Switch 2 Game Prices. Will it change how you purchase games?

[Shadow1980]

Shaunodon said:

The most insidious part people leave out in this discussion, is that not lowering the retail price is used by companies as an excuse to drive truly anti-consumer practices like microtransaction hell, on-disc DLC, early access periods which will only get longer and more expensive, releasing games broken and having to patch it several times over years (basically another form of early access)...

Production budgets have skyrocketed in the last few generations. They have to recoup that money somehow. If they're not making it back up front how do you think they're gonna try and get it.

Nintendo have kept themselves somewhat immune to more extreme issues, but even their production budgets will be pushing it by now. Breath of the Wild with the time it took to develop and the scale of it's world, was not cheap to make just because it was made for toasters.

Being the first to increase base prices to a new level means Nintendo doesn't want to follow those shady tactics, but people want to paint them the villain of all things.

I understand the impulse to lash out at corporations doing anything that takes any extra money out of their pocket. Corporations are also easy targets for good reason, because they actually really do scummy things for the sake of profit. But video games are technically cheaper than they've ever been in terms of upfront costs, despite a market that's been stagnant since Gen 6, software tie ratios having not grown in that time, and development budgets skyrocketing.

I would have gladly paid $80 for games over these past few years if it meant that I could just unlock stuff in game instead of being nickel-and-dimed through microtransactions and battle passes.

And you know that meme going around that says "I want shorter games with worse graphics and I'm not kidding"? Well, I agree with the first half, and I'm sure a lot of others might want more games that don't take 60 hours to complete. But I really doubt most people would have been fine with graphics having stagnated for the past 20 years or so. The console cycle is dictated by sales. Every system reaches a peak and then declines as the number of people who have the desire and money to buy that system starts to trend towards zero. A new system comes out to replace the old one and restart the cycle. Those new systems are more powerful because technology advanced over the previous few years. If we kept getting consoles with the exact same power levels as a Gen 6 system over and over, with each system not being forwards compatible with its identical successor. The only other alternative is to just stop making new consoles period and just focus on software forever, only making new systems to replace ones that wear out. The former possibility is downright insulting, and the latter is something that I think most people probably really want to happen regardless of what they might say.

But as long as we keep getting more powerful hardware and gamers keep demanding ever more grand and ambitious experiences and treat "short" and "linear" like dirty words, development costs will continue to go up, and the industry will find some way of generating more revenue to make up for increased expenditures.