NextGen Games new $70 price point and paid upgrades? [2020-07]

[JPT]

Games have largely been stuck at a ceiling of $60 for over a decade (360/PS3?) with zero accommodation of increasing costs of development or inflation. An increase was inevitable.

I remember buying a game for my Atari 2600, must have been around 1981-83 and that cost about 40 euros back then, crap that was a lot of Christmas and birthday gift cash + my dad put in the difference. I played a lot of PolePosition before somebody gifted me a new game.

 

[Karamazov]

I remember buying some Snes games for around €70, and those were not imports, like super street fighter 2 turbo

 

[Malo]

I'ld prefer to see 5 hour long games of $10, I think this is a more healthy environment, but of course we will always get AAA games with massive budgets and marketing costs which convince the populace, oh you MUST play this game now or you will miss out

That doesn't suit big publishers. They need to keep you engaged in massive long games and need you to buy microtransactions to extend the profits way past the $70.

 

[Arwin]

Although they can do that with a free game too

 

[Deleted member 13524]

To me the biggest affront is those super expensive special / collector editions coming without a friggin' bluray disc.
Catering to the Digital Edition crowd by taking out the disc on the collector editions was the real "missing the mark" here. Don't they know the crowd who collect game packages with sculptures, figurines, maps etc. are also the most obsessed about having the physical disc in their hands?

Going by the lowest common denominator by default is just stupid in this case.

it was already a case with miles morales, I bought cheaper ps4 versin and had free update to ps5

With Sackboy Adventure it was actually the opposite: the PS4 version turned out more expensive in stores because it would run on both consoles, unlike the PS5 version.

Games have largely been stuck at a ceiling of $60 for over a decade (360/PS3?) with zero accommodation of increasing costs of development or inflation. An increase was inevitable.

The games have been stuck at the same $60 and the market for console games didn't really expand from the ~170M PS360 owners we saw on that generation. PS4 + XB1 combined are 115M + 50M, so about the same with 165M total users.
There are no miracles here, and IMO it's Sony + Microsoft's fault for not making a smoother transition to $65 during the 8th-gen.

Yes, an increase was inevitable, but their implementation for it doesn't make sense. The prices should be increased across the board, not for current-gen only.

Oddly enough, what Sony should have done was to just ask $70 for the game on all platforms. Like this it seems like they're punishing PS4 owners for not being able to buy a PS5.

 

[snc]

The main problem I have with new 70$ price is that in Poland it means 90$ for ps5 game :d

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The first time Sony mentioned charging $70 was in mid september.

That's also not quite correct, at least going by the date of the article that you linked.

PS5 games from Sony will be priced up to $70/£70, Jim Ryan says | GamesRadar+

Now if you actually meant Sept. 2020 and not Sept. 2021, then yes, that'd be correct.

Regardless, did Activision price it that way independently of Sony pricing their games at 70 USD? Or did they announce that price knowing that Sony were planning to price some of their PS5 games at 70 USD? That latter can be reasonably assumed as Sony would likely be keeping their publishing partners in the loop as to their plans for the PS5 and the PS5 ecosystem. But it's certainly also possible that Activision had been planning this independently of Sony's pricing plans.

It's one thing to go out on a limb and announce a 70 USD price first, if you know that Sony will be announcing 70 USD prices for their titles a month later. It's another to do so thinking you're the only publisher that will be doing it.

Regards,
SB

 

[iroboto]

Games have largely been stuck at a ceiling of $60 for over a decade (360/PS3?) with zero accommodation of increasing costs of development or inflation. An increase was inevitable.

I think the confusion for some people, and we are probably going way OT with this and it deserves a spawn off, but some publishers ultimately decided to move price points and others did not. While I fully agree that a price increase is inevitable, there's also a point in time in which the straw breaks the camels back, there is only so much more of an increase that can be withstood before market collapse. If you think about gas, what is a couple cents more, each time in an increase until it's at a critical point where the market has an issue. The difference between gas and games is that gas is a necessary good, and games not so much so.

I think we are looking at some publishers who are hesitant to increase their prices because they think we are very close to breaking the camel's back, and other publishers who believe that that breaking point is higher. MS is not the only publisher that kept pricing the same, we also see CDR and others also keep their price point from last gen. I think it's fairly clear that MS is on the conservative side of things, on top of keeping pricing the same, they've gone ahead and created a cheaper console as well. They know they are not the dominant market leader and they cannot command the prices that Sony can. Whether they will ever follow suit is unsure (alternative forms of increasing revenue without increasing pricing; PC space is the obvious space for both), if they were in Sony's shoes I'm sure they would have done something similar.

I don't think there is a right answer of course, what the market can handle is probably the truth, though with respect to this thread, Sony price increase was well informed ahead of time. I think people were just thrown off by not having an upgrade path for $10 for instance as they normally had (which has now been rectified). And I agree with the commentary that PS4 users were being punished for not upgrading to a PS5 statement, whether it was intentional or not, Sony should not be tone deaf to their own stock shortages.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I think the confusion for some people, and we are probably going way OT with this and it deserves a spawn off, but some publishers ultimately decided to move price points and others did not. While I fully agree that a price increase is inevitable, there's also a point in time in which the straw breaks the camels back, there is only so much more of an increase that can be withstood before market collapse. If you think about gas, what is a couple cents more, each time in an increase until it's at a critical point where the market has an issue. The difference between gas and games is that gas is a necessary good, and games not so much so.

I think we are looking at some publishers who are hesitant to increase their prices because they think we are very close to breaking the camel's back, and other publishers who believe that that breaking point is higher. MS is not the only publisher that kept pricing the same, we also see CDR and others also keep their price point from last gen. I think it's fairly clear that MS is on the conservative side of things, on top of keeping pricing the same, they've gone ahead and created a cheaper console as well. They know they are not the dominant market leader and they cannot command the prices that Sony can. Whether they will ever follow suit is unsure (alternative forms of increasing revenue without increasing pricing; PC space is the obvious space for both), if they were in Sony's shoes I'm sure they would have done something similar.

I don't think there is a right answer of course, what the market can handle is probably the truth, though with respect to this thread, Sony price increase was well informed ahead of time. I think people were just thrown off by not having an upgrade path for $10 for instance as they normally had (which has now been rectified). And I agree with the commentary that PS4 users were being punished for not upgrading to a PS5 statement, whether it was intentional or not, Sony should not be tone deaf to their own stock shortages.

Heck, there are still some developers who won't charge more than 50 USD for their games. Deck 13, for example, only charged 50 USD for The Surge 2, which, IMO was one of the better Souls-like games which was more polished and with more content than many 60 USD games.

So, developers do have some leeway on how they price their games. It'll be interesting to see just how many developers choose to go the 70 USD route. The safer play is to probably keep a 60 USD price point and then continue to rely on DLC to make up any shortfalls. I could be wrong on this, but it feels like DLC pricing keeps going up despite game prices being relatively static.

Regards,
SB

 

[see colon]

I remember buying some Snes games for around €70, and those were not imports, like super street fighter 2 turbo

When SSF2 came out on snes, my mother owed me $50. I don't remember why, but she owed it to me and we went to a sears to pick up the game. I also don't remember the exact price, but I think it was something like $79.99 USD. My mother slapped the shit out of me in front of the store clerk. I didn't get the game that day.

Some context: I was being a real brat about this $50, made my mom drive a half hour away to the sears. Also, she basically only had $50 to her name at the time. I was also old enough to know better. 15 or 16 years old. Which sort of makes getting open hand disciplined in a public place even more embarrassing, now that I think of it.

On the topic of $70 games now.... I'm not opposed to it if the quality of the game is there. I do enjoy that there are plenty of sub-$70 (or even 60) games at launch. Pricing shouldn't be one size fits all.

 

[TobiasAT91]

Because to me it feels like Microsoft isn’t really releasing anything in the same category when it comes to targeting next gen with exclusives, which then partly due to Covid have some of them retargeted. This is vastly different from MS’ approach.

Microsoft and Sony are pretty much releasing games in the same category, most games from both are cross generation releases besides a couple of games on the Sony side. I wouldn't call their approaches vastly different.
The cross generation games should perhaps be priced at $60, like GoW GT7 Horizon etc. Have in mind that, here in Germany we are paying over $80 or more for one title with the price increases. It doesn't help that availability is next to none, generally higher console prices at msrp and a pretty lacking list of games that are native to the systems.

Covid-19 has interrupted things but this generation is one of the least intresting so far. We are a year in, i can't wait to see what Sony has to show at their event this week.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I think the confusion for some people, and we are probably going way OT with this and it deserves a spawn off, but some publishers ultimately decided to move price points and others did not. While I fully agree that a price increase is inevitable, there's also a point in time in which the straw breaks the camels back, there is only so much more of an increase that can be withstood before market collapse.

Gamers want more lavish, impressive and better quality games but don't want to pay more for them, they prefer instead to pretend inflation isn't a thing. Let's not ignore that there are tons of quality F2P games that aren't gouging gamers: Fortnite, Warframe, Genshin Impact, Destiny 2, Apex Legends, War Thunder etc.

Games are increasingly going to have different price points because selling video games is a business designed to generate a profit, and costs - as developers keep telling us - are increasing. There is more than one way to generate revenue (and hopefully profit), i.e. the traditional game pricing model means selling the game for as much as the market will bear, but at the core you want to cover the cost of developing this game, and go as far as the hog can be thrown to fund the development of your next game while also giving a decent profit margin to whoever owns the company.

In addition, you can build a model where the game is compelling enough to drive DLC sales (e.g. Grand Theft Auto 4, Fallout 3, NV, 4, Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed) and spread the cost over time, or build a model where people willingly spend on micro-transacton for cosmetic customisation (Fortnite) or include your game as part of a subscription model.

A standard game price hasn't been on thing on Steam for years, and hasn't on consoles either but people like to pretend the high-end eeking up $10 after fifteen years is a scandal.

Yes, an increase was inevitable, but their implementation for it doesn't make sense. The prices should be increased across the board, not for current-gen only.

Why should it? The nextgen consoles have new technologies that require extra effort to exploit. Why should nextgen console owners not have to pay for that, or arguably why should last gen console owners who won't benefit have to subsidise it? Why do I have to pay Microsoft more for my Windows Server licence if I have 512 CPUs compared to if I have 128 CPUs? It's literally the same OS.

I remember buying a game for my Atari 2600, must have been around 1981-83 and that cost about 40 euros back then, crap that was a lot of Christmas and birthday gift cash + my dad put in the difference. I played a lot of PolePosition before somebody gifted me a new game.

Same, Atari 2600 carts were £30 in the UK which made buying new games a rare Christmas or birthday treat.

 

[iroboto]

Gamers want more lavish, impressive and better quality games but don't want to pay more for them, they prefer instead to pretend inflation isn't a thing. Let's not pretend that they aren't tons of quality F2P games that aren't gouging gamers: Fortnite, Warframe, Genshin Impact, Destiny 2, Apex Legends, War Thunder etc.

Games are increasingly going to have different price points is because selling video games is a business designed to generate a profit and costs (as developers keep telling us) are increasing. There is more than one way to generate revenue (and hopefully profit), i.e. the traditional game pricing model means selling the game for as much as the market will bear, but at the core you want to cover the cost of developing this game, and go as far as the hog can be thrown to fund the development of your next game while also giving a decent profit margin to whoever owns the company.

In addition, you can build a model where the game is compelling enough to drive DLC sales (e.g. Grand Theft Auto 4, Fallout 3, NV, 4, Witcher 3, Assassin's Creed) and spread the cost over time, or build a model where people willingly spend on micro-transacton for cosmetic customisation (Fortnite) or include your game as part of a subscription model.

A standard game price hasn't been on thing on Steam for years, and hasn't on consoles either but people like to pretend the high-end eeking up $10 after fifteen years is a scandal.

Absolutely.

The move to microtransactions, DLC, 'live games', cosmetics etc are all work around methods of keeping the entrance price lower, while finding other methods to monetize. Ubisoft in particular often goes this route with their 3-4 launch options.

This type of thing was fairly common last gen.

I agree, the increase in entry price should not be controversial, expected really. It's just a matter of how you want to approach obtaining those extra $10.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I agree, the increase in entry price should not be controversial, expected really. It's just a matter of how you want to approach obtaining those extra $10.

Many, many games give you tens, even hundreds, of hours of entertainment. I do not consider $70 controversial. Nobody likes paying more money than you have to for anything but gamers ignoring fifteen years of inflation for AAA games is some absurd bullshit.

Nobody has to buy games at all, if $70 is too bitter for some, wait for a sale. Most do because the vast majority of sales for AAA games come way, way after launch when sales have begun to kick-in. Gamers are some of the stupidest, most entitled people I've come across in any of my hobbies.

/rant

 

[BRiT]

Why should it? The nextgen consoles have new technologies that require extra effort to exploit.

It's easier to target current-gen consoles compared to last-gen consoles. There is more effort required to get acceptable performance on last-gen than current-gen.

 

[see colon]

Many, many games give you tens, even hundreds, of hours of entertainment. I do not consider $70 controversial. Nobody likes paying more money than you have to for anything but gamers ignoring fifteen years of inflation for AAA games is some absurd bullshit.

Nobody has to buy games at all, if $70 is too bitter for some, wait for a sale. Most do because the vast majority of sales for AAA games come way, way after launch when sales have begun to kick-in. Gamers are some of the stupidest, most entitled people I've come across in any of my hobbies.

/rant

I'm not one of the people who is categorically opposed to a $70 price point, but I will say I think it's insulting to charge an extra fee to take advantage of hardware that I already paid for. Especially if it's on a walled garden like a game console. If they are going to sell a more expensive next gen version that's just a res/fps boosts or maybe adding ray tracing, I can't justify the price difference.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

It's easier to target current-gen consoles compared to last-gen consoles. There is more effort required to get acceptable performance on last-gen than current-gen.

What about exploiting new technologies like raytracing? Or repackaging games entirely implementing a different I/O profcess so they load faster? Spider-Man on PS5 looks better, uses more modern technologies, is smaller and loads faster on PS5 compared to PS4. Because that team clearly put in a ton of effort to make that happen. That's what you're paying more for.

I'm not one of the people who is categorically opposed to a $70 price point, but I will say I think it's insulting to charge an extra fee to take advantage of hardware that I already paid for.

You're paying more for the video game developer to spend effort to exploit the extra new hardware you paid for. Some of these technologies are new and developers are still learning how to get the best for them. Developer time = $$$. Your argument makes sense for the Windows Server model because there is literally no difference between Windows Server running on a 64 CPU system vs. a 512 CPU system. You are charged more because you have more CPUs.

 

[Malo]

It seems to me there's significantly less effort developing for new consoles as you don't have to worry about all those tricks for streaming data and optimizations to get your game running well on horribly slow CPU/IO. I'm not sure the case could be made for assets either since in many workflows you're starting with high quality assets and reducing them a lot for the old consoles, where you don't need possibly as many versions for LOD as before. The stories from developers for games like Spiderman on PS4 where they had to duplicate assets all over the disc so they would stream in more efficiently are a thing of the past.

So whilst there might be some new features like raytracing, I think they would take far less time than what developers had to do to get high quality games working on the last generation.

 

[snc]

It seems to me there's significantly less effort developing for new consoles as you don't have to worry about all those tricks for streaming data and optimizations to get your game running well on horribly slow CPU/IO. I'm not sure the case could be made for assets either since in many workflows you're starting with high quality assets and reducing them a lot for the old consoles, where you don't need possibly as many versions for LOD as before. The stories from developers for games like Spiderman on PS4 where they had to duplicate assets all over the disc so they would stream in more efficiently are a thing of the past.

So whilst there might be some new features like raytracing, I think they would take far less time than what developers had to do to get high quality games working on the last generation.

every generation we have much more capable hardware so less work for optimisation and cheaper production ? nope, every generation games are more and more expensivie

 

[Deleted member 11852]

It seems to me there's significantly less effort developing for new consoles as you don't have to worry about all those tricks for streaming data and optimizations to get your game running well on horribly slow CPU/IO.

There absolutely will be things which are less challenging to achieve, but having new hardware means not having as much experience with it. How are the tools less than a year out of the gate? Things aren't that easy though, look at the changes that Insomniac delivered with the Spider-Man Miles Morales which originally shipped with a RT mode at 30fps and a performance mode at 60fps. Then with effort (which costs money) they manage they get a great RT implementation in there at 60fps. And they've added more graphics options to Ratchet & Clank too.

For the things that are more effort - re-packaging the games, testing the new I/O, raytracing, other changes, this is more work for what is effetely a small market base. And at the end of the day, it's a third sodding PlayStation hardware configuration and a forth Xbox hardware configuration.

I don't see the timing as anything more than a convenient time to bump the cost up - just as it's traditionally jumped at the start of previous console generation launches with the reason being "new consoles, more complex". This price increase is just long overdue.