Labo is a huge ripoff and a waste of a great concept (so far)

[DonFerrari]

Biggerboat1 said:

DonFerrari said:

1) Consoles do take more space and have almost 0 profit margin.

2) And Accessories all have very overpriced history (no controller cost over 15 bucks to make but retail for 60... X1 pro controller is almost obscene).

3) Skylander also uses a lot of shelf-space but I never saw it hitting this high (which would also be obscene). And I don't think Nintendo is giving the store 50 USD of margin.

1) If that's true then I'm guessing that they're only selling them due to the profit that will come from any additional games bought with the console - that strategy obviously doesn't apply to Labo - if they weren't making decent profit on it, they simply wouldn't stock it, & since it takes up considerably more room (on the shop floor & in the stock room), I'm guessing they'll want a higher profit than a 60 dollar game...

2) Well, isn't Labo sort of an accessory? Albeit with software included... If so, and all accessories are overpriced, then it's just following the trend. Not that that would necessarily justify it's price, but it would change the overall argument to "Accessories are a huge ripoff", rather than "Labo is a huge ripoff"

3) I'm not familiar with Skylander products so can't speak to potential production / R&D / marketing costs or the size of it's packaging compared to Labo...

I'm not a Labo evangelist by any means - at the time of it's launch I thought that $80 was a bit high for the market & that $60 would have been a more fitting price-point.

However, I'm also aware that it is a very different beast from a $60 game, so would be hesitant in labelling a rip-off.

As I said before there are distribution and retailer profit implications to consider which may well have had an impact. Also, from a business point of view, Nintendo may have internally projected that it wouldn't be a massive seller, so for it to be worth their while they'd need to set a certain price point for them to see a reasonable return.

It's easy for GOW / BOTW / GTA etc. to stick with a $60 price point & assign a large dev budget as they know they're going to sell 5 million + units. That's not the case for most games / products.

1- Yes it's true. And one of the reasons why digital games cost the same as physical, so they don't take out even more market from retail, because without the profit from the SW they wouldn't keep selling the HW (one store chain in Germany even stopped selling X1 after they put the Gamepass out). They may make more profit from Labo, can you prove it? Because we have several sources for the average retail margin on the retail priced AAA games. Just wanted to point the sophism on the "It uses more space so it must have higher margin".

2 - I do agree, I would see Labo as accessory and they usually are very overpriced (controllers as I said usually cost less than 15 and sell for 60). Which justs address the OP and goes against people saying Labo isn't overpriced or a rip-off.

3 - Yes it's a very different game from regular games that cost 60, but not overall best in all areas to justify the extra 20 (since they are cutting a lot on the SW side and the cardboard by itself is peanuts cost to make as well)

Sure the profit for chain and also the expectation of lower sell (which I don't think is the case since from what we have heard Labo was expected to do good, and the people saying it isn't overpriced don't say it sold bad or below expectations... so they can't have it both ways right?)

Most console games have 60 price point, and budgets vary but average AAA would cost you over 30M and need over 1M sales to recoup. Smaller games (no indie) from what we know need something from 100-250k to 1M to break even (seems like several of Japanese niche releases are very profitable under 100k sales). That is one of the main reasons I don't like Nintendo policy on prices. They hold the 60 for like 4 years on most of their games, on average sell more than most games and budget lower.

HoangNhatAnh said:

DonFerrari said:

All I hear is you saying you judge others for your own behaviors.

Consoles do take more space and have almost 0 profit margin.

And Accessories all have very overpriced history (no controller cost over 15 bucks to make but retail for 60... X1 pro controller is almost obscene).

Skylander also uses a lot of shelf-space but I never saw it hitting this high (which would also be obscene). And I don't think Nintendo is giving the store 50 USD of margin.

Doesn't change the fact vita memory card and ps2 classic games on ps4 are overpriced and cash grab

No it doesn't. And what about it? Keep reserving your right to have double standard, it's pretty obvious to everyone.

duduspace1 said:

WhatATimeToBeAlive said:

Estimating the costs by development time and team size is very reasonable. And SSM has published few indie games through their external publishing branch, they haven't been developing them. So what difference does it make? And those God of War cost estimates don't include facility costs, wages for voice and motion capture actors, musicians, (marketing, even though in my opinion it shouldn't be counted) etc. So the costs are even higher.

You have run out of excuses and you're embarrassing yourself with your constant dodging.

Yes it is, provided you are not making unverified assumptions on who is involved in what amongst their projects. It is fine by me if I am also allowed to make such estimates and assumptions as he makes with SSM's 200 member staff and Facilities with Nintendo's over 5000 member staff and facilities spread out across different countries but I already have his answer on that.

I didn't pick all Sony employees or year costs to make the estimative. I picked the studio, which only released one game in a 5 year period (and you can bet their external support have been with minimal crew, even more when those games were Indie... or do you think Indie games use 50 people to make?). Also gave you GoW3 declared cost (which had a much shorter cycle) and average AAA development budget. But we all know you had no idea about the costs when you decided to declare Labo costed similar to GoW because it does some things other games don't. Next we are going to see you saying a 3-wheeler car cost as much as a F1 car because both do things other cars don't.

You pick up the team that developed Labo, with the duration of the project and do similar math and it would at least makes more sense than "Pokemon marketing costed 50M so Labo probably also costed 50M to develop).