RJ_Sizzle said:
I'll never get the Stockholm Syndrome of being in an ecosystem where the platform holder refuses to lower the prices of their games to create a false narrative of value, instead of opening the opportunity for more people to play the game when sales are slow, or to expose more people to the IP. That line of thinking is poison. The market should determine the value of a product. Failing to meet people halfway by keeping costs high when sales were dying on the vine killed a certain console this gen for a reason. |
Personally, for me, it's not Stockholm Syndrome (thanks for that bit of presumptuous ondescension though), it's just that I have a broader perspective on the issue. Cutting prices this fast in my mind devalues games as a whole, especially when it is a high quality game doing it, and ultimately perpetuates the hype-machine driven front-loaded-sales state that the industry is in. It conditions consumers to *expect* rapid drops in prices, meaning if your game isn't spectacular or more to the point hyped up by a massive advertising push, you're screwed. Because your game won't sell enough in launch window and you can't keep your price up and bank on legs because no one will pay that full price. Rapidly falling prices on all games in my mind is unhealthy for the games industry. It encourages companies to double down on the already toxic preorder culture, devalues games in general in the minds of consumers, discourages taking risks on new ideas that will be dependent on long term sales rather than massive launch window sales, and encourages the already egregious advertising spending. Nintendo can be extreme in peotecting the value of games, but look at, say, Splatoon. In a market where games have been devalued by the aforementioned practices and consumers conditioned to expect price cuts constantly, Splatoon would have had little chance of becoming the successful new IP it was because it's very odd premise made it dependent on legs much more so than launch day sales. Could it have been a sales success still? Probably but nowhere near as profitable and who knows where that would put us at now. Who knows if Nintendo would have even bothered.
Personally, in my mind, unless a game is failing in sales, I would like it's MSRP to stay $60 for 12 months. Then drop it in tiers over an extended period. Cutting a quality game's price in half 5 months after launch is just not healthy for the industry and while it's lovely short term for consumers, it's not worth the exchange.
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