Can you even spend $80 on a game?

[Shihainin]

$80 lol. I wouldn't even spend $20 on some of the shit that comes out these days.

 

[Potapota]

I buy most of my games on sales (honestly I do rarely pay more than 20 bucks for a video game) but I am doing financially well enough to splurge 60-ish dollars once or twice a year for something I really want and consider "worth it". Even for that price, I am for damn sure expecting more than a 10 hour short shitpost though and at 80 dollars it better be a god damn masterpiece.

 

[KamakoKamako's icon]

I can literally afford food for 2 weeks for that price...

^
This. I could spend $80 on a new game but no game justifies it.

I will not pay more than £50 for any game (and more often than not I won't pay over £30). The last game I paid £50 for was Black Myth: Wukong. Whilst I don't regret that purchase, it was an outlier title.

Before that the last game I bought full price was Cyberpunk 2077, and what a shitshow that turned out to be.

If I can wait 6 years and buy Red Dead Redemption 2 for £15, I can wait a while for GTA VI. And if I can't wait, it won't take long before I can yarr harr it anyway (I don't care about the online multiplayer).

 

[Dyne]

I have a backlog of games. I dont need to buy the $80 game when its brand new.
I can wait until it goes on sale lol

 

[FlyingToaster]

I can't, but even if i could i would refuse to. No game is worth 80 bucks

 

[Sumea]

Currently I'd have to eat nothing and drink only water for 2 weeks to pay 80€ for a game. Well here actually more like 90€ because EU economics work stupid.
Not that I do. Most expensive single game purchase I done in past 5 years has been 35€, when some mega edition of metaphor was on psn sale or something like that. 30€ is just my current maximum.

 

[Rocket2049]

i would ONLY spend 80$ on a game if it's one of those i'm gonna play 100+ hours kinda games
i factor playtime into what i buy always
i'd spend 70$ on metaphor refantazio or persona remakes, i always get near 200 hours gameplay on those.
or disgaea games, i have near 300 on every disgaea title except 6

i would NOT spend 80$ on mario kart world, consider it's only like 16 tracks, less customization and less characters, and no gliding, and you can't even go underwater
for reference mario kart 8 PLUS all it's DLC is 90$ but you get 128 tracks and double the character roster

 

[Graves Ruinwalker]

We have that pricing in germany since the ps2 and classic xbox times (well in euros of course ). But with that price nowadays i would rather buy an retrogame that is very hard to get instead getting modern games .

 

[zombie100379]

i get that $80 is a lot for GTA VI , but at the same time development costs have gone up and GTA VI has supposedly cost more then $3 billion......

 

[SaveSeraph]

I have no shame in the fact that 90+% of games I play are pirated, for various reasons that I don't feel the need to get into. Especially now that I have bills to pay I have no interest in spending any money on games unless absolutely necessary and I know for sure that I can afford it. I have never paid full price for a game either, even for games that I really looked forward to such as Kingdom Hearts 3, and it will be a cold day in hell when I spend more than $60 to buy a game.

 

[Megarockman _1987 Megarockman _1987]

Absolutely not—I’d have to eat nothing but olives for a month, lol. But on a more serious note, and leaving basic necessities aside, I could buy up to six games with that money
With just one game and all that money, I’d feel like I was making a bad investment

 

[Nebulon_Galaxy]

Why do digital games cost the same or even MORE than physical when its just a file being put into a server rack in some janitorial room? Shouldn't these games be costing less? Who the hell would spend 80 dollars on a game if you can't hold it in your hand?

 

[G.L.a.D.O.S.]

I mean, I could buy a new game now and then if I wanted to, but I don't. I don't think I've bought a new game from a store since the PS3 was new, and it wasn't a PS3 game. I think I bought a PC game. I don't remember exactly when, but not that I can't,

I just refuse to, to be honest. Not that any new game looks like it's worth more than $15 on a Steam summer sale anymore.

 

[PhaseJump]

I spend more than that taking lunch meetings at bars and steakhouses.

 

[Pearly]

As someone that lives in Europe, we have had games be around the €80 mark for a while with new releases, over the last few years.

Grand theft auto is what's pushing this in the US, and efforts were made in the past to do this and nintendo decided to be the first to push it in the states. 90-100 for a "premium edition" also showed up with all this and, this pricing specifically showed up with the ps5/series s-x big releases in Europe around 2020.

For me at least, Grand theft auto is pretty much the same price any other tentpole game is releasing as.

That said, everything is more expensive now. The price of alcohol in Ireland for example is hilarious, and it was pushed by the fact that the overlords of bars and pubs didn't like the fact people weren't going out to bars anymore so they pushed the government to massively raise drink prices and ban in store voucher use on alcohol. I don't like bars, but I do like Guinness. Guinness is now 35% more expensive per 500ml than it was 10 years ago.

Trust me when say the expense of Guinness weighs heavy on my heart as it will never be on sale for peanuts whereas GTA 6 will, eventually, be a fraction of it's cost.

Gone are the days of buying a 24 pack for €24

Why do digital games cost the same or even MORE than physical when its just a file being put into a server rack in some janitorial room? Shouldn't these games be costing less? Who the hell would spend 80 dollars on a game if you can't hold it in your hand?

A friend of mine swore that going all digital will make prices plummet. This was in 2014. I laughed in face then, and I laugh now still. Corporate greed is not somehting he's entirely aware of. Anyhting that can be done to increase profit margins shall and will be done.

Savings are never passed on to the consumer, ever, that's a rookie stuff.

 

[Gabrinius]

I can't.

And even if i could, i won't.

The max i should is 30 or 40. (120 to 150 in my currency) and only if it's something i really want to play.

If not, i will wait for it to be 10 or 20.

But even the discounts are weak those days

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

I'm feeling some kinship with at least 21 of you xD

 

[PhaseJump]

New games generally aren't worth dropping full price money on. I would do it easily if I gave a shit and wanted the game, and the only thing on my radar to warrant it right now is Virtua Fighter Crossroads.


Most of the gaming industry pumps out trash, and many of the devs need to be fired. They waste money and drive up costs.

 

[Serotonin]

I already did so for Mario Kart World.

Never again. Man I got scammed.

 

[Noon]

I think the context is important to this, games aren’t more expensive than before, they’re sold in bigger portions. It’s totally fair to say current pricing doesn’t fit our personal budgets (especially if you think you’re supposed to be able to buy everything you want and want everything) but that doesn’t mean they’re not appropriately priced.

Too many people kept on asking for more and more graphics and content and features while giving bad scores to those with less than the front runners without thinking that that stuff costs more to do, it’s not just a creative change.

I don’t care about stuff like high graphics or draw distance and I’d rather not pay money for it, but when I buy a game I know it’s it in there and they did the work for it wether I care about it or not. Of course though I’d would rather buy the same game for less if it didn’t do stuff like that.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

I think the context is important to this, games aren’t more expensive than before, they’re sold in bigger portions. It’s totally fair to say current pricing doesn’t fit our personal budgets (especially if you think you’re supposed to be able to buy everything you want and want everything) but that doesn’t mean they’re not appropriately priced.

Too many people kept on asking for more and more graphics and content and features while giving bad scores to those with less than the front runners without thinking that that stuff costs more to do, it’s not just a creative change.

I don’t care about stuff like high graphics or draw distance and I’d rather not pay money for it, but when I buy a game I know it’s it in there and they did the work for it wether I care about it or not. Of course though I’d would rather buy the same game for less if it didn’t do stuff like that.

Fair point!

But, just for context, "The Game Made For NASA Employees" (Crysis) retailed at less than $50 when the industry really wanted to start moving the price point to $60 for standard releases, and that one pushed graphics and computers to the very limit and attained legendary status because of how far it pushed everything (hell, it was just a step away from reviving the old tradition of shipping games with additional hardware just so people would be able to play them!).

I think something else's going on here.

 

[usergaycoolguy]

Afford is a weird word because like... yeah I could if I saved up enough. But also like, I got GTA V when it was free on Epic years ago and it took 3 days on my crappy internet at the time to install it. I played it for 45 minutes and then deleted it off my harddrive. So it's very hard for me to consider paying for a game if I don't know if I'm gonna drop it after 2 hours and never play it again.

I pirated Elden Ring when it came out because I'd never got on with Soulslike games and once I'd put 50 hours in I bought a real copy and ported my save over because I knew it was worth it and wanted to support FromSoft. That's the last time I bought a triple A game and I don't think there were any others that really appealed to me in the five years before that. For reference I buy indie games usually around once a month to play on deck because I want to support artists I give a fuck about.

My salary is less than the median salary in the UK but I would also guess the people who are going to drop 80 quid on a game like GTA VI are the sorts of people who have one console and one game, and that's the game they're gonna play for that generation with friends online. I can see those people begrudgingly forking over 80 quid for it but less of them now that hardware costs are skyrocking from the AI bubble. My brother makes bank working in accountancy and I just found out even he doesn't have a PS5.

I'm sure the tentpoles will do well cause they always do but god I wish they wouldn't sometimes. Those 35 employees at Rockstar fired for making it over the percentage where their union would be legally recognised should have been the last straw, but unfortunately I think GTA VI is targetting exactly the sorts of people who either don't know or care about the state of the industry for workers.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 3:30 PM

i get that $80 is a lot for GTA VI , but at the same time development costs have gone up and GTA VI has supposedly cost more then $3 billion......

That's true but GTAV has made over 10 billion dollars since 2013. So like, they're still at recordbreaking profits even to this day. IIRC 2 billion of that was from the last year or two alone.

 

[Kovlak]

i get that $80 is a lot for GTA VI , but at the same time development costs have gone up and GTA VI has supposedly cost more then $3 billion......

I think the context is important to this, games aren’t more expensive than before, they’re sold in bigger portions. It’s totally fair to say current pricing doesn’t fit our personal budgets (especially if you think you’re supposed to be able to buy everything you want and want everything) but that doesn’t mean they’re not appropriately priced.

Too many people kept on asking for more and more graphics and content and features while giving bad scores to those with less than the front runners without thinking that that stuff costs more to do, it’s not just a creative change.

I don’t care about stuff like high graphics or draw distance and I’d rather not pay money for it, but when I buy a game I know it’s it in there and they did the work for it wether I care about it or not. Of course though I’d would rather buy the same game for less if it didn’t do stuff like that.

While you have a valid point of view, wages haven't been keeping up with the inflationary spikes in prices, and particularly in gaming. And if people don't have the money to splurge on a premium prices game, or if it gets out of their impulse buy territory, it doesn't matter the economics of modern game development, as much as publishers and developers care for their customers finances. Remember Randy Pichford arguing that it was important for game developers to have their luxury cars.

 

[Graw]

I could afford it occasionally but I can think of a lot better and more useful things to spend the money on. Also, it's closer to $90-$100 in Canada.

 

[ArchienineZXAdventArchienineZXAdvent's icon]

No, games in Argentina are pretty expensive so...