Topic: The Price is Right? Gaming Price Discussion

@BAMozzy Very insightful, sir, as always.
Do developers get a “cut” of the sales profits or do they get a flat reimbursement from the publisher after the game is ready to release, or a combination of both?

I’m wondering because sometimes I feel like I want to buy a game to “support” a developer I like or a franchise, but if the sales success of a game goes primarily to the publisher, then there is very little point in doing that.

@Th3solution I would expect the Developer - or at least the bulk of those that work for a Publisher (like Dice, Treyarch etc) to get a flat wage. They get paid over the course of the years they worked on the game just the same as everyone else employed in a regular job. I wouldn't be surprised if they do get some bonuses but in general, they get a regular wage over the course of the year. They aren't working for nothing and then get paid depending on how successful that game is.

Publishers obviously make money based on how successful their titles are. However they are also generally answerable to shareholders and they must make more money this year than they did last year. EA and Activision also have to fund those studio's they own, pay those wages of the developers and their running costs, pay the advertising etc as well as make a profit - its why they may sell/close studio's down because they cannot pay the wages and running costs as well as continue to make increasing profits to keep shareholders etc happy.

Then you have independents, like CDPR who will make deals with publishers so they get some of the profit from sales and re-invest that money back into the company, pay back investors etc.

I think $60 is a good starting point. It’s worth if you want at launch, but you can wait otherwise. Nintendo is the exception as it brings down their games for me when it’s a risk to try it, but they want $60 a year after launch. I think all digital is a very scary idea because its prices don’t drop though. Flash sales aren’t good enough to compensate for overall higher prices either. I’m okay with Steam on PC, but not on consoles.
@BAMozzy Excellent point about DLC and MT being a hidden rising cost on our end.
I think MT’s in something like Destiny in particular are awful. Cosmetic items are still a part of the game and that DLC adds up.

@Jaz007 As someone who plays Destiny, I don't have too much issue with their Micro-transactions. Nearly everything can be earned through just playing the game - every time you earn enough XP, you get an Engram which will give random Eververse items. If you don't want them, you can break them down into 'bright dust' and use that bright dust to buy from a selection of items on sale and things like emotes, ornaments etc are only one time items - in other words, you won't get duplicates. There are bounties too to earn bright dust so overall Destiny's is one of the better options and I have NEVER spent additional money yet still have all the 'exotic' cosmetic items that Eververse sells - just by playing the game. The first 3 levels every week are at earned at a higher rate so you can get the first 3 Eververse engrams in a an hour or so per character - that's 9 in a few hours of gaming. There are a few items though that are sold for real money only - a couple of 'Whisper' camo's and an emote which are ridiculously over-priced for just cosmetics - I think they are around £8. The fact that you can earn everything by just playing, earn bright dust to buy items from Eververse if they happen to sell the items you specifically wanted, doesn't rgive many duplicates but has a higher chance of getting something you don't have its one of the better implementations of Micro-transactions.

I am NOT defending MT's at all and in my opinion, they should be banned from AAA games entirely. Destiny's is more like a 'random' reward, with a limited selection being offered weekly to buy with 'in-game' currency or you can spend 'real' money to get more random rewards if you want. Its not like some games where the random rewards are earned so slowly and full of 'rubbish' so the chance of getting exactly what you want is incredibly small. I already have every exotic item from the halloween event in Destiny - that's in a week of just playing the game and NOT spending anything!

I agree that when Destiny introduced Eververse, it was very poorly implemented but now its possible to get (almost) everything without spending anything just by playing. I can live without the two Whisper ornaments, the 'IT' dance and two (upcoming) Thunderlord ornaments as I refuse to buy any Silver but I have all the exotic ships, sparrows, ghosts, the other ornaments, as well as all the shaders (which can also be bought from your collections too btw if you have had at least 1 before) and still have over 20,000 bright dust if Tess is selling something I want that week. A lot of games don't offer a selection to buy with in-game currency and Destiny's are only cosmetic so don't affect the game in anyway - whether you have them or not. Changing the colour scheme of armour/weapons is not exactly game changing like getting a weapon or particular variant with bonuses.

@Th3solution So much for waiting for a price drop, SCVI's Deluxe Edition is already sold out on Amazon.

@WanderingBullet lol, ah well, the best laid plans and all that .... so much for predictions. I still feel a price drop in the next month, though. I’ll keep my eyes peeled.

@Th3solution Haha, I hope they restock it.

@Jaz007 Digital-only also means no competition between retailers. I don't really pay €60 for a game at launch, because there are always at least one retailer asking €58, or €55, etc. If everything is in one store, there's hardly any competition. And feel like whenever digital-only is established, streaming will be next, and we'll be even worse off. So I don't get it when people are rooting for a digital-only future; it's going to be awful lol.

@Octane Yeah, I’m currently trying to decide whether I get Red Dead Redemption 2 now at release or whether to wait. I just saw GameStop is offering a $10 reward of in-store credit if you buy it there at launch. So effectively the price becomes $50 instead of $60, so I think I might go ahead and do that. I’m unlikely to find it cheaper than $50, possibly not even on Black Friday.

@Th3solution there isn't one price you could hang your hat on. For me £60 is about right for AAA unique games like RDR2, Gow, Zelda botw, hzd etc. Built from the ground up with big teams involved. I will pay about £40 for annual released games like pes, ass creed, cod, codemasters racing games etc. £30 is the right price point for remasters. £15 is my preferred price point for Indies.

Now with micros and map packs etc. They just need to go. With the advent of online gaming and the fact we pay psplus I would like to see a bigger subscription service say it's £70 per year for psplus. The £60 is kept by Sony for our current psplus benefits but £5 is split between the top 20 online games of the first 6 months of the year and £5 for the other half. That's approx £200,000,000 for online games to keep servers on and produce content for the year. £5,000,000 if you creep into that top 20. More than enough to keep people in work and get rid of the bs we see today and Increased competition to innovate and keep people engaged.

@themcnoisy The MTX aren't used to keep the people in work. Most AAA games are profitable after their opening weekend. They don't need the MTX; even without they they would be very profitable. It's just an extra on top of it because they know they can get away with it, because apparently there are people willing to pay for them.

@Octane I never mentioned mtx other than to condemn them and I fully realise that big games are making ridiculous money. However my second paragraph is blue wave thinking, the online games will be going big to make the top 20 cut and we won't need mtx in any form as the dough is already there.

@themcnoisy Yeah, we can dream, that's true

@themcnoisy I would be okay with this solution. It's just not okay outside of FTP games. and then once you enjoy a FTP game, you wish you just pay a premium to re-balance not to encourage MTs. No that there are very many good FTP games though.
What we really need, it for game companies to buy back their stock so annoying shareholders don't hold them to short-term profits all the time.

Sony have around 20-25m people subscribed to PS+ that's around £100m a year allowing for differences in exchange rates. That's more than enough to maintain servers - especially as some companies (like Activision) have their own dedicated servers as well as the console acting as a 'host' server in a lot of games.

We all know that AAA games generally sell enough to be profitable in the first few weeks or so - some may take a bit longer depending on cost of development and advertising but a LOT of games are profitable after a 1m or so in sales and some that are profitable before they even release with pre-orders.

We don't always know how much companies 'waste' either on development - it can't be 'cheap' to cancel games and close down studio's. The fact that EA and Activision are releasing fewer games but have still seen massive growth in profits has from a business perspective, been the right move. Killing studios stops the outgoing cost of wages and running costs for the 2-3yrs before they release a game to start recuperating those costs. It also limits the risk of games not being as profitable as they hope - especially with competition from other releases. MTX and DLC can be made by a small handful of people that are not needed in the early stages of a new game being developed so have literally no cost to make and are extremely profitable too - the big reason that both EA and Activision have seen such big growth in the past couple of years. EA has had some 'flops' too with games like Titanfall 2, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Need for Speed: Payback, Battlefront 2 etc but these were still 'profitable'. Titanfall 2, the ultimate edition has been on sale for £5 on MS Store (possibly on PSN too but I bought the physical edition for PS4 and haven't bothered looking on PSN to see its price) - A game that released between Battlefield and Cod, struggled to sell and even offered 'free DLC' maps so as not to split the user base yet was still profitable. EA though expected 9-10m in sales yet sold a quarter of what Titanfall managed in its first week (both physical and digital sales). Despite these high profile games not selling as expected or 'hoped' by EA, EA still managed to grow massively in the past 6-8yrs. Fifa Ultimate Teams is worth $800m a year (at least it was a year or so ago) which is enough to make ~15 Mass Effect: Andromeda's a year (which cost around $50m/£40m to make) and Activision say there Micro-transactions are worth $2bn a year...

Its why these companies would rather have this type of content as its incredibly cheap to produce and virtually all profit - in other words very little outlay for massive profit. Why spend $50m on making a game over 2-3yrs when you can spend almost nothing and make more profit? It wouldn't be too bad if we were seeing that being invested in games, offering more content - even if some of it comes after release in the form of DLC expansions, more new games instead of the same 'few' year after year - a growth in their portfolio instead of a reduction...

At the end of the day though, ALL gamers will vote with their wallets and decide what a game is worth to them. If a game is worth pre-ordering and having on day 1 to a person, then they will pay that much. I really don't get the mindset of people that complain about price drops after a game has released - they were 'happy' to pay that much to buy it on Day 1 - of not they should have waited until it dropped to a price they were happy with. Its the same with Consoles or other hardware too - If you can't afford it or don't think its worth the money (as we all value things differently), then you can wait! I can't afford ALL the games I want every year - especially not if I buy ALL on day of release so I decide which I want, which I think will be worth getting on day of release when games are at their most expensive and which I can happily wait for in a sale. The price I am willing to pay is dependent on the game, what aspects of it appeal and how much I value it to be compared to my budget, my expectations and my desire to play it. A game I am excited for is something I am likely to pay more for than a game I am only slightly interested in....

@Th3solution I haven't read the whole thread so I'll just reply to OP.

Games have been more expensive back in cartridge age but got cheaper with the rise of discs and only got to a 60 usd price tag at the beginning of last gen. Publishers regularly post record breaking profits, so I'm not sure where all this "they earn less than before" comes from.

Raising the base price won't stop exploitative practices like dlcs, microtransactions, half products at launch etc it will just bring more money to the greedy and that's it.

Also, many forget how big digital became, and this is where publishers earn much more money because they share profits 30/70% and that's without any manufacturing and distribution costs. And if we're talking about first party like Sony, then they get 100% of profits which was unimaginable back it those days.

One more thing which is specific to this gen is how easier it is to develop games because of x86 architecture so obviously cheaper.

So, if you ask me, considering all sources of profits publishers have today games should actually become cheaper. But that's not going to happen and it will remain at 60 usd for at least one more generation.

Europeans have been less fortunate as digital prices have raised in some places to 70 euro and that's shameful really.

@themcnoisy you want to pay more? That's and interesting 💭. I don't know why all people think that we play games on Sony or Microsoft servers when for the majority of games it isn't true at all. And let's not forget that Sony raised the annual price of psplus by 10 usd/euro last year and we still have the same discounts, same occasional downtime of psn, same two games per month (with albeit improved selection for the majority of this year). So why does anyone think more expensive service will bring something more? Let's say they rise it to 70, so after a few years someone will come and say oh they could improve this and this and this we should have 80 price tag and so on and on.

I'm bemused why people think giving more money to companies will make them charitable when they are just businesses and they care for profits and that's it. Even if they do things which are beneficial to us it's still for profits. They aren't charity organizations and that's okay, they are here to profit and they should profit, but let's just adjust our expectations and the stance on them.

@NecuVise The €70 price tag for digital is so weird when games can often be found for €55 physically at launch. Maybe that's the result of many competing retailers versus one digital storefront.

@NecuVise You are focusing too much on the money rather than the basic idea.

£10 per subscriber is set aside. Estimated a £200,000,000 sub pot of dough.
The top 20 online games jan-jun get £5,000,000 each and that's mirrored jul-dec. It's only an idea but I think it's very good. There would be no reason to have additional costs like micros or lootboxes and would pay for dedicated servers etc.

@themcnoisy Activision makes like 2 billion a year from MTX, and that's from 3 or 4 games at most (Destiny, COD, Overwatch and Heartstone(?)). They're never going to settle for 5 million per game, even if there's some agreement between Sony and third parties (no MTX for x amount per 6 months)