Budgets are a choice by the developer, but you're naïve in thinking it has nothing to do with pricing ever. Of course when your game development cost is $100 million for a mid-budget game all of the sudden the side effect of that is inevitably publishers, developers, etc. etc. start thinking "gee, should these games really be priced the same way they were in 1997 when the average budget was $2 million dollars for a mid/high tier game?". Devs these days aren't even "chasing" a budget anymore, those types of things are just industry standard now and what a lot of gamers expect. 

If people move to PC and mobile ... I mean yeah ... and? PC and mobile have zero physical games at this point, so I don't really see how that helps the physical game argument. Sony/MS are stagnating and declining, Nintendo not so much but I don't either of those things has anything to do with physical vs digital games. 

Games from the N64 and prior eras can go for a lot because game collecting wasn't a thing then and as such those items have become rare in some cases. I could have picked up multiple Virtual Boys on clearance at my local Blockbuster for $20 a pop, I remember thinking I should, but I opted not to. Who knew that would be worth several hundred dollars a unit many decades later. 

But modern games aren't really collectible in that same way because once you let collectors in they ruin the rarity factor because they hoarde and preserve everything they can get their hands on. Ergo those things are not really rare and not worth much. Same thing happened to the comic book industry in the 90s, none of those 90s comics are really worth much because so much collectors entered the market thinking the Death of Superman comic book would be worth $100,000 today. 

Saying the truth doesn't impact the market one way or another. Physical games are on the way out, it just is what it is. The economics just aren't in favor of it and the modern generation their NES is their parents iPhone, they don't care for or value physical media at all. It just is what it is. 

I personally prefer physical over digital if the price is the same, but if it's not I'll get whatever is cheaper. Honestly if digital existed in the era of the N64-Playstation, Sony never would have beat Nintendo IMO. If you could download large game files to cheap onboard storage, Sony's entire advantage over Nintendo is rendered completely moot. So in that sense I wish we had this decades ago, it would've meant a shit ton more games for my N64 at lower prices to boot. 

You might think that is the case, especially as companies bump into one another's shoulders for the same products, but streaming is bigger than ever and continues to grow rapidly revenue-wise.

To be honest, I buy a lot of physical and would like video games to remain what they were when I was a teenager like a lot of people here, but nothing is forever. The market trends are clear with a fast-growing winner and a fast-declining loser.

In 5-10 years, I wager we'll see similar discussions with people bemoaning a subscription or streaming-only future over their preference for buying games digitally. It is what it is, I suppose.

Why is 50 MB/s from disc "basicly useless"? The internet speed average of most countries every country is slower than that: 

f.e. USA = 287 MBit/s = 36 MB/s, Canada = 242 MBit/s = 30 MB/s, France = 300 MBit/s = 38 MB/s, Japan = 220 MBit/s = 28 MB/s, Germany = 99 MBit/s = 12 MB/s

Or do you buy SSDs where the console games are already preinstalled?

I'm saying for running an actual game, a disc drive in this day and age is essentially useless. 

Why would you want to run a game with 50MB/sec data transfer when the SSD runs at 1000x (!) the speed. At bare minimum it would render loading times entirely moot. 

So the days of the disc drive being used for actually running games are basically over. All they are now is basically a glorified way to dump data onto the SSD. Even compared to the UFS 3.1 storage in the Switch 2 and a lot of Android phones, that has speeds of about 1200MB/sec ... that absolutely demolishes a disc drive. 

For digital downloads you can also have pre-loading where the game is already loaded onto your system and ready to play right at midnight or whatever of release date, so even the utility of the disc being there so you don't have to wait to download a game is kinda murky these days. 

And tracking digital sales is a chore. -_-

Actually the budget has very little to do with game pricing... Up to a point.

Keep in mind that only until recently games were typically $60 USD... And that is with budget of $400-$500~ Million.
Why? Volume of sales.

It's easy to justify a $500~ million dollar budget if you are going to sell more than 15+ million copies at $60. - You will profit at-least $400~ million off that.
Remember profits have never been higher in the video game industry, profit records are being broken all the time, clearly Physical and $60 pricing isn't the issue.

Developers chose the budget, they do not HAVE to all be $500+ budgets which Baldurs Gate 3 has showcased in a spectacular fashion.

Yes developers are chasing budgets. How it works is they build the concept of a game, they then approach a publisher and put forward their proposal with rough budget estimates, the publisher then either green lights, sets conditions or declines it based on risk assessments and return on investment.

Publishers like EA, Activision (Now Microsoft) and Ubisoft have franchises like Battlefield, Call of Duty and Assassins Creed which have pretty reliable rolling game budgets for every year as they have pretty reliable sales track records to minimize risks and a failure on return on investments... And that is how they can justify their particular budgets.

But budgets don't need to be as high as they are and that's the reality.

Are gamers really going to notice or give a fuck if a games budget is $500 million or $100 million? Probably not.
Good games can happen regardless of budget.

People have already moved to PC and Mobile, they are the largest gaming platforms.

Difference with those platforms is they aren't locked, closed, ecosystems, there are ways to retain your games library when services shut down.


I would argue Nintendo has "declined" from it's peak with the DS+Wii console era... Where they had a combined sales of 154 million consoles with the DS and 101 million consoles for the Wii for a combined 255~ million consoles. - Switch is likely to come up 80-100 million consoles short of that number.
That's a collective decline... Sony declined since the PS2 with an uptick at their competitors expense with the PS4/PS5, Xbox since the Xbox 360.
The console market isn't growing... And higher hardware prices will ensure it doesn't going forth.

But it's also been a blessing for the consumers as Nintendo has been able to invest it's time and effort into one platform, one set of game releases.

Collecting has always been a thing.

Did you know the first thing ever sold on Ebay was a broken laser pointer? It was because someone was collecting broken laser pointers.

I have Xbox 360 games which hold some value. (Still sealed) 
Scarcity and demand is what drives up collector sales prices.

My New XL 3DS could sell for $800 AUD... And I bought it for $150 AUD brand new.

The worth of something is dictated by demand and the price someone is willing to pay for it.

That is a blatant lie.

Modern games *are* collectable.

Take for example the limited run of 3D Mario All Stars for the Switch. - Nintendo literally limited the release for that game.

Limited Run Games has built it's entire business model around collecting.

No one in the history of this thread has said that Physical isn't in decline.

The issue is, it doesn't have to be given the flick for stupid schemes like "Code in a Box" or "Game Key Cards" - Having a digital release inside a physical distribution system -is- anti consumer and stupid.

If you want a digital copy, buy a digital copy, but keep releasing Physical properly until the sales no longer exist.


And like others have alluded to in this thread... Nintendo's physical sales is still a huge % of their total software sales, ergo there is still demand for Physical when it's done right.

Price is irrelevant to me. I'll buy what I want.
And I want Physical.

We did have digital distribution decades ago even before the Nintendo 64.

Nintendo had it on the Super Nintendo with "Satellaview" where you could download games.

GTAV was 360/PS3 game. The Switch has 8 times the RAM of either of those consoles. The reason GTAV wasn't only Switch 1 is it couldn't fit on a 32GB card and the internal storage on the Switch was paltry. 

It's not as simple as number go up, therefore good. Investors and Analysts like Pachter like to see it that way but those same investors and analysts predicted that Switch would be lucky to hit 40 million.

Wii and DS sold a lot combined in part because you needed both systems to have a full Nintendo library. In part because the DS Lite was insanely cheap at $130, and multiple kids in the same household wanted one. In part because Pokémon games were actually Fire back then. In part because as a mostly 2D system, the library of the DS kept getting amazing releases daily. And finally, in part because the Wii was a fad and also insanely cheap at $250, with a free game included.

The top ten best-selling DS games sold roughly 172 million combined. And the top ten best selling Wii games sold roughly 217 million (not counting Wii Sports pack-in, but counting pack-ins for the other top 4). The top ten best-selling Switch games sold roughly 308 million combined. Unlike the Wii and DS games, Switch games in the top ten rarely went on sale or were packed in. Switch games are also sold for a full $60 unlike DS games selling at $40.

But what's most important here is that unlike the Wii, which burned customers the Switch will retain customers. Tons of people bought a Wii, used it for six months and then put it in the attic or bought a few pieces of shovelware for $15 a pop.

As for PS2, you can't compete with the GOAT and something that doubled as a DVD player.

As for Xbox, they are intentionally destroying their console sales. Lots of people back during the 360/PS3 era owned both. Now there's no need to own both and most people just have a PS5 for a non-Nintendo gaming console.

To sum it up, the console market hasn't shrunk at all. Pachter and company just don't know how to take anything into account outside of "number goes up therefore good" and "number goes down therefore bad".

GTAV however could fit on two DVD's with the Xbox 360, which is less than 16GB.

That was my argument.

Aka. Multiple devices/form factors, one library of games is a very lucrative idea if they can pull it off.
Think of the potential audience size here.

The entire handheld Market of the Switch (150+ million) and the entire fixed console market of the Xbox Series/Playstation 5. (150+ million)
That's the entire point of competing.

We don't know what the long term trend will end up being, Switch 2 isn't out yet.

You are missing the point.
I am talking about total addressable market sizes here.

In saying that, the OG Xbox had DVD support, HD games and far better visuals and performance than the PS2, yet sold less than a quarter.

But the total addressable market has been on a downward trajectory since the 7th console generation in terms of total addressable market size.

Xbox losing sales is a sale that Sony or Nintendo picks up.

No one cares about Pachter.

@Pemalite That's wrong !

We do care immensely about him ....

But moreso his silly predictions ;)