Saber Interactive CEO Doesn't Think $70 Video Games Are Sustainable

I would rather pick the shovelwares or non popular games with lower price rather than getting $70 AAA games that I will never like them. (Except Ratchet & Clank PS5 that I got with 50% price and Brand New 😁)

I don't mind paying $70 if it truly is a stellar game.
The rest $60 or $50 is fine.
2D games should be like $30 max.

Edit: By 2D I mean Indie caliber games, games with 2D art/sprites etc.

I dunno if the $70 strategy will stick. I can see financial arguments on both sides that could argue which is better for company profits overall.

However with that being said, I really hope the answer is prices going back down. It's already difficult enough to afford anything with southern California prices

Hmm, it's true. It's not sustainable

It should be $50 or $40 on average.
3D games should be $20 max.

All I ask is that I get what I paid for. For example Mario Wonder, I got what I paid for. Sonic Superstars, I should have been given a wire transfer for playing.

In all seriousness, especially Nintendo, I trust them to treat me right. Even though Satori isn't there anymore his legacy still echos from the 3DS days. I feel like I'm well taken care of a customer. Maybe make sure all remakes/remasters are all like $40, but other than that i cant complain.

His latest game is priced at $70 because he is "concerned audiences will associate anything cheaper with a
'poor quality' product."

I associate that with a big heaping pile of bulls---.

It's true. It's very true. The $70 USD price tag in this economy is absolutely unsustainable and downright foolish.

One big reason: the jump from $60 USD to $70 USD was supposedly meant to offset the cost of rising game production costs (a whole other laughable point when you look at CEO pay).
Okay, so... why are there still day one DLC practices and microtransactions in these $70 USD games??

In these economic times in western countries, where the cost of living is not in line with working class wages, to say the business practices of the video game business is unsustainable, is an understatement.

Something has to give. Either drop the price tag, or drop the post-sale extractions.

Games have already gotten sneaky with $60 games having paid dlc. The questions is how blatant do they want be about it, cause I've bought all of nintendos dlc without feeling ripped off I spent $85 on one game technically

So does he mean it's not sustainable because players aren't gonna keep shelling out that amount of money, which would impact sales? Or that it's not sustainable because $70 still isn't enough to turn a profit on development costs? Games were $60 for a very long time, I'm surprised they only went up by $10 recently.

I don't know why people complain about this, look at catalogues from the 90s and you see snes games like street fighter 2 selling new for higher price than games go for now and when you consider the cost of making the game and wages being less back then, it's crazy we get games at the price we do. Prices I remember (specifically for Australia but would probably apply in other regions) are the ps2 being $1000 retail on release day, conkers bad fur day with retail sticker price of $120 and bloody roar original xbox being $130.

Or in other words it's not sustainable not for any specific reason, because he clearly doesn't have anything to back the claim up other than that word salad. Homeboy recognized an opportunity to get some quick cred by saying the thing people like to hear and it looks like it's working.

I can understand why the cost of physical games would go up, but it's ridiculous to apply those same principles to digital purchases.

Especially after Wii U/3DS going offline has made several titles become "Lost Media".

While I don't expect $70 to break consumers, I do think video games are getting too costly. I think it's going to get to the point where people simply will buy less games because they cost too much.

As for my own stance, I always thought video games were too expensive. Barring the rare exception, no piece of entertainment should cost above $30. We have $200 million-budgeted movies being sold for $20-30, or less. And yet, many high-profile games today are being sold for $60-$70.

Sure sounds like he thinks AAA games will soon cost more than $70.

I'm not inherently against the 70 dollar price point. I just hate how often it only applies to the biggest games that will make money regardless and/or bloated live service disasters trying to grab all the money they can now, even if they're dead in a year.

In the case of Nintendo specifically, my main thought is if you want to justify the 70 dollar price point instead of having it be an excuse to make even more money, make the next Xenoblade 70 dollar and the next underwhelming Pokemon remake 40 dollars. Because that's obviously what they're both worth if you are selling games based on a reasonable idea of what you're selling to people, but it won't happen because people will buy Pokemon no matter what and Xenoblade is far more niche.

I think it's funny people think the $70 price point is new. I remember when N64 games were over $70 in the late 90's. Moreover, Virtua Racing was famously $100 on Genesis.

And that's not even bringing up Neo Geo.

Imagine thinking TotK was a $70 dollar game when 80% of the game was rehashed from the previous one. While completely new games like, I don’t know, Xenoblade 3 was $60.

Totally a random decision or just squeezing the Zelda fandom hype before release. It was a $50-60 dollar game.

Charging what it's worth up front at a flat rate (even if that's a little bit more than people are used to paying) is fine. 90$ for Tears of the Kingdom is a bargain, considering how much quality content there is. Price discrimination, in the form of microtransactions and lootboxes, is where the problem is.

@Phin68 Movies last two hours. If I bought a new Zelda game and it was only two hours long I’d be pretty upset.

@Synecdoche My counterargument against length is that a book can take several hours to read, but still doesn't sell past $30 in many cases. That said, books likely cost significantly less to make than both movies and games. Still, I don't believe length justifies the high cost of games.

Though I will say in the gaming industry's defense, they don't have a viable theatrical market like the film industry does. The home market is their one shot.

Anyone remember when games back in the 2000’s were 20 or 30$? That’s the main reason I have so many GameCube, wii, gameboy, DS, and PS2 games. Although I do have a lot of switch games.

They will charge whatever people continue to pay. The selling cost of a game is entirely independent of the production cost.

@Arkay do you mean games that are 2d platformers or just have 2d artwork? Either way, there can be a ton of work put into them

Other than Nintendo games I don't think I've bought any other game at full price in the past decade. But with the success of some mid tier games with mid tier prices might show some companies that you can lower the price but make up for it with quantity.
But Developers and Publishers need to stop thinking they're going to be GTA or Fortnite otherwise it is a failure.

@Maulbert exactly what I was getting at. It's nuts.

@Arkay whether or not a game is “2D” or not should have no bearing on its worth.

Whoa, whoa, raising prices is unsustainable? He can't go around saying stuff like that. Get him a seat on a 737 before people catch on.

@Phin68 I remember at least one $99.99 game on Genesis; by that math TOTK would’ve cost $200. So in a sense you could argue we did better. And it’s true that most games today have been $59.99 for some time, while development costs have increased.

On the other hand, I never asked for photorealistic everything (currently playing Stardew Valley — no ray tracing here). And I don’t believe every company who’ll claim they need to charge $70 to recoup costs, when we’ve seen so much greedflation recently. Which leads to the fact that many regular people are hurting. And not just from the last few years; wages have stagnated for my entire lifetime. And there’s no end in sight. So I agree that when push comes to shove, many may simply buy fewer games.

The market will decide - The same people will buy day 1 and the same people will wait for sales.

I work at a smaller developer/publisher, and that's given me a different perspective on this. I think most people don't realize how insanely dirt cheap games are for consumers when you factor in inflation, labor costs, operational costs, and the sheer dedication and sacrifices many people make to ship a game. The oversaturation of the market just means that developers can't charge what their work is really worth, and many (most?) are barely scraping by.

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand not wanting or being able to spend a lot of money on games as a frugal spender myself. But I think some people have very unreasonable expectations of what they should be getting for their money. It's crazy, for example, that a single restaurant meal can cost more than many giant indie games.

In year 2023:
25 live service games alone had 73% market share.
Only 48 new games were played by 90% of the gaming market.
The last 10% had around 1500 games.

Live service have totally ruined the gaming market.
Most people play free FOMO games instead of buying real games.

If most people didn't play live service games, real games would sell a lot more.

It's ridiculous at how many people in this comments section devalue 2D games when millions of people pick them up for $50 to $60. They are worth the money, especially if a lot of care when into the character and background design, like in Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

The $70 price point certainly makes it harder for me to justify preordering, especially since my collection is all digital.

I don't mind so much if they drop some of these awful practices like dropping a $30 pass or releasing a revamped or "complete" version down the line.

The only games I can see being worth that price are all 2d. Enter the Gungeon, Super Mario Maker, Hades, Dead Cells it's just endless entertainment. They didn't cost $70 but for the value you get it would have been well worth it.

It's fine for some games, like zelda totk, mario odyssey (it's $60 though) and maybe gta 6, but definitely not for some other games. For example, I bought ps5 exclusive returnal brand new at $70, but there's no way that game is worth $70, with only 6 "stages" and 3 of them are recycled.

Oh well, I can always give myself one years before buying $70 games, so I can buy it cheap when its discounted and fully patched, I have enough backlog already 😃

i only buy old games at this point and if i buy a newer game it's only when it's gone on sale. i just don't have enough time to play everything i wanna play anyways, so i can easily just wait out prices to drop. i have a huge back catalogue at this point so i probably won't even get nintendo's next system. my switch is more or less a minecraft machine at this point (my family and i all play on a realm together) and if i play something single player it's typically on my wii u or gba

well I never ended up buying totk

I couldn't care less what price a game is to be fair. If I like it, I will buy it. I'm not going to buy one and done microtransactions though. Keep that stuff out of non-free-to-play games.

Unlike most other games Zelda TOTK was actually worth paying 70 for, I don't mind paying higher prices aslong as the content and quality is there and there's no scummy MTX or DLC to go with it. Just look at the new Star Wars game, to get everything including the story DLC's it's going for £130 on the PlayStation store, the same price as Dragons Dogma 2 and FF7 ReBirth combined 😅.

Will honestly just depend on the perceived value of a game. ToTK was $70 and a game like Princess Peach Showtime! was $60. Both are completely different experiences but people still bought them anyway regardless of the price.

In some ways you could say the market has already decided that price point is unsustainable, now the majority of time spent gaming is in free to play games.

He is correct that industry prices will be forced to reduce over time for many reasons, and that even applies to the standard $60 USD price point. Major AAA titles are increasingly competing over the same consumers who continue to play budget indie and ongoing, competitively-priced (or free) titles like Minecraft and Fortnite, while advances in the adoption of AI technologies reduce or even eliminate aspects of development that have ballooned expenses for major projects in recent decades. Inflation and economic woes worldwide will continue to put hard limits on consumer entertainment spending.

but there's going to be an emphasis on trying to find ways to reduce costs

This just sound like more and more microtransactions, live services, lootboxes, etc.

I think 70 stays but I also think that development costs are going to sink a bit since those big AAA games are just to expansive for what they are.

we need a more healthy game development ecosystem for small and big companies (mainly for the smaller ones since the big once are making billions anyways with their live service crap)

@sanderev
for some companies that means, be more like fortnite... but for others this is will be just less expansive graphics, presentation etc...
this can even be good for the games quality overall.

the more complex a game becomes (tech wise) the more difficult and expansive it is to make changes and adjustments that improves the gameplay.

I also could imagine we see more often the Dave the diver approach

@Beetlebum91
People aren't complaining, they're saying it's not sustainable.

@Maulbert
Who said it was new?

My suspicon is that when AI gets suffiently advanced, it'll do a lot of the grunt work, reducing costs.

Games are nowadays exactly in the same price range as they were 30 years ago, at least here in Europe. And that's comparing new NES and SNES games back then with Switch games nowadays. Considering the increase in quality and content, it is actually cheaper.

And when you spend 100h on a game that cost 50 EUR, that's only 0.5 EUR/h, which is the cheapest any hobby can be.

Clearly this guy is just trying to get his 15 mins of fame selling this game I never heard about. Smart move!

@Yalloo Right! There’s a cost of living crisis and we are seeing a race to the bottom. The money is drying up! The whole exchange culture has changed. Old man story - in 1993/94, when I bought my copy of Beastie Boys ‘Ill Comunicaion’ on cassette they let me listen to only half of the first track on headphones. I heard the break beat and I laid down £8.95 on the hunch that the rest would be worth it. And it was! Since YouTube things have really changed - no more screenshots or clips, suggesting what was being offered. They release footage, people dissect them and recut trailers. It’s like a mexican standoff between customers and sellers (“show me the footage! You show me the money? Give me a sample!”). Because of piracy so much stuff is given out for free or riddled with microtransactions. The days of good quality single player campaigns - and people taking a gamble on them - have gone…..I’m sad and will now go have a lie down. Peace

@Beetlebum91 that’s because of cost of cartridges and materials that were passed down to the consumer which is why game prices were higher then.

@Toastmaster you right. The live service Gatcha games and game alike destiny tie my free time up with dailies and events so I don’t have time to play single player games anymore.

Gamers are cheap.

Some of these games should be close to $90 or more the way development doses have ballooned.

That or gaming companies need to reduce the amount they are pumping into them by investing in more efficient processes.

Seems like he is saying that the $70 price for big AAA games is too cheap, and as a result the price of AAA games will either go up (to $80 or more?) or developers/publishers will start developing cheaper AA/A games that are priced below $70 to begin with.

TBH I'm not sure I believe him. The market has now largely accepted $70 AAA games - Nintendo is basically the only major publisher who hasn't totally transitioned to the $70 price tag and that is only because they have not released the Switch 2 yet.

I'm not spending more than $60 on a game no game is worth $70 or more

If I'll have at least 70 hours of fun out of a game then that's fine. Tears of the Kingdom, for example, provided me way more than that, making it worth every penny. A dollar per hour of fun is a reasonable price for me.

What SHOULD go the way of the dodo are the download codes in boxes, Day One DLC, and Day One downloads the same size or larger than the base game. With the huge selection of games available these days, I'm more than willing to wait for an actually complete game release.

in denmark new AAA games are usally 90 or 80 USD and after a month around 70 USD.

At the other hand people do also like complexity and quality- the market for it will exist and I rather pay once and feel it’s worth it, than spending lots of small amounts on things that could be better and make me feel it’s a missed opportunity. Nintendo does treat us well in this regard, thanks go out to them and I keep supporting as long they deliver quality.

I'll stick with good games rather than those "cinematic experiences" that cost half a billion to make. There's virtually zero replay value in most of them.

I remember back then third party games were more expensive than Nintendo games.

It might be £70 on launch but it will fall in price and even faster if it doesn’t shift the target quantities.
Also Ubisoft games are 1/3 off within weeks of launch and half price within 6 months.
Just wait til it’s within your price range.

I don’t think it’s sustainable either. If we keep jacking the price up on stuff at which point do we say enough is enough? Where’s the cutoff point? Are we going to be paying over $100 for a game one day? I think it’s government and corporations that are going to drive us to economic collapse. The world will end up like the Roman Empire.

@Arkay

2D games should be like $30 max.

This makes zero sense.

>Be me
>Think most of Embracer's bad decisions were because of Saber
>Saber CEO admits CDE was a risk they shouldn't have taken in retrospect, but that Square would have shut them down without a buyer
>Defends Embracer for growing studios that were stagnant before joinging them
>Says $70 games and AAA are unsustanible
>Publicly calls Randy Pitchford a bad team player, and an idiot that Take-Two deserves
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCZpvYb78R8

I wish for complete games in physical form, like in the 90s, with maps and flavour text in the manuals. And good looking games, do not have to be expensive. I would not mind shorter experiences without all the bloat, grind and busywork. Around 30 hours, is more than enough. And please try to cater to gamers, not modern audiences.

Tell me again how much SNES and Genesis games cost back in the day.

Here's the thing... I didn't buy a SNES or a Genesis... the games were too expensive. So trying to use the cost of them to convince me to pay that much now is futile.

@Alpha008 2D artwork basically. Like Indie caliber games, should have explained that better, my bad.

Whoever thinks games are only 60-70 eur are delusional. Add all the DLC, premium editions and such and you will realise that games have been way above 70 eur mark for a long time now

I agree with several others on here. I don't mind the price for a good games: one that is complete at launch and doesn't have performance issue where you can barely enjoy it until it is patched later on. There is no excuse for them releasing a game they know is sub-par quality just to get it out to market. They test the games before release (I assume) so they know the quality of the game beforehand.

@LadyCharlie Does Tears of the Kingdom have day 1 DLC? Is Nintendo's CEO pocketing record $ rather than offsetting the high cost of development? I think it depends on the company and the game.

@Serpenterror There's been a lot of inflation since the late 90s. And even 1st party games back then were 60 USD.

70 USD seems reasonable if you're getting what you paid for!

The whole video game market is on the brink of a massive collapse.. if this keeps going the way it is, I don't think alot of publishers/developers are going to survive.

Not that I care though, the best gaming days are FAR behind us anyway - though I'm certain Nintendo will easily survive the storm that is to come

@Theghostofkeithmoon Cheers, man! Peace & love ✌🏻🤘🏻don't fool yourself thinking things were better in the past, that's just a trick of your mind.

My last game purchase (Physical, Digital, Nintendo or otherwise) was ToTK........wow almost a year ago now. Usually I like to buy new games pretty often, there are plenty of titles out there I would like to play, but unfortunately my budget, (and free time) are small. I have been looking more at $30 and under purchases/only on sale purchases but haven't made any yet. Can't imagine trying to keep up with all of these titles as they come out, paying full price or more for special editions. fondly remembers the time where $20 could get you a GBA game Videogames are still entertainment and unfortunately food and shelter have to come first in the budget.

£50-£60 for a PS5 game and £30-£40 for a switch game is the most ill spend. I get exclusives may cost more but no switch game should the same (or in most cases, more) than a PS5 game. Switch versions look and run worse than other consoles but they ask for more money!?

Concerning The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom costing 70 USD.

When you think about all the people working on this game, all the workhours that went into this game, how big this game is and how many hours of fun you can get out of this game - the price is not that bad at all..

The USD per hour of fun is rather low.

Also: This game is SO BIG that Nintendo could have easily locked part of it behind DLC and sold game+DLC for a total greater than 70 USD, and nobody would have raised an eyebrow. But they didn't, they included all in the base game and charged an extra 10 USD.

I think game companies need to reconsider AAA games. I think AA games do better and are less costly. Look at Hell Divers 2 success. ITs definitely a double a game not a triple a but I think it shows not everyone Likes AAA games that much anymore. Why dont game companies invest less in story and focus on gameplay.

I much rather play a pikmin than a last of us.

Why? Everything else literally became more expensive in daily life from necessaries to luxury goods.

Tear is blatant example that the shift from $60 to $70 had next to no impact (keep in mind the game being good or not is an important factor whether its $60 or $70) because realistically it’s an extreme minority that people that were gonna buy the game on launch would consider extra $10 a deal breaker.

I think the market will speak for it self. If the game is worth the cost, people will pay for it. I don't believe $70 will go away, rather, I hope pricing will be more dynamic based on the quality, scope of the game and we should see more games (hopefully) of mid size.

Some of the large AAA studios will not take as much risk anymore and pour years of development into one or two titles with over bloated budgets, $200m+ budgets. However, others will continue to push for the $70+ (including special editions, early access, season passes etc.) This has been an emerging trend for a while.

I only pay $70 for Nintendo games likes TOTK. And I'm believed that a Switch 2 will bring many $70 games likes Super Mario Oddissey 2. And yes I will buying them all. Other consoles AAA games max I will buying at $40

Lower price, increase volume. It's not a tough concept. Considering most purchases are digital, it's almost free to ship games now. There's no reason for 70 dollar games and then have prices drop 50% in a couple months. Just start with a more affordable price and then you won't have to discount heavily when your game flops at launch.

It's difficult to treat anything this bloke says with any credibility after that excuse. That has to be up there with the lamest excuses of all time.

Honestly I think part of what keeps prices low is the Switch. I fully expect the successor to slowly bump prices up depending on how much of a performance boost there is between the systems. And if Nintendo can do it, everyone else is gonna pile on. But games have always had a range and have always been expensive. It’s a luxury hobby. The market would have to tank for prices to drop and a 10 dollar increase isn’t enough to price the majority of people out. I feel like 100 is the real breaking point. (For the base game I mean)

@Arkay 2D art can take more time to animate properly and is not always cheaper to make.
I think the price needs to reflect the work put into the game and the value it brings to the consumer be it in lenght or replayability and future support.

I understand that point of needing to pay 70 as games have cost more in the 90s . However with an era of half finished games, micro transactions, short service life( looking at you call of duty) or repetitive cut and paste games like Ubisoft that have ultimate and gold editions that go on sale within weeks for half or more even sometimes it makes me question if it's worth it and for others I definitely feel I'm throwing my money away... Games are so so cheap these days and even free and barely having time to even finish games from years ago they need to make good on their end... Sony first party and Nintendo generally make top notch products where as I also want to support the studio so they make more steller content.. however Nintendo games hardly go on sale and I can't justify paying 60 for these little one time adventures like kirby and peach or the endless mario sports games, where as on PlayStation knowing their best games eventually go half or cheaper or for 10-20 making me wonder if i should wait on some ... But I definitely have paid full price for games i barely touched thinking i was gonna have time or not get sucked into another game...overall tho last year was the first year in a while with so many dang good games but also where as I can wait a bit for some as jedi survivor dropped to half price regularly now and I picked up Hogwarts legacy for half price at the end of last year.. still not far... Anyways its definitely an era for the gamers hopefully things can be made right on the development side as thousands have lost their jobs over the last couple years

@Ryu_Niiyama my switch is easily my most expensive platform to game on, cheaper on PlayStation and even cheaper on PC

@ParadoxFawkes Ok, there is not a lot of context to you saying that. Are you buying at full MSRP (which is what the article is talking about) or waiting for sales? Are you buying more games on one system vs the other? Switch is my most expensive system too, but that’s simply because that’s where my money is spent not due to MSRP. If I bought the same number of games day one across the board I would be spending more on Series X and PS5.

Either way, the discussion (and my original comment) isn’t about individual consumer habits. The point is the baseline cost as a whole, what the market can sustain. Nintendo currently has the lowest MSRP range (usually around 40-60 with 70 being one game). And they are currently the best selling console manufacturer with a high software attach rate. So if they raise their prices across the board same as some games on the twins then imo, if the market accepts the fluctuations then others will do a widespread adoption rather than case by case.

Nintendo didn’t up its prices, it’s pretty irritating seeing this still being peddled. Nintendo merely brought America in-line with the rest of the ENTIRE world . . . ALL other countries had a higher price point for Breath of The Wild and Smash Ultimate, but for some reason America did not have a higher price point for these games. So all Nintendo did was deciding to not continue this with Tears of the Kindom. So now America has a higher price point just like EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD ! EXCEPT they still have Breath of the Wild and Smash Ultimate at the standard price point ! So consider yourselves fortunate !! 🤓

@khululy I see your point and I can agree to that.

Wasn't Sabre removed from Embracer group? If they want a $70 game they better have no bugs or be a LE/SE editions. Remaster and selling at $70 is bloodmoney nothing more. $70 is unsustainable for game prices. People buy more then juts one game or if they collect games they will reduce the amount the buy til it goes on sale or discounted prices. Not everyone can constantly pay $70 game and it's a not a finished game? That won't fly they will just wait for price drop or discount or sale to get it then.

@jco83 Most people are going to speak to the economy they participate in. I live in the US and participate as a gamer in the US and JPN markets, so from that perspective yes prices were raised. I don’t understand how speaking from one’s economic perspective is peddling anything. I don’t make purchasing decisions based on what someone pays in the UK. As I don’t participate as a consumer in that market.

@Ryu_Niiyama because it should be being reported on as introducing PRICE PARITY with the rest of the world. When EVERY other country IN THE WORLD has had a higher price point for BotW & SSBU, America was fortunate to have been singled out and not given the higher price point (until TotK).

So American customers should actually be thankful for their LOWER price point for said prior games compared to everyone else, and only now seeing the higher price point for TotK.

Nintendo is a WORLDWIDE company. #entitlement

@Ryu_Niiyama i meant overall my switch costs more to game on than elsewhere.. ports are more expensive than elsewhere 1st party games also stay full price far longer than elsewhere and barely get good discounts. Not based on playing one platform more than the other or how many games are bought at full price, my switch collection has cost me more in dollars than playing elsewhere even if I play more on pc right now

I honestly can’t tell if Karch thinks the prices will increase or decrease but the comment about how he thinks players associate a lower price with lesser quality kind of strikes me as being a bit tone-deaf, he should see how well some games do during Steam’s quarterly sales.

That said, I can count the amount of times I bought a $70 USD game on one hand and even then one of them was slightly discounted.

I bought Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart at full price and payed for the Digital Deluxe upgrade since I bought it physically. I slightly regret it since Rift Apart, while it’s a nice R&C game, feels like it’s shorter than past games (I’d put it somewhere between Into the Nexus and the PS4 reimaging of the first game) and the writing isn’t as nice. I also haven’t played it in recent memory, I did buy it on Steam but because it was on sale (it sells for $59.99 USD on Steam and it was on sale for just a little over $40 USD) and because I had a gift card for it.

Meanwhile, I got TOTK and Pikmin 4 digitally via the Nintendo Switch Game Voucher program (I’m already paying for online, why not take advantage of any special offerings they have?), I essentially payed $49.99 USD for each title and saved myself $30 USD. Not only do I still play these games regularly I think they’re around the same as, if not better than, past games in their respective series quality-wise.

I think what’ll happen is we’ll see something similar to what Nintendo’s doing: there will be a baseline price that’s accessible to a majority of players, a slight increase for some titles but publishers will offer ways to get them for the base line price or cheaper, and sales that reduce the price to where everyone who wants to buy a game can get it. At least that’s what I’d like to see.

@jco83 Ok you seem kinda stressed about this. Noting and reacting to prices in the market one participates in isn’t entitlement and pricing isn’t flat globally so your argument still doesn’t make any sense. As you aren’t taking into account currency exchange, taxes, economic potential of a region, logistics and profit margin. And as a consumer you don’t have to, bit that does mean that you are only going to react to the market you participate in (or that you are lumping together to attempt to make an entitlement argument). 7900yen (less than 70 dollars) doesn’t equal 70 dollars or 70 euro (more than 70 dollars). Which means it isn’t price parity. Just means the price went up in the US (and any other region I don’t know about that got a price increase for TOTK).

@ParadoxFawkes oh ok, thank you for explaining but now I am more confused. Did you initially tag me by mistake? Because I don’t see the correlation between my initial comment and your reply now or your initial reply after you clarified.

@Ryu_Niiyama "(and any other region I don’t know about that got a price increase for TOTK)."

That is exactly the point I am making ! America is THE ONLY REGION which didn't start off with the higher price point EVERY OTHER REGION DID ! but seems no one talks about it. Only the big hoo-ha "price-rise" gets talked about. Well guess what ! - TotK was never available at a lower price point for you - so you have had no price-rise ! 😂

Absolutely no point talking about exchange rates and all else you mention, every region obviously has its own price points. The point is: every region other than America has had a higher price point for BotW & SSBU since release. The end

@anubisvel Preordering has long been an unnecessary tactic. Used to make some sense when you knew demand would outstrip supply. Nowadays, I think it's meaningless unless you really, really, want that skin.

I paid 70 dollars for link to the past on snes from funcoland in 1992, used, because finding a new copy anywhere was impossible.

Many snes games back then though were easily 59 dollars and these were games that took 1-3 years to make, not 5-7 with full voice acting casts and motion capture and multi million dollar budgets.

Anyone who doesn't realize games haven't matched inflation are disillusioned. Players can't expect triple A game budgets and 1990s price points for them. It's a miracle games stayed priced the same for 3 decades already. They certainly cannot sustain that way though.

that said, if a developer puts out something that is not up to quality (skull and bones for example) then they should expect to lower that price point accordingly. totk, final fantasy 7 rebirth are 70 dollar games easily, if anything they coulda sold for more. but if you release a game that's not up to that standard. you better drop that price to 20-30 tops.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to say you're pricing for the veneer of quality and that it's not sustainable - that's direct acknowledgement of being the problem. What amazes me is that companies know by the time it's priced whether it's worth it - TotK was, a number of other titles most certainly were not but went forward anyway.

I don't particularly care if your company dumped nine figures if you ended up with a mid game. That's not a great case for handing over a premium.

@Strictlystyles Yes. After many years i uninstalled Destiny last year. I still play 3 live service games, but none of them have time consuming daily FOMO.
Lost Ark, Battlefield 2042 and World of Warships (All on PC).

Warships used to be time consuming, but they changed season passes so you can do dailies in 30 mins at most instead of 3 hours. There is also way less FOMO missions.
I will uninstall Battlefield 2042 sometime after Season 7 ends as there won't be more seasons.

Ill rarely pay the full RRP on release for a game in the UK. Even on the high street, you can find new releases at an RRP of £50 for £40.

I'm Nintendo through and through during a generation and tend to get PS or Xbox at the end of their generation when most games are under £20. You can't do that with Nintendo though.

When games were 40-50€, I bought more of them. I have a budget for about 1 game a month now, but I probably play 10.

So I've been playing a lot more older games since some pre-orders reached over 100€ for the 'full' game (only to get 30€ DLC)

Also: why has Nintendo not released Breath of the Wild as a 25€ 'classics' release?
Because the sharks running things don't know how to hold a controller and they want to press this orange for as long as they can.

How about go in the opposite direction and make smaller games, or reduce the budget. I think this way when I have to pay taxes. Reduce budget to reduce my *^#^$^$%#% taxes reeeee lol

@Maulbert That is a logical fallacy. Those games used expensive ROM Chips that cause the price of the game to be increased to cover the cost. With the introduction of CD and DVD media, those costs cratered; and with the introduction of digital delivery those costs are almost effectively zero.

The truth is that we now get shoddy coded games that are all too frequently either incomplete (requiring large updates before playing), are stripped down to maximize profits through DLC and casinoesque manipulations, or are games as a service that took frequently are turned off within 5 years (meaning your investment becomes zero).

EDIT: Those chips were the main reason that the N64 struggled. Nintendo insisted on those expensive chips while everyone else embraced CD Media. So N64 games ran $50 - $60 while most PS1 games ran $40 - $20. That was a huge reason I switched to the PS1 back then. I could effectively purchase two or three games for the price of a single N64 game, and usually the N64 game had to make sacrifices because of space constraints. (i.e. RE2 on N64).

I was gaming in the 90s, and most of my games cost $1-5.

Because my games were either shareware disks from Public Brand Software, or Atari games from a thrift store or closeouts from KB's (which continued to carry Atari games for quite a while, at fire-sale prices)

Because that's what I could afford.

Nowadays... I try to get "big" games at 40% - 75% off, and probably the majority of my games are from bundles (which are usually $1-8 a piece) Because guess what? I'm still not rich, and games go on sale quickly, so why would I pay a full $70 when I may not even have the time to play a game within a few months of its release, and I got Alan Wake 2 straight from Epic two months after its release for $27 (before tax)

I kind of wish games would stratify to different price points. The idea that such a broad variety of games fell under the $60 price point always struck me as artificial. If a game is a massive project, big budget and provides a ton of gameplay, it seems like it should cost more (also assuming no micro transactions). I'm going to go into old man mode and talk about "Back in my day..." Back around 1990, the price of games varied quite a bit. And when a new game came out with a high price tag, we all thought, "Ooh, it must be really special. I WANT IT!" Of course the price was tied to the expensive memory chips cartridges used, not the overall development budget. It's not like we enjoyed spending extra money, but it was seen as the game had extra value reflected in the price. Of course big budget doesn't necessarily mean quality, we can all name many examples of developers spending a huge amount of money only to release a bigger pile of trash.

With my backlog in mind I rarely buy games day01. I recenty bought Zelda Totk for about 45eur, I still havent played it...

Maybe im just old, but i remember paying $80-$100 for snes and genesis games. Didnt really mind back then, dont really mind now.

$70 is more than fair value for a full game, even a non aaa game as long as its good.

The market will dictate how games evolve. As consumers we should also understand that producers cant make things at a loss. Its not like they are rolling in money.

@Darknyht Ill simply point out here that in the overall picture, the cost of production is no different than the cost of development to a developer. If it cost $10 for the chip which raised prices in cart based games, that is no different than the cost to develop a game being $10 higher per unit today. They are both supply side costs that need to be passed on to the consumer. Problem is, the cost was shifted from the consumer to the producer and over time that is unsustainable.

@Toastmaster This is honestly the real issue. It's easy to forget as a "core" gamer on a gaming site like NintendoLife how the vast majority of the gaming market is spent on mobile phone shovelware. Between mobile games and legal gambling apps, the US market only spends 1/3rd of the same money on core gaming software.

Americans especially, and everyone for that matter, need to wake UP to JUST how much money they are flushing down the toilet on their smart devices alone. The amount of money being wasted under the lie of sheer convenience is grotesque.

I measure game success by hours of playtime vs price. As long as I get 1 hour per USD spent, I’m happy. Of course Zelda TotK with 25 hours was far from this quota.

It doesn’t matter if I spend 50, 70 or 400.

@Ulysses I don't understand why people buy "100 acorns" for 100$ that is probably used within 5 minutes in a simple barebone farm game, and they still have to wait until next day for daily update.
You get nothing of value for 100$ in a game.

Did you know that it costs 110.000$ with real money just to max out one character in Diablo Immortal on phone? This were confirmed a year ago. Someone with a lot of money to waste also spent "only" 4000$ in Diablo and got nothing of value...

Some dude spent 25.000$ in the Heartstone card game and said it were worth every $ as the card game were his life...

I doubt it's any better in Europe and Japan. "gambling and money spending addicts" exist everywhere.
There is also friends of friends who is forced to buy expensive live service loot to keep up with their friends.

73% playing live service games on Consoles and PC in 2023 is insane too. It's like the mass market don't like good games anymore.

Majority of normal games sold today is probably sold on Switch and PC.
Nintendo still focuses on proper games as they always did, and probably why Switch sold so much.

In my honest opinion as a Nintendo Switch Oled owner and 46 year old gamer i think the 70 dollar price point is too much. I
Was much happier when games were mostly 40 or less. Another factor is that I am special needs and my income isn’t all that much that I can do alot of game buying.

@Runex2121 True, but a lot of those costs have come because of their own pursuit of bleeding edge graphics. They marketed and trained the consumer to care about high resolution graphics (even when it's impossible for the human eye to see it). So in a way, they have dug their own grave.

Nintendo thankfully wised up to the problem, and for years now has pushed gameplay and innovation over graphics and eye-candy. They produce on hardware that is affordable, but even they are slowly being drawn into the madness.

I look at retro games like Elite on the BBC Micro (a procedurally generated space adventure in 28KB), Fatal Labyrinth for Genesis (Rouge-Like in 128 KB), our most beloved arcade titles (most under a few MB), SimCity Classic (512k floppy that introduced a new genre), and tons of other classic games that show power and size isn't everything. It is the size and graphics of their games that make the development so expensive.

I look at games like Shovel Knight, Celeste, and Dead Cells as games that pushed their genres without flashy graphics or huge development budgets. The truth is that the industry has starved those B-List games out of the picture, much as film has starved out almost everything that isn't a blockbuster.

@Yoshif3 reusing assets ain't inherently bad, it's only bad if a game has been using the same assets since the Mesozoic period like CoD and Battlefield plus TotK is a complete game unlike the games I mentioned are butchered where 80% of it's content is locked behind multiple paywalls. Y'all can boo at me but know that I'm right. He dicho, caso cerrado.

@Manaphy2007 one thing is to reuse assets… and another thing to reuse the same COMPLETE map and sprinkle it with tiny sky islands and a procedurally generated Depths lol. Y no, no es caso cerrado 😂