Agree that 70-80 euros is not alien to a new game. This is of course a remake, as I would have found 30-50 euros more reasonable, but it’s a great game and a lot of work is put into it, so for example.

But I don’t agree with your view on increasing costs. First, the sales market has become much larger since, say, SNES or Atari 2600, but moreover: the industry itself chooses the size of the game, how complex it is or how beautiful to look at it, and therefore how much time / developers / money it will cost to develop. In extreme cases, they dump more than 2,000 employees (including foreign aid studios) over a period of sometimes 5-10 years. This is not a natural disaster. Gamers always want more beauty, better and more – it’s up to the industry to choose how fast they go with it. They can also keep the sale price the same or even lower it if they want, with equal adjustment for the number of people, game complexity or development time for each game.

If we were at the level of 2010 in terms of games, for example, we wouldn’t know anything different and have a good time. The industry has cemented itself so competitively that games are now very polished, sometimes really as good as TLOU, although the quality of the output varies widely across the industry. The best games of the year 2000 can rival today’s games in many ways, with the exception of graphics.

Also, don’t forget: things like DLC and microtransactions are additional income with often relatively low development costs (especially cosmetics), as well as things like merchandise and movie alterations. And remakes like this.

The main factor in determining the price of a game is “what a player can pay for and what they are willing to pay”, with some crazy outliers like Neo Geo with 350€ games… Practice is that new prices for games are at fair value, adjusted before inflation, Whereas, the Atari 2600 has fallen from (in current dollars) ~$120-140 to $75 (consoles) and has increased quite a bit since then. The early days had the advantage of novelty and a more specific group of interested parties, after which the price became more in line with the income available to a larger group. Prices have been almost keeping up with inflation, but with a great deal of resistance with the addition of every 5-10 euros.

In any case, 70-80 euros is normal and still fully justified for a big game in 2022, although it is still high for me (fortunately, there is a used one). But not because of development costs. The industry is just bearing this burden on itself.

[Reactie gewijzigd door geert1 op 22 juli 2022 17:42]