They're also releasing games without proper game manuals just 1 black and white sheet of paper with controls on it. I wonder how much theyre saving on that.

Like Jim Sterling put it: They don't want to make some money, they want to make all the money. And if they can't make all the money, they don't care about it at all.

DLC, Microtransactions and Lootboxes are used to make more money and to flatten the income curve so the investors don't see the business as risky. And it works, sadly not just with kids, but I know a couple of persons in their thirties who buy these things on a regular basis

PC games in the nineties came in big cardboard boxes crammed with stuff. These days you get those things maybe in a collector's edition, but at the time, that was the "standard" version of the games. Often the manual was very big and detailed not just the controls in detail, but also the backstory, some hints and so on. Some of the biggest manuals had up to and over 200 pages (mostly in RPG, detailing all the spells, equipment and the whole character creation always takes a lot of pages). Such a manual alone would nowadays probably cost around 2-5$ depending on thickness and paper quality

The video game market is worth something like $100 Billion smacko's.
Publishers are constantly posting ever-increasing profits.

And they are whinging games are to expensive to make?

Maybe their business model and/or product is bad or they have inadequate marketing?

Some game manuals were the equivalent of a phone book.

Blizzard would often include lots of stuff in the box, note pad, cards, discs in a jewel case (Not a paper sleeve), manual and sometimes even demo disks.

Been saying it for years games can easily cost 40 bucks at retail..I have a friend who is an AAA dev to back it up. Also a reminder. Nintendo's most ambitious and expensive game they ever made only needed to sell 2 million to profit and that game is in the running for the GOTY awards. Zelda BOTW. Publishers spend too much and then just found a flimsy excuse for bad DLC practices.

I've never bought the rhetoric that publishers need to add microtransactions and other monetization features into video games to counter the high costs of making video games. If they are unable to make a profit without such practices that only tells me that the company is poor at managing their game development and marketing costs.

It also sickens me how things like lootboxes are becoming increasingly predatory as time goes on. The most recent example are the lootboxes in CoD:WWII, where they actually drop down from the sky in front of other players who can then watch and see the items you get from opening them. There's even an achievement in the game for watching other players open 3 lootboxes. It's just a shameless marketing strategy to get people buying them when they see other players get cool items.

Sadly Nintendo isn't any better in this. They basically do the same thing but the other way around. Instead of asking for more money they just ask for the same amount of money like everybody else and instead shrink the budget and make the consumer pay indirectly for it. If a normal AAA game should only cost $40 measured on its budget a Nintendo game should only cost $20.

Nintendo games and consoles are missing so many features and are using such low quality assets, it's an absolute joke to demand $60 for it.

Okay, I agreed with your first statement in this thread, but this is just bullshit.

From what I've heard, the cost of making games didn't increase much from Gen 7.

Well, you've convinced me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter!