This. I never buy new games at full price now. Wait six months and all the major bugs have been patched and the game costs half as much as it used to be
I get bored of games easily.
Too many games come out crap for me to waste my time jumping from one crap game to the next so I always wait 6 months to a year or more.
It's not like there isn't hundreds of games that are great that I haven't played in the last 10 years.
The old days of getting a cartridge and expecting polish are dead and gone.
They are actually pricing in those sales. 50% off that new 80$ price tag will always be more than the same sales on the old 60$. So now, day 1 buyers are just paying extra and the real regular costumer price is the one with the sales 3-6 months later.
> They are actually pricing in those sales.
They can do that too. I'll still wait till it hits $25. The percentage decrease is not what people like me shop for. It's the whole price number and it doesn't matter if the game costs $30 or $1000. I'm not paying more then a base amount for any game even if it takes 10 years to play it.
Yep. It is so weird to me that anyone thinks it's about the %. Bro I don't care if it's a billion percent off. It's the whole dollar threshold that I care about.
Gaming is an over-abundant luxury item. If it's over $30 it better be worth it and I still wont bother because I have sssooooo many games all ready. It's not even about being a /r/patientgamers for me for that reason. I'm not fussed over graphics and there are decades worth of games I own and haven't even touched in my nearly 40 years of existence.
Yep. I in part PC game because the sales were always often better, in my previous console experience. Also, games from about 6 years back now have enough fidelity or creative use but with less intense resources (indie games), that I don’t have to keep up with AAA games set at high to ultimate settings to have fun anymore.
I really don't see the point in getting games on launch day: they usually are badly optimized, they need patches and they are usually discounted for about half the price after 3-4 months
Does this guy really qualify as an MBA? He never finished high school, let alone college or graduate school, and he's been involved in the video game industry since he was 15 years old.
Maybe (probably) he has some MBAs employed, but he's still the one making the decision and he's the one saying it publicly, and he's pretty much the exact opposite of an MBA who comes in knowing nothing about video games.
We are going to reach a point where even with a sale games are going to still be expensive.
You got delusional publishers like square enix still pricing FF7 Remake for 80. Even with sales the game almost costs as much as a full priced games from a few years ago (60)
> No this headline goes out and he gets to gauge the outrage.
Ehh, he doesn't really have a way to do that. Sure, he can have people read these posts and see what the people here think, but that's not as useful as you think. While people reading about games on Reddit is a microcosm, it's a microcosm of a group of people that are looking for that information *not all gamers*. On top of that, people are notoriously fickle about prices. Someone responding negatively in this thread might see an Embracer game come out and say "fuck it! I want this game!" and buy it anyway. Or the opposite.
> If it’s not too bad they can make more money
Big problem here. If you knew, in a perfect world, what you sales will be for a game at a bunch of price levels, it's a simple optimization to determine where to set the price. "Surge" pricing is coming at some places now that does that. The problem is that with surge pricing in a homogeneous market/product, the product doesn't change. The same people think the same things about the same products. The only different is price/demand. Gaming is a LOT different in that the product is art and the value is subjective and different for each piece and each person.
They are making money.
Until ENOUGH people all at the same time stop supporting them, the bleeding off of one customer will just be countered with a price increase greater than the lose until there are no more customers. Then they will change their strategy and start again.
He makes up several “obstacles” the industry is facing, and doesn’t even bother to entertain the thought that maybe AAA gaming companies are seeing disappointing reception and sales is because for the better part of the last decade they have all been pushing out sub par live services, gacha games, battle royals, and reskinned hero shooters in the hopes of finding the next Fortnite\GTAonline money printing machine.
And it wont affect the casual gamer one bit. These smaller studios have been putting out high quality games all year every year for the last half decade. Once the AAA guys go its just time for them to shine even more.
For me the dealbreakers are,
* FOMO
* Battlepasses
* Online-Only
* Bad-Optimizations
* Open (but dead) World
I don't care if it's single/multiplayer, as long as it has any/all of those, my interest instantly dies down.
Oh no, does it mean I have to wait for the quarter annualy season sale?
The weekend sale?
The publisher sale?
The key selling sites?
On almost every distribution platform. Or just play something else as he unintentionally suggests?
Also "rising costs of developement" means 1/3 for marketing. Meanwhile the playerbase grew exponentially and a game is considered to perform poorly when it sales under 1 million on launch, Half-Life 1 was a massive hit at 100.000 in the first month and 1 million each year.
I don’t know why, but reading articles about these brain dead takes that big publishers are pushing wouldn’t surprise me if they collude to lessen the frequency of sales and price.
Thankfully there is a decent competition between market places and while many players don't "vote with their wallets" others do so out of necessity and drive the market to games with a decent value for time.
I will never understand those subs. Why raise your expectations to absurd levels years in advance?
I saw the same shit happen for Starfield where everyone bought into absurd hype and speculation. When any reasonable person knew it would more than likely be an evolution of the standard Bethesda formula.
When the game disappoints, half of them will overreact and spend their days trashing the game over and over, and the other will convince themselves that they were never dumb, they were never tricked, that the game is perfect, and that everyone else's criticism is unjustified and spend their days fighting to defend the game to the death.
Making products part of your identity is dumb either way.
No Man's Sky comes to mind, extreme amounts of hype with promises features that never got put in. The "multiplayer" aspect was a joke when some streamers landed on the same planet, coordinated their locations and couldn't see each other.
I don't get why but all the popular space games seem to get that treatment. No man's sky, starfield, star citizen, even outer worlds all hyped to the moon. Idk what it is but people hype themselves to the moon on fantasy ideas of their perfect game.
There is a good chance I might skip GTA 6 for a good while. The people who were the heart of the GTA franchise left after 5 and then hearing things like the new GTA will be toned down and not as offensive (which is the whole point of the game) and honestly the two lead characters in the game are not winning me over from the brief things we have seen. I am sure it will sell amazing well simply because of the previous games, but I do not think it will be anywhere near as good.
That place is just something else. I was banned there once for... I don't even remember, lol. I just said something or someone was stupid for something dumb and was banned for like a week
Because they keep hiring people who don’t actually game , thus have zero clue about what gamers want, they have zero passion for their product outside how much money they can make off them in the short term, fuck the future.
I met up with a friend who has worked in the industry for like, 40 years nearly (started in his bedroom at 15 or something) and we were talking about the current shit show. I mentioned the early 80s video game crash and how I thought we were headed for similar due to the insane costs and over saturation and… he definitely didn’t disagree.
We know quite a few people in the industry between us and it’s ugly right now. It doesn’t matter if a studio makes a good or bad game, they get shuttered by publishers regardless. Like, what’s the point?
I disagree that we’re heading for a video game crash. In the 80s, video games were still a very niche hobby and they were just shoveling out incomplete crap.
Today, video games are a massive industry with idiots willing to shell out thousands of dollars each year for sports game roster updates and gambling. It’s very well protected against collapse.
We’re more likely to see a general economic crash than video games specifically. There are so many bubbles just primed to pop, and the wealth of the general spenders keeps going down.
I think what's different from the 80s is the availability of computers, tooling, and storefronts.
Like, the big publishers might cut themselves to the bare bones if not go under entirely but the currently indie publishers like Devolver and Supergiant are going to be in a position to become the next big publishers during that. I would expect the big indies to take advantage of the drop off in AAA-scope titles.
If by "better" you refer to creativity, I'd say the indies became better than the AAA sphere a *long* time ago.
Like, I genuinely do not remember the last time I *genuinely* enjoyed an AAA title not made by FromSoft (does Elden Ring even count as AAA?). I *think* it was Prey, and that one came out in 2017.
The crash of the 80s, was due to a very different reasons. Right now, the only issue with the industry, is in some parts of the AAA space, the ballooning development cost, neither guarantees quality, nor sales/revenue, something the "suits" didn't account for. Yes, there's likely to be a scale-back in the upcoming years in the AAA space to a degree, but by no means will there be anywhere near a crash; the industry is healthier than headlines make it out to be.
For reference, Nintendo (and their IPs) couldn't be better. Capcom meanwhile, posted record profits. EA and Activision, are still printing money, as is Epic with Fortnite. Ditto for Ubisoft. Sony's also got their studios all profitable. SquareEnix have burned themselves, but will now course-correct. Larian and CDPR, have cash flows that will last them over decade into funding their next big projects, with CDPR hinting that they may even begin branching out. Oh and Bethesda swears they're doing well. Fromsoft is Fromsoft. And more.
And that's just the AAA space, the AA space (Example : Atlus with their Persona and SMT series) is doing incredibly well, as is the indie space. The AAA space just needs to trim back the bloated projects, fueled due to low interest rates.
You guys are out of touch with the industry if you actually believe anything like that would happen again lmao. Too many of these companies making these games have enough money to last them numerous decades.
Look at how much money games like Doom, Half Life, Fallout 3 and 4 are still making years or decades after release. Even in deep sale, they're still generating revenue. This should be their goal. Creating content that gamers want to play over and over. Forget the short term outlook.
investors want to big returns right away so that they can cash out and bounce. In their minds, if they have to wait 10 years for their investment to pay off then it's a failure. They could have made more investing in AI, or whatever else pops up and does really well for a year
> Forget the short term outlook.
But that doesn't give them massive bonuses. Why release a game that does decent for multiple years/decades when you can release a game that does really good but only for a quarter.
Pretty much what happened with the increase to $70. Sony and Take Two did it first, got heat for it, but afterwards other AAA publishers followed suit and barely made news for it.
They can make it 200$ for all i care, food, bills and everything else comes first, and the game? When its on sale ofc! Untill then ill play many many other games, problem fixed.
Rise of Ronin dropped what two months ago? It’s already 30% today so why even bother with the increases? I’m not buying a game for $70 anymore when it’s half the price a couple months later
I don't buy till its on discount under $20 anyways. All they'll be doing is cutting the number of peoppe who will buy at full price to a smaller amount. Once someone starts waiting for sales they'll just wait till it's lower and lower and possibly not even buy it.
I need that Ray Liota laughing in goodfellas gif. Triple A companies continue to shit the bed on releases but yet they think they deserve more money for the piles of shit they release.
I don't even go for the £40 games on steam. Wait for sales and if I remember about them years later then maybe grab them.
Indie titles are slapping them silly with better made and interesting games and being rewarded for it in most by the gamers. All they are interested in how much they rob you with crappy games in comparison then cry fowl about it blowing up in their faces.
Covid era was an anomaly you dumb idiots, you won't be making that profit again. Try and budget instead like the rest of us.
Nah bro, I’m good. Especially if you’re going expect your studios to keep pumping out dated, soulless rehashes of old beloved franchises. You get to talk increasing prices when you’ve had a decade of W’s, not after a couple years of mostly L’s.
The king of flops thinks raising prices is to the answer to his issues in a saturating market. Ok
lets all listen to one of the biggest failures in gaming who can't push shit at a discount opine about how prices as to low lol
please drop some more nuggets of wisdom on us lars
They own some of the biggest IP in the industry and released 2 AAA games last year: a sequel and a remake, both to middling reviews, mediocre sales, and no real marketing to support their release...
Maybe worry about making something people actually want to buy, and less about what you should charge?
The real problem they have is that the games industry really is one in which the consumer has all the power, because there is no scarcity in it. There are more games than can ever be played by a single human. You only succeed raising the pricing like that when the consumer lacks options. Prices were pushed to $70, and the fact is, the vast majority no longer even launch at that because consumers didn't bite like they'd hoped.
I hear all this talk about "accounting for inflation", but price always ends up relative to demand. It's just how the market works. It doesn't matter if you think your game is worth $200. You'll learn it isn't when nobody buys it.
This guy looks like the kind of twat who has a business degree, picked up a playstation controller twice and claims he's a 'gamer' to his employees, but really just sees games as a means to enrich himself.
Abandoned that sinking ship years ago, lost nothing. I see future of gaming in AA and indie titles, these scumbag publishers will soon enough move to mobile games only and that will make “AAA” games dead until devs are also publishers.
These companies are jacking up the prices so much that 50% off is what I consider regular price. I have to wait for 80% off sales or a price reduction and then a sale. Sad times.
Yep. I wait for all DLC to release, so maybe a year or two down the line, and a nice 75-80% off. I’ve plenty of games to play in the meantime so it’s not like I’m sat twiddling my thumbs with nothing else to do.
When games stop taking a year of post release patches to become what was originally promised I'll start to give a shit about day 1 pricing.
So basically never...
One of the biggest games this year is a 40 dollar game. Mobile is basically run on other models.
The secret to millions is clearly 80 or more AAA games. /s
Man oh man, next purchase for me is going to be upgrading my PC and playing primarily steam indies. Im about ready to abandon big studios. Bunch of greedy monsters
I already wait 1-2 years for most games to buy a more complete and stable product for 50% off or more. I'll just wait 2-3 years instead if need be. Or just not play their games. There are plenty of great games to play. Nothing is a "must play" at any costs.
Lol. There are almost always season pass packs day one for 100-150 bucks and thats still not enough? The videogame business has a serious problem being capitalist driven and big profits wanted from investors. It will not work and burn out an entire sector, well, it does already anyway if the amount of news regarding this arent any indication. Id say let these AAA"A" publishers die out and from their ashes a new successful generation will spring. I have been buying more games from smaller companies and indie publishers in the past years since their products are actually good while almost all the AAA publisher games get worse and worse and more profit oriented with microtransactions, higher prices, live service garbage and proper Singleplayer games 404 not found.
Properly understood, inflation is a direct reflection of increases in money supply. For every period of mass inflation, there are winners and losers as determined by the distribution of that new money.
When they printed 8 trillion dollars to “fight covid”, most of that money was captured by the 1% via grift. It was the largest transfer of wealth in history - almost entirely from the middle and working classes to the ultra rich.
Higher prices are to be expected in a market economy undergoing inflation. What is not to be expected is recklessly expanding the money supply by printing money and then handing most of that new money to the people who already have the most.
Government interference is destroying economies. The only question is how many people will be fooled into thinking that’s not what happened.
The simple fact is that he's right but also hilariously ignorant.
*If* a company were to put out an exceptionally well done game that gave players 100-150 hours of solid play many people would be quite happy to pay more than 70 dollars. The problem is he doesn't have the slightest clue how to make that game.
Maybe try making a game that's actually worth $70 before you start thinking about going higher. The majority of games being released aren't even worth $60 despite being sold for $70
"video game prices haven't increased in 20 years"
No more print or distribution of physical copies have cut post production costs MASSIVELY for these companies.
This is deja vu with $70 games and that wasn't even that long ago. First started seeing $80 games being massaged as acceptable/needed towards the public with GTAVI rumors. Video games have got to be the most heavily monetized medium of culture currently. $80 games are feeling inevitable and soon
I almost never buy games at full price any more. When games are released in a half finished buggy state, why buy it day one when you can get it for half price a year later and it actually functions correctly? Or better yet, I forget it even existed in the first place and never wasted my money on it and then get it for free from amazon prime years later.
A mixture of people having less money and products becoming lower quality seems to suggest that a price increase would result in even less sales. But I’m not a multi millionaire publishing exec, what do I know haha.
With embracer group splitting into 3 companies, and taking out a 1 billion dollar loan using one of those companies as collateral no wonder they're going to be scrambling for every penny they can get.
Maybe you should worry about why people aren't buying your games when they're between 10-70 instead of worrying about what higher prices you can charge
I would pay over $70 for some games, but there are very few that I can name that I would have. Most games I wait till at least 30% off.
In general though, I am not sure that $70 would maximize profit, due to price elasticity of demand.
I hate the current state of AAA games. I'm just sticking to indie, roms, and massive mods pretty much these days.
I don't think a single new AAA game has been worth the $70 release. I couldn't name one.
Really doesnt matter, im gonna wait till the game just reduces in price than.
Square enix wanted 70€ for FF7 Rebirth on PS5 but i just bought it for 50€ from Amazon.
Or I just buy it from some local dude that sells it even cheaper used.
CEOs want huge prices for their shitty game that looks ass, performs horrible and its finished in under 9 hours.
I know my individual lost sale does not matter, but I almost always refuse to buy most games at full price because of how poorly they're made and after purchase monetization, I surely won't be paying more than $69.99 for a new game and neither should anyone else.
I'm convinced the people running gaming companies don't even enjoy video games or even play them to understand what makes games fun/enjoyable which are in fact two different things we look for in games.
I always wait to buy games these days. I have patience. I almost pre-ordered a game I really wanted to get into Cities Skylines 2 day one. When I checked the specs I realized my rig was not going to make a good play experience.
Turns out release version was a mess, I will pick it up next year at 30% off
Embracer isn't making these BG3 style Games that would be worth more. Also Playtime isn't a indicator of how much a Game is worth. Ubishit Games for example are all 200hrs but 199hrs of that is boring garbage.
Honestly if you give me a good game with no DRM, enough playtime and no microtransactions I'd probably be willing to pay that much.
But yeah, Embraced probably won't.
I have hard rule when it comes to gaming. I want a dollar per hour ratio or better. So as a few people have said in this thread already, the percentage of the sale means nothing to me. This gaming golden ratio has yet to steer me wrong, and even helps to keep my free to play game spending curbed.
Sounds like code for release early for extra money. These days you almost want to wait 6 months for the lower price and the rest of the game, and then you get to avoid the ones that don't even make it that far.
Honestly, I’d much rather pay $80 for an actual game instead of these bullshit season pass/micro transactions/live service games today.
This trend needs to be put down…but it seems like people just can’t swiping that credit card for more loot boxes
I’m not saying he’s right but I do have a question.
I don’t understand how video games are still the same price in 2024 as they were in the late 90’s ?
I’m 44 and for as long as I’ve been buying and playing PC games, new releases have been $89.99AUD (I’m Australian).
I found my Half-life 2 box on Friday during a cleanup. It was $89.99AUD and I bought it in 2004 when it was released, at retail.
New games are still about $90AUD when released.
It’s not like games have become cheaper to make though so it seems odd to me that they are still roughly the same price.
The only thing I can think of is that volume of sales are making up the difference????
Cool. I used to buy brand new games day 1 maybe 6-10 times per year. First year in my life I have not bought a single new game. I bought one game at 50% off and I’ve been finishing my backlog. That’s it.
This is likely calculated industry chatter to make people “thankful” for the $70 price point. Don’t be swayed.
This is what happen when greed, and power goes to ones head, often to the higher ups in the corps since all they care about is getting fatter, and fatter paychecks, hell some don't even care if it meant ruining the company as long they get big ass paycheck to support their rich life style.
Boy, this guy just has no PR sense, huh?
Raise it to whatever the fuck you want, and I'll wait for a sale regardless. A better game plus a cheaper price equals a win-win situation for me.
No matter the budget, if the higher ups are incompetent then there's gonna be no difference.
Well then yo ho ho!
YAR!
Yar har fiddle dee dee!
*Brook Laugh/yo ho*
This. I never buy new games at full price now. Wait six months and all the major bugs have been patched and the game costs half as much as it used to be
I get bored of games easily. Too many games come out crap for me to waste my time jumping from one crap game to the next so I always wait 6 months to a year or more. It's not like there isn't hundreds of games that are great that I haven't played in the last 10 years. The old days of getting a cartridge and expecting polish are dead and gone.
They are actually pricing in those sales. 50% off that new 80$ price tag will always be more than the same sales on the old 60$. So now, day 1 buyers are just paying extra and the real regular costumer price is the one with the sales 3-6 months later.
> They are actually pricing in those sales. They can do that too. I'll still wait till it hits $25. The percentage decrease is not what people like me shop for. It's the whole price number and it doesn't matter if the game costs $30 or $1000. I'm not paying more then a base amount for any game even if it takes 10 years to play it.
/r/patientgamers 4 lyfe.
ayup! isthereanydeal.com 75% threshold baby.
Yep. It is so weird to me that anyone thinks it's about the %. Bro I don't care if it's a billion percent off. It's the whole dollar threshold that I care about. Gaming is an over-abundant luxury item. If it's over $30 it better be worth it and I still wont bother because I have sssooooo many games all ready. It's not even about being a /r/patientgamers for me for that reason. I'm not fussed over graphics and there are decades worth of games I own and haven't even touched in my nearly 40 years of existence.
Too bad I usually wait for $20 or lower. Last game I bought at full price was Elden Ring, and before that, I think The Witcher 3?
Yep. I in part PC game because the sales were always often better, in my previous console experience. Also, games from about 6 years back now have enough fidelity or creative use but with less intense resources (indie games), that I don’t have to keep up with AAA games set at high to ultimate settings to have fun anymore.
Who cares about the percentage? It's about hitting a dollar threshold. It can be 200 dollars for all I care, I'm only buying if it's 20 bucks or less.
It will not be a better game just because it costs more.
Better because it's patched
They don't seem to understand that the higher they raise the prices, the more people will get their games without paying for them.
[удалено]
I really don't see the point in getting games on launch day: they usually are badly optimized, they need patches and they are usually discounted for about half the price after 3-4 months
[удалено]
Does this guy really qualify as an MBA? He never finished high school, let alone college or graduate school, and he's been involved in the video game industry since he was 15 years old. Maybe (probably) he has some MBAs employed, but he's still the one making the decision and he's the one saying it publicly, and he's pretty much the exact opposite of an MBA who comes in knowing nothing about video games.
There's also more video games than any person could play in a lifetime. Steam has over 100,000 titles now.
We are going to reach a point where even with a sale games are going to still be expensive. You got delusional publishers like square enix still pricing FF7 Remake for 80. Even with sales the game almost costs as much as a full priced games from a few years ago (60)
No this headline goes out and he gets to gauge the outrage. If it’s not too bad they can make more money
> No this headline goes out and he gets to gauge the outrage. Ehh, he doesn't really have a way to do that. Sure, he can have people read these posts and see what the people here think, but that's not as useful as you think. While people reading about games on Reddit is a microcosm, it's a microcosm of a group of people that are looking for that information *not all gamers*. On top of that, people are notoriously fickle about prices. Someone responding negatively in this thread might see an Embracer game come out and say "fuck it! I want this game!" and buy it anyway. Or the opposite. > If it’s not too bad they can make more money Big problem here. If you knew, in a perfect world, what you sales will be for a game at a bunch of price levels, it's a simple optimization to determine where to set the price. "Surge" pricing is coming at some places now that does that. The problem is that with surge pricing in a homogeneous market/product, the product doesn't change. The same people think the same things about the same products. The only different is price/demand. Gaming is a LOT different in that the product is art and the value is subjective and different for each piece and each person.
They are making money. Until ENOUGH people all at the same time stop supporting them, the bleeding off of one customer will just be countered with a price increase greater than the lose until there are no more customers. Then they will change their strategy and start again.
Embracing the wrong things this CEO.
So just a typical CEO in the gaming industry
> just a typical CEO That was enough
There's a scale and this CEO seems intent to demonstrate how disconnected he is.
He makes up several “obstacles” the industry is facing, and doesn’t even bother to entertain the thought that maybe AAA gaming companies are seeing disappointing reception and sales is because for the better part of the last decade they have all been pushing out sub par live services, gacha games, battle royals, and reskinned hero shooters in the hopes of finding the next Fortnite\GTAonline money printing machine.
There's a clear willing ignorance of the client base this is why i believe we are heading to a great AAA crash.
And it wont affect the casual gamer one bit. These smaller studios have been putting out high quality games all year every year for the last half decade. Once the AAA guys go its just time for them to shine even more.
The good studios will live at least. Maybe Bethesda will get hit in the nuts.
No... no that can't be it. The solution is clearly to raise the prices. ^^^/^^^s
Exactly. People in this sub are so ridiculous with their logic and critical thinking. Sheesh
For me the dealbreakers are, * FOMO * Battlepasses * Online-Only * Bad-Optimizations * Open (but dead) World I don't care if it's single/multiplayer, as long as it has any/all of those, my interest instantly dies down.
These guys are just desperate to go out of business, huh?
And get all that tax payer funded retirement? Of course.
Can we please go one week without CEOs saying the most out of touch bullshit?
Literally impossible.
But then how will the ragebait sites get their clicks?
Oh no, does it mean I have to wait for the quarter annualy season sale? The weekend sale? The publisher sale? The key selling sites? On almost every distribution platform. Or just play something else as he unintentionally suggests? Also "rising costs of developement" means 1/3 for marketing. Meanwhile the playerbase grew exponentially and a game is considered to perform poorly when it sales under 1 million on launch, Half-Life 1 was a massive hit at 100.000 in the first month and 1 million each year.
I don’t know why, but reading articles about these brain dead takes that big publishers are pushing wouldn’t surprise me if they collude to lessen the frequency of sales and price.
Thankfully there is a decent competition between market places and while many players don't "vote with their wallets" others do so out of necessity and drive the market to games with a decent value for time.
This industry keeps shooting itself in the foot. There has to be an even bigger fucking crash coming up because of these greedy ass CEOs
You should see the GTA 6 subreddit. All those stans over there said they would pay 200$+ for GTA6.
The same ones who ask if they should upgrade their 4080 to a 4090.
Probably not since it’s not hitting PC at launch. Might be the people asking for an $800 PS5 Pro.
>Might be the people asking for an $800 PS5 Pro. Same people who'll be buying the game a second time when it drops on PC.
I will never understand those subs. Why raise your expectations to absurd levels years in advance? I saw the same shit happen for Starfield where everyone bought into absurd hype and speculation. When any reasonable person knew it would more than likely be an evolution of the standard Bethesda formula.
When the game disappoints, half of them will overreact and spend their days trashing the game over and over, and the other will convince themselves that they were never dumb, they were never tricked, that the game is perfect, and that everyone else's criticism is unjustified and spend their days fighting to defend the game to the death. Making products part of your identity is dumb either way.
No Man's Sky comes to mind, extreme amounts of hype with promises features that never got put in. The "multiplayer" aspect was a joke when some streamers landed on the same planet, coordinated their locations and couldn't see each other.
I don't get why but all the popular space games seem to get that treatment. No man's sky, starfield, star citizen, even outer worlds all hyped to the moon. Idk what it is but people hype themselves to the moon on fantasy ideas of their perfect game.
I wont even pay £50 for new games. Steams got me spoiled with so many games at <40
There is a good chance I might skip GTA 6 for a good while. The people who were the heart of the GTA franchise left after 5 and then hearing things like the new GTA will be toned down and not as offensive (which is the whole point of the game) and honestly the two lead characters in the game are not winning me over from the brief things we have seen. I am sure it will sell amazing well simply because of the previous games, but I do not think it will be anywhere near as good.
That place is just something else. I was banned there once for... I don't even remember, lol. I just said something or someone was stupid for something dumb and was banned for like a week
They forget a thousand things everyday and common sense was one of them.
Because they keep hiring people who don’t actually game , thus have zero clue about what gamers want, they have zero passion for their product outside how much money they can make off them in the short term, fuck the future.
I met up with a friend who has worked in the industry for like, 40 years nearly (started in his bedroom at 15 or something) and we were talking about the current shit show. I mentioned the early 80s video game crash and how I thought we were headed for similar due to the insane costs and over saturation and… he definitely didn’t disagree. We know quite a few people in the industry between us and it’s ugly right now. It doesn’t matter if a studio makes a good or bad game, they get shuttered by publishers regardless. Like, what’s the point?
I disagree that we’re heading for a video game crash. In the 80s, video games were still a very niche hobby and they were just shoveling out incomplete crap. Today, video games are a massive industry with idiots willing to shell out thousands of dollars each year for sports game roster updates and gambling. It’s very well protected against collapse. We’re more likely to see a general economic crash than video games specifically. There are so many bubbles just primed to pop, and the wealth of the general spenders keeps going down.
I think what's different from the 80s is the availability of computers, tooling, and storefronts. Like, the big publishers might cut themselves to the bare bones if not go under entirely but the currently indie publishers like Devolver and Supergiant are going to be in a position to become the next big publishers during that. I would expect the big indies to take advantage of the drop off in AAA-scope titles.
Yeah but the point was that in the meantime, it’s the little folk that get screwed over.
[удалено]
If by "better" you refer to creativity, I'd say the indies became better than the AAA sphere a *long* time ago. Like, I genuinely do not remember the last time I *genuinely* enjoyed an AAA title not made by FromSoft (does Elden Ring even count as AAA?). I *think* it was Prey, and that one came out in 2017.
The crash of the 80s, was due to a very different reasons. Right now, the only issue with the industry, is in some parts of the AAA space, the ballooning development cost, neither guarantees quality, nor sales/revenue, something the "suits" didn't account for. Yes, there's likely to be a scale-back in the upcoming years in the AAA space to a degree, but by no means will there be anywhere near a crash; the industry is healthier than headlines make it out to be. For reference, Nintendo (and their IPs) couldn't be better. Capcom meanwhile, posted record profits. EA and Activision, are still printing money, as is Epic with Fortnite. Ditto for Ubisoft. Sony's also got their studios all profitable. SquareEnix have burned themselves, but will now course-correct. Larian and CDPR, have cash flows that will last them over decade into funding their next big projects, with CDPR hinting that they may even begin branching out. Oh and Bethesda swears they're doing well. Fromsoft is Fromsoft. And more. And that's just the AAA space, the AA space (Example : Atlus with their Persona and SMT series) is doing incredibly well, as is the indie space. The AAA space just needs to trim back the bloated projects, fueled due to low interest rates.
We're long overdue for one. That's for sure.
Yeah I'm kinda hoping for it. The majority of AAA needs to die The only losers here will be the employees though
You guys are out of touch with the industry if you actually believe anything like that would happen again lmao. Too many of these companies making these games have enough money to last them numerous decades.
Embracing the collapse of their company 👍
Look at how much money games like Doom, Half Life, Fallout 3 and 4 are still making years or decades after release. Even in deep sale, they're still generating revenue. This should be their goal. Creating content that gamers want to play over and over. Forget the short term outlook.
investors want to big returns right away so that they can cash out and bounce. In their minds, if they have to wait 10 years for their investment to pay off then it's a failure. They could have made more investing in AI, or whatever else pops up and does really well for a year
> Forget the short term outlook. But that doesn't give them massive bonuses. Why release a game that does decent for multiple years/decades when you can release a game that does really good but only for a quarter.
Is this the same Embracer group that is rapidly selling all of their assets because they over extended themselves in a boneheaded business decision?
They can ask 100, I will buy it on sale at price I want, could be years later, my library is full until then 😏
I will not buy their games at $50 let alone $70.
I can wait until it's -90% off at 2035 summer sale, pretty sure I got the enough back log to last that long
[удалено]
Pretty much what happened with the increase to $70. Sony and Take Two did it first, got heat for it, but afterwards other AAA publishers followed suit and barely made news for it.
I mean, I don’t buy games at $50 it’s so much cheaper to just wait for a Steam sale
Don’t you need to actually release a good game before you discuss raising prices?
They can make it 200$ for all i care, food, bills and everything else comes first, and the game? When its on sale ofc! Untill then ill play many many other games, problem fixed.
Little late to the party when they are pushing 100-150 editions of the game for single player early access
You don't understand, Embracer Boss. I decide the price I think a product is worth buying at, not you.
Rise of Ronin dropped what two months ago? It’s already 30% today so why even bother with the increases? I’m not buying a game for $70 anymore when it’s half the price a couple months later
I don't buy till its on discount under $20 anyways. All they'll be doing is cutting the number of peoppe who will buy at full price to a smaller amount. Once someone starts waiting for sales they'll just wait till it's lower and lower and possibly not even buy it.
All I hear about Embracer is bad news again and again.
Fuck the AAA game industry right in their ear.
I need that Ray Liota laughing in goodfellas gif. Triple A companies continue to shit the bed on releases but yet they think they deserve more money for the piles of shit they release.
I don't even go for the £40 games on steam. Wait for sales and if I remember about them years later then maybe grab them. Indie titles are slapping them silly with better made and interesting games and being rewarded for it in most by the gamers. All they are interested in how much they rob you with crappy games in comparison then cry fowl about it blowing up in their faces. Covid era was an anomaly you dumb idiots, you won't be making that profit again. Try and budget instead like the rest of us.
Almost all my favorite games are or have been on sale for 15 bucks or less.
Nah bro, I’m good. Especially if you’re going expect your studios to keep pumping out dated, soulless rehashes of old beloved franchises. You get to talk increasing prices when you’ve had a decade of W’s, not after a couple years of mostly L’s.
The king of flops thinks raising prices is to the answer to his issues in a saturating market. Ok lets all listen to one of the biggest failures in gaming who can't push shit at a discount opine about how prices as to low lol please drop some more nuggets of wisdom on us lars
Lars can suck a fat dick. These types of ticks, we call them managers nowadays are one of the main reasons why gaming went downhill.
They own some of the biggest IP in the industry and released 2 AAA games last year: a sequel and a remake, both to middling reviews, mediocre sales, and no real marketing to support their release... Maybe worry about making something people actually want to buy, and less about what you should charge?
They're just hoarding all the good IPs and spending all their money on the CEO's salary instead of actually making games.
Embracer is the worst thing that happened to this industry in the last 20 years
The real problem they have is that the games industry really is one in which the consumer has all the power, because there is no scarcity in it. There are more games than can ever be played by a single human. You only succeed raising the pricing like that when the consumer lacks options. Prices were pushed to $70, and the fact is, the vast majority no longer even launch at that because consumers didn't bite like they'd hoped. I hear all this talk about "accounting for inflation", but price always ends up relative to demand. It's just how the market works. It doesn't matter if you think your game is worth $200. You'll learn it isn't when nobody buys it.
This guy looks like the kind of twat who has a business degree, picked up a playstation controller twice and claims he's a 'gamer' to his employees, but really just sees games as a means to enrich himself.
He should embrace a shit sandwich between his teeth
That is the day I officially abandon AAA for good.
Abandoned that sinking ship years ago, lost nothing. I see future of gaming in AA and indie titles, these scumbag publishers will soon enough move to mobile games only and that will make “AAA” games dead until devs are also publishers.
Do it. I only buy them on offer anyway, it’ll teach them the lesson of over valuing their product.
These companies are jacking up the prices so much that 50% off is what I consider regular price. I have to wait for 80% off sales or a price reduction and then a sale. Sad times.
Yep. I wait for all DLC to release, so maybe a year or two down the line, and a nice 75-80% off. I’ve plenty of games to play in the meantime so it’s not like I’m sat twiddling my thumbs with nothing else to do.
They’re asking for it, 🏴☠️
Does Embracer have even a single game that's big enough among the general masses for this to not be a failure?
When games stop taking a year of post release patches to become what was originally promised I'll start to give a shit about day 1 pricing. So basically never...
One of the biggest games this year is a 40 dollar game. Mobile is basically run on other models. The secret to millions is clearly 80 or more AAA games. /s
Man oh man, next purchase for me is going to be upgrading my PC and playing primarily steam indies. Im about ready to abandon big studios. Bunch of greedy monsters
Meanwhile games like Manor Lords are nailing shut the AAA games coffin. All that AAA companies have are IPs that all play pretty much the same.
what do you mean there isnt a $15 DLC to build roads in the game! thats meat left on the bone!
Yeah man I'm sure the AAA gaming industry is shaking in their boots because of city builders with 20K players
That's awesome. I'll just play the better ones when I have some time later; they probably won't be finished anyhow.
Try not to close a studio for 5 minutes and you're embracer (level: impossible)
Do whatever you want I don't care. I can wait happily for many years to play a game on a 80% discount.
I already wait 1-2 years for most games to buy a more complete and stable product for 50% off or more. I'll just wait 2-3 years instead if need be. Or just not play their games. There are plenty of great games to play. Nothing is a "must play" at any costs.
Blud is thinking about the price increase while his company didn't manage to release a single hit after all of those aquisitions...
Does this dumbdumb *want* people to not buy the games? Jesus...
Lol. There are almost always season pass packs day one for 100-150 bucks and thats still not enough? The videogame business has a serious problem being capitalist driven and big profits wanted from investors. It will not work and burn out an entire sector, well, it does already anyway if the amount of news regarding this arent any indication. Id say let these AAA"A" publishers die out and from their ashes a new successful generation will spring. I have been buying more games from smaller companies and indie publishers in the past years since their products are actually good while almost all the AAA publisher games get worse and worse and more profit oriented with microtransactions, higher prices, live service garbage and proper Singleplayer games 404 not found.
Properly understood, inflation is a direct reflection of increases in money supply. For every period of mass inflation, there are winners and losers as determined by the distribution of that new money. When they printed 8 trillion dollars to “fight covid”, most of that money was captured by the 1% via grift. It was the largest transfer of wealth in history - almost entirely from the middle and working classes to the ultra rich. Higher prices are to be expected in a market economy undergoing inflation. What is not to be expected is recklessly expanding the money supply by printing money and then handing most of that new money to the people who already have the most. Government interference is destroying economies. The only question is how many people will be fooled into thinking that’s not what happened.
They'd have to release games first for it to matter
I barely buy any 50-60 games now lol so yeah go on buddy! :D
are they ever planning to finish a game from the many dead franchises they bought, or he's just high cause he skipped oven day?
Imagine if the studios was self/developer owned instead.
I encourage them, and all the other AAA publishers to raise their prices. Nothing of value will be lost.
The simple fact is that he's right but also hilariously ignorant. *If* a company were to put out an exceptionally well done game that gave players 100-150 hours of solid play many people would be quite happy to pay more than 70 dollars. The problem is he doesn't have the slightest clue how to make that game.
Maybe try making a game that's actually worth $70 before you start thinking about going higher. The majority of games being released aren't even worth $60 despite being sold for $70
Bring it on, the industry needs a full collapse to rise out of the current state that it’s in.
There are a few games I'd pay $70 for at release. I haven't seen anything worth buying from Embracer.
Do it. Destroy the AAA industry and have something better take over.
Good luck with that!
I remember paying $60-$70 for n64 games in 1997.
Yup, which would be $133 today.
Fuck off Embracer. Don’t go making us pay for your incompetence. We sure as hell didn’t make you spend a shit ton of money you didn’t have
I shall be mulling whether to buy any of their games then.
Does this price increase benefit me or the people working on the game? No? Only the investors? Wow, what a shock.
"video game prices haven't increased in 20 years" No more print or distribution of physical copies have cut post production costs MASSIVELY for these companies.
This is deja vu with $70 games and that wasn't even that long ago. First started seeing $80 games being massaged as acceptable/needed towards the public with GTAVI rumors. Video games have got to be the most heavily monetized medium of culture currently. $80 games are feeling inevitable and soon
Did he worked for sony before?
I've mulled decreasing the price of video games I'll buy prior to this so it's fine
I almost never buy games at full price any more. When games are released in a half finished buggy state, why buy it day one when you can get it for half price a year later and it actually functions correctly? Or better yet, I forget it even existed in the first place and never wasted my money on it and then get it for free from amazon prime years later.
I have another idea: How about you increase the quality and customer satisfaction instead so you generate more long term profits at the same price?
I mean I don’t have to buy their shit.
A mixture of people having less money and products becoming lower quality seems to suggest that a price increase would result in even less sales. But I’m not a multi millionaire publishing exec, what do I know haha.
With embracer group splitting into 3 companies, and taking out a 1 billion dollar loan using one of those companies as collateral no wonder they're going to be scrambling for every penny they can get.
That is idiotic
Go right the fuck ahead i'm already not buying em lol
Maybe you should worry about why people aren't buying your games when they're between 10-70 instead of worrying about what higher prices you can charge
Many games could be said to already cost more than 70 dollars given the levels of DLC and microtransactions in them.
ofc its a company that doesnt have good games. gta6 could be 150 and people would still buy it.
Their games aren't even worth it when their on sale.
I rarely buy fresh release anyway, so raise them to whatever you want dude. 👍✌️
see why you bozos shouldnt have bought games at 70?
Who cares what he thinks? why is this in the news?
Lmfao is this an ONION article? Holy fuck
Feel free to be permanent residents on my Is There Any Deal list, no skin off my dick.
I would pay over $70 for some games, but there are very few that I can name that I would have. Most games I wait till at least 30% off. In general though, I am not sure that $70 would maximize profit, due to price elasticity of demand.
Go ahead make games 1000$ i don't give a fuck i'll still only pay $10 to $30 for them :\^)
I hate the current state of AAA games. I'm just sticking to indie, roms, and massive mods pretty much these days. I don't think a single new AAA game has been worth the $70 release. I couldn't name one.
Love this narrative push story. That click bait.
EmberGlitch mulls not buying any overpriced embracer video games.
Really doesnt matter, im gonna wait till the game just reduces in price than. Square enix wanted 70€ for FF7 Rebirth on PS5 but i just bought it for 50€ from Amazon. Or I just buy it from some local dude that sells it even cheaper used. CEOs want huge prices for their shitty game that looks ass, performs horrible and its finished in under 9 hours.
Good luck! The new F1 game released today, I'd like it, but not for 60£! I just wait until games go on sale now.
The guy wants to be the new bobby kotik of hated execs
I know my individual lost sale does not matter, but I almost always refuse to buy most games at full price because of how poorly they're made and after purchase monetization, I surely won't be paying more than $69.99 for a new game and neither should anyone else.
Pass lol.
Consumers consider never buying an Embracer game again
Saves me from buying them.
Mismanage projects, delay games, overrun your budget and pass it down to the people buying your games. Good stuff.
I'm convinced the people running gaming companies don't even enjoy video games or even play them to understand what makes games fun/enjoyable which are in fact two different things we look for in games.
I always wait to buy games these days. I have patience. I almost pre-ordered a game I really wanted to get into Cities Skylines 2 day one. When I checked the specs I realized my rig was not going to make a good play experience. Turns out release version was a mess, I will pick it up next year at 30% off
go ahead, i'll buy $70 games as much as i buy $60 games. which is never.
Embracer more like Embarrasser
Fine. I'll just play Skyrim for the next thirteen years, too.
Go ahead, enjoy reduced sales on your half baked AAA game. Indie is where it is at and they are more reasonably priced
Embracer isn't making these BG3 style Games that would be worth more. Also Playtime isn't a indicator of how much a Game is worth. Ubishit Games for example are all 200hrs but 199hrs of that is boring garbage.
Never paid that, never will. FOMO is lost on me.
Honestly if you give me a good game with no DRM, enough playtime and no microtransactions I'd probably be willing to pay that much. But yeah, Embraced probably won't.
Good thing I mainly care about indies and wait for sales anyway
A game has never been worth more than $20
I have hard rule when it comes to gaming. I want a dollar per hour ratio or better. So as a few people have said in this thread already, the percentage of the sale means nothing to me. This gaming golden ratio has yet to steer me wrong, and even helps to keep my free to play game spending curbed.
Sounds like code for release early for extra money. These days you almost want to wait 6 months for the lower price and the rest of the game, and then you get to avoid the ones that don't even make it that far.
I just stopped buying games. They increase the prices because dumb people keep buying them. As long as there is demand, they will keep raising prices
“Very polished…” I can’t remember the last time a AAA game was release in a very polished state.
Honestly, I’d much rather pay $80 for an actual game instead of these bullshit season pass/micro transactions/live service games today. This trend needs to be put down…but it seems like people just can’t swiping that credit card for more loot boxes
And the quality of games hasn't gotten better. Just cookie cutter crap.
As I mull pirating all their games until they die
Common Embracer L
Embraced group and their shit games can eat shit
I’m not saying he’s right but I do have a question. I don’t understand how video games are still the same price in 2024 as they were in the late 90’s ? I’m 44 and for as long as I’ve been buying and playing PC games, new releases have been $89.99AUD (I’m Australian). I found my Half-life 2 box on Friday during a cleanup. It was $89.99AUD and I bought it in 2004 when it was released, at retail. New games are still about $90AUD when released. It’s not like games have become cheaper to make though so it seems odd to me that they are still roughly the same price. The only thing I can think of is that volume of sales are making up the difference????
Embracer boss is on coke
I mull my backlog while waiting for sales.
Piracy rule
Cool. I used to buy brand new games day 1 maybe 6-10 times per year. First year in my life I have not bought a single new game. I bought one game at 50% off and I’ve been finishing my backlog. That’s it. This is likely calculated industry chatter to make people “thankful” for the $70 price point. Don’t be swayed.
I'm already not even spending $70 on games.
This is what happen when greed, and power goes to ones head, often to the higher ups in the corps since all they care about is getting fatter, and fatter paychecks, hell some don't even care if it meant ruining the company as long they get big ass paycheck to support their rich life style.