Former PlayStation boss says gaming price hikes are inevitable, but lack of value is the real issue

[Thatsdisgusting]

I've seen cp77 and celebrities already being mentioned...

Wanna slip my imho, may I? - Keanu voice acting is horrible in cp77, especially in heavy-action scenes.
Prominent example - "Lightning Breaks" job

 

[Tantor]

And then there's Steam which takes 30% right off the top.

The best way to keep game prices low may be to develop alternatives to steam.

 

[Tantor]

People paying $30,000 for a virtual spaceship have other problems. Just, let them have their thing. At least they're contained

Trump wouldn't let his kids buy $30k virtual spaceships. He forced them to learn how to operate heavy equipment. Like excavators, loaders, and backhoes.

 

[Fuzzy Dunalap]

Costs are rising because your game dev studios are horribly managed. You are overstaffed for garbage that doesnt matter, and understaffed for things that DO matter. You spend tens of millions on "consultants" that are the human embodiment of BlueSky. You triple your budget to chase 0.01% better graphics instead of developing your own style. You blow hundreds of millions on "celebrity" voice acting. You dont bother to actually FINISH the games, just the microtransaction systems, pushing out games with less content and fewer features while taking away our access to the older, better titles.

You see arguments for the price of old games adjusted for inflation, while ignoring that all the costs; the manufacturing and shipping of games, the market research for shipments, and the cost of spinning up new copies if a game hits it big later; that have been made irrelevant by the advent of digital distribution allowing for ever growing revenues. In 1985 100k copies of a game was insane, today a million is pedestrian. Games like MK8 sell so many copies that you could make a whole generations of first party games with 0 sales and still make a huge profit.

And above all else, you are STILL raking in record profits. You dont NEED higher prices. You WANT higher prices. And you have the AUDACITY to justify continued price increases. Gotta fuel the greed machine! By god I hope it backfires. I hope every single one of these greasy suits drives their companies into the ground, destroying their stock packages' value in the relentless pursuit to satisfy their greed as their companies replace them with cheaper contract labor.

Stop supporting these companies. Stop buying from them. Stop working for them. Let em rot.

Bravo!

 

[Dreadcthulhu]

And then there's Steam which takes 30% right off the top.

The best way to keep game prices low may be to develop alternatives to steam.

The Epic game store has lower commissions, and of course absolutely nothing stops game devs on PC from simply setting up a webpage and selling the game themselves - Minecraft, one of the most popular PC games of all time, simply sold itself on its own web page like that for years until MS bought them. Game devs have to weight the cost of letting Steam take that cut vs all the customer eyeballs & assorted services Steam provides; but at least on PC they can choose.

 

[Axeia]

Sony: Here's Concord, the game no one asked for but cost $400 million. Oh oops, nevermind let's pretend that never happened.
Also Sony: Game prices need to go up.

How about you just spend less on the game development?
Fire every single consultant that actively makes games worse.
Hire people that love making games instead of programmers in the most expensive cities just there for a paycheck.
Cap the team size to a 100 tops.
Make a game the people are working on are passionate about instead of chasing whatever the current money making trend is.

Pretty much every single triple A (or quad A if you're Ubisoft and like making stuff up) has flopped. The successes have been the games from smaller studios and passionate people. What's the last actually big hit from Blizzard Activision, EA games, Ubisoft etc?

 

[m4a4]

Games have cost $60 dollars for the last 20 years. I'm fine with publishers raising prices to $70 dollars because inflations is real but game studios have also been putting out crap lately. As long as the game is well done and not half baked I'm fine with $70 dollar games.

And it costs them ~$0 to sell another copy of a digital game. In a market that is only growing.

Let's not pretend that most of the purchase price of a game is going to distribution or printing them anymore. Or that the market isn't continuously growing in strides as gaming becomes more popular.

The increase is just pure greed (driven by pleasing stockholders), with short-sighted people ignoring context and championing a concept that is false.

 

[StrikerRocket]

Customers are now seen as milk cows, just like in about every aspect of society and economy. It's as simple as that. Try to justify that any way you want, you can't hide from the facts and figures.
Shareholders want a fixed return percentage, but that's totally irrealistic, they think they are entitled and this is not the way it should work! Capitalism, the real one I mean, is investors taking risks to potentially obtain something in return. Now, they have reversed the process, and expect society to change to guarantee their investment return, thus industries and corporations (and politicians BTW...) become more and more out of touch with what is called "real economy" and live in a fairy tale.
This is why I buy less and less video games and instead replay the ones I have liked in the past or go back to the ones I did not finish. Just that is going to take me a lifetime! Well, what is actully left for me, who started tinkering with computers in the early 80's...

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

I've seen cp77 and celebrities already being mentioned...

Wanna slip my imho, may I? - Keanu voice acting is horrible in cp77, especially in heavy-action scenes.
Prominent example - "Lightning Breaks" job

Keanu Reeves should have done Johnny Silverhand as Ted Theadore Logan.

 

[jam4t]

I worked as a Software Engineer in games for 15 years at Blackbox, Ubisoft and EA. Costs have not risen like they are saying. The major expense of a game is labor prices and SE hourly rates and artists have dropped recently. Basically wages have frozen for at least 5 years, so major costs are roughly the same, office space is also cheaper with people still WFH. Some IP costs may have risen, but really what has gone up is studio costs, ie management and corporate expense. Greedy CEOs who basically drive people to rinse dimes from kids and players to given to shareholders. Corporations pay CEOs millions when they bring little value to games. Smaller studios didnt have these costs. Also most innovative studios have been takenover by big companies to reduce competition, looks at Microsoft buying tons of strudios then "integrating" them in - by laying most people off and keeping the IP. Microsoft is one of the biggest reasons games are absolute junk nowadays, and they want this sector to cling on to Windows PCs. One thing to push for is everyone moving to Linux to play games, this would reduce MS's interest in the sector and maybe we could get fun back into games again.