Shiken said:
Now you see, THAT is a legitimate reason. I do not agree that budget dictates price. It is all about content, and if I enjoy the game for 100 hours, 60 dollars is not a problem.
The Order 1886 had a big budget due to all of the visual tech and engine building, so it was priced at 60 dollars. Many people felt that a 6 to 8 hour game at 60 dollars was ridiculous, so now I have to ask, which is it? Pretty visuals or content provided? Battlefront 2 was lacking in content for only paying the base 60 dollars, but it was heavy budget and had great visuals so it was ok right? Oh wait...no it was not.
The bolded at the end of your post, that is all you need to say. There is no need to complain about the price despite giving you tons of enjoyable gameplay that would be well worth the 60 dollars. If you feel you might not enjoy that content however, well no one can argue that. Only you can make that choice. |
I think you misunderstood what I was saying, obviously that part you highlight is my personal view. The bit about game budget and final price wasn't intended to be a hard rule on what people should pay for a game.
Game dev costs do have to factor into a final RRP. To oversimplify, if one game needs to sell at $60, in order to profit, then one with half the dev costs only needs to be priced at $30, yes that is incredibly simplified but you get what I mean right? A company pricing their product has to factor in costs at the very least. This doesn't mean I think a publisher needs to follow such a rule, it's very smart business sense to sell your game at $60 even if you could comfortably sell it at $30, if you know people will still buy it at the higher price then you make more money.
But some people might still think the publisher is going too far by inflating the price they "have to" charge, in this case even Square Enix sells other very good smaller budget JRPGs at lower prices like I am Setsuna. I'm not saying this is my argument for why they should have a lower RRP for Octopath (I don't have detailed info on their associated costs etc), I'm saying that it's a way of thinking I can understand, someone might think Square could (or should) price it lower and not suffer, yet they choose a higher price just for more money because they know this particular game is hyped up and guaranteed good sales regardless of price. So this is my interpretation of what someone might mean when they say we shouldn't have to pay AAA prices for an AA game (or whatever terminology they use, hi fidelity vs low fidelity etc) and I don't think it's unreasonable. So in this case not buying at $60 would be in protest of pricing strategies, yet could still be interpreted as "the graphics are shit, I'm not paying full price for that" (though since even that is personal taste there isn't anything wrong either).
The Secret of Mana remake was priced too high in a lot of people's opinions, I'm guessing both due to those who are looking for more gameplay hours and those that consider it not technically impressive enough to justify a higher price along with those who just think its an insulting travesty. I loved that game though and only see the remake as superior so I didn't feel cheated to pay up, but I can see why others would. Square were clearly trying to milk the game's reputation and could have comfortably priced it lower, I feel like Square have made a similar decision with Octopath Traveler, but I don't argue they shouldn't do that since they are a business that needs to make money.
Again, my personal criteria is just whether I think I will enjoy a game enough to spend top dollar to play it now vs wait for it to drop in price and play it later or not at all. That is also what I think games reviews should be considering, e.g. The Order 1886 should never have received lower scores due to a price point which would actually drop pretty quickly, the price should have been a point to note instead of detracting from the quality of the game. But this is a different topic so I'll shut up about my gripes with games journalism.
As a side note, I'm going to try the latest demo for Octopath since this topic got me thinking about it, the first demo didn't impress me though.
Last edited by Landale_Star - on 22 July 2018
