It feels to me like the closer we get to the Nintendo Switch 2’s June launch and the, apparently, $80 games associated with it, the more people are fighting with themselves over what is and isn’t worth it. But at least Sony veteran and previous head of PlayStation Indies Shuhei Yoshida is free from inner turmoil – he thinks relatively expensive, high quality video games are unequivocally necessary.
“I don’t believe that every game has to be priced the same,” Yoshida continues. "Each game has different value it provides, or the size of budget. I totally believe it’s up to the publisher – or developers self-publishing – decision to price their product to the value that they believe they are bringing in.
Yoshida continues to say that, “In terms of actual price of $70 or $80, for really great games, I think it will still be a steal in terms of the amount of entertainment that the top games, top quality games bring to people compared to other form of entertainment.”
“As long as people choose carefully how they spend their money,” he continues, “I don’t think they should be complaining.”
80$ is a steal, yeah right…
(Screenshot from isthereanydeal just for simplicity, avoid grey market when possible)
There is an argument to be made that Expedition 33 was essentially created by a studio with 30 people (though once you add everyone that worked on it the credits do balloon to over 400) with a rather small budget, and meanwhile companies like Rockstar, Sony and Activision have thousands working for years and spending hundreds of millions creating games like GTA 6, CoD and Concord, so naturally they should be a lot more expensive to buy too.
They just shouldn’t be surprised if people don’t buy all the $500 Waguy steak on offer and are perfectly happy with way cheaper options.
There’s also the argument whether games really need that high of a budget. It feels like there’s little correlation between the budget of a game, and its success (or quality).
Sony could’ve invested in five or ten more Helldivers 2 scaled games, instead of wasting it all on the Concord flop.
Over 400 seems a bit high to me but the size vs cost argument remains. Those external voice actors, animators, QA testers etc were all paid. Kepler Interactive even gave them money to have known actors for VA (they probably aren’t cheap).
So that’s very probably a several million budget (rumored to be between 5 and 25 mil according to non reliable source, thanks to Kepler and the early Gamepass contract).
Ok that’s not a 500 million budget, rather a 50 mil one (to be very large), but it’s definitely not a 500k budget.
And yet they sell it 45$.
Anyway, it just prove that you can build a Waguy steak alternative for cheaper while keeping the taste and without abusing your workforce.
“412 people (403 professional roles, 9 thanks) with 502 credits.” https://www.mobygames.com/game/241065/clair-obscur-expedition-33/credits/windows/?autoplatform=true
As for those compared budgets, CoD Black Ops Cold War cost $700 million and GTA 6 has already surpassed a billion.
It’s really absurd where budget of those games went to… Big corpo gaming is wasteful as fuck.
Ah thanks for the link! I was looking for that information but could not find it.
Nobody rightfully complains when Lamborghini sells their luxury car for hundreds of thousands. Gamers have been conditioned for far too long that indie games cost less than 60 and everything else costs 60. This was the fault of the industry to be sure, but it’s clear the barrier is being broken by necessity and expensive-to-make games are going to climb the price ladder and prices for games overall will stratify like many other markets.
Interestingly, that’s all Shuhei is saying here. Pay for the games you think are worth it. Games still provide a significant amount of value for their cost, even at higher price points. This is obviously true as we’ve had a decade of base game $60 and ultimate edition $90-100 with people purchasing ultimate editions and such.
Stealing from the consumer