Unpopular opinion: Capcom boss believes video game prices are too low

[Shawn Knight]

A hot potato: Capcom President Haruhiro Tsujimoto is sure to catch flak from the gaming community after proclaiming that video game prices are too low. During the recent Tokyo Game Show, Tsujimoto said development costs are about 100 times higher now than they were compared to the Famicom [Nintendo Entertainment System] era, but software prices have not increased much.

"There is also a need to raise wages," Tsujimoto said. "Considering the fact that wages are rising in the industry as a whole, I think raising unit prices is a healthy option for business," the executive added.

As much as gamers probably do not want to hear it, Tsujimoto has some valid arguments. It was not uncommon for AAA games to sell for $50 or more in the era he speaks of. Factoring in inflation, that is closer to $120 in today's money yet modern AAA games are just now flirting with the higher $70 price point.

Today's games are also far more complex, and some of the top titles do indeed have massive production budgets. Studios need some way to recoup their investment and make some profit on the top. Without charging significantly more for games, publishers have had to come up with other ways to get more money out of gamers including microtransactions and DLC.

Either way, itis clear that something has to give as the current model feels unsustainable for much longer. What is likely to happen is that AAA game prices will continue to inch past the $70 mark… slowly, of course, as to not rock the boat too much at once. Unfortunately, microtransactions and paid DLC are likely here to stay as well.

Another area of concern is remakes and ports to other platforms years after an original release. Both are becoming increasingly more expensive to the point where substantial pushback feels imminent.

The industry is at a crossroads and it is unclear exactly what will happen next. That said, how would you like to see things proceed? Would you be alright paying slightly more up front to do away with microtransactions and DLC? How much is too much to ask for a AAA game?

Image credit: Thomas Despeyroux

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https://www.techspot.com/news/100305-unpopular-opinion-capcom-boss-believes-video-game-prices.html

 

[Trapped Nowhere]

They're still going to add extra transactions no matter much the games cost to siphon as much money as possible

 

[Theinsanegamer]

These companies are making record profits while paying well below industry standard, they dont need any more money. This is greed, pure and simple. For all the bosses talk of "the good old days", on the OG playstation a "greatest hit" meant it sold 100,000 copies, at $60 each. Today, games routinely sell over a million, at $60, with far lower costs since everything is digital now. Yet its never enough.

 

[noel24]

If those corpos will have Their way, soon people will go back to buying Their games on Pirate Bay Inc.
Corporations just have to prove growing income, quarter after quarter, no matter what. This bubble will eventually burst, There's just not enough people in the World to buy more and more of those expensive things.

 

[RandomWAN]

He's free to be wrong. I can't wait to see what excuse they use for lagging sales when they start pricing themselves out of the market for anyone but the diehards with money to burn.

 

[Beerfloat]

If price increases would reverse the onslaught of freemium, microtransactions, battle passes and season passes right back out of games, it's not a bad argument.

 

[USAvenger]

The WEF says that we need to eat bugs and RFK Jr. says that BlackRock, Vanguard, et al could own 60% of single-family homes in the US by 2030, so none of this may matter before long anyway...

 

[Uncle Al]

IF and only IF all games had a feature that allowed you to play it entirely OFF LINE then I'd be willing to pay a higher price but considering all the private information they collect I don't think the price should ever exceed $50 and that is for a truly unique game. Bottom line, as previously stated, these folks are running on 100% greed and nothing more so they just don't deserve a loyal following .....

 

[VaRmeNsI]

I happen to agree but I don't see how they can get the price of torrenting above $0?

 

[torchyear]

Tsujimoto is correct. AAA titles today have the exact same price as what I paid for boxed copies of Ultima 6 and Wing Commander in 1990. If corrected for inflation from then, games would be over double what is currently charged.

 

[Kam7r]

Ok, up the price of games but get ride of all the battlepass and microtransactions BS , and I'm ok with that...

 

[bviktor]

Tsujimoto is correct. AAA titles today have the exact same price as what I paid for boxed copies of Ultima 6 and Wing Commander in 1990. If corrected for inflation from then, games would be over double what is currently charged.

Yup. People just don't get it. Neither inflation nor anything else.

Then they say but but the market has exploded. Yes, and so did production cost. You know how many people made the original Doom? 6. And in how much time? 1 year.

Compare that to Doom Eternal? 1302 people and 4 years. And developer salaries didn't exactly collapse since the 90s. Go figure.

You can wish for 'cheap' games, but as long as you do, you'll get all that precious microtransaction and loot box and DLC and unfinished, rushed games, and all the other cr@p.

 

[yRaz]

How much did they pay him to say that? This will be written off as market research costs

 

[m4a4]

Yup. People just don't get it. Neither inflation nor anything else.

Then they say but but the market has exploded. Yes, and so did production cost. You know how many people made the original Doom? 6. And in how much time? 1 year.

Compare that to Doom Eternal? 1302 people and 4 years. And developer salaries didn't exactly collapse since the 90s. Go figure.

You can wish for 'cheap' games, but as long as you do, you'll get all that precious microtransaction and loot box and DLC and unfinished, rushed games, and all the other cr@p.

And how much does it cost to manufacture and ship a game these days compared to earlier?

You people always conveniently leave out the important part of how much net profit developers made per copy compared to modern titles. The sticker price of the game does not reflect that.

 

[RoJoel]

The WEF says that we need to eat bugs and RFK Jr. says that BlackRock, Vanguard, et al could own 60% of single-family homes in the US by 2030, so none of this may matter before long anyway...

Bread and Circuses

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

Mr. Tsujimoto have you forgotten what happened to Sony in 2011 and now again in 2023?

 

[wiak]

1. he dont buy games
2. he does not play games
3. he just wants more profit

soooo he is not grounded in reality
nobody wants to pay $100 for a game that is buggy mess on release (even worse for early access/preorder)
all games lately have been that, **** buggy and just simply unfinished on release

 

[J95qRP7]

One thing to take into account is the gaming market that these publishers and developers have is much much larger than in the past. It is a sound business strategy to make less money per unit, then make it up through volume of sales. I don't see this point taken into account when publishers and media talk about raising prices is needed.

 

[redgarl]

Capcom just made the biggest predatory move with SF6 that I can remember in a long time.

They charge new characters 350 Fighter coins, but you can only buy Fighter coins in bundle of 250 Fighter coins. 250 Fighter coins cost 5$, so you need to buy 500 coins for a single character.

They were charging 750 Fighter coins per TMNT promotion costumes, meaning 15$ per turtle costume...

And, after buying the core game, you need a 30$ season pass for having the full cast of characters, which you need to play a fighting game for being able to learn those characters in training mode.

In the end, the game is going to cost you, over 5 seasons, around 200$... and that`s without any micro-transactions...

Capcom... you know how to screw your fans...

 

[MasterAce]

I’m still hurting from my last GPU buy, but sure…

Really maybe they should take a hard look at the games that they have done recently. We don’t need more developement, we need more originality.

 

[Puiu]

What he meant to say is that AAA studios pay their CEO and PR department too much money.

 

[Puiu]

Yup. People just don't get it. Neither inflation nor anything else.

Then they say but but the market has exploded. Yes, and so did production cost. You know how many people made the original Doom? 6. And in how much time? 1 year.

Compare that to Doom Eternal? 1302 people and 4 years. And developer salaries didn't exactly collapse since the 90s. Go figure.

You can wish for 'cheap' games, but as long as you do, you'll get all that precious microtransaction and loot box and DLC and unfinished, rushed games, and all the other cr@p.

you don't need thousands of devs to build good games. it's just stupid what they are doing. it's a clear sign of mismanagement, lack of goals and proper planing.

do you know what happens to most of the code written by AAA studios during the development of big titles? it gets scrapped because "plans change" midway more often than not.

 

[erickmendes]

Game bussiness is now a 200 billion industry, and they still complaint about games prices... AAA littles that cost 80 bucks for premium edition, 50 bucks for the vanilla, and that's for some half baked game filled with bugs and bad optimization, then microtransactions to win and/or get cosmetics, then the traditional same year DLC that costs as much as the base game, and the next year DLC... ... Capcom boss got some cognitive issue.

 

[toooooot]

They will all keep rising prices while also hoping to hook people on game subscription services.
Don't like high prices? Pay monthly. Don't like us sucking money all year round? Pay premium.
I do not even hate price hikes as much as games being partitioned before release and then sold in portions using DLCs.

 

[RoJoel]

1. he dont buy games
2. he does not play games
3. he just wants more profit

soooo he is not grounded in reality
nobody wants to pay $100 for a game that is buggy mess on release (even worse for early access/preorder)
all games lately have been that, **** buggy and just simply unfinished on release

I think the bigger question is why do we keep buying this crap? You make a good case for not doing so.