The return of the $70 video game has been a long time coming | Hacker News Reader

The return of the $70 video game has been a long time coming

arstechnica.com

26 pointszdw50 comments

This "article" was written and published at the same time across many different publications. Ars, IGN, and more published this PR piece in full: https://icrowdnewswire.com/2020/07/10/the-return-of-the-70-v.... Search for this title in DDG and you'll find many results.

The question is, who paid to publish the press release? Pushing a press release through a PR firm that would get you wide coverage like this ain't free, and it doesn't happen on its own.

I haven't seen anybody asking that question or pointing out the conflict of interest.

The `icrowdnewswire.com` link says it is written by "Kyle Orland"

> Kyle Orland is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games.

I couldn't find the IGN mirror of the article, but I did find this article which points in the other direction:

https://www.ign.com/articles/why-70-ps5-and-xbox-series-x-ga...

I think this is more a result of NBA2k's decision to charge $10 more for PS5 Xbox Series X titles.

Given how general the message is, My first guess would be it’s an “industry association” of some sort.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say? You can click on the author's name to see he's the senior games editor at Ars. The results on Duckduckgo are generic article spinner SEO spam bot sites that copy and repost articles. And I'm not sure what the "conflict of interest" would be? And who's the PR firm?

I'm suggesting that Forbes, IGN, and the many other websites that published nearly this exact article at the same time--an article which clearly benefits a game publisher's interests--might not be a coincidence.

A dozen journalists arguing in the same week that it's about time we pay more for AAA games... Is more than a little odd.

Except that’s not what happened...

And it’s partly because a tweet about it got very popular this week too. There’s definitely industry pressure but it’s not a work like come on.

I don't see a trace of it on any legit site other than arstechnica. Show us a link from Forbes or IGN if it's on there. The only other sites I see it on are throwaway domains with stolen content.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aforbes.com+The+return+of+th...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aign.com+The+return+of+the+%...

The link you posted sources all of its images from Ars. As in, the src of all of the images is literally pointed at Ars Technica's CDN. "ICrowdNewsWire" is probably just publishing Ars’s RSS feed. If you click around most of the pages on the site are obviously just stolen from elsewhere. It's obviously a link farm.

Good spotting of a PR sub.

Here's another iteration of the PR 'news' piece:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/07/03/next-g...

I'm really impressed by the reach. Hats off to them, if it's not the case of a coincidence.

Disclaimer - the $70 and $60 price points refer to AAA games and game developers, not indy games, which often run closer to $20-$40.

So with that disclaimer, any time someone (like the author) says that games have never been cheaper at the $60 price point, I like to point out that the AAA game developers have never turned higher profits than they are right now. Activision Blizzard is reporting over 4 billion (yes, ‘B’ billion) dollars in profits.

> It's time

If this author really thinks that a price hike of the minimum game experience they’re selling is going to stop any of the predatory behaviors, they’re being incredibly naive. AAA game developers don’t just want your money, they want as much of your money that they can squeeze out of you.

Fifa - the only game confirmed at this new price point so far - is particularly bad about this, with individual players occasionally spending tens of thousands of dollars on this game.

Let's be clear, there are plenty of AAA games that do not nickle & dime you. There are also a bunch where they do sell additional material, mostly additional campaigns via DLC, that is no way necessary. Just off the top of my head, Witcher 3, Doom 2016/Eternal, Last of Us 2, Spiderman, Uncharted 4, Bloodborne/Sekiro, Last Jedi, Persona 5 (Royal), FFVII Remake.

For every Spiderman, there’s a FIFA. For every TLOU II, there’s a TLOU2 Elly edition being sold for over 4x the entry price.

Even the Witcher 3 sold a season pass for $30 prior to any expansions being released. And Cyberpunk 2077? There’s a $260 edition and a $400 edition. There’s no official word, but it’s looking likely that there will be a season pass sold for it as well.

And you don't have to buy any of that. Stop concerning yourself with what others spend their money on.

I concern myself with it in two cases: When they’re taking advantage of adults (and children) with gambling illnesses. Jim Sterling has a great video about this reality, and how it impacts people.

The second is when games are changed in an attempt to get more money. Anytime an XP boost is sold, it’s because the grind has been made intolerable. Anytime powerful characters/abilities/gear is sold, it’s because it’s been made harder or unreasonable (or impossible) to get through the game itself. When skins are sold, they’ve been removed as a natural reward from the game itself.

Games are being actively ruined by these money-making tactics.

Yet, some (most?) of the best games of this generation don't do that. I agree the loot boxes are terrible, and I think that the government should outlaw them, but I find it hard to be outraged at MTX and DLC when I've literally spent less than probably $30 on those things in my lifetime, almost all DLC, Spiderman and Breath of the Wild, and I spent $3 on SimCity Mobile one time.

If there were nothing but games that required XP Boost, that'd be one thing, but it isn't. I can't even keep up with the amount of great AAA and indy games and I probably game anywhere from 20-60 hours a week. My backlog of games to play is nearly 80 deep.

Ff7 probably shouldn’t be there since it’s chapter one of an unspecified number of chapters.

> I like to point out that the AAA game developers have never turned higher profits than they are right now. Activision Blizzard is reporting over 4 billion (yes, ‘B’ billion) dollars in profits.

In 2019 ATVI made $1.5B profit on $6.5B revenue, down YoY from the previous year. During the same year Google made $34B on $161B of revenue, up YoY from 2018. Apple similarly had a gross margin of about 38% on $89B of revenue.

Relative to companies that actually are making profits hand over fist, I find it hard to muster any outrage toward labor-intensive entertainment businesses.

I was looking at the gross profit figures, since we’re explicitly talking about the cost of making video games - not marketing or executive/corporate costs. > Activision Blizzard annual gross profit for 2019 was $4.395B

But, even with “only” $1.5B profit they’re doing pretty amazing - that’s just shy of a 25% profit/revenue split. That’s better than Google, which I’m sure you realized.

And if billions of dollars of profit isn’t “hand over fist” money, I don’t know what is.

Those are companies that are in every facet of everyone’s life. That’s like comparing the profit of a local ranch to Kellogg.

The revenue of big game publishers comfortably puts them in the top 10 most profitable media companies, competing with massive conglomerates.

You're right, of course.

Games also exploded in popularity, the industry is huge now, games can make a billion dollars in a matter of days.

AAA doesn't need a price increase, it makes it up in volume... and fucking IAP.

Why do you accept other products going up in price with inflation but not games? It's getting more difficult to make an AAA from what I can tell.

As a greybeard, I think paying $70 for a video game is crazy.

Then I have to remember that in 1982 I paid $50 for a copy of Atari 2600 Pac-Man. That's $135 today.

So maybe I should shut the hell up.

For fun:

Federal minimum wage in 1982(2020 dollars): $3.25 ($9.11)

Federal minimum wage in 2020: $7.25

So that copy of Pac-Man was 15.38 hours of minimum wage labor in 1982, a $70 game today is 9.65 hours of labor. Minimum wage is slightly lower today than it was in 1982, but video game production has apparently become significantly cheaper.

Installing Unity or Godot and having something move around on the screen is significantly faster, more intuitive and therefore cheaper than dealing with all the processes around racing the beam.

Not a great comparison since outside of rural Mississippi and similar, the cost of barebones living is much higher, so people on minimum wage have much less discretionary income today.

I think they are just trying to point that inflation exists...

Production costs have increased by several orders of magnitude. Just look at the credits of a modern game vs something like those 80s Activision titles that were developed by a single person.

A larger video game market has created economies of scale that make larger development budgets viable.

Ah yeah, you're right for these AAA games, it is economies of scale that have made it cheaper, not lower production costs.

I remember back in 1987 going to my local pub/bar and paying $1.40 for a beer. You only needed $20.00 in your pocket to have a really good night out.

These days you pay between $5.00 and $6.00 for the same beverage with some establishments charging way more that.

How much did you pay for a car back then compared to now?

The sticker price is a psychological barrier and the studios have figured out a much more lucrative way around it. So they never have had to challenge it.

But they totally could, and should. These games are the cheapest and longest form of entertainment around. The market can bare more, it is just a matter of time before shareholders force studios to put that theory to the test.

I'd like to see market size considered here too.

Games cost a fixed amount to develop regardless of how many copies you sell. How many copies did developers sell 20 years ago compared to today? If you sell 2X the copies, the game can cost half as much and yet the profit would stay roughly the same.

Marginal cost has gone way down as well as there is often no physical copy (and no physical store, etc...)

Yet Steam still takes 30%, it's not all fun and roses.

Getting 70% from digital is still superior to the 55% you'd get at retail.

The Legend of Zelda had a team of 6, a dev cycle of about a year, and sold 6 Million copies at $50(1986/7/8/9/90). BotW had a dev team in the 100's, took 5 years of development, and has sold ~18MM (Switch) copies to date at $60(2017/8/9/20), which barely puts it inside the 50 best selling games of all time.

I remember paying $60 (or $70?) for Ultima VII in 1992 which would be at least $110 today. But there's no chance I'd pay $70 for a digital download today. The market has changed a lot!

Can't digital download a map printed onto a piece of fabric tho :D

"I'm sorry, honey, but those games cost up to and including $70." —Marge Simpson, 1995

I used to play on consoles, typically would have 2-3 of them each generation and buy up the biggest AAA titles. God I can't imagine how much money I spent during those years. These days I spend most of my gaming on the PC, where I don't feel this constant urge to keep up. The games are reasonably priced and there's plenty of free-to-play options that actually end up being the more fun games anyways. If I feel like spending money on in game items I will, but generally I spend a small fraction of what I used to. There's no way I'm spending $70 on a video game unless it's something I see myself playing for years on end. Think Elder Scrolls. Suspect the vast majority of games don't fit into this category though.

If you wait just a few months after release you can almost always get pristine copies of xbox one and PS4 physical disc-based games for a lot less on eBay. I think I paid $19 for Assassin's Creed Odyssey including shipping.

Or at GameStop. Despite that, criticizing GameStop and wishing it would go out of business seems to be a favorite hobby of many HN'ers

I think it's the gap between the buy and sell prices that offends people. Bring in a pristine copy of a six month old AAA PS4 game and get offered $6.50 for it, they'll sell it for $28.99. That and the pushy sign up for membership sales tactics their management forces the retail floor workers to hassle customers about.

Simulators, for one, are very complex and take a lot of time to master, and buying them for that much (or more) money is well worth it. It is like buying a $200 math or physics textbook: you'd spend so much time and effort studying it that the price would not seem to matter in comparison. (Not sure about other kinds of games; vendor's focus on the DLC might be the biggest problem there.)

> It is like buying a $200 math or physics textbook

Well that's bonkers in the first place.

I don't think that video the game price is going to change for me. I have a large backlog of yet-to-be-played games from bundles, sales, etc.

I usually buy games below $20, many below $10. If it takes the AAA title a few years to get there, then this is fine. It gives them time to remove the nastiest bugs and combine all the extensions into a Game of the Year edition.

Inflation.

Anything but micro transactions and subscriptions. Can we stop dumbing down games too?

MTXs and season passes aren't going away in games that deploy them. But they may stay away in AAA games that haven't been infected with them yet. I don't understand why you think games have been dumbed down though.

> Anything but micro transactions and subscriptions.

Are you implying that hiking up the base-price of a game will stop companies from wanting post-sale monetisation? That seems optimistic :P

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