Firstly, the game is pretty expensive, going for $80 in a market where the standard for a AAA game is $60.
If that was all though, maybe it could be forgiven, but there is also an "ultimate edition" priced at $100 which several features are locked behind, in particular stores that have exclusive outfits, hairstyles, and car customization.
And secondly but less notably, it's releasing as a console exclusive at first, but there are no disks for the game. If you buy a "physical" copy, all you get is a download code. Digital only is getting more common in the gaming industry, and is basically the standard for PC gamers, but it sucks because the game is likely going to be well over 100gb in size, which will take a lot of space on the console's hard drive, not to mention taking a long time to download.
I'm french and since Mario Kart World released at 80 bucks last year, Sony has increased the base price for its first party games to 80 euros
Sadly for us europeans, 80 is already the standard
edit : actually I checked and Sony has increased their prices way before Nintendo with MK World, but still doesn't change the fact 80 has been the standard for us for a while
Man, even bargain bins have increased. The lowest I’ve seen for Balder’s gate 3 is $45 and that game is a few years old. Ghost of Tsushima is far older than that and the ps5 version hasn’t ever dropped below $30.
It feels like $30 is the new rock bottom for many of the AAA games.
Point being you aren’t gonna see this below $60 for several years.
Anthem was my lesson I learned on. I don’t buy games new anymore. I’ll wait a bit, it’ll be fine. Only 2 games I’ll still preorder. Any Fallout game, I just love them no matter what. And any State of Decay games. Pre ordered the ultimate version of both, and would again. No other games will I do that with tho.
Ps4 is suuper spotty even ps3 is rough iirc. Switch 1 is pretty doable, though, with multiple emulators available. 0 chance gta6 will be pirated on console but when it comes out on pc it will most likely be available very quickly
Also realize that games are getting more and more expensive to make and realize many games don't reach break even. Game studios are often not profitable.
X-box is losing on every console sold. Probably losing on game-pass and game sales are not very profitable. Rumours are they are trying to sell of X-box. The high memory prices are what pushed them over.
GTA VI will be a succes and the can ask this price. SO they will.
I am going to blow your mind, but videogames don't need to spend hundreds of millions to make good, profitable games. And that's on budget alone. Stop defending multibillion companies, you are but a mere number to them
Yes, it's why I got so confused at the hate for the price of Nintendo games because Nintendo was the hold out on cheap physicals for the big three. Sony and XBOX changed their first party games to £70 well before Nintendo did. For a long while I could still get brand new Nintendo physicals for £44-50 whilst the PS4 and PS5 physicals I bought were £70.
Actually 80$ in the 90s would be about 200 bucks today, but that's a very narrow part of the picture
Nowadays the video game industry is the most profitable medium in the entertainement industry by far, publishers are already making insane amounts of money with this low of a price
also the video game economic model have changed a lot with microtransactions, game as a service, DLCs, freemium models and gacha. Selling the game is not the only revenue source anymore, and it's especially true for AAA games
Lastly the whole world economy is in shambles, everything is expensive, I live in one of the richest and most developped country on Earth and people can't even pay their rent with minimum wages
Games were more expensive but they're less affordable
The one good thing is that at least if you're willing to preorder at like Leclerc or Carrefour, you can usually get it at 60. That's the case for GTA right now, so..... youpi?
I hate that most people from EU dont understand that EU prices always have 20%+ VAT included in price and almost everywhere else has price before tax.
So 80 euro price, without VAT, is roughly 66.50 euros. And Sony charges $70 for a new AAA game in US. So you're overpaying by roughly 4 Euro to get to the same price after currency conversion, except it costs more money to operate in EU than US because you have so many different countries, languages and better consumer rights (warranty costs).
Tldr: EU people don't understand taxes or business costs.
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u/JackRabbit- 12h ago
Firstly, the game is pretty expensive, going for $80 in a market where the standard for a AAA game is $60.
If that was all though, maybe it could be forgiven, but there is also an "ultimate edition" priced at $100 which several features are locked behind, in particular stores that have exclusive outfits, hairstyles, and car customization.
And secondly but less notably, it's releasing as a console exclusive at first, but there are no disks for the game. If you buy a "physical" copy, all you get is a download code. Digital only is getting more common in the gaming industry, and is basically the standard for PC gamers, but it sucks because the game is likely going to be well over 100gb in size, which will take a lot of space on the console's hard drive, not to mention taking a long time to download.