Ready to pay 70 dollars for new games?

@clush: it does suck but you just have to do your homework.

There are games that didn't add any of that shit. Witcher 3 for example isn't' nickle and dimed with anything. To make an RPG at that scale they were originally going to randomly generate but found the quality lacking so made it all by hand. It burnt tons of developers out in the process.

There is paid DLC but it's all very good and one is in the vein of a classic Expansion pack.

Maybe my extra money wouldn't have prevented some bad treatment but there's no doubt it was worth it for that game, which I put 100 plus hours into the base game.

There's other stuff out there with just cosmetics and stuff that it never bothered me. I would love there to be some AAA push to kind of certify a no microtransaction thing but can't see it happening.

@toughshed: I can see an increase in game prices leading to a wider adoption of services like Game Pass. I've been a subscriber this past year or so and it's been really great. I've been able to play a lot of games to completion and the savings over buying them individually, even on sale, are pretty significant. That said currently it's more of a back-catalog sort of service. Microsoft exclusives get released on it day one which is amazing but for everything else you have to wait. I wouldn't be surprised if they brought in more tiers and signed deals with publishers where a Game Pass Ultimate subscription would cost $10 more a month but would guarantee you Day 1 access to new releases from a select group of publishers. Unfortunately with EA and Ubisoft holding their own services that idea won't work all too well, and few people are going to subscribe to all three in order to get their Battlefield/Assassins Creed/Halo on release day.

I think the problem here is not that the price increase isn't warranted, but it's that in the public eye it is not deserved. The game industry is notorious for being poorly run. Games have not gotten necessarily that much better but we've seen the introduction of micro transactions and day one patches and generally products getting shipped before they are ready because you can now get away with patching them up weeks after launch. The general perception is that it's a mess and it hasn't been getting better, so while economically it's a logical move they will have an uphill fight to justify it to the buying public.

Heck no. I only let Romance of Three Kingdoms games rip me off.

Who pays 70 dollars for games? If it’s an Xbox game or play station game, it’s worth it, but never please for a computer game. They will be a stage where I’ll stop worrying about how much games cost. It will happen as soon as I start monetizing my gaming abilities. I have had that ambition for a long, but I haven’t started yet. Although it seems easy, it honestly isn’t easy. You can check the options I consider (https://yourmoneygeek.com/how-to-make-money-playing-video-games/) and tell me the ones you think are better. From the moment I start earning from games, I won’t worry about how much games cost.

I am because I'm not much of a AAA gamer anymore, so I won't be paying $70 for every game I purchase. I'll have to be because I won't have a choice if I want to play AAA games anyways...

no, i will be buying alot less games new and will wait for price drops n sales or buy used more. 60 was already too much imo depending on the game this 70 crap is just....not all games need to have the same pricetag. i tend to lean towards indies alot more than i used to these days so they can have my money instead when i have it

Yep, and yet so-called Season Passes are not going anywhere with the 70 buck price tag...

If its a game I really want i will, but I mostly wait for it to drop $20 or more dollars a few months later, I don't mind waiting for it to go on sale and drop down in price

No one is forcing you to buy a game the exact second it is released. If you don't want to spend that much, just wait a few months or look out for a sale

No game is worth 70+

I'm Canadian. Octopath Traveler is $84 on Steam. Every time I hear this "Games will cost $70" thing I roll my eyes.

Games is my country are 100$ so NO.

@vectortheangel: Roll your eyes all you want, it's a thing that translates across different currencies, if game costs are going to raise in USD, it'll do the same in CAD. What's not to get?

@baillie: Let's put it this way. NBA 2k20 cost $59.99 USD at launch. NBA 2k21 cost $69.99 USD at launch. In Canada they were both $79.99 and all AAA release have been that price for many years now. We may see an increase in game prices but we've already seen this jump before and have always had to deal with it in more extremes and greater frequency than the USA. Australia has the same issue to an even greater degree.

Honestly, the temptation to buy brand-new, full-priced games for me is just to keep up with the conversation. Yeah, I'm going to eventually want to play RE8, but I haven't even finished RE7 yet and I got that on sale for like $10. Listening to the hype around a game gets me excited, but only enough to add it to a wish list somewhere and wait for a price drop.

If I had all the time in the world or was a streamer or something, I would feel compelled to keep current. But I work full time and it wouldn't be smart to just buy a full-priced game when I know I don't have time to play it. The last game I got at launch was Demon's Souls and I got that on launch day with my PS5 and I sunk over 100 hours into it over the course of a few months.

My advice: Just wait for a price drop and play the stuff you already have in your library...unless it's a 1st party Nintendo game, then just buy it. That price might never drop.

I paid 70 for Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers on the NES and beat it in like a day. That was in 1990.

Everyone knows the games didn't actually need to go up in price. They just want more money. It's solely for more profit to look better to shareholders and making sure they're constantly growing. It's the same nonsense they spewed about "needing" mtx. Kotick literally just got 150 million dollars as a bonus while Activision laid 100s of people off after record revenue. I'm not nor ever going to feel sorry for major game companies.

@fugoy: Kotick excessive bonus aside thats not really the whole picture, companies hire and fire at the all the time often at the same time.

Activision announced just last month their hiring 2000 more developers which is considerably more than they let go, and saying let go might not even be entirely correct cause we don't know how many found positions within Activision.

@vectortheangel: What is $70 USD in CAD? Because that is the math you should be doing.

If my memory is right, Street Fighter 2 for the SNES was retailing for $60 when it first came out in 1992. I ended up buying TMNT IV: Turtles in Time to save money. Games have always been expensive.
The Real Cost of Gaming: Inflation, Time, and Purchasing Power - IGN

@thepanzini: I'm sure those people who got laid off feel nice that they have the opportunity to work at the same company that laid them off during a pandemic again. How nice of Activision. Also I will not set aside the excessive bonuses that Kotick got. It's shit. Has always been shit.

None of this even goes against the notion that there is no need to increase the price. They say they need to but I am not taking any of that nonsense at face value when all we hear about is record profits. The companies would be more than fine without raising the price. They just wouldn't be as profitable as they could be. And in that respect I have zero sympathy or understanding. They can eat it.

This is why I bought the disc version of the PS5. I'll pay full price for games I don't want to wait for and buy used copies of the rest.

Did a little bit of digging and found a Interview of CEO of Take-Two Stauss Zelnick talking specifically about the price increase on NBA 2K21 for next gen consoles.

Why was your 2K basketball game the right product for making the leap to a $70 price point on the next generation after $60 has long been the norm?

The bottom line is that we haven't seen a front-line price increase for nearly 15 years, and production costs have gone up 200 to 300%. But more to the point since no one really cares what your production costs are, what consumers are able to do with the product has completely changed.

We deliver a much, much bigger game for $60 or $70 than we delivered for $60 10 years ago. The opportunity to spend money online is completely optional, and it's not a free-to-play title. It's a complete, incredibly robust experience even if you never spend another penny after your initial purchase.

(source: https://www.protocol.com/take-two-strauss-zelnick)

While people who buy and play games think there isn't a need to increase the price of games, there are various examples of why the cost of some games are increasing. And this feels all to similar to when the price of games was increased starting with the launch Xbox 360; specifically the title Activision (under CEO Bobby Kotick) Call of Duty 2--other games started following this trend in the months afterwards. The price of games has improved or gotten worse depending on which games you like to play, but you cant deny there are plenty more affordable options now than there was 10-15 years ago in comparison. And the reason for games costing more is a bit deeper than "They just want more money" as an excuse.

This article www.theringer.com/2020/10/23/21530092/rising-video-game-prices-70-dollars-call-of-duty-ps5-xbox-series-x goes over the cost of games with quotes from various people within the industry if you want to read further into games pricing.

@hells: 2k can miss me with their production costs going up that much. That's on them. I literally don't care that AAA studios decided to pour more money into their games to hopefully make even bigger returns. I also don't care about the prices of the past, because the present reality is there is a limit to what these games will be bought at. Sure they'll get people to pay $70 but with the way things are right now it's a huge chunk if you even want to get even more than one game. That's not even mentioning the garbage regional pricing that anyone who doesn't live there doesn't know is shit.

Eventually they will price themselves out and that's on them. Those plenty of affordable options have the potential to do more gangbusters than any of those big budget titles. So I don't want to hear how the games have to be bigger and bigger for them to keep making profits.

Also what the hell are these increases even for? It sure as shit ain't for the devs wages. It ain't for their benefits or any bonuses or such. So if it's not going to them and they're still getting screwed why should I care that they decide to up their production costs?

If there is a game that I really want, I would deal with it.

I wouldn't pay that much for current AAA games but I have paid that and even more for indie games just to show support. It would great to finally discover some AAA game which would look so interesting that I would be ready to pay $70 for it.

@chiefbeef123: Agreed—same here.

On one hand I feel bad because I want to support devs as much as possible... but I wanted to play the PS5 version of MLB The Show 21 recently and based off the reviews I saw, the game isn't that drastically different from PS4 to PS5, so to me, that means I might as well save some money on this one and get it used on eBay. Snagged it for $40 sealed vs $77 (after tax) from a retail store. 🤷‍♂️

Can't wait until 7 years later when the "ready to pay 80 dollars for new games?" thread pops up, then another 8 years later "ready to pay 90 dollars for new games?". Ready to pay 100 dollars for new games? At some point, consumers are going to have to put their foot down or games will start costing as much as the console itself.

No thanks, I've bought 1 $70 game this generation and I will not be buying another. It's gotten completely out of control. Hell the "ultimate edition" of the new BF2042 game is freaking $120! That's for a single game and just a single year battle pass.

I don't have a ps5 yet so no.

I think some games have worth to pay 70$.

Smm Panel

I used to pay $0.98/gallon of gas…

I’m m living in the EU and games have been progressively getting more expensive here over the past 8 years. I was recently considering buying Scarlet Nexus and it’s one of those new even more expensive games and the prices are getting kind of ridiculous to the point where I started conserving going back to PC gaming again just cause of the savings.

@humanity: xbox game pass my friend

@haz_kaj: I have it and it’s great but sometimes you do wanna get that new game when it’s new and then Game Pass makes you recoil even more from the cost of a single new game.

As I love reminding people, a PS4 launch game was $60 in both US and Canadian dollars. Now, the new $70 US price is actually $90 in Canada, and the new digital sales tax coming this week should mean that I can't even evade taxes by buying digital anymore. So $90 goes up to $102 in my province. And, woe is me, I bought a digital PS5 before they announced the tax change. Well whatever, I will wait for sales. People with disc drives can do the same, or buy used, or borrow from friends, or buy at full price and re-sell.

I remember people saying PlayStation would turn into Nintendo and stop putting their first party games on sale -- Not true. As of this past weekend, all PS5 first party games (except Ratchet) have been discounted on PSN. Even Returnal is 29% off right now. Just wait longer if you think 29% is not a big enough discount.

No one is putting a gun to your head and saying you have to buy every game on day one. Unless you suffer from massive peer pressure or FOMO. Lucky for me, I'm only interested in single player games and I have no gamer friends. (Plus there's the benefit of the game getting decently patched up by the time I buy it)

@peffy: I totally agree about waiting if you don't want to pay the $70, but to add to your point, I think it's actually a big deal that Sony basically matched the "Amazon Prime Day" prices of MLB the Show, Returnal, and Sackboy. I also got the digital only PS5 since I only bought one physical game last gen, but those deals on the disc hurt because I thought Sony would not come close to matching those prices for months. I wonder if they felt the heat of people who bought the disc-less PS5 complaining about missing out on those deals, and cut the prices because of it? It was only for the weekend, but I am glad they did it, and it keeps hope alive that if Target, Best Buy or Amazon have another big sale down the road, Sony will match it in a sale of their own so that the digital only folk have a way to save as well.