It's naive to think that increasing the cost of a game from $60 to $70 USD will magically make loot boxes or microtransactions disappear. It won't. Because loot boxes and microtransactions aren't about "keeping the lights on," it's about "players as payers," maximizing profits, and shareholder returns.
With digital distribution, offloading costs to consumers, how can games be "more expensive to make?" Or how can pressing a blu ray cost more than making a NES game cartridge? Or with gaming being global and mainstream (making more money than the movie industry), boasting billions of players and customers, how can that economy of scale be "more expensive" than during the Atari or NES days, when gaming was niche? Or the tax breaks and incentives they get from governments to open studios, or having studios all over the world, where labor and costs are far cheaper?
AAA publishers will continue to poor mouth while still boasting billions in profits every year.
Games being "too expensive to make" is a fallacy publishers are more than happy to reinforce, normalizing customers to games as a subscription service, instead of a single point of sale.
2) I hope they video record GOTY talks as a series of premium podcasts. I NEED that in my life during the month of December: because audio only captures so much tension. I need to see the furtive glances and the knife fights during this most cutthroat of seasons!!!
Winter doesn't start for 2 more months. It's 75ยบ in Georgia. ZP is crazy.
Where I live in the PNW it's going to be 60 F on Thanksgiving. When we should be freezing in knee-deep snow for the past month, my roses are blooming. In November. It looks like Santa's bringing me horrible drought conditions and devastating fire season next summer! Yeah!!!
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