Reality, Console Industry has become Stagnated.

[Soundwave]

Wman1996 said:

Soundwave said:

Publisher's honestly are not lying. It's easy to villify them, but lets look at the reality of the situation.

Everyone will acknowledge, even players, that game development costs are way higher as the years have gone on.

This is not like Frito Lay trying to justify doubling the cost of potato chips post COVID, bullshit that those cost double to make.

So you have way higher development cost, which no one will really deny ... do you have sales that are way higher? Not really, it's the same number of people buying the same number of consoles every generation, that number is not increasing.

The other thing most gamers are clueless about is they don't even understand how games are financed. Understand that a lot of publishers were borrowing money for dirt cheap interest rates (free money) basically in the past. Now that interest rates are much higher it means if you take out a $100 million dollars to pay for development of a 5+ year project ... it's way more expensive with interest rates being much higher. No more "free money" for anyone.

In all honestly, the Capcom president said this and it's true, and I know people are going to not want to hear it, but game prices need to go up. They should be about $80, and even that honestly is pretty low. That really only covers some of the inflation cost it doesn't really get into development costs being way higher. You can't increase the production cost of anything, whether it's a McDonalds cheeseburger or Nike shoes by multiple times or whatever and sit there and say "well I expect to never pay more than the standardized price I was paying 10+ years ago". That's just not realistic. When you go to see a movie at a theater are you paying the same ticket price you were in the year 2002? I don't think so. 

Something has to give here. Layoffs are just a sign of a bigger problem the industry has. 

Digital sales make up the bulk of the industry, no shipping or retail costs. I know games are expensive regardless, but digital is a huge advantage for profit and revenue. 

I'm only down with more AAA games at $80 USD if some of the $60 and $70 games go down. There are some games past, present, and future that make sense to charge $80 for. They are some that don't even make sense to charge $60 or $70 for. 

Yeah digital has helped but it's not a be all end all. 

Lets just do some basic math. 

In 1997, the average Playstation game cost $50. That would be with inflation like $96 today. 

Lets remove the cost of retail and assume all games are digital (they're not, but lets just assume that) bring that down by $20 removing the retail cost, that's still $76 for a game just on inflation costs alone. 

Now factor in massively increased development cost, according to the Tekken producer, games cost 10x+ more today ... in all honesty even $80-$90 per game would be low for what publisher's are putting into for a lot of these games. 

$80/game barely would cover the cost of inflation alone. 

And the insane thing on that on top of all that, is you have a vocal group of people saying they want "more, more, more!", so how is the industry supposed to go from where it is today to a place where development budgets are even 2x, 3x, 4x  more what they are today say by the time the PS5 is winding down and the PS6 is launching (that's only about 4 years away). 

Does anyone think that is feasible? It's easy to paint publishers as the bad people here, but if there was no argument for example that the cost of beef had risen even 5x ... I'm pretty sure most people would agree "well hamburger prices have to go up". 

Last edited by Soundwave - on 29 February 2024