We're all talking about dev costs rising, but here I am asking when marketing costs are going to be pulled back. Looking back on some games, their marketing budgets are almost as high as marketing the games themselves and that should honestly never be the case, like at all.

I mean look at Fallout 76, that game came out so damn half baked and loaded with MT's, and yet it's marketing, flying out all those "yes man" youtubers to their events, it wasn't cheap at all, and all that money and time could have gone straight into giving that game more polish.

Video game marketing honestly needs to be tapered back so hard, because we're now in an age where you can grab an intern with ad and visual knowledge on how to create a few video and image based ads, that said intern can then upload to youtube and have websites plaster those ads all over. You don't need to spend untold millions on presser events.

We've also got game engines these days that make scanning objects and people into games that much easier than the old days, and that shouldn't magically increase the costs, that should lessen them, because we've got the tech to do what artists would spend many months animating, which actually did cost a ton back then, but shouldn't now.

Publishers can charge whatever MSRP they want. We are the consumer, we are in charge of the cost to buy something. I wouldn’t pay $40 for that trash Avengers game, let alone the $60 they are asking. $20? Maybe. Considering the game is designed as if it is a free to play mobile game, maybe they should have charged less. But they know people will pay. I’m amazed sometimes at how many people online think we should just pay whatever publishers want, no questions asked, and just be honored to be able to support developers.

I can’t think of any announced next gen game I would pay $70 for. They don’t exist. I feed bad for anyone buying the digital consoles, they’ll be locked into higher prices for awhile.

In a perfect world they absolutely should rise. But in a perfect world we'd also actually have complete games that are not full of micro transactions, carved out content and gambling. The games that actually should cost more than $60 are not getting made anymore.

Games should cost whatever the market says they should cost. If some pubs raise prices to $70, just skip those games until they're cheaper. If most people take this approach, games will all be back to $60 in short order. But, if the games sell well at $70, the other publishers will raise their prices to $70 as well. That's how markets work.

Yep, I'd hope that they could figure out the best price points but you can't trust them to do that. It looks like Sony are having some variance in their pricing structure. I can see games like GOW and Horizon, ND games etc being $70. But smaller games from their studios like sackboy being $60 and miles morales being $50 and Demon souls remake being $70.

I agree. Its total bullshit. Triple A games are making profits that exceed blockbuster movies. All this price increase is going to do is contribute to the death of console gaming.

Any Game can be bought digitally now, that surly has a huge impact on the cost of delivering video games to customers 

COD should be F2P or at the very least $30. You can't monetise your game like a f2p game and then expect people to pay $60 just so they could have the privilege of buying a battle pass and cod points for all their extra bs throughout the year. Same with sports games.

I personally see the sports game as the most appalling. These are games that are not new developments each year, but upgrades on engine, physics and roster still relying on the work of previous years, but then sell it at full price for the *basic* version (you still can pay more for gold or ultimate or whatever) *and* microtransactions on top. This is just greed. no one can tell me the development cost on these break the bank. They just get away with all that stuff, therefore they do it.

They are increasing prices because they can. We lost

They don't need to. People who believes in inflation excuses are fools. Software is a highly scalable product, the unit cost is negligible, development costs are mostly fixed, meaning once you get the break-even pretty much everything you sell are profits.

In software sales a small 10% increase in revenue will reflect almost fully in profits, specially if the sales are digital. And guess what, software sales are only increasing and digital sales getting even higher shares

And AAA developers are always reaching their break-even, period. Indeed development costs are increasing only because those developers can pay them

Big budgets are mostly determined based on the profits from other games anyway, unless you are a indie and indies are not the ones who are increasing prices