Sega Contemplating AAA Game Retail Price Increase, Could Adopt $70 Industry Standard

[SOAREVERSOR]

Well if they are going to sell a game for 70 dollars everything should be included, that's my only issue with these games that has been coming out for the past idk 10 years? Why are these people selling Mortal Kombat characters, when they are default characters? lol I remember my dad going to toys are us and buying sega genesis and supernes games, they were only 60 bucks right, but everything was included. I just think its a big scam happening and i never fall for it. The only game i bought for $60 bucks is Sleeping dogs because in my opinion its worth every penny, massive world, all the dlcs are included, character customization, i love that game.

Except default characters is a concept that never actually existed. SF and MK are actually the best examples of this. In SF the roster changed completely with Alpha because the characters were different. This happened again with SF3, and SF4.

Sure, there was no "DLC" but with say SF Alpha you had SFA, SFA2, SFA2G, and then three versions of SFA3 over time. In each case you were buying a brand new copy of the game at full price. If you got them all, you paid full price for a game six times. MK also pulled this stunt over and over. MK3 was mostly a brand new cast, then you had UMK3 which brought back a bunch of characters, then you had MK3T which brought back all of them and added more.

This has always been the case as the concept of a default character is bullshit. In the case of SFA and MK3 they straight ditched the majority of the cast. There was no Scorpion in MK3 and Smoke and Sub Zero, well one turned into a robot and then other was reworked and rushing about in suspender ninja clothes and neither had their classic move set. They didn't resemble the old versions. More characters were left out as well from 2 or even 1. So obviously even Scorpion and Raiden weren't default characters back in the 90s. Some of the missing prior characters came back in UMK3, 80 for the cart 50 for the disk all over again and the disk ran like ass. Though not all. And it introduced new characters like Ermac. Then in MKT, again buy the whole game, they brought back the entire roster and added more but it was a broken damn nightmare.

They weren't only 60 bucks either some of them ran for 80 and they were vastly cheaper to make. Again costs have gone up, that's the cost of fancier graphics, sound, physics, and more content. If you wanted all that you drove the cost up as well, pat yourself on the back you own it now. But there are three tricks right now that make it a better deal. The first is you can just pay outright at the initial gap for most of the DLC and not have to worry about purchasing another total copy of the game in a year. The next is you can just wait for a sale on the entire finished product. The last is you can buy the game and then buy the characters you want to use, but still play against the others for no damn cost at all. Even without taking into account inflation it's cheaper than it ever was. Take inflation into account and it's a laughable cost compared to the 90s and early 2000s. But of course PC gamers are always going to demand companies make less or lose money to cater to them and when that doesn't happen they will stomp their feet like a toddler throwing a hissy fit and pulling on her pig tails as everyone else laughs at "the gaming master race" acting like it does.

 

[TheDeeGee]

My industry standard is waiting for a 75% sale or gtfo.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

See this is the issue, companies like this want to do what nvidia has been doing, increase price without any reason. The reason AMD has increased prices is because of Nvidia and because AMD followed, others are doing the same. What people can do is boycott them all.

A boycott is not going to work. The products are still going to sell. Even if you could organize say a PC boycott all that will result is the next iteration of the game doesn't get released on PC or the port is given no effort at all. So, you'll own yourself and for what? Not being willing to wait a couple months for a sale? If you want cheap games look at indie games, many of them are good!

The raw reality is that companies are spending more to make products but need to catch up at the sales price point. They also realize that all the temper tantrums, especially from the PC crowd, are all bark and no bite tantrums of man children, and if push did come to shove consoles are where the money is at anyways. So you have no threat or leverage here, outside of creating a really good reason for more shitty ports or not porting to the PC at all.

My industry standard is waiting for a 75% sale or gtfo.

Sane people do this. The griping about the cost is "but moooommmm, I want it and I want it now, and no I won't do my chores" followed by throwing a screaming fit. But you know, PC gamers gonna PC gamer.

 

[mechtech]

meh

I paid over $70 (CAD) back 30+ years ago for NES/SNES/N64 games

 

[ymdhis]

It's funny to bring up SF because back in the 90s on the SNES there was SF2, SF2CE, SF2HF, SS2, SS2T all were pretty much the same damn game and sold at 80 bucks a pop. Mortal Kombat pulled the same stunt. So the reality of the situation is that the cost of making games has gone up massively, where the cost of purchasing games has not only not increased to make up for it, it's actually lower than it used to be. Not only all this, but instead of having to buy the same damn game five times at the original 80 bucks you can just get the extra stuff a-la-carte and play against someone who has content you don't.

When you actually look at the situation it's better than it ever was, especially with the mass sales that now go one. The issue is that gamers demand to be treated like a special class, especially PC gamers. And they will stomp their footsies like Veruca Salt and pitch giant fits if they don't get it.

Back in the SNES era games cost $70-$80 (carts with special chips costing $100) because cartridges were much more expensive to make. Once games started coming out on CDs, they became cheaper to mass produce; and it was around that time when companies started doing budget re-releases for half the price or less. Plus as I recall Sony had lower licensing costs than Sega/Nintendo, which also contributed to the prices going down. Since then we have moved to online distributions which have nearly zero up front cost and only take a small percentage out of the game price.
Also, back in the 90s your console development kits were $30000 hardware debuggers, CD emulators, SGI workstations, MIPS cpus, etc. Today they are all x86 PCs.
You also have professional crossplatform game engines to build games in, you can jump into making a games content almost immediately, you don't have to spend a year creating a game engine for each console first.

If anything, the cost of making games has been steadily declining over the decades.

What increased is the complexity of games, which require more people to work on content. But that doesn't warrant games costing more, what warrants it is that every publisher is retarded and wants to make the next GTA/Skyrim/Cyberpunk, which take more time to develop than Duke Nukem Forever.

And Capcom still makes you want to buy 4 different versions of every Street Fighter for full price so there's no change there.

 

[Zendou]

A boycott is not going to work. The products are still going to sell. Even if you could organize say a PC boycott all that will result is the next iteration of the game doesn't get released on PC or the port is given no effort at all. So, you'll own yourself and for what? Not being willing to wait a couple months for a sale? If you want cheap games look at indie games, many of them are good!

The raw reality is that companies are spending more to make products but need to catch up at the sales price point. They also realize that all the temper tantrums, especially from the PC crowd, are all bark and no bite tantrums of man children, and if push did come to shove consoles are where the money is at anyways. So you have no threat or leverage here, outside of creating a really good reason for more shitty ports or not porting to the PC at all.



Sane people do this. The griping about the cost is "but moooommmm, I want it and I want it now, and no I won't do my chores" followed by throwing a screaming fit. But you know, PC gamers gonna PC gamer.

The point of a boycott if for them not to sell if successful. Just stating "it won't work" is not much of an argument as it can be countered with "it will work". Also the statement was $70 dollars in general, not just on PC. If everyone boycotts the price, where will they then sell it? I am aware you can say "well everyone won't", but if enough people do it is all that matters.

It is actually a misnomer that companies are spending more to make products. It has never been cheaper to make a game. The prior references you made about SNES are not really relevant as that was due to chip scarcity and shortages that made the cartridges expensive to produce, but that does not exist with modern titles. Physical media is much less common and discs are not expensive to procure or make. It is a bad faith to just label a group of people as an "other" and say that there concerns on the value of the money they earned amounts to a tantrum. The PC market is the largest gaming market on earth, I am not sure where "consoles are where the money is at" comes from. All games are developed on computer and all modern consoles are x86 devices. The fact bad ports exist is one of the greatest mysteries of our time, but if a company makes a bad port, then it won't sell.

As for commenting that it is "sane" to only buy a game when it is 75% off is the weirdest self own I have seen. If you agree with the sentiment, then it would make sense to say that you only value the game at 25% of it's original value and that is the case, why are you arguing a $70 dollar game is a good thing or necessary when you personally think it should only cost $17.50.

The general attitude reeks of the old console war people and by your comments it appears that like many who try to engage in discourse on the internet, you are just going to label a group and dismiss. It is better to engage with the spirit of the argument, then it is to strawman and try to "win".

 

[Bomby569]

meh

I paid over $70 (CAD) back 30+ years ago for NES/SNES/N64 games

i remember my brother paying something similar for a sega megadrive game back in the day, some fighting game.

 

[ymdhis]

Except default characters is a concept that never actually existed. SF and MK are actually the best examples of this. In SF the roster changed completely with Alpha because the characters were different. This happened again with SF3, and SF4.

Sure, there was no "DLC" but with say SF Alpha you had SFA, SFA2, SFA2G, and then three versions of SFA3 over time. In each case you were buying a brand new copy of the game at full price. If you got them all, you paid full price for a game six times. MK also pulled this stunt over and over. MK3 was mostly a brand new cast, then you had UMK3 which brought back a bunch of characters, then you had MK3T which brought back all of them and added more.

This has always been the case as the concept of a default character is bullshit. In the case of SFA and MK3 they straight ditched the majority of the cast. There was no Scorpion in MK3 and Smoke and Sub Zero, well one turned into a robot and then other was reworked and rushing about in suspender ninja clothes and neither had their classic move set. They didn't resemble the old versions. More characters were left out as well from 2 or even 1. So obviously even Scorpion and Raiden weren't default characters back in the 90s. Some of the missing prior characters came back in UMK3, 80 for the cart 50 for the disk all over again and the disk ran like ass. Though not all. And it introduced new characters like Ermac. Then in MKT, again buy the whole game, they brought back the entire roster and added more but it was a broken damn nightmare.

They weren't only 60 bucks either some of them ran for 80 and they were vastly cheaper to make. Again costs have gone up, that's the cost of fancier graphics, sound, physics, and more content. If you wanted all that you drove the cost up as well, pat yourself on the back you own it now. But there are three tricks right now that make it a better deal. The first is you can just pay outright at the initial gap for most of the DLC and not have to worry about purchasing another total copy of the game in a year. The next is you can just wait for a sale on the entire finished product. The last is you can buy the game and then buy the characters you want to use, but still play against the others for no damn cost at all. Even without taking into account inflation it's cheaper than it ever was. Take inflation into account and it's a laughable cost compared to the 90s and early 2000s. But of course PC gamers are always going to demand companies make less or lose money to cater to them and when that doesn't happen they will stomp their feet like a toddler throwing a hissy fit and pulling on her pig tails as everyone else laughs at "the gaming master race" acting like it does.

Those aren't really good examples IMO. SFA1 to 2 was a small update, sure, but SFA2 to 3 had major changes in gameplay and roster and it came out 2-3 years later. The other versions of SFA3 were handheld ports released 3-5 years later so they really don't count.

Mortal Kombat 3 was extremely rushed which is why they needed to make UMK3 to fix it. Mortal Kombat Trilogy was a case of "hey, we don't have space limitations now on the Playstation, so why not throw in every art asset we have for a megamix game?", the game was so unbalanced and broken it was hilarious, and gave you a ton of content and the ability to play as bosses straight from the get go. Going from UMK3 to MKT was like going from MvsC1 to MvsC2.

None of those come close to SF2 being released five times in two years (three years if you count the arcade releases), only adding tweaked profile and ending pictures, a few new moves, and 4 new characters.

Also back then you could rent or trade games, so that $80 wasn't that bad. Can't trade in a DLC today.

 

[64K]

$70 is indeed the Industry Standard for AAA games. It just hasn't been fully implemented.......yet.

My industry standard is waiting for a 75% sale or gtfo.

My thoughts exactly. I haven't paid retail launch price in almost 15 years with one exception that was an MMO and it's best to get in those early on imo

 

[wNotyarD]

People asking what does SEGA have of relevance, does the name ATLUS mean anything?

 

[Deleted member 230939]

$70 is indeed the Industry Standard for AAA games. It just hasn't been fully implemented.......yet.



My thoughts exactly. I haven't paid retail launch price in almost 15 years with one exception that was an MMO and it's best to get in those early on imo

I could swear we are nearing N64 cart prices or already at it.

"It is cheaper to distribute software with no physical media" So they said... and lied.
The catch all is that they failed to tell people the landscape can change and they don;t bother to appease those who hate change.

The responsibility lands square on the ones selling and a lack of backbone to be responsible and hold marketing to higher standards.

People asking what does SEGA have of relevance, does the name ATLUS mean anything?

Not when they are not putting anything worthwhile out.

 

[Space Lynx]

I would say Persona 5 was a AAA title even AAAA.

I don't think any game has as much bang for your buck as this game even at full price.

I tried it, but did not like the art style, felt too crowded to me, I like simple UI designs when it comes to reading the text on screen, etc. Everyone likes different things though, its all good.

 

[Hyderz]

Sega should go back to arcade style games, I still like visiting the arcades house of the dead series was fun

 

[Dr. Dro]

I have a better proposition, return to the console market, undercut the other guys with $60 first parties, negotiate an Xbox Game Pass-like subscription service and leverage the massive catalog of timeless MD/Gen, Saturn and Dreamcast classics that people that are between 25 and 50 will be absolutely DELIGHTED to have in their hands again. Remaster the most popular, sell the ROM/provide official emulator a-la virtual console for the rest.

All it takes is a post in a Sega retro forum to make more noise than this industry can deafen, make Sony soil their britches and Microsoft descend into outright panic plus a call to AMD for a quote on a batch of Z1 Extreme CPUs for your new console and a eventually a reborn Game Gear. And don't forget to market it in Brazil - after all, we still have licensed Master System consoles which actually sell, that's right, the 1985 Master System never died in Brazil.

...just don't screw up marketing and developing it like Atari did.

 

[Vayra86]

Except default characters is a concept that never actually existed. SF and MK are actually the best examples of this. In SF the roster changed completely with Alpha because the characters were different. This happened again with SF3, and SF4.

Sure, there was no "DLC" but with say SF Alpha you had SFA, SFA2, SFA2G, and then three versions of SFA3 over time. In each case you were buying a brand new copy of the game at full price. If you got them all, you paid full price for a game six times. MK also pulled this stunt over and over. MK3 was mostly a brand new cast, then you had UMK3 which brought back a bunch of characters, then you had MK3T which brought back all of them and added more.

This has always been the case as the concept of a default character is bullshit. In the case of SFA and MK3 they straight ditched the majority of the cast. There was no Scorpion in MK3 and Smoke and Sub Zero, well one turned into a robot and then other was reworked and rushing about in suspender ninja clothes and neither had their classic move set. They didn't resemble the old versions. More characters were left out as well from 2 or even 1. So obviously even Scorpion and Raiden weren't default characters back in the 90s. Some of the missing prior characters came back in UMK3, 80 for the cart 50 for the disk all over again and the disk ran like ass. Though not all. And it introduced new characters like Ermac. Then in MKT, again buy the whole game, they brought back the entire roster and added more but it was a broken damn nightmare.

They weren't only 60 bucks either some of them ran for 80 and they were vastly cheaper to make. Again costs have gone up, that's the cost of fancier graphics, sound, physics, and more content. If you wanted all that you drove the cost up as well, pat yourself on the back you own it now. But there are three tricks right now that make it a better deal. The first is you can just pay outright at the initial gap for most of the DLC and not have to worry about purchasing another total copy of the game in a year. The next is you can just wait for a sale on the entire finished product. The last is you can buy the game and then buy the characters you want to use, but still play against the others for no damn cost at all. Even without taking into account inflation it's cheaper than it ever was. Take inflation into account and it's a laughable cost compared to the 90s and early 2000s. But of course PC gamers are always going to demand companies make less or lose money to cater to them and when that doesn't happen they will stomp their feet like a toddler throwing a hissy fit and pulling on her pig tails as everyone else laughs at "the gaming master race" acting like it does.

This is the Warhammer story too. Every game they peddle the catalogue of races and units

Vanilla game you get Orcs and Space Marines / The Empire. Every time.

 

[wNotyarD]

I have a better proposition, return to the console market, undercut the other guys with $60 first parties, negotiate an Xbox Game Pass-like subscription service and leverage the massive catalog of timeless MD/Gen, Saturn and Dreamcast classics that people that are between 25 and 50 will be absolutely DELIGHTED to have in their hands again. Remaster the most popular, sell the ROM/provide official emulator a-la virtual console for the rest.

All it takes is a post in a Sega retro forum to make more noise than this industry can deafen, make Sony soil their britches and Microsoft descend into outright panic plus a call to AMD for a quote on a batch of Z1 Extreme CPUs for your new console and a eventually a reborn Game Gear. And don't forget to market it in Brazil - after all, we still have licensed Master System consoles which actually sell, that's right, the 1985 Master System never died in Brazil.

...just don't screw up marketing and developing it like Atari did.

If Sega were to launch a new console, I'd get it day one (or at least as soon as it arrived where I could buy it). GIMME THAT.

 

[windwhirl]

massive catalog of timeless MD/Gen, Saturn and Dreamcast classics that people that are between 25 and 50 will be absolutely DELIGHTED to have in their hands again. Remaster the most popular, sell the ROM/provide official emulator a-la virtual console for the rest.

I believe that already exists on Steam

Steam Developer: SEGA

To be this good takes AGES

store.steampowered.com

Steam Developer: SEGA

To be this good takes AGES

store.steampowered.com

Missing (that were previously available) from that are certain Sonic titles that got remastered with Sonic Origins

 

[chrcoluk]

Not sure if $70 is industry standard might just be Sony standard.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I believe that already exists on Steam

Steam Developer: SEGA

To be this good takes AGES

store.steampowered.com

Steam Developer: SEGA

To be this good takes AGES

store.steampowered.com

Missing (that were previously available) from that are certain Sonic titles that got remastered with Sonic Origins

Yes I'm aware of it, I have the entire (small) catalog of MD games they released as well as NiGHTS and a few others, there's still quite a few games they haven't released and it largely seems to me that they've moved on.

Also arcade board games aren't on Steam at all :/

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

Sega should go back to arcade style games, I still like visiting the arcades house of the dead series was fun

Except the catch is that they do. They allowed Streets of Rage 4, the latest Virtua Fighter came out in 2021, and there are more. Discounting that SEGA has Total War series, ATLUS titles (Persona), owned partners (FIFA, Disgeae, Gotham Knights, Hogwarts). Hell Fatshark, a SEGA subsidiary is behind Vermintide and Darktide. Still discounting all that SEGA is cranking out arcade style titles either directly under them or through a partner.]

But that's not the issue, the issue is PC gamers wanting to be treated like prom queens. Most are too stupid to realize that GPUs cause more becuase they cost more to design, fabrication costs more, and well here lets look at the PCBs and how they have changed.

But the notion is always that even though the costs and complexity to make anything has skyrocketed due to the demands of PC gamers, the cost that PC gamers pay must never go up! Because master race. When it's really bunch of autistic incels throwing fits and not understanding shit about shit. I demand you make better shit for me and pay more to make it, and I demand I don't have to pay for it and you suffer, and I deserve it, because I game on the PC. Que tantrum when realizing the world does not work like that.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Except the catch is that they do. They allowed Streets of Rage 4, the latest Virtua Fighter came out in 2021, and there are more. Discounting that SEGA has Total War series, ATLUS titles (Persona), owned partners (FIFA, Disgeae, Gotham Knights, Hogwarts). Hell Fatshark, a SEGA subsidiary is behind Vermintide and Darktide. Still discounting all that SEGA is cranking out arcade style titles either directly under them or through a partner.]

But that's not the issue, the issue is PC gamers wanting to be treated like prom queens. Most are too stupid to realize that GPUs cause more becuase they cost more to design, fabrication costs more, and well here lets look at the PCBs and how they have changed.

View attachment 296411
View attachment 296412

But the notion is always that even though the costs and complexity to make anything has skyrocketed due to the demands of PC gamers, the cost that PC gamers pay must never go up! Because master race. When it's really bunch of autistic incels throwing fits and not understanding shit about shit. I demand you make better shit for me and pay more to make it, and I demand I don't have to pay for it and you suffer, and I deserve it, because I game on the PC. Que tantrum when realizing the world does not work like that.

But you're comparing a high-end aftermarket design to a graphics card who would be of legal drinking age in practically the entire world at this point

Not to mention that; the entire point in technology advancement is to bring costs down.

 

[windwhirl]

Not to mention that; the entire point in technology advancement is to bring costs down.

Which, for the most part, it keeps doing so. The cost of rendering a specific scene or do a certain task in whichever way you want to measure (time it takes to render, energy it takes to render, etc.) keeps going down. It's just that the software side of things hasn't kept up (see game engines that still don't use more than four cores) or the code keeps getting fumbled for one reason or another (see games that have no reason to require the computing power they require, i.e., unoptimized turds that on top of that have a frankly terrible DRM implementation), or we are doing stuff that's too costly for the improvements it provides (read: RTX)

the issue is PC gamers wanting to be treated like prom queens

I'd say it's more the desire for instant gratification that makes people unable to think "I could wait until it's on sale or something"
I waited until Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was 80% off to buy it. And I refuse to play it until EA removes their bullshit Origin requirement. I had enough with Assassins' Creed Origins requiring Ubisoft's shitty launcher.

autistic incels

Don't throw autism into this.

 

[SOAREVERSOR]

Which, for the most part, it keeps doing so. The cost of rendering a specific scene or do a certain task in whichever way you want to measure (time it takes to render, energy it takes to render, etc.) keeps going down. It's just that the software side of things hasn't kept up (see game engines that still don't use more than four cores) or the code keeps getting fumbled for one reason or another (see games that have no reason to require the computing power they require, i.e., unoptimized turds that on top of that have a frankly terrible DRM implementation), or we are doing stuff that's too costly for the improvements it provides (read: RTX)


I'd say it's more the desire for instant gratification that makes people unable to think "I could wait until it's on sale or something"
I waited until Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was 80% off to buy it. And I refuse to play it until EA removes their bullshit Origin requirement. I had enough with Assassins' Creed Origins requiring Ubisoft's shitty launcher.


Don't throw autism into this.

PC gaming kicked off due to shareware and the ability to pirate stuff. It was always "I want what I want, and I want it now, and I don't want to fucking pay for it". Along with a constant demand for better graphics. Now that the butchers bill has come due for it like a six year old rich girl throwing a fit the PC gaming communities solutions for it are 1.) subsidize off console sales, 2.) we need special treatment because we are on the PC, 3.) hardware companies and gaming companies should lose money because we are PC gamers, and then throw a tantrum when these demands aren't met. Then wonder why the rest of the world points at them and says "fuckin incel gamers".

 

[Broudka]

Why not ? people are buying at those prices anyway.