IkePoR said:
Here's a publisher telling it's shareholders - the only people they feel any desire to be truthful to - that a profit turning business model has been axed but bears no detriment to their bottom line. What this means is that $60 + DLC + Season Pass + multi tiered deluxe editions are making them the intended profit. At $60, they're still making more money than you or I will ever see in our lives. As others have pointed out to you, publishers make their own beds. That $60 goes farther than it ever has, with costs of physical production at an all time low and the rapidly rising sales of digital copies. Yet they continue to perpetuate the lie that games are so expensive - they aren't. In fact, it's more affordable than ever. It's when you kick your budget management out the door and add unnecessary "features" and prolong development that they get expensive. If you're feeling sorry for developers and their hungry families, point them to Ninja Theory, who just struck gold with Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Or the thousands of independent developers who are raking it in on the Nintendo Switch alone. Developers like Respawn that deal with the devil get no sympathy from me; in today's market, publishers are not a necessary evil like they once were. There's no excuse in a digital era for "starving artists" nor the greed fueled corporations trying to coax them into signing the dotted line. |
The argument of digital distribution enhancing the revenue is indeed a valid one. That said Digital is far from being a valid option for many and for good reason.
Still respecting inflation over the last decades I don’t think that equals out, but it at least is a valid option of an argument.
