Games have been the same price for over thirty years, they’ve not changed with inflation and production costs have skyrocketed. To an extent the increased market has helped keep costs down for the consumer but it’s not unreasonable to see prices shift upwards.
What about the cost of disc media that’s absolutely disappeared? That was a huge chunk of the overhead. Logistics to get the copies to all the stores, etc.
Now it’s just electricity and servers to download from.
Do you ever notice that no one ever talks about all the advancements that saved money? Of course not, cause then they’d never be able to justify continually hiking the prices up.
Lots of games today force some sort of online element (ex. Cloud saves, workshop content, multiplayer, etc.) I wonder how much that costs them to maintain. I can’t imagine it’s that significant if they are dealing with multiple single player games.
I am genuinely not trying to sound like a studio apologist, because there are myriad reasons to be upset with them, but y’all need to think these arguments through a little better. I haven’t pulled up any numbers, but are we really going to pretend that the cost of producing a game in 1990 is even remotely comparable to that of a modern day AAA game? The fact that video game costs have remained relatively steady and even decreased in some cases for decades should be astonishing.
There’s no way in hell that paying steam is more expensive than buying dics, putting your game on those discs, putting those discs in cases, and then paying to ship those cases all over the world.
Know how I know? Because businesses do whatever is the most profitable, and clearly digital distro is cheaper since we’ve been pushing for it since it was invented.
Games have been the same price for over thirty years, they’ve not changed with inflation and production costs have skyrocketed. To an extent the increased market has helped keep costs down for the consumer but it’s not unreasonable to see prices shift upwards.
What about the cost of disc media that’s absolutely disappeared? That was a huge chunk of the overhead. Logistics to get the copies to all the stores, etc.
Now it’s just electricity and servers to download from.
Do you ever notice that no one ever talks about all the advancements that saved money? Of course not, cause then they’d never be able to justify continually hiking the prices up.
Distribution platforms like Steam charge 30% for their service.
Lots of games today force some sort of online element (ex. Cloud saves, workshop content, multiplayer, etc.) I wonder how much that costs them to maintain. I can’t imagine it’s that significant if they are dealing with multiple single player games.
Probably not as much as the money they derive from the live service model.
Businesses do what makes them the most money.
I am genuinely not trying to sound like a studio apologist, because there are myriad reasons to be upset with them, but y’all need to think these arguments through a little better. I haven’t pulled up any numbers, but are we really going to pretend that the cost of producing a game in 1990 is even remotely comparable to that of a modern day AAA game? The fact that video game costs have remained relatively steady and even decreased in some cases for decades should be astonishing.
Pick a different argument.
Steam is more expensive than discs.
There’s no way in hell that paying steam is more expensive than buying dics, putting your game on those discs, putting those discs in cases, and then paying to ship those cases all over the world.
Know how I know? Because businesses do whatever is the most profitable, and clearly digital distro is cheaper since we’ve been pushing for it since it was invented.
The customer base has increased more than a thousandfold. If anything prices should go down.