[HN Gopher] Video Game Pricing [video]
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Video Game Pricing [video]
Author : PascLeRasc
Score : 75 points
Date : 2021-08-16 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| As a gamer who rarely finishes games, I love the DLC model. $60
| back in the early 2000s was always too expensive for me, so I
| only ever had used games. If I were a kid today, $60 isn't too
| bad. And if love the game enough, $10 DLC packs is an easy pill
| to swallow.
|
| Wish dunkey did a little more focus on that, but theres tons of
| other videos that go more into the economy of DLC and micro-
| transactions.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I'm not sure how insightful this is. It's largely predicated on
| his personal beliefs of what games are good and what you're
| looking for in a game. I think Pikmin is a great game. I'm not
| sure I would call it close to being the best RTS game, or even
| worth $60.
|
| If anything I would say some of the takeaway should be reversed:
|
| * Games are significantly cheaper than ever before
|
| * Games are generally longer and have more content than ever
| before. A year of multiplayer life is pretty good for $60.
|
| * Free to play games aren't successful as an adverse reaction to
| monetized non-free games. Free to play games are more monetized
| than most.
|
| * Old games are great. Go play them. But don't expect a fungible
| experience with new games. There is no classic game equivalent
| for Resident Evil 8. I would say, there isn't even something
| particularly equivalent for Hollow Knight, which is a direct
| evolution off of old school metroidvania.
|
| But definitely try to look past marketing. We can of course agree
| on that.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I worked in the industry a while back when those prices were
| set, and he does not even mention several factors 1.) games
| sold in stores required a concrete date for shelf space with an
| agreement with large retailers for shelf placement and kiosks,
| better cost the publisher more concessions IIRC, the game
| publisher sold the game for half the retail price to retailers
| so they were making say $30 out of the $60, ballpark estimates
| of sales were used to set budgets and almost everyone tried to
| time release for optimum sales period of Christmas shopping,
| setting the date - often years in advance, so that's why the
| time crunch problem was/is an issue, most games sold an
| extremely high percentage within a month of release often > 90%
| at least at full retail price (I can't remember if the
| publisher had a penalty for those that didn't sell after a
| while) 2.) many console games required a contracted number of
| actual physical media burned at a certain date so the publisher
| had to predict sales, a popular console might have limited
| timeslots for production to sell to game publishers and
| overshooting the mark on physical media is a loss and
| undershooting means lost sales at retail price so this makes
| console more high stakes than PC games in a way for publisher
| (Nintendo being console maker and publisher changes this
| somewhat for them alone), also the surcharge the console makers
| charged publishers was $10 per physical media produced in
| PS3/360 days, this had not changed from Game Boy days when we
| looked into making a new cartridge game when those games sold
| for $30-$40. Obviously the situation has changed and I don't
| know what the numbers are now, and some of these are
| alleviated/changed by the availability of digital only versions
| of games.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| > Old games are great. Go play them. But don't expect a
| fungible experience with new games. There is no classic game
| equivalent for Resident Evil 8.
|
| Similarly, there is no modern equivalent to Katamari Damacy.
| Some games are just too perfect to be recreated.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Potentially unpopular opinion, but I think a large part of
| Katamari Damacy's appeal was it's oddball aesthetic, with a
| feeling it was kind of intentionally shitty, but executed
| really well. I think this hasn't aged as well as it deserved
| because so many indie games ham up the "low quality" aspect
| of their game now. Whereas KD did it artistically, indie
| games do it as an excuse for not being better. And for
| keeping that company, I find KD hasn't aged well.
|
| Good theme song though.
| OmarIsmail wrote:
| At this point I literally only play games on Xbox Game Pass and
| I'm playing more now than ever before. It's truly unreal how good
| of a value Game Pass is.
| yuy910616 wrote:
| It reminds me of something I think someone from Netflix once said
| (paraphrasing): We're not competing with Hulu or Disney Plus,
| we're competing with sleep.
|
| These days games are not the only forms of addictive
| entertainment - there are games, social media, streaming service,
| youtube, tiktok, and so much more.
|
| Maybe games are cheaper (in real-term) because entertainment in
| general are getting cheaper.
| supperburg wrote:
| This is absolutely unacceptable. When HN started allowing videos,
| I was weary because it was a step in the wrong direction. But
| obviously the majority of users didn't care. Now we have this. A
| popular culture YouTuber featured on the front page... of hacker
| news. A YouTube video that is listed on trending on YouTube is
| also on the front page of hacker news.
|
| This is a blatant violation of the guidelines. This video,
| besides not even being the best quality in Dunks library or the
| most interesting, is vapid popular culture content and is in no
| way, by any stretch of the imagination, intellectually
| interesting. And that's just the threshold for entry! It doesn't
| even come close to being as intellectually stimulating as the
| long-time HN user has become accustomed to.
|
| This is the day that I know beyond any doubt that this is not a
| noob-illusion (a decade old noob), HN is allowing itself to
| degrade. For the love of god this is the only place left on the
| internet that I know of where a person can have an intelligent
| conversation. The last place where I can expect that the curation
| of links will please and surprise me. Please don't let this
| special place die. Ban YouTube links and ban garbage like this
| from appearing here.
| Leftium wrote:
| Related: https://youtu.be/VhWGQCzAtl8
|
| This 6 min video explains from game dev perspective why (AAA)
| games have been pegged at $60 on release, even though they should
| be priced higher to be sustainable ($85-$90 in 2018).
|
| So game developers tried various ideas to make up for this gap:
| DLC, perpetual experiences (map packs & expansions), loot boxes,
| microtransactions...
| Leftium wrote:
| One additional major revenue stream not mentioned is
| merchandise.
|
| Pokemon's merch revenue completely dwarfs game revenue:
| https://youtube.com/clip/UgxvU_ygdejMiTGyChN4AaABCQ
|
| Merch is great because it allows "whales" to spend as much as
| they want without the questionable gambling aspect of loot
| boxes/gacha.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _So game developers tried various ideas to make up for this
| gap: DLC, perpetual experiences (map packs & expansions), loot
| boxes, microtransactions... _
|
| There's also "ultimate" editions, which bridge the gap at sales
| time.
|
| Sure, you could buy Forza Horizon 5 for $60, but you could also
| buy the Deluxe Edition for $80 to get some extra cars or the
| Premium Edition for $100 to get the same extra cars + the DLC
| when it comes out and some extra goodies.
| Leftium wrote:
| Many players complain when DLC is released at the same as the
| main game because they feel it should just be part of the
| main game.
|
| Framing this DLC as an "ultimate" edition seems like a great
| idea!
| foxfluff wrote:
| To what extent does it backfire though?
|
| "Would you like the ripoff edition or the inferior
| edition?"
|
| Actually, I don't want to buy the game anymore.
| Leftium wrote:
| The difference a tiny change in framing can make is
| amazing:
| https://www.psychologyofgames.com/2010/03/framing-and-
| world-...
|
| > In World of Warcraft what they did when they first
| designed the game was they had an experience system that
| would, over time, lower the amount of experience you got
| because [Blizzard] wanted to encourage people to play for
| like two hours at a time instead of twelve hours at a
| time. So the longer you played you'd get this experience
| degradation and then it would bottom out and at that
| point it would be a fixed rate of experience. And people
| just hated it.
|
| > And so they went back and [Blizzard's Rob Pardo] was
| like all right, basically what we did was we made
| everything in the game take twice as much experience to
| achieve as before and then we flipped it. So actually
| what happens is you start getting 200% experience and
| eventually it goes back down to 100%. So that effectively
| now how they spin it is that if you log out for a while
| you get this 200% boost when you log back in! And then
| over time it goes away and you just get regular 100%
| experience. It's EXACTLY the same as it was before,
| except NOW everyone is like "Fuck yeah, Blizzard, this is
| exactly what I want!"
| gopher_space wrote:
| A lot of your examples are also attractive because you'd
| already have the framework set up to deliver them.
| dkersten wrote:
| > sustainable
|
| The popular AAA games have been making record breaking amounts
| of profit in recent years before you even include the
| microtransactions they've been adding. The market is bigger
| than ever. This is from the earning reports. This is just an
| excuse to try milk more money out of consumers.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Which ones?
|
| The big yearly franchises rake in tons of cash, just as
| superheroes do at the movie theatre. But if you go a bit
| deeper, the situation is more mixed. Bioshock Infinite just
| about bankrupted Irrational Games, for instance, despite
| being very well-received.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Sounds like they should have put $80 price tag on the game.
| It was worth it.
| pcwalton wrote:
| Anecdotes are one thing, but the picture is clear when you
| look at inflation-adjusted trends:
| https://venturebeat.com/2018/01/23/the-cost-of-games/ The
| development cost for games, especially AAA titles, has in
| fact risen significantly.
|
| Given the sacrifices that developers and especially artists
| have to undergo to work in the industry, I have absolutely no
| problem with saying that video games should monetize as much
| as they can, to ensure that the crew can continue to make a
| decent living.
| mister_tee wrote:
| in response to the video's message - I get that $60 in 2006
| inflated to $80 today. And that development costs have gone up
| rapidly (so have sales IIRC but I know that's not evenly-
| distributed).
|
| Might the move to digital distribution, even if not complete
| yet, already be giving publishers substantially increased
| profits per unit sold?
|
| A decade ago, an article suggested publishers made $27 on a $60
| physical game, and the platform holder a $7 royalty[1]. With
| digital, retailers lose out and no longer get a cut, cost of
| goods is reduced, and returns go away.
|
| With a $60 digital game, don't Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo/Steam
| all charge a 30% platform fee for infrastructure/store costs
| and their profit? They'd take $18 (+157%) and leave $42 for the
| publisher (+55%) (edit:math). Is that the extent of the pie or
| is it divided more?
|
| Multiplayer still requires a $60/year fee on console systems
| too, correct? And all the extra and ongoing costs mentioned in
| the parent post are unlikely to go away with increased base
| price, right? I don't mean to be skeptical but feel we're going
| to see some price increases (beyond gaming too) just because
| businesses can.
|
| [1]
| https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/...
| muststopmyths wrote:
| Most of what used to go to the retailer apparently goes to
| the console maker now ($7/60 vs $18/60), so the studio hasn't
| really gotten much of a benefit from digital.
|
| Multiplayer fee does not go to the game maker either.
|
| And costs are astronomically higher. A mid-market AA game
| with a studio of 80-100 people will cost in the order of
| 15-20 million USD a year to produce. Art is enormously
| expensive in 3D, even outsourced. My numbers are a few years
| old, so it's probably worse now.
|
| It's ludicrous to assume that in the cut-throat gaming market
| (unless it's the 1000th iteration of a franchise) game
| developers are looking to increase the price "just because
| they can". They actually _can 't_ because gamers have shown
| themselves to be incredibly hostile to price increases.
|
| The main reason there are no more mid-market games (i.e.
| between AAA franchises and indie small-scales) is that it is
| absolutely not profitable or sustainable. You can put all
| your money and energy into a game, but unless it's a huge
| hit, you will never recover the cost. It is just not worth it
| to most of us these days to even try.
| chriswalz wrote:
| I found it weird how the video doesn't account for the massive
| economies of scale that AAA companies have access to. The
| audiences & market size are way bigger now than they were back
| in the day.
| gambiting wrote:
| Our own marketing department made a good summary of this( I
| work for a AAA games company) - according to them as little
| as 10 years ago there was maybe a dozen big, AAA, 50h+ long
| releases each year. Now there's 100+ a year and increasing.
| Yes your markets are bigger, but there's more competition and
| fundamentally it's still winner takes all - big names sell
| 20/30/40 million units, while if the game isn't either a big
| well known franchise or an absolute 10/10 hit it struggles to
| pay for its own development cost.
|
| And the length of games plays big part too - my wife took
| 100h to complete Assassin's Creed Valhalla and there's still
| tonnes to do, it just meant that she wasn't ready to buy
| another big AAA game for like 3-4 months.
| gruez wrote:
| >according to them as little as 10 years ago there was
| maybe a dozen big, AAA, 50h+ long releases each year. Now
| there's 100+ a year and increasing.
|
| What's the criteria for "AAA"? 100+ AAA releases per year
| seems a bit on the high side.
| Leftium wrote:
| There's a bit of handwaving and the the video admits $90 is
| just a gut estimate.
|
| However, I think they did try to account for things like
| that: they started with an estimate games should cost
| $225-$300 before accounting for larger audience size.
|
| Larger market size and efficiencies like reusable game
| engines are balanced by increased productions costs. The
| first versions of Final Fantasy just had text captions in 2D.
| Now they are in full 3D with fully acted voice actors.
|
| Starts here: https://youtu.be/VhWGQCzAtl8?t=96
| vlunkr wrote:
| This is entertaining and informative, but it needs some sort of
| thesis statement to be worth discussing.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| It came sort-of in the middle, and a bit more at the end, but
| my reading is that the thesis of the video is that games are a
| rip-off; emulate the classics and you'll have a better
| experience than chasing the newest wave of hype (and will save
| hundreds of dollars).
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I don't think that's right. He made it pretty clear he thinks
| Super Mario Odyssey is a game worth $60 or more. I enjoy
| retro games, but I wouldn't enjoy playing through an entire
| catalogue of old games before I wanted something that had a
| more modern design sense.
| wsinks wrote:
| Completely agree.
|
| Dunkey uses the tried and true method of SaaS selling in this
| video too. Start with the pain, then move to the solution
| that you definitely didn't start your pitch with.
| sleibrock wrote:
| There's a lot of ideas to too wild for one thesis to draw up,
| but I think there's a lot of good talking points.
|
| * Triple-A games are often-times yearly releases of a series
| priced at $60 (Battlefield, Call of Duty, FIFA), but are hardly
| ever new games with new technologies. Most times they last
| about a year before they're effectively EOL'd.
|
| * Indie games are much lower in comparison and receive more
| love from their developers
|
| * Nintendo are renowned for their titles and IPs, but their
| games are far from innovative at times, and their prices are
| not competitive in the slightest.
|
| * Pricing of modern video games makes players turn to free-to-
| play games which receive more updates on a regular basis.
|
| * The only way to play classic games reliably is emulation.
| Getting modern versions of old games from devs/pubs is very
| unreliable currently (Silent Hill collection, Super Mario 3D
| Allstars, etc)
| vlunkr wrote:
| I still think getting into one of these topics in-depth would
| be more interesting. Like this one:
|
| > Nintendo are renowned for their titles and IPs, but their
| games are far from innovative at times, and their prices are
| not competitive in the slightest.
|
| They aren't priced competitively, yet they are incredibly
| successful (depending on the decade). Could other companies,
| especially indie devs, price their products similarly? I'm no
| game dev, but I assume it doesn't feel great to sell your
| game for $0.99 on Steam.
| detaro wrote:
| "too wild"? That seems like fairly generic gaming opinions.
|
| (Well, the F2P one seems a bit weird, given the wide range of
| options of getting games cheap-ish if you don't insist on
| only playing the newest AAA titles)
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Honestly emulation is so good now, and games so easy to
| acquire via torrent communities, that it is kind of difficult
| for me to justify (to myself) collecting retro hardware.
| Especially since I end up using Everdrives and ODEs anyway.
|
| I've been seriously considering selling off my collection,
| but I'm too lazy to do it piecemeal.
| bitwize wrote:
| No, it's never the same. There will always be glitches.
|
| KiwiFarms murdered the person who could bring emulation
| within spitting distance of real hardware. So yeah, now
| there's even more reason to collect gaming hardware.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > No, it's never the same.
|
| You're right, but of course the nature of emulation is
| that it can actually be better in a lot of ways. More
| power efficient than original hardware, no cartridges or
| discs, no composite or NTSC artifacting[0], save states,
| networked multiplayer, automated translation, etc.
|
| > There will always be glitches.
|
| It is at least theoretically possible to build a perfect
| emulator. Practically, though, we are already so close
| that it is more than good enough[1] and fake it for the
| rest if anyone cares.
|
| > KiwiFarms murdered the person who could bring emulation
| within spitting distance of real hardware.
|
| Yeah, that was horrible and tragic without even
| connecting it to emulation and those fuckwits can die and
| rot in hell.
|
| [0] Ok, that one being better is debatable since the art
| was designed with that in mind. Of course, there's always
| shaders.
|
| [1] With the exception of a few systems, like my beloved
| Saturn.
| bennysomething wrote:
| I've got nes, snes, megadrive and a N64 everdrive. I don't
| use them anymore. I've got a pc under my TV that can handle
| everything up to GameCube. I can't be bothered dragging out
| hardware and hooking up an ossc.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I mainly collect retro hardware for the hardware itself.
| Emulations can play the games, but nothing can emulate how
| the Game Boy Color perfectly fits on the curve of the N64
| (try it), or taking a Dreamcast VMU with you on the go, or
| the TV tuners that kids like me craved. I love seeing
| hardware evolve in front of my eyes.
| kevinlou wrote:
| Never thought I'd see my boy Dunkey on HN, but here we are
| MaXtreeM wrote:
| I never thought I would see videogamedunkey in top hot posts on
| HN but here we go. As others have already pointed out, he usually
| makes silly videos but has been consistent for many years if you
| like his kind of humour. From time to time he makes a video-essay
| which are usually great, I would recommend a "Game Critics"[0]
| and part two if you liked the first one.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG2dXobAXLI
| supperburg wrote:
| I think that this kind of content doesn't belong on HN and I
| think that it's a violation of the guidelines. It saddens me
| deeply to see today for the first time ever a blatant Reddit
| post reach the front page of HN. I've been here a decade.
| supperburg wrote:
| Once again, I don't think pop culture videos belong on hacker
| news and I think it's a violation of the guidelines.
| tenaciousDaniel wrote:
| I've always been curious about video game pricing. The car
| dealership comparison was perfect, really shows how wild the
| market is.
| gruez wrote:
| >really shows how wild the market is.
|
| makes sense when the marginal cost is near-zero.
| moonchild wrote:
| The majority of consumer products are priced according to
| what people will pay, not what they cost.
| gruez wrote:
| >The majority of consumer products are priced according to
| what people will pay
|
| That'd depend entirely on your purchasing habits. "what
| people will pay" is an upper bound on the price, and "what
| they cost" is an lower bound. For high end/luxury products
| (eg. iPhone 12 pro max 256GB), prices are indeed dictated
| by "what people will pay", but for low end/commodity
| products (eg. low to mid range android phone, or everyday
| staples like food) it's dictated by "what they cost" due to
| competition.
| yifanl wrote:
| Its weird, because the quality of the product has fairly low
| correlation to the production costs associated with the
| product (including even the marketing budgets!), whether it
| is distributed as a cartridge or 2 DLLs over Steam.
| esotericsean wrote:
| I love dunkey. He comes across as a dumb YouTuber making silly
| videos about video games, but this was really insightful just
| like the majority of his videos.
|
| As a game developer, it's a crazy world out there.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Dunkey makes visual essays only when he comes up with a good
| one. He doesn't force one out every week. The rest of the time
| he goofs around or makes a half-hearted review. But even during
| his goofing around he'll make a good point or slyly highlight
| out some shady practice. Take for example his review of the
| recent Ratchet and Clank on the PS5. He shows off these
| beautiful vistas while reading Sony's claims that this could
| only be made on the PS5 because of such-and-such technology.
| Then he pulls the rug and says all those beautiful vistas were
| actually from the previous Ratchet and Clank game on the PS4.
| It's not an explicit take-down of Sony, nor does it need to be,
| but it helps reenforce the idea that marketing claims should
| always be treated skeptically.
| wsinks wrote:
| I saw the title of this, and as a dunkey subscriber, I was
| hoping this was the first time that I'd seen dunkey on HN.
|
| What a wild cross-over day!
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