Good point.

If you take into account how much a movie costs to make, then to pay to watch, and that you get 2 maybe 3 hours out of it, and most people only watch it once, then comparing that to a cinematic game experience with 40,50,60hrs of playtime, even which is only played once by most people, is an absolute steal for $70.

I put like 200hrs into DS myself, and that was through Plus Extra at the time. The game wasn't new anymore, but in terms of value, I got way more out of it than PS did. DS isn't even that great of an example considering it was a new IP to begin with, and niche at that, and wasn't a massive seller compared to other AAA.

I think 100 million is a rough go for a lot of publishers, but they're willing to go to that range for certain titles. 

It's when you are getting into budget ranges of 200 million, 300 million when things are getting really dicey, even for Sony, they can afford it but it looks like moving into that budget range has come with serious consequences, basically sounds like the end of Playstation exclusivity for their software and large cost cutting measures with layoffs elsewhere.

Lets put this in perspective Spider-Man 2 at 300+ million is more than Spider-Man 1 + Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart's combined budgets. So basically they are spending as much on one game now as they would on previously two fairly large budget games just 4-5 years ago. 

If $300 million, $400 million, $500+ million becomes the standard for "high tier" games, the industry is headed for a lot of pain. 

100% too Starfield (400 million budget) is likely going to end up on PS5 and Switch 2 at some point. 

My point still stands. Let's say Rockstar charges 100US+ for price entry on GTA VI and additional costs for GTA online besides the online tax on consoles, what would be left for those consumers spend on other titles available, even those that maintain a regular price tag? Instead of buying GTA and other games, their purchase list will only consist on GTA, with the same amount of money 

The higher the budget, the more they charge for a game. Why not, assuming they think consumers will pay it. However, if they spend $400 mil and the game ends up like Starfield, then you've gotta bite the bullet and charge less than you would want to. Simple as.

If the consumer won't pay the higher price for the higher input cost game, assuming it's worthy, and you can't sell enough, then you know you've got to limit AAA game budgets to less than that.

GTA is a lot like COD. People playing those games are mostly only playing those games anyway, so they can charge as much as they want for them. Plus those games have little to no competition in their genre.

Should consoles ban GTA and COD? Limit playtime for those titles?

Making games is partially about catering to the consumer. If your game doesn't sell that well, even if you've made something great and unique, you've gotta accept it's seen as niche or you've gotta make something else that people will pay for and play.

I think what is actually going to happen

1.) A shift away from the standard single player/single pay title to GAAS business model where they will try to extract that extra money in a stealth ways and get player commitment for a couple of years instead of investing 6-8 years of development time + massive cost for a game that the player beats in one weekend and then never touches again. 

2.) Eventually they will probably trying bumping the standard price to $80, but hopefully not for a few years yet. 

3.) A lot of companies are just going to say "fuck this" and not even bother really even making games in that budget range. You're going to get fewer games that try to have high end graphics and production values and probably more of a proliferation of the "PS4 game on steroids" type thing. 

4.) PC and Nintendo platforms will benefit with a lot more multiplatform content that they haven't enjoyed in the past. XBox and Playstation platforms will basically have no exclusives. Even smartphones, I think developers are going to try to have more of their console content there too as tech improves on smartphone and tablet devices. 

I think Switch 2 owners will be playing games like Halo, Call of Duty, Forza, Madden NFL, Street Fighter VI, mainline Monster Hunter, Persona, mainline Resident Evil games that they did not get on the Switch 1 natively as an example. May take a little bit for some of those IPs, but eventually I think that's where that's headed. 

I don't disagree, but I think what they'll end up with is a handful of GAAS that perform on somewhat the same level as GTAV, and many other games and devs will suffer greatly. Big AAA will have to be $80, $90, or even $100 to make them worthwhile in comparison to the quality we got last gen. I see everything between AAA and GAAS suffering quite a lot.

I don't necessarily see cross platform as a bad thing. It's mostly a good thing, and shouldn't hurt companies like PS much as long as their games are exclusive to the PS platform as a whole for a while before going to another platform.

Yeah the shift to GAAS is going to be a problem because they're going to become a time/money suck for gamers which will leave a lot of "regular games" sitting on the sidelines in the cold. 

I think Nintendo is the only company of the big 3 that has a healthy and sustainable business model
console space. Hardware is sold with healthy margins rather than at cost, development costs are lower than their competitors, and they consistently make games that are high quality and what their fanbase is asking for.

If Sony wants continued growth in profit margins and number of users playing their games, they either have to radically alter their console business model or expand out of console, and it seems like they are doing the latter option with their PC push.

As for Microsoft, they don’t really seem to care about console anymore. They have their console player base of about 50 million people, they know it’s not going to grow anymore unless they were to make radical reductions in profitability for extended periods of time that their shareholders have no appetite for, and what’s left of Xbox’s fanbase probably isn’t leaving (honestly, if you are an Xbox owner and haven’t already switched to PlayStation, you probably never will at this point.)

I think this will just be the status quo for the console market for the next 15 or so years. The total assessable console market combining all 3 manufacturers is about 300 million devices globally and it’s been that way for 25 years, it’s not going to grow anymore. That doesn’t mean it’s going to die, but for companies that are looking for robust growth it will not be a priority market either

My thought is that most likely TotK had a bigger budget than Mario Wonder (we dont know Mario Wonder's budget at the moment, but they were given "ample budget"). When asked about if they will make all games $70 they stated “No. We determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis”. Based on this, we can assume that $70 will not become the standard for Nintendo. They want their company to be the entrance into games, so keeping it low (if $60 can be considered low) will give them the advantage over Microsoft and Sony with $70 AAA.