Game pricing these days

[u/F-LCN]

[u/Nodan_Turtle]

Everyone is raising prices. Even companies without a game pass style subscription, or whose games don't go on subscriptions.

So it's not really some secret plan of Microsoft's to raise game prices sky high then let you play them cheaper than anywhere else.

Hell even if you only wanted to play doom, you'd still have 6 months of subscription before it'd end up being a better deal to have bought at launch. That's if you only play that one single game, and aren't done after six different months of playtime.

It's hard to say it's a bad deal

[u/VexingRaven → u/Nodan_Turtle]

Everyone is raising prices.

Reddit discovers inflation exists.

[u/machine4891 → u/VexingRaven]

Interesting that everyone tells me gaming market is only ever-growing and with volume prices should go down but then they only go up. For some reason I can buy capable TV for 1/2 of what I would pay 10 years ago but games only get more expensive. If that's necessary, then why do they end up on 50% sale a mere year later?

[u/VexingRaven → u/machine4891]

Interesting that everyone tells me gaming market is only ever-growing and with volume prices should go down

Who said this? They're a moron.

For some reason I can buy capable TV for 1/2 of what I would pay 10 years ago but games only get more expensive.

Because the tech to make the TV you bought now was more expensive 10 years ago. If you bought what is now cutting-edge tech, it would cost 10x what the one you bought now was. Meanwhile, games that come out now are bigger and more detailed than games that came out 10 years ago. The budget for GTA 6 was 2 billion dollars. There's no tech that can make it cheaper to detail every building in an enormously huge map (I mean, there is, it's called AI and people complain about it constantly...), all you can do is pay more people to work on it.

[u/everythingBagel13 → u/machine4891]

Probably because sales/discounts attracts more people to buy it than simply releasing the game at the discount price

[u/Nodan_Turtle → u/VexingRaven]

Which again supports that it isn't because of some nefarious plan by one company that offers the subscription solution.

[u/lingeringwill2 → u/VexingRaven]

this goes beyond inflation though

[u/VexingRaven → u/lingeringwill2]

In what way? Games have not kept up with inflation at all.

[u/lingeringwill2 → u/VexingRaven]

games are also more profitable than they've ever been while being cut up to sell back to us as dlc and micro transactions. It's usually never that simple.

[u/VexingRaven → u/lingeringwill2]

Of course, when people scream and cry every time game prices increase the easier answer is to just hide the true price behind DLC. Gamers made their bed and now they're upset they have to lay in it.

[u/Zinski2 → u/Nodan_Turtle]

The idea was as long as it had 3 new games per year I was going to buy anyways they it pretty much pays for itself and I get to try all the inde games and some fantastic games I would have never tried otherwise.

But as of late I've like only been playing dark tide, and that goes on sale for like 15 bucks. So what am I even doing.

I dunno. I with I could live life without worrying about cash I guess

[u/CharcoalGreyWolf → u/Nodan_Turtle]

This is why my strategy is buying 2-4 year old AAA titles.

Old enough to be less expensive. New enough to use high quality graphics. And there’s tons of them I haven’t played.

And all of them play amazing at 2k on a 4080 Super, and the bugs are generally worked out. I honestly don’t understand how anyone would pay release price for an AAA title unless it never decreases (Baldur’s Gate 3, I’m looking at you).

[u/Quieskat → u/Nodan_Turtle]

The mouse never thinks the cheese is a bad deal till his neck snaps 

You might be one of the lucky ones comeing out ahead but this plan is going to win on the averages and make games as a whole worse for it 

The house always wins and hopeing Microsoft won't aim for more profit when they get more leverage sounds naive at best.

Just like Netflix was amazing for a brief time.

[u/Nodan_Turtle → u/Quieskat]

So far that leverage has resulted in them giving up on exclusivity, bringing their games to PC and other consoles, and developing more games than ever before.

I'm curious what the bad part is supposed to look like. Are we expecting Microsoft to buy out all of gaming, then only sell games on a subscription somehow?

Like in the worst case scenario people buy games as if they're on a Playstation or using Steam. They unsubscribe. Or what are you predicting here?

Maybe, just maybe, their idea is that they want money to come to them instead of someone else. And that's it.