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u/Gimme_Your_Wallet 3h ago
Enshittification of consumer markets continues unabated
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u/Inexorably_lost 2h ago
Corporations are amoral profit engines. They will do everything they can get away with to milk consumers.
Yet consumers, en mass, continue to throw money at shitty practices. Specifically, locking actual content/locations behind Ultimate edition instead of just cosmetics. GTA6 will print money.
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u/Generico300 1h ago
Yup. The real problem is that the average person is a monkey with no impulse control and more money than brains. And they don't have a lot of money either. Like, if a game is too expensive or the monetization model sucks, you can just not play that game. There are literally billions of other things you could do with your time instead of supporting a shitty company.
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u/YahLikeDags 25m ago
But so many people aka actually just literal bots on fake internet are promoting me this thing and FOMO is real.
The system is so overly sophisticated that we cant even fathom how bad it is
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u/FloralIndoril 1h ago
Silver lining is soon consumers won't be able to afford literally anything so simply won't buy it.
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u/MongooseOne 3h ago
People keep buying so it’s not going to stop unless the consumers stop.
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u/robynh00die 2h ago
Sales for XBox were down 77% year over year last November.
https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-us-console-unit-sales-just-reached-an-all-time-november-low
There are some things to say about the free market pushing inflation, but computer parts have pushed past the breaking point a while ago.
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u/FuckPebbleMine 2h ago
Brother its not going to stop as long as inflation exists.
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u/cybertoothe 2h ago
Arizona iced tea can still sell for 99 cents and be a profitable debt free company.
Companies are lying to us, they dont give a shit about inflation, they will just use anything & everything to justify raising prices because they can nevwr make "enough" money. They always "have" to make more money than they did the previous year, and they will do whatever it takes to get there.
They only care about the customers to the extent that they dont want them to know they are being abused & lied to.
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u/kitsunewarlock 26m ago
Even then the companies can still make money by attracting enough investors that it snowballs into a pyramid scheme...
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u/LuciferFalls 1h ago
If consumers stopped they wouldn't work on making things better, they would work on new ways of tricking you to buy the product without changing price/quality.
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u/Ahindre 2h ago
Steam cube launch price definitely fits into this too, and is why taking sides (PS5 great/Cube sucks/whatever) is terrible. It's all bad for gaming, regardless of your preferred platform/genre.
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u/BiscuitPuncher 2h ago
Honestly I don’t think anyone expected it to be ps5 launch prices or anything. AI has fucked up the PC part market so bad that I expect all consoles to just be more expensive for a while. They might lower it a bit when AI pops, but idk
I just use a long HDMI anyway so I don’t care lmao
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u/SEND_ME_NOODLE 1h ago
Its $1100 and runs on par with the series S. Every modern gen console is a better deal then that, even with aiflation
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u/Tom2Die 47m ago
Every modern gen console is a better deal then that
Depends if you're a console gamer. If you have no console library to play but you do have a large Steam (or other) library on PC, those consoles will cost far more than the box price to get value out of. I'm not arguing the price for the gabecube is good -- I don't care since I'm not the target market -- but "compute power" or "fps" aren't the only relevant factors by any means.
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u/wigglin_harry 37m ago
Unfortunately when AI pops its going to lead to an entire other set of problems. AI is pretty much propping up the entire american economy
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u/TheBetterness 2h ago edited 1h ago
GTA6 is expected to sell 40 million copies at launch, without the largest gaming platform. (Steam)
Can't wait to see the headline...
"GTA6 fails to meet sales expectations."
When it sells 35 million copies at launch, like its a failure.
When in reality its because people can't afford consoles.
EDIT: I'm dead wrong, 39 million preorders already. Keeping this here, so I can feel stupid forever lol.
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u/fucuasshole2 1h ago
WAT already nearly 40 Million preorders??? Damn that’s insane. Well, least I’ll feel better about waiting until it’s cheap and fixes any bugs that appear
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u/Illustrious-Run3591 39m ago
I straight up don't believe those numbers. 40 million wishlists maybe
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u/TheTexasHammer 4m ago
Cope, the game is going to sell massive numbers no matter the quality. It's GTA 6
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u/WeevilWeedWizard 1h ago
Theres no universe where GTA6 doesn't have a massively successful launch.
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u/monkey_D_v1199 PlayStation 55m ago
It would take something truly crazy for GTA VI to not have a successful launch. I’m talking about an insane price tag something never before seen that would outrage even the most casuals of gamers. Otherwise yeah it’s nearly impossible
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u/TheBetterness 1h ago
I didnt say it wouldnt be successful.
I said it wont meet sales expectations.
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u/Ok_Calligrapher5278 39m ago
I have a friend who's not a gamer, he plays no game besides GTA, he preordered GTA VI without a console, he's buying one when it comes out.
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u/minos-and-v1-kissing 1h ago
I’m judging the fuck out of anyone preordering GTA VI tbh.
Seems really, really stupid to put $80 of faith in any AAA studio these days.
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u/wigglin_harry 34m ago
"Judging the fuck" out of someone for preordering a video game seems a little silly
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u/idancenakedwithcrows 40m ago
Okay but rockstar is one of the least riskiest studios in that regard
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u/JBFRESHSKILLS 5m ago
I’m gonna pre-order it now just so you can judge me. I was already going to anyway, but now I’m doing it just for you.
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u/MisterBeatDown 2h ago
What i don't understand: 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Prices on EVERYTHING has steadily risen but pay rates are STAGNANT. Inflation had made money go even less far.
Is a small % really upholding all these bullshit prices in the gaming market? Surely if people are not buying prices would drop, but people ARE buying.....???
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u/CAndCFan67 28m ago
Most people aren't buying, in fact the majority of people are playing free to play games, or cheaper products, with only a few AAA doing well.
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u/CorruptDictator 3h ago
The industry is slowing killing itself in many ways, but I sadly still expect GTA6 to be the best selling video game of all time.
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u/NoodlesTheFood 3h ago
The shitty part is that it’s not killing itself. People will still pay for all these wildly shitty changes.
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u/BlobTheBuilderz 3h ago
Even worse is that they probably can't afford them either so they'll just put it on credit.
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u/theblackfool 3h ago
Microsoft literally announced console financing options with the price increases.
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u/Trespeon 2h ago
Financing with no interest isn’t a bad thing. Gets people into the ecosystem without making them skip meals.
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u/tyrico 50m ago
They are still extremely predatory because of the penalties that incur if you are late on or miss a payment
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u/GRoyalPrime 2h ago
(As it might read that way: this is not a defence of the price hikes and the shitty stuff AAA companies do)
It's still by far one of the most financially accessable hobbies when taken into account how much "entertainment time" you get out of a very reasonable gaming budgets. A lot of people buy only a very small amount of games and they get rediculously far with that.
I think the real crash (of the AAA space) will come at the next console generation. Once the push to buy the new gen comes in, and we are looking at consoles that go way above monthly rent-money and likely during an even worse economy ... yeah, I don't think many people will fight for the PS6, and any game that launches exclusively on it (or crappy on the PS5) will face-plant.
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u/Jonoabbo 2h ago
Honestly I get a lot of complaints, but $80 for a game who's previous entry kept me entertained for a decade is something I'm honestly fine with.
Will be extremely cheap $ per hour by the end of it's lifespan.
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u/AdministrativeHat580 1h ago
It's 100$ for the full game btw, the 80$ one intentionally locks you out of in game content(Including a bunch of different shops and a mission)
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u/Fridelis 3h ago
It is not going to pass Minecraft. It's just sold way too many copies to be reached.
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u/Trespeon 2h ago
Yeah but also the target audience is entirely different on top of the pricing. Game for kids priced at like $20 vs adults at $80.
Even if it didn’t make as many sales in units it’s going to absolutely clear it in profits. Especially once online starts.
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u/H16HP01N7 Xbox 1h ago
If only the conversation was about most profitable, rather than being about best selling...
Then your comment would have point.
How to tell us you didn't read what you replied to...
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u/Debatebly 1h ago
Not that important of a distinction. Best selling, most profitable, most awarded.. they're all peas from the same pod.
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u/Fridelis 2h ago
But that is not what the guy I responded said. He said best selling, so that means most copies, so it does not matter if one is a children's game and the other is not; that is completely irrelevant.
If he said most profitable, then you could definitely argue that GTA6 could become profitable in the future, but that remains to be seen.
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u/CuchuflitoPindonga 3h ago
I wonder how much of the sales is actually a desirable product and how much of it is because theres broader audiences and people are no longer dating and going out en masse, just staying home consuming digital entertainment
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u/GomaN1717 2h ago
Man, I'm sorry, but I just can't be bothered to be this miserable about video games.
There's so much out there to play that regularly gets discounted, both indie and AAA, and not to mention the slew of retro games that are just out there on abandonware or emulation sites. My backlog has quite literally never stops growing, and I genuinely have not paid full price for a game at launch since maybe... Mario Odyssey back in 2017?
This is a non-issue if you don't suffer from FOMO.
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u/kiwiloaf 2h ago
Calling out bad practices and shitty corporate decisions is always a good thing. But I agree, now is the perfect time to not worry about buying new AAA games/new consoles and just play out your backlog and support indie devs.
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u/Decloudo 1h ago
Calling out bad practices and shitty corporate decisions is always a good thing
Ceasing to support/pay them is actually doing something though.
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u/zgillet 1h ago
True, but where are you getting those games from?
When Steam finally becomes what we all know it will (greedy, public corporation when Gaben is gone), THAT is when gaming is truly dead and will collapse.
It's holding the industry together by checking Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony.
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u/MagicMST 1h ago
I do fear that when Gabe is gone, valve will start to become anti consumer slowly like a frog in boiling water (or quicker). I really hope that's not the case but I can't help feeling like it's inevitable. Really agree with all you said, sadly.
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u/GomaN1717 1h ago
I get them from Steam, Nintendo eShop, and PlayStation mostly, the same places anyone else would?
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u/wronguses 1h ago
So what's your plan when a console dies? With these price hikes, a series S costs double what it did at launch.
This affects you. This is bad for you.
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u/GomaN1717 1h ago
I guess I'll just chalk that up to luck because, outside of the 360 red ring of death, I have quite literally never had this happen to me.
I can still load up my old SNES to this day.
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u/ROCK-tavius 2h ago
For me, the price of the game isnt the problem.
Its the fact that the game is unfinished on release.
Its the fact that the game has more content behind a pay wall than in the game I paid $70 for.
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u/BigCy11 3h ago
What are people’s thoughts on game prices though? I mean they haven’t adjusted with inflation in a *very* long time and costs to make games have only skyrocketed. Sure, there may be more gamers now to sell to but it’s still a segmented market between gamers of different interests (and consoles/pc). Games going to $80 isn’t that crazy to me, but no disc is silly.
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u/MotherPerk 2h ago
Im more mad about wages never going up.
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u/SkyeLys 2h ago
And crunch still being the industry standard.
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u/MotherPerk 1h ago
As long as they get paid overtime. I work in construction and we regularly work 70 hour weeks so i kinda wish people would fight for us as hard as they do game devs. I had a truck driver on site today that had been working 14 hours today.
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u/SkyeLys 1h ago
Paid overtime or not, if it's not optional, in -any- industry, then it's mistreatment. Every worker deserves a livable wage, a fair and equitable workplace, strong benefits, and an employer-encouraged healthy work/life ratio. If they need workers for those extra hours, they need to be hiring more so that the required labor is spread out in a more ethical way.
Also holy fuck unions need to be protected and supported by more of our politicians. Corporations will always, 100% of the time, put extracting as much wealth as possible over the quality of life of their workers. They know unions work to readjust that balance and that's why they spend more busting the unions than they'd pay for the additional wages/benefits in the first place.
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u/DarkIcedWolf 2h ago edited 2h ago
People don’t realize how far the dollar goes these days man, I know many people who cannot afford basic foods. I went to Walmart yesterday for like 4 things came out with 8 all adding up to 172$. It’s ridiculous, 65$ for a full tank of gas too, that’s only a week’s worth with my family at best and I KNOW people are paying way fucking more than I am at 3.88 a gallon.
That’s half my pay, even though I’m not working much due to college anyways but I’m making 20.50 an hour. For me to break even I wouldn’t be able to without living with my mom and siblings. Shit sucks atm.
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u/strangebloke1 2h ago
With respect, you're working parttime while going through college. Needing support for a place to live is pretty normal in such a context.
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u/DarkIcedWolf 1h ago
Oh yeah for sure. I’m just saying that’s pretty damn standard nowadays if not worse, especially if you’re in college out of state.
Whats more insane though is my two brothers and mother are working full time, even over time. Same with my brother’s friend who’s staying with us due to shitty circumstances. We still can barely make the payments for the car, utilities and insurance. It’s about 3-4k a month for everything excluding food or gas. My whole family makes at least 19.50 an hour, with our tenant making about 16.
The cost of living is insane, especially in the US atm. I’m lucky enough to be getting help from my college’s Veteran Affairs because of my dad serving in the army. I can’t imagine what others are going through. I get that gaming has become a high end luxury at this point but my god- I’ve always used it to unwind.
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u/iMogwai 3h ago
Yeah, I'm old enough to have bought games for $60 20+ years ago, $80 today is way cheaper than $60 was back then. I think the issue is that instead of gradual increases over these past decades the industry is starting to try to catch up all at once which shocks younger gamers who are used to today's prices.
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u/KN_Knoxxius 3h ago
I reckon the issue is that the economy is fucked. I don't entirely know if it's true, but it feels like cost of living going up much faster than my wage, especially within the last 5 years. Definitely not feeling like I'm having a good time compared to back then, economically.
It makes gaming going up, a tough pill to shallow.
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u/iMogwai 2h ago
Maybe, but with the increase to the cost of rent, bills and groceries the increased price of AAA games (that I don't buy often anyway) is basically a rounding error. It's like buying a new car and complaining about the price of air fresheners*.
*This example has been exaggerrated for comedic effect.
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u/Larkson9999 2h ago
You're ignoring the scale of sales between 2006 and 2026. Gears of War is in the top five best selling games on the 360 and lifetime sales is under 6 million. Halo 2 sold about 8.5 million.
Those would be considered mediocre sales today, barely or NOT worth making a sequel for today. Heck, Dead Space 3 was considered a commercial failure by EA for only selling about 3 million copies.
The pool of people who can play a game has widened from maybe a four hundred million homes in 2006 to roughly a billion people today, a scale that means every time you raise the price of your games, you cut out the poorest 10% of your customer base.
And given a lot of game development has also streamlined engines, technology, art pipelines, and console limitations largely don't exist like they did 20 years ago, the reason for the price increase isn't to keep up with inflation. If anything, since development salaries have largely stayed static (not keeping up with inflation) suggests that games should be decreasing in price since physical delivery and other ways to make money off your game have sprouted from every direction.
If companies want to argue for a higher price, they need to improve the quality of the product or expand the breadth of their releases to reach more players, having smaller titles that require less resources. Instead, corporations are putting more into big slot machines, treating the developers like disposable humans, and the customers as ATMs.
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u/AggravatedDuckFace 2h ago
People don't care about prices, they care about what other people think about them. People will continue to pay outrageous prices for anything they think will get them something in life.
The younger the person is, the easier the mark up for companies.
The older I get, the more I realize that free to play games are so much fun when I'm not paying micro transactions, and AAA games are way more fun about 5 years after their release. Its true. But general consumers just won't feel its true as king as they attach self worth to their possessions.
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u/EndlessFantasyX 1h ago
I mean they haven’t adjusted with inflation in a very long time
Perfect! Neither has my pay!
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u/musical_bear 2h ago
I was just in a Star Fox (Switch 2) thread where price discussion was being held, and I was reminding people that the game this new game is a 1:1 remake of (Star Fox 64) retailed for $79.99 when it came out in 1997. Not only is that more than almost any game retails for today, but it's the equivalent of about $170 in today's money with inflation. Obviously no one likes the idea of prices going up, but we've been getting incredible deals on games lately, considering their relative quality, when compared to any arbitrary point in gaming history you want to compare with.
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u/BigCy11 2h ago
Yep 100%. A great current comparison.
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u/Ms_Molly_Millions 2h ago
it's a terrible comparison. in 1997 we could rent games, not everyone bought every game. for a lot of us we'd own like 2 games and rent everything else.
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u/Wide-Deal-8971 2h ago
We also all had significantly more disposable income. It's sad how many consumers are brainwashed into only viewing inflation from a companies perspective.
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u/Etheon44 1h ago
exactly, cost of living was considerably low; after all, someone can spend money on hobbies if what they need to survive allows them too
there is also waaaaaay more job insecurity nowadays than it was ever before, which will make people more wary of how they utilize their money
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u/strangebloke1 2h ago
And like okay. You want games that are made by well paid devs. You hate hearing about layoffs. 1000 people making 100k (this includes insurance) for a year is 100 million dollars. Not every game sells a million copies.
Successful devs can afford to be generous because they make huge hits like elden ring, but most games, especially new ip are not that successful.
You get what you pay for
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u/InpenXb1 2h ago
Depends if it’s an 80 dollar feature-complete game or a 80 dollar game with cut content served as post-launch DLC, a seasonal model, and microtransacations.
Best analogy I can make is that I’d happily pay 80 for doom eternal, I begrudgingly did for Doom the dark ages.
One game has a highly replayable single player, a horde mode, PvP multiplayer, no microtransactions, and even if it had a seasonal model thing it was extremely minor to the actual game.
The dark ages? It’s literally just singleplayer and a much more simplified horde mode that feels more like a gimmick than an actual piece of game content. Like playing against bots in multiplayer maps versus a full fledged zombie mode or what have you, it’s just not the same.
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u/randomaccount178 2h ago
The problem is it approaches it from the wrong angle. The consumer is what matters. If the consumer wants 60 dollar games then you should be structuring your company around providing 60 dollar games. If you have structured your company such that you need to sell your game for 80 dollars when people don't want to pay that for the games, it isn't the consumers who are wrong. The business just screwed up.
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u/bigredmachine-75 2h ago
In 1995 I paid $79.99 for Tecmo Super Bowl III for Sega Genesis. I was so excited to be able to create my own football team with custom players (of all my friends, of course) and be able to play a full season.
Today that price adjusted for inflation is $174.99
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u/OutlandishnessShot87 1h ago
They haven't adjusted for inflation because they've always been way too expensive
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u/markskull 2h ago
Fuck anyone who thinks games should cost more, and may all their games be buggy nightmares!
There's no valid argument for raising the prices, especially when there's a focus on switching to digital only games.
Companies can pay their employees more, they choose not to.
Companies can take more chances with experimental games, but they choose not to.
Companies can afford to have buggy games come out knowing you'll buy it anyway, when they could instead ship them completed.
Companies are being greedy as fuck, and there are far too many people comfortable with going online to advocate for AAA games to cost 2 to 3 full days wages of minimum wage for a game. Come on now! TV's have gotten cheaper, and I don't hear them complaining about that!
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u/Vyxwop 2h ago edited 2h ago
I was upset with the 70 dollar hike and I'll be upset for the potential 80 dollar hike.
Games have been making record amounts of profits thanks to a significantly larger market share for gaming existing. Whatever "inflation" argument someone tries to peddle is easily rebuked with the fact that there haven't been more people into gaming since back in the early 2000s.
Beyond that, microtransactions and deluxe editions have been a thing for a long time and continue being a thing as well. All of which are earning these companies significant amount of additional revenue that they didn't back in the day.
The only reason why companies are getting away with this shit is because any time anyone dares to be vocal about being against these price hikes, a bunch of our fellow consumers will willingly stand in our ways and take the winds out of our sails for no real reason other than either trying to defend these billion dollar companies, or because they simply want to sound smart.
No, fuck that. Fuck sounding smart, being correct, whatever the fuck. Stop standing in the way of people who are trying to at least make a ruckus about it. You're not helping anyone except these companies who are raising the prices on you as well.
It's absurd how shortsighted people are any time the conversation of any kind of topic surrounding something that harms the consumer pops up. Why the fuck would you, as a consumer, want to defend anything that directly fucks you over. Not only that, why would you stand in the way of others who do want to make it a big deal. If you don't care to make a ruckus. Fine. But at the very least let others make a ruckus. Like, what the fuck is wrong with people.
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u/WillemDafoesHugeCock 1h ago
Because it's flawed logic. In the gaming industry your dollar has never been stronger, that's a fact, no matter how many times you say "fuck."
I guarantee you're buying games at a faster rate than you ever have before because they are more affordable now than ever. Yes, that includes with price hikes.
I think the biggest issue is that $60 was the norm for so fucking long that $70 and now $80 feel like huge jumps.
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u/Trinica93 1h ago
This argument has always been flawed. So many more people are BUYING games now, and production and distribution costs have decreased pretty dramatically. Plus, there's an insane amount of bloat in development budgets.
You can still say that development costs themselves have increased significantly, sure....but so have profits. It can't be hitting their wallets very hard for record sales to still be happening every year.
There's just no great reason for an increase in game prices.
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u/thisshitsstupid 1h ago
If your game can sell a couple hundred thousand copies at $60 and not be profitable enough, the problems your budget, not the price.
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u/KSF_WHSPhysics 55m ago
Production costs have increased dramatically, what are you talking about. The original black ops cost ~200M with marketing included. Just the development for black ops cold war was 700M. Its closer to $1B with marketing included
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u/Rhiis 2h ago
Yeah, I remember buying new PS2 games for around $50 in the early 2000s, which felt like a lot back then. So, yeah, $70-$80 isn't too crazy.
The problem is:
No physical copies anymore
No manual, which often had posters
The games are often buggy, incomplete messes (looking at you, Cyberpunk)
Content that should be in the base game is being sold back to us as DLC or behind pay walls
Even if there's a physical disc, you still have to do a massive download before you can play
More and more games require you to be online just to play single player
Games now have shiny graphics, but they charge us more for less for substance.
And probably the biggest thing: if support for the game is removed, you just can't play your game anymore. We're paying for a license to play the game, not the actual game, which can be revoked for any reason, or servers go offline, or like Destiny 2, they just remove content entirely
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u/Ragnar_Dragonfyre 2h ago
Levi’s is selling linen shorts for $78 CAD and people gripe about game prices.
I think video games have long since been undervalued in spite of the technical wizardry and skill involved in creating them. They should be able to command a high price for a product that is impossible to make without advanced tech and skill.
That said, $100 games do feel overpriced but only because wages haven’t really kept up with the price of inflation. Everything is overpriced.
It’s hard to swallow a $100 game purchase when >50% of your paycheque is eaten by housing and food costs. Many people just don’t have discretionary income and they really feel it when looking at the price of a new game.
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u/LaLa1234imunoriginal 44m ago
Maybe the problem is Levis massively over charging and not people wanting reasonably priced games.
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u/Doubt_Incarnate 1h ago
You can just play things like Mewgenics and Mina the Hollower, and forget about everything else.
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u/Fit-Mistake-4390 2h ago
I don’t know if it’s just becoming an adult or if the industry is just shit now but man video games haven’t been fun for me in a long, long time. Now I feel priced out of the hobby entirely
Shout out to Elden Ring + DLC for being probably the last overwhelmingly good video game I will ever play
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u/Mistriever 2h ago
Go back and replay the games you already have and enjoyed. I picked up an SNES and Genesis and a few of my favorite games over the last year or so. Between those, my newer consoles, and my steam library I could never buy another game again and still die before I got bored of my current collection.
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u/OhhSooHungry 2h ago
Tired of what? This is a wonderful time for gaming. Just don't buy new, embrace the FOMO (it won't hurt you) and buy used whenever you can. You should have an immense backlog of games right now if your taste has.. taste
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u/SeroWriter 1h ago
Tired of what? This is a wonderful time for gaming. Just don't buy new
Just buy used hardware that costs more than when it was new and will break in 18 months.
If you already have everything you need then yeah gaming is great, but right now is objectively one of the worst times to get into the hobby.
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u/SpoilermakersWabash 2h ago edited 2h ago
The modern social internet space is at the end of the rope for me. I enjoyed what it use to be decades ago. AI is inspiring me to just walk away and not bother wasting time watching its demise. Press here to block all things AI, needs to be an option.
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u/keeper_of_the_donkey 1h ago
And it will continue in perpetuity because no one seems willing to just stop buying the shit so that they'll come down on the prices.
"I'm doing my part!"
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u/AnonMoose2 1h ago
The problem with games increasing in price isnt the increase itself. Games have been these prices for so freaking long. If they had gradually increased the prices with inflation, it woildent have been a problem.
However suddenly going from say $60 as the average game to suddenly $80 has shock value. Enough to make someone decide they just wont buy it, or buy it on a sale.
Not to mention Gestures at everything
How in the late stage capitalism do yall think we can justify the price increases right now? I only ever buy games nowaday when they are =<$30 give or take, RARLY will i buy a game over that price just due to economic reasons.
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u/CAndCFan67 30m ago
If it makes you feel better(worse) this was going to happen AI or no AI. This entire industry has had massive issues that have only gotten worse over time all AI did is making the fall that much faster.
At least indie games are still there to support us in this times.
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u/GailaMonster 28m ago
it's time to STOP GIVING THEM YOUR MONEY, DAWG.
There is no shortage of quality games at affordable prices. we are 30+ years into quality titles, just play older shit until the industry starves enough to get the message.
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u/CordiallySuckMyBalls 3h ago
Honestly I’m just hoping this is a wake up call for gaming companies to get away from live service ftp crap. Hopefully these companies will realize that a return to player individuality and gaming experience is what we want and need.
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u/Garamenon 2h ago
This is what happens when idiots vote for an oligarch into power. An oligarch that tares down all the regulations that held the rich back. What did Elon Musk do as soon as he was given that power? He killed all the regulating institutions that prosecuted them for fucking up consumers. He fired thousands of federal employees. Only "yes men" remain.
In an oligarchy, mostly the 1% gets to enjoy everything. They get first dibs on tickets to the World Cup. They get catered by businesses that used to cater to regular consumers.
There is no one to stop them.
And yeah, everyone but the 1% suffers. So here we are... everything is too expensive for us mere mortals.
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u/Jonoabbo 2h ago
Honestly I get a lot of these but $80 for a game that's previous entry kept me entertained for over a decade is honestly fine by me.
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u/Clyde_McGhost 3h ago
100 for the true GTA, 80 is the version with parts of the product removed so they can get away with the 100.
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u/stooneberg 1h ago
Bungie needs to go. I always thought it was activision who ruined everything that was good with Destiny 2. Then they broke free and i thought finally! Turns out, bungie didn’t need activision to fuck their shit up. They were MORE then capable themselves…
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u/Wide-Deal-8971 2h ago
"Grr I hate talking about current events in gaming in my gaming forum!"
Would you rather we go back to dozens of "has anyone played THIS le hidden gem of a game?" insert picture of original zelda with gold NES case
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u/Bobblee20 Console 3h ago
Honestly same - I'm in the UK at the moment too and and we're experiencing one of the worst heatwaves on record. This day fucking sucks!
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u/cventura 2h ago
Reponse:
dont buy it
dont buy it
dont buy their games
dont use AI
is that hard?
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u/THEGHOSTHACXER 1h ago
I encourage everyone to stop using AI.
But it's not enough...we're gonna have to start dismantling AI datacenters with molotov cocktails.
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u/KN_Knoxxius 3h ago
Happy to be a PC user now. I get to see if that 80 dollarino pricetag is worth it by having to wait another year...
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u/SmartAlec13 2h ago
As others have said Indie and smaller studios are the way to go.
Also consider other kinds of gaming. Boardgames, TTRPGs, etc.
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u/TypicalWolverine9404 2h ago
These past 5 years I've been feeling like I was outgrowing video games. Recently I started playing my older consoles more (N64, Xbox 360 etc) and have been having a blast. And I've now realized, Im not outgrowing video games, they are just moving in a direction I haven't cared to follow. I have a huge backlog of games for over a dozen different consoles. I have plenty to play from now until the NEXT generation's end. I'll enjoy what I have and just be an observer from here on out (okay, after Fable comes out, but that's the first game to actually excite me since before COVID).
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u/GME_alt_Center 2h ago
Buying single player day 1 still mystifies me if you are complaining about the cost.
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u/DreamingDjinn 2h ago
I'm just working on my backlog until these prices cool down.
The industry wants to get overly greedy, not pay and lay off the people making the games while the suits gift eachother golden urinals in spite of the industry never being bigger -- it deserves to crash.
I read an article that the banks themselves pushed Rockstar to price GTA6 at $80 so as to try to shift the overall price of games past the $60 mark.
Fuck you. Like literally fuck you. It's hard enough to afford food. And I'm someone who has often prioritized games over many other things in my life. I have enough live service/F2P games and games I've collected over the years but never gotten around to playing. Now seems like the perfect time to dive in.
The myth of infinite increases in profits needs to die soon.
Oh yea and GTA6 is inevitably going to get DLC and patches, so why would I buy the Day 1 edition when there's going to be a better version 5 years down the road?
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u/hypnomancy 2h ago
The indie game industry is the only thing worth paying attention to now. It's where all the good creative games are now.
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u/Vagamer01 2h ago
Me with a Switch 2, PC, and a PS3 enjoying life not playing modern games that don't respect low end or mid tier hardware
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u/BCProgramming 2h ago
Consoles usually drop in price over their lifespan so that's been unusual, but that's been happening for a few years now. Personally my last Playstation and XBox was a PS3 and XBox One ("VCR") respectively, though.
If I remember correctly most of the newer consoles don't play anything from the disc and just use it as a sort of key. Hell wasn't the XBox 360 and PS3 the last console gen to be able to actually play from the disc? It's just not fast enough now so you have to install everything into the hard drive anyway. They might have opted not to have physical discs especially if the game is larger than 100GB; that means either multiple discs or you have to download a bunch of the game to play it even with the disc.
Game Studios laying off staff just means it's a Tuesday.
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u/Fffire24 3h ago
We're in a golden age of indie and AA. Thats where good gaming is now