>As the video-game industry barrels through the fourth year of a post-pandemic crisis caused by all sorts of factors (from game market oversaturation to the diminishing appetite from venture capital funds), developers are looking for a way forward. Budgets are swelling while revenue is not. High-end games have grown more costly to buy, jumping from $60 to $70 in the 2020s even as the cost of living has gone way up for many consumers.>But two things have changed significantly. One is that distribution has pivoted from mostly physical to almost entirely digital, lowering costs and boosting profit margins. Publishers like Electronic Arts Inc. might make roughly $35 on a $70 physical game but that jumps to $49 for digital, according to analyst Serkan Toto. If they'd kept the $60 price tag, they'd still be pocketing $42 per digital game and making more money per unit.>The other thing that's changed is the number of options. In the early 2000s, even crummy licensed games could move copies at $60 if they were positioned correctly on the Walmart store shelf, because those were all people could find. Today, there are essentially an infinite number of new games to play, including free, user-generated experiences on platforms like Roblox. There's no reason for cash-strapped players to spend $70 on a game that doesn't blow them away.Wait so they purposely raise the prices of games, sell them to us unfinished, and now suddenly they're on our side saying games should be cheaper?What the fuck was their game plan here?????
>>732954928A jew is telling me things should be cheaper???????
>>732954928>scum journo rag in partnership with the biggest piece of shit in games """"""""""""""journalism""""""""""""""" tries to curry favor.lol eat shit
People have, for years, been more likely to click on things that make them angry. As you might expect, people have gotten tired of this and instead are gravitating towards only ever clicking on things that align with their world view; as such, you will see mainstream opinion pieces start to move towards agreeing with extremely mild takes.
>>732954928jew
Consoles got so expensive that there's really a hard entry point for new people to get into console gaming.Kids play on phones, as they grow up they get a laptop to study or work and might get into some not very demanding PC gaming.Consoles are a bit fucked at the moment. They're becoming a platform for old people.
Wasn’t he one of the crybabies ehining about Silksong being “too cheap” and undercutting all the AAA games that came out at $80+?
Didn't wilds just sell millions @70
>>732954928>2025>games HAVE to be 100 bucks at least to sustain the industry!>beginning of 2026>games NEED to be less than 60 bucks to sustain the industry!
>>732955547Something must've happened cause yeah the same guy was championing for $100 games
>>732955547Yeah they tried to really extort the consumers and its taken multiple big industry failures for them to admit that it doesn't work
>>732955357only people that like cheap shit bought it
Like 15 years ago the last quarter of the year was always busy with AAA games.Now games from the same series take 4-8 years to make, despite almost always being worse. They're in development for so long, that by the time they release, the trend they tried to chase became old and tired.For past few years, the industry took like one game released that year and astroturfed it into gotyay.People got used to not buying games, especially since the most popular online games are years old games with seasonal content.
>4chan now supports $70 gamesI thought we all supported piracy? Obviously we’re never going to buy games, but you’d think the “free is too expensive” movement would at least be against $70 games, right?
Is he wrong
>>732954928Nintendo already changed their strats in europe. Pretty sure the switch 2 is doing really bad over here. In the switch 1 days, you could buy a game day one, because the price will never go down anyway.Now, prime 4 is 37,-, Galaxy bundle is 50,-, pokemon is 47. Everything goes down in a month
>shilltroons having a meltyhe's right then
Clair obscur had a sugar daddy who funded the game. It's a bad example.
>>732955547>2025>fucked around>2026>found out
>>732955062Things are turning to normal. That's how it used to be.
>>732959434It's a good example because it competed with AAA and won despite costing a tenth as much to make.
>>732954928> Korean Crimson Desert and Japanese Death stranding 2 both releasing with expensive price tags next month> every blackrock AAA kike studio is closing or laying off half their staff> massive push to re-release 15 year old games made by team of white guys cause everything new from USA sucks fucking asswall street kikes must attack
>>732954928MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNo I think games should go up to $80 actually. Then the gaming 'industry' can collapse and we can hunt and butcher everyone with a 'game design degree' and it'll only be individuals and small teams making passion projects for neckbearded stinky nerds such as myself once again
>>732954928Games should be $200 so this piece of shit """industry""" that doesn't remotely represent actual gamers can collapse into the fucking ground.
>>732960402>>732960479This
>>732955062survival mechanismthey'd rather make a lower profit in the short term and prop up the system they've already infiltrated over having to start all over again with the decentralized indie scene
>>732959434Even if it cost closer to 10 million that is nothing compared to the ridiculous amount of money that these companies have been sinking into those dogshit trash fires for the last 10 years
>>732960402>The industry will totally collapseYouve been saying this for 8 years now
>>732954928When a Jew is saying the right thing, you know we're about to get a mega snowstorm. Woke truly is dead.
>>732954928>Fourth year post pandemic>It is the year 2026 and Developers STILL love to use "THE COVID PANDEMIC!!!!" as their favorite excuse despite being over 6 years agoKek
>>732954928And yet Highguard was $0 and still flopped. The real problem is that devs aren't making good games much more than the price tag, although the latter does not help either. If E33, a pretty good 8/10 game but not some masterpiece, came out in a year that anyone else was making good games, it wouldn't have gotten such a huge spotlight on it. It's just a testament to how little talent is left in the industry, needing ballooning budgets for middling, milquetoast games absolutely no one is interested in. No one bought Veilguard because it was fucking garbage, and it didn't move units when the price was cut in half. No one bought Concord because it was another tired game in a saturated genre (and was only $40 to boot). The people working at studios are talentless, and the leaders are spineless and deathly afraid of any experimentation, ironically ensuring the game will fail because it ends up being homogeneous trash no one remotely cares about.
>>732961116It's been happening steadily for two weeks for over 8 years.
Tendies are NOT gonna like this.
>>732961720Just two more weeks until the prices drop then
lmfao what happened to GTA 6 SHOULD BE AT LEAST $100!!!i'm noticing and i'm not forgetting
>>732961430>investors pull out of gaming to back ai>suddenly the industry wants games to be cheap againHmm...
>>732954928>[Bloomberg/Jason Schreier] Video Games Need to be Cheaper to BuyWhat (((Schreier))) is actually saying:>Games need to be cheaper to produce>That means AI. Yes, I'm shilling AI here.>Anyone not demanding AI is a chud, incel and certainly not a gamer.
>>732954928Jews are bad, ok?
>>732954928i swear this kike was just saying a year ago that games need to be more expensive due to inflation
>>732961986Is that the reason? Honestly I'm suspicious of everything jews say.
>>732955368And Capcom lost a lot of goodwill because of it, g rank version will sell record low copies because the game is ass
>>732962103That's just my schizo pattern recognition, money is absolutely being pulled out of gaming to back AI instead though so there's less investors in the gaming market.
>>732962405Good if true.
>>732955547(((Schreier))) and others assumed that the demand for gaming was inelastic and they could charge whatever and people would still buy it. Turns out, demand is VERY elastic and the games that people buy a lot less at a $10 increase. Like most of the sequels to $60 games when they went to $70 sold half. Mind you, to make the same profits, it has to be within about 85% of the original. Now nothing is selling but everyone still has these massive budgets and turns out they can't raise the price anymore. The actual solution is fucking slash the budget and stop developing shit on the westcoast but the industry will never learn.
>>732955062Vlad Kliatchko is the CEO of Bloomberg L.P.
I've been saying this shit for years, we really need a fucking retarded kike to tell us the obvious?
>>732954928>SchreierFuck off.
>>732962650CEOs only listen to one specific group of "people"
>>732962538In addition: A lot of the $70+ games simply weren't good. Veilguard? Come on.
My big issue is that most games no longer get permanently discounted anymore. They stay at $70 and then go on sale every other month. There's no reason for a 6 year old game to be full price.
>>732955547>Games sell few copies at 70$/80€>I know, let's ask for fucking 100$/120€ for a game, so with our current sales we'll earn 30$ more per copy>Sales decrease 50% because you priced people out of your gameThese people have always been bottom of the barrel dumb, just look at how the most sold games lately are 60 or less.
>>732962405Other than a few exceptions, gaming is an awful investment.
>>732962945Money got heavily dumped into it during COVID, investors realized that bubble is over now I guess. All the failed live service games have to be adding onto that, the American gaming market is imploding.
>>732962103Like another anon said, there is no reasons to let an industry they completely dominate(*) pull an hero. The clever ones can tell there is a need for a strategic retreat, to better consolidate their position.(*) in the west at least - China is immune, but they are making inroads in Japan thanks to investments with strings attached.
>>732962914Just Nintendo games. You can wait a few months and get games for cheap as shit.
>>732962742At this point, pretty much any AAA+ isn’t even worth 1/10th of what they are priced.
>>732962538IMO the problem is that these companies are both selling high initially and then also selling the game for fucking dirt cheap half a year later. Shit, the new CoD was $70 at launch and $35 a month later. Who the fuck feels confident buying games like that? Just wait the month and get it half off. Games will be $20 a year later and then that pulls the ladder from all the games releasing in the next year when you can just play year old games for dirt cheap forever instead.Throw in the $30 early access or early DLCs and you could be looking at spending $100 for a new game at release. It's not sustainable when the market is flooded with so many free options that are becoming increasingly higher quality in order to compete against each other.
>>732959434The companies putting out 70$ games are sugar daddy tier so what's the excuse?
>>732955062The goyim need to be able to afford the AAA woke goyslop used to condition them.
>>732954928It means that their jobs are on the line.its too late.
>>732954928Games need to be cheaper, this is a fact.Journos do not deserve praise for stating the obvious however, and continue to deserve to be ridiculed and jeered at. This is also a fact.Still not going to buy modern slop though until I know for a fact that the game industry is actually making games that are game first and money second.
>>732963282>gamers are playing xi's free games instead and getting served chinese propagandatragic
>>732955073fpbp
>>732955062>>732954928Typical jewish scam.Something is X. Everyone likes it being X.Force it to become Z.Everyone hates it being Z.Fight to have it become Y.Everyone is grateful that it's not Z anymore.Everyone forgets that it should be X.Y is the New Normal.People who only know Z and Y don't understand what X even is and call it uncshit, because they're zoomoidnegroids.
>>732963156Was there a AAA title in 2025 that was worth it's high price?KDC2 yes. Very maybe Yotei.AC, Indy, Doom, MH, BL no.Avowed, E33, Nightreign, Mafia aren't really AAA.
>>732963474The gweilo are being served up big tit coomerslop also served up to the Chinese peasant. It is what it is.
>>732963376It will be hard for them to accept the pivot, the captive audience for gaming is just too big. Modern, post-WWII liberal democracies’ political stability almost entirely depends on the regime’s capacity to broadcast the message to a passive, defenceless population.
lmao, things must be in complete disarray internally for this industry speakkike to pull a 180.
>>732959226Now lower the switch 2 price and maybe ill be interested
>>732963791the gamer uprising has started, you have ex world of warcraft fags being the main source of political news for a startling number of people. they need to release cheap games targeting gamers to quell them.legitimately think how different the gaming landscape and even political landscape would be right now if asmongold was still stuck in bobby's kotick's maze because world of warcraft didn't get turned into the wokest shit imaginable.
>>732956254Nintendo of all companies being the first to do it made it unhip with games journalists. If literally any other company threw the first stone they'd be batting for it.
>>732955062Never trust a jew. Games should be more expensive to piss them off.
>>732961116>The industry will totally collapseAlready has. EA and Ubisoft belong to foreign capital, Activision got absorbed by MS which is quitting consoles, line go down perpetually. >>732964102Nonsense, they were all batting along for GTA's $100, if anything they were happy Nintendo could ease the blow.
if nobody is buying at 70 or even 100 why not try 200? or 500? it has to work eventually.
>>732964035> the gamer uprising has startedI wish, but the truth is that the west is just getting poorer while China is pushing good enough, propaganda-free, freemium games.
>>732961116He's a retard. The industry won't collapse, it will simply change direction.
>>732964328>propaganda freeIt's just chinese propaganda instead of American.
>>732964196> Already has.Also 1/3 of western game devs having lost their jobs during the last couple of years. There is a gigantic reconfiguration of the industry underway.
>>732964328the major push against woke in media is coming from gamers and it's killing the gaming industry in the process. the rejection of woke is now seeping outside of the gaming community, the autism stopped being contained.
>>732964521At least Chinese propaganda is less degrading, less depraved and healthier than the (((western))) one.
Games dont need to be cheaper, Nintendo successfully made games $80 and it's still selling well. Just make better games and people will be happy to pay more for them.
>>732960176retard
>>732954928For being a Jew, Schreier really is a fucking retard. The problem isn't the price, the problem is that most games are just fucking dogshit and not worth it even if you can get them on sale.
>>732963617if such tatics work then we deserve them
He won. Bigly.
>>732964727That's not true either, quality games are known to not sell as they should on switch because they don't benefit from the brand loyalty.
>>732964776The fact that you need to pay like $100-120 to get the full version of any video game is definitely a problem.
>>732964770the old stereotype is that all they wanted to do is save money. "jew" was used as a synonym for being thrifty. well to be fair, it was also used as a synonym for ripping someone off...
>>732961986Hopefully, it stays that way. I don't want video games to ever get government or investor money again, honestly.
>>732964841True, but you need to understand that this tactic work perfectly well when executed over a significant period of time, because generational shifts. This is how they successfully transformed US society into a w slave plantation during the past 70 years btw.
>>732965197Jews being subversive is centuries old. The catholic church was explicitly antisemitic until ww2. Luther wrote a whole book about it.
>>732960762This guy knows jews
>>732965279> I don't want video games to ever get government or investor money again, honestly.Can’t allow that, I’m afraid.Free, democratic voters might start to get ideas above their station if we stop telling them what is good for them.
>>732955062The price increase is resulting in lower overall sales. They'd love to charge $100 or more but only if the cattle actually follows along and keeps buying.
>>732954928imagine paying full price for a fucking gameif you aren’t waiting for a sale you are paying a premium to improve the game for me when i buy it
>>732962331>And Capcom lost a lot of goodwillRE9 will outsell E33 within a month. Then you got people excited for Pragmata and Onimusha. They seem to be doing fine and they "outrage" was manufactured.
The attitude of "you should buy games as a charity to the developers and a cause for the industry" is just fucking retarded and anti-capitalist. A game will fucking sell if there's organic demand for it. You don't need to shill it for free.
>Take 5 years to point out the obvious thing that was obvious from day oneGuess he had to stubbornly acknowledge something. But he'll never say that one factor that make games worse since being buttblasted by Dragon's Crown.
>>732954928>Today, there are essentially an infinite number of new games to play, including free, user-generated experiences on platforms like RobloxBut that's partly why prices went up. You can't compete vs piracy or F2P games like Fortnite. Everyone calls it greed but look at how few games are truly successful. That's why Sony and Microsoft and Valve and Rockstar all just does live service slop now, you can't beat F2P and piracy
>>732954928>Companies do things that no one likes>Their shit doesn't sell anymore and they all crash and burnI love this timeline
>>732965670You are crazy if you think DD2 and Wilds outrage was fabricated.
>>732965670Are the people excited for Pragmata and Onimusha in the room with us?
>>732964776Most jews are not smart. They're just a highly ethnocentric, nepotistic and criminal race. Go read some of Jeffrey Epstein's e-mails. He's at most 90 IQ.
>>732966719This is going to get like 3-4 raging rightoid replies calling you a muslim.
>>732963617There is a name for this right?
>>732966719Jeffery Epstein was one of your own, Mohammad
>>732966719The jews being responsible for creating the whole anti woke anti immigration movement and the modern right shows how they might not be smart but they use all their effort to trick people into pushing stances that only empower jews. Distrust all jews.
>>732963617>Everyone is grateful that it's not Z anymore.>Y is the New Normal.>Everyone forgets that it should be X.that's called pushing the overton windowone of the oldest tricks in the book
>>732966719The golem is pretty much their origin story. They are good at short term strategies to hack and subvert others societies, but historically they always fail to recognise when they have pushed their advantage too far.Sabotaging goyim societies to make room for themselves in the great XXIst c. competition for limited resources, while antagonizing everybody else, is going to bite them hard in the ass.
>>732955062It just means you can rent the game for $59.99 on their new GAAS platform.
>>732966719ThisThey have contributed nothing of value since jesus's time. The intelligent jew converted and the insidious hedonistic ones denied christ and became, without exaggeration the synagogue of satan
>>732966719Thank you, someone else understands this.
>>732955114>People have, for years, been more likely to click on things that make them angry.Have they, or is it just TPTB asserting that? Sounds like a good way to shift the blame for all the atrocious propaganda onto randos.
>>732962015Aw crud you're right>>732964727Shut up
>>732965670>They seem to be doing fine and they "outrage" was manufacturedCorrect. Even the low sales on their quarterly reports with fucking MH Rise and World outselling Wilds were manufactured.
>>732965635I really really like this image
I want video games to be more expensive to they will die.
>>732966809Rent free, faggot.
>>732967365Don’t forget that 39.99$ monthly subscription after you have bought that game, anon. Those rental gaming gpu are not free !
>>732956807They're not admitting it. Only one mouthpiece seems to be doing so, begrudgingly, because he's on Bloomberg's payroll and not the game industry's.
>>732955062A jew who actively smeared gamers from his ivory tower, he's the faggot who said the sorceress from dragon's crown was a loli.
>>732959226Z-A is still not worth it at that price, it's worth 60 dollars at best with the DLC included, ideally 40 since the 3DS games had the same or more content than Z-A with the DLC.
>>732962538The actual solution is to stop drinking the graphics kool-aid.
>>732954928broken clocks i guess
>>732962073Jews and being two-faced, name a more iconic duo
>>732967590They have, how can you genuinely try to argue otherwise on 4chan, home of getting extremely angry about retarded things and then obsessing with them?
>>732955062Ask yourself this, we're things cheaper when jews had more or less control of things? Right now we are seeing things spiral out of control because the entire population of the west is siding against us.
>>732963057Pretty sure sony didn't drop the price for stuff like R&C and demon's souls this gen despite selling their first parties for dirt cheap shortly after release last gen
>>732954928with jews you win!
>>732963162This is why I'm not buying RE9. I'll get it at Christmas for half the price. The only video game I felt okay about buying at full price was E33, and even that wasn't $70.
>>732954928Merely lowering the entry prices isn't going to be enough anymore. If they hadn't been raised in the first place then the industry could have coasted along on consumers' existing purchasing habits but those habits are already being broken. Don't get me wrong, lowering prices would help stem the bleeding but it wouldn't reverse the trend. Developers will have to start offering products gamers want to buy if they want that to happen. But they won't.
>>732965340>centuriesMillennia. As long as recorded history.
>>732954928>>732955062Jason Schrier was one of the fuckers that spent years arguing in favor of the $60 MSRP being the new normal decades ago, and he's been a key defender for online subscriptions constantly being bumped up over time as seen with PS+.I don't know what he's planning but him saying this shit now might be a carrot to bait people into accepting cloud gaming or some other anti-consumer shit in the future.
>>732954928>Jason massive kike Schreier says something reasonable >Not even just reasonable but outright challenging the industry and pro consumerIs... Is hell frozen over?
>>732969032Schreier has always been a competent journalist who is willingly an apologist for the worst kinds in gaming. This is just him building credit to cash in running cover for Marathon in a little while.
>>732969032Well, it is friday the 13th, so something must be happening....
>>732969032No, it's merely a response to the current pushback. He'll go back to his usual tactics as soon as things calm down.
>>732968517Why would an actual person click on some banal thread just because it makes them angry? I'd imagine real people would avoid things that make them angry. Sounds like you fell for bot replies. Or are YOU the bot?
I think the real problem is that videogames need to be cheaper (and faster) to make. Production cycles for a new AAA game at this point take longer than a single console generation. It's not sustainable. In one generation we went from Mass Effect 1 -> 3. Something like that is just completely unimaginable now.
>>732968963He's only doing this because people are getting laid off, and without people to feed him info, he has no job. It's just self-preservation.
I still think people freaking out over $70+ dollar games are freaking out over the wrong thing. Gaming is still an incredibly cheap hobby, and its unironically keeping it up with inflation (60 dollars in 2010 is 90 dollars now). A much bigger problem is, for example, paying full price for a game then still needing to deal with some kind of micro transaction / cash shop in the game.
>>732969401The good news is that it will probably happen, the bad news is that it will happen because of AI and we'll be overrun with slop.>>732969694My personal pet peeve are the games with paid early access, where it's $30 to get it 3 to 7 days earlier than everyone else. Instantly kills a game for me, I will never buy one that does it.
>>732969032Someone stated it earlier in the thread but >AI costs can mean cheaper game development>People are pulling out of AI>Jason "UM, WE ACTUALLY NEED CHEAPER GAMES AND THE ONLY WAY TO GET THAT IS IF YOU PUSH FOR OUR NEW ISRAEL AI!"it's still the same schlocky don't be fooled
>>732965197You are too stupid to understand things. Please never explain anything ever again. Just assume that you are wrong when somebody disagrees with you.
>>732955368>most games>so what you're saying is that they absolutely never will do it right?Fucking retard. There are humans and people who don't understand what "exceptions prove the rule" means.
>>732959434No, they didn't. They had to make a demo while working their usual jobs and apply for funding with their demo in hand. Why lie about a great game?
>>732970862Who are you quoting?
>the entire insustry was getting the biggest boner at the idea of games getting to 100$>All of these rumors come out about GTA VI being the first 100$ game, and they know it can get away with it and ease it in for the rest >Publishers keep on hodling on higher game prices, ignoring all of the floppa>It'll be worth it once GTA VI is out>Fucking 5 years later>Entire industry feeling a great recession >Thousands of devs layed off>The biggest publishers in the industry either selling themselves to foreign governments or on the verge of bankruptcy >80% of AAA shit releasing in a year flops or doesn't sell as well as it did at 60$>Zoomers are verging towards retro gaming >The RAM crisis >General outlook on videogames has never been more negative >And now GTA VI is about to get its 3rd delayI used to pray for times like these
The last (non-small indie/small DLC) game I bought day1 was Witcher 3.Stopped buying AAAs around the release price tag in the early 2010s, prolly 12-13. The concept of paying ~70$ for one fucking video game is beyond crazy, not just because I live in central Europe.
>>732969032Anon this comes over as nothing other than pure desperation Hes one of the biggest industry cocksuckers with connections at every major studio For him to publish a article like this, something must be going terribly wrong in the current Vidya market
>>732954928retards dont understand inflation. new games are cheaper now than they used to be>$40 in 1997 is equivalent in purchasing power to approximately $80.78 today, reflecting a $40.78 increase in cumulative inflation over 29 years. This represents a total price increase of 101.95%, meaning the same goods cost roughly double what they did in 1997.
>>732971016Pls don't bully the industry
>>732971506and most people were buying 2nd hand, renting, pirating, and above all- didn't have 10001 free games, F2P games, mods, cheap game bundles, 3rd party key sellers and other alternatives to a 'box in the story'. In an environment where every month a few games might come out, not a few hundred.
>>732968426Assetmaking is bloat as fuck even if you reduce detail. The entire approach to game world construction has to change.
