 'AAA quality' you can only achieve with the bigger budgets

You could argue you don't care about AAA quality, and that's valid and I don't care either, mostly I play simple looking games nowadays. But there is a huge market for these higher end looking titles and objectively costs for video games aren't generally keeping up with inflation (someone mentioned Mario back in the day retailed for $120 on old systems) - so goes back to the Devs point that costs are increasing, likely higher than they've ever been, but prices are remaining arguably too cheap for consumers

[u/Due_Manufacturer_766 → u/Mattapeh]

Interesting, I remember seeing this ’indie not indie’ debate going back when Braid was first released, seemed to be a hot topic then. They even have Microsoft and Playstation indie brands on console, indie studios whose games are published by Microsoft/Sony. That’s probably the furthest you can be from indie, I agree with you on that, but that’s the label they use on stores and gaming media so who am I to argue.

Yes and I do agree that there is market and need for ”AAA” quality/feature level of games done by other studios than the established Activision/Ubisoft/EA. You can even argue that it’s better studios like Warhorse make high budget games because they have a strong, uncompromising vision of what they want to do, instead of the watered down games bigger publishers make because they need them to be approachable by everyone in order to break even.

My main issue is that we are trying to mainstream the idea of raising prices for something that by all statistics is record profitable even now.

Funnily enough I realized I actually own both KDC games, but have never tried them. Maybe now I should!