I cannot tell you the last game I actually purchased at 70 bones.  I always wait for a sell and its not like I cannot afford the game at that price, its just that I like to spend as little money on luxury items as possible.  Case in point, I love the Armor core series, I could have easily pulled the trigger on it when it released but wait until now at 40 bones on Amazon to get it.  Hell I still believe I can wait until it drop to 30.  If games move to a hundred, that means they will discount faster but their base discount will be 70 or something like that.  Its just a way for the industry to give you a perceived discount and better price all the while taking more advantage of the Whales and less patience consumers.

We are tracking well towards the capex and opex targets set out in the restructuring program announced in June 2023, as we approach the final stretch of the program, which is focused on both possible divestments, and consolidation.

As part of the restructuring program, Embracer still has a few larger structured divestment processes ongoing that could strengthen our balance sheet and further reduce capex. Processes are in mature stages. Certain companies might initiate restructuring before any divestment is announced. Our overruling principle is to always maximize shareholder value in any given situation. We are unlikely to reach the restructuring program target of below SEK 8 billion in net debt by March 31. Certain divestments could significantly reduce net debt post March 31, 2024. To be clear, our group leverage target of net debt to Adjusted EBIT of 1.0x on a 12-month forward looking basis remains unchanged.

Embracer Group publishes Interim Report Q3, October-December 2023: NET SALES INCREASED BY 4 % TO SEK 12,050 MILLION - Embracer Group

Sounds like Embracer is about to sell a few studios.

I've been doing it more often even though I don't play them right away.  It's because of how scarce the physical copy market is becoming.  I have found lately if I don't jump on them immediately the only copies left will be the foreign copies.  I know they still work but I can't stand the ugly rating system colors on them. And to get a copy that is North American can sometimes go up in price, not down.  I come across this problem more often with JRPGs.  

They actually release a good bit, if you look at their Wikipedia game lists their first publisher alone, THQ Nordic, has released several dozen games and ports since they opened in 2011. They have acquired quite a few other publishers since then including Koch Media/Plaion, Gearbox, Saber Interactive, and DECA Games. Across all divisions they have released over 100 games I believe.

The issue is most people don't realize what they release because so many of their studios are AA or smaller, alot of their games fly totally under people's Radar because they aren't AAA. Their actual AAA offerings have been pretty poor the last few years, Saints Row reboot flopped, Dead Island 2 was only a middling success, 4A haven't released anything since Metro Exodus in 2019, Aspyr's KOTOR remake with Sony and Disney disappointed both in the vertical slice demo and ended up cancelled, Gearbox haven't released anything AAA Embracer themselves can publish since being acquired (same with Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal).

Now they are going around cancelling games left and right, including one of the few noteworthy AAA games they had in development, the next Deus Ex by Eidos. They grew much too fast and never took the time to give the studios they already owned a chance to see if they could actually put out hit games. Then when those studios failed to deliver big hits and Embracer has billions of acquisition debt, now they are reeling from the effects and trying to sell off studios and close studios to get their debt paid off.

Here is a non JRPG example.  I already own it on PS4, but I was thinking about double dipping.  So sometimes if you snooze, you looze.  

Lmao.

I was actually thinking this last night, what if Nintendo moves the date of the Direct because of this, as Pentiment is rumoured to be in this Direct, Microsoft may want to comment on it first after the drama, but Nintendo moving their entire Direct over one game? Lmao.

Goddamnit, I want to know if the Spyro rumour has any merit to it.

Nintendo fans going to hate Xbox now and refuse to buy Pentiment RIP.

Or the insiders full of shit 👀

Edit - Grubb mentioned this on Tuesday though in his Podcast, hmm.