GTA 6 Could Bring New Era of $90+ Video Game Prices

[Hakker]

Games prices also didn't fall 20% during the 2000s when they moved from physical (typical 50% retailer cut) to digital (typical 30% Steam cut). The publishers at the time just pocketed it all as extra profit, not even passing it onto the developers who made the games. Now factor in all those costs saved on no longer needing to master physical CD's, printed manuals, printed boxes, shipping from CD mastering company to distributor warehouse then again to retailer, having thousands of retailers in dozens of countries to deal with (different supermarkets, high street game stores, mail order companies, etc, per country) vs the hyper-centralised handful today (Steam / Epic / Microsoft), no faulty disc return shipping & replacements to deal with, no having to self-host downloadable patches on the developers website instead of letting Steam do it.

Then there's the development costs like labour partly outsourced to Asia, greater reuse / 3rd party licensing of pre-existing game engines vs the 90's era where idTech, Infinity, Aurora, Lithtech, Dark Engine, UE1, Build, Gamebryo, Source, etc, all had to be made from scratch sometimes almost one per AAA franchise, motion-cap costs have fallen to the point its cheaper to do now vs spending enough time hand-animating every character's joints / movement such that they didn't look awkward, etc. And last but not least, a lot of 1990's PC games franchises were PC only typically peaking at 10-15m sales whilst the mega-hits of today like Witcher 3 & GTA V sell nearer +50-70m because they're all cross-platform meaning massively more profit through sheer volume alone.

So the real world "fair price" cost of today's AAA games is a little more complicated than saying "If disc based PC games were $60 in 1995 when publishers took a 50% cut from 15m sales to PC-only gamers, then all games should be $120 today from taking a 70% cut from selling them to 70m PC & console gamers combined, please also ignore the shitload we make on top from DLC, micro-transactions, lootboxes, pay2win / pay2unlock 'booster packs', etc!" Not only are mega-studios not poor, they've actually never had it so good...

Oh you missed the biggest reason why games are so expensive to make. The insanely bloated marketing budget. Games for years have had steady development costs of 150 million as a max. However in that same time marketing campaigning costs have risen upwards to 600% It's not uncommon to have marketing budget that's 5x the development costs. That wasn't happening when triple A games were still good. Those games literally sold themselves. Not to mention their money increase by tenfold with their micro transactions and gambling mechanics in those same paid games.

I pay for indie games because the dare to push the market Triple A games are just milking it with very few decent titles between them.

 

[Chane]

There were already SNES games in the 90s that were $90. I'm more amazed that video games didn't go up significantly in price starting in the Dreamcast/PS2/XBOX era. Especially now with as long as it takes to make a game. During 8bit and 16bit games era, there were games getting pumped out in months. And they still charged $50 for them.

In the 90s... I can't remember a game being more than $49.99 unless they came with an accessory like the N64 expansion pack, in San Diego at least. I remember when games went up to 59.99 people were super pissed. What game do you remember on SNES that was 90$? (not attacking you, just generally interested)

 

[Kapone33]

You don't have to wait for GTA6. Games are regularly over $90 Canadian in a World where the most you would pay for a PC Game was $59.99. In fact PC Games used to be cheaper than their console variants, You can thank MS for that as a brand new MSFS with everything is over $200. To make it worse it looks like $129 is the bar if you want everything in a Game.

 

[Gmr_Chick]

The ONLY game I'd pay upwards of $90 for is Metroid Prime 4 - super stoked for it! And unlike Dread, which was kinda disappointing (even more so due to the fact that we had to wait 19 years for a Fusion sequel), the Prime games have NEVER disappointed. All 3 of them were masterpieces in their own right. I'm confident 4 won't buck that trend.

But a big "meh" to GTA VI. I haven't cared about that series since IV.

 

[QuietBob]

They could price it at $1,000 for all I care.

My price point for getting games is $0-10 and has been that way for years. I've got hundreds of titles in my backlog. I play less than a dozen games per year, so I'm pretty much set up for life.

And AAA gaming is dead to me.

 

[AusWolf]

I've been saying it for a while and I'll say it now: AAA gaming is dead. Do yourselves a favour and look into a decent indie title for the fraction of a price that will run great on your PC, and give you lots more fun.

 

[AsRock]

GTA has a crazy enough fanbase they could probably pull it off, but I'm not sure who else could. I'm practically never buying games at launch anyway, so I don't know how much of a difference it would make to me.

Maybe they will f it up again like with RDR2 and have a discount within a month of release, either way waiting it out as it might be more trash.

 

[hero1]

There are enough people invested in this franchise that they could ask $100+ for the game and the people will pay it. If the game is well made and doesn't disappoint then why not. Nonetheless, we've seen enough AAA titles not deliver the promised goods, so I say, not for me, but maybe yes for others.

 

[theouto]

I've been saying it for a while and I'll say it now: AAA gaming is dead. Do yourselves a favour and look into a decent indie title for the fraction of a price that will run great on your PC, and give you lots more fun.

Yes, go play factorio right this instant! It's twice as fun if you are doing anything related to engineering.

 

[Kaleid]

It'll only happen if people purchase games for this price. Just don't. let the game be patched for a while, let the prices go down

 

[Chaitanya]

It better come with a physical copy and some collectibles for that asking price. Else I can easily see looking towards high seas.

 

[tpuuser256]

I feel like GTA 6 will be online only, like diablo 4
Making it difficult to play without paying (catch my drift), and would effectively enforce the 90 price tag and hopefully it gets gyped enough so everyone will want the 'supreme' of video games.

 

[Kapone33]

I have been a Gamer all my life and I will never play a GTA Game. To each their own but for me what we need is a sequel to Sleeping Dogs.

 

[AusWolf]

I have been a Gamer all my life and I will never play a GTA Game. To each their own but for me what we need is a sequel to Sleeping Dogs.

Personally, I never got the appeal of a car stealing thug life feel in a video game. If I wanted that, I'd just google Birmingham news, it's full of it and it's free. With life-like graphics, too. But yeah, each to their own.

 

[Kapone33]

Personally, I never got the appeal of a car stealing thug life feel in a video game. If I wanted that, I'd just google Birmingham news, it's full of it and it's free. But yeah, each to their own.

The stereotyping of Communities is one of the reasons for me. Games are supposed to be about fun. If I want serious violence I just play TWWH3 or Orcs Must Die. I don't even have the Blood pack for TWWH. Not because I don't like it but because it is Fantasy. Like that scene in Game of Thrones where the Queen's Dragon mows down a row of troops with fire. Well that was me in TWWH with some pesky Archers that did not see my Dragon flying through the Woods.

 

[JohH]

That's fine. I'll pass personally. But if they can make $90 work for them then more power/money to them.

 

[AusWolf]

The stereotyping of Communities is one of the reasons for me. Games are supposed to be about fun. If I want serious violence I just play TWWH3 or Orcs Must Die. I don't even have the Blood pack for TWWH. Not because I don't like it but because it is Fantasy. Like that scene in Game of Thrones where the Queen's Dragon mows down a row of troops with fire. Well that was me in TWWH with some pesky Archers that did not see my Dragon flying through the Woods.

If I want violence, I'll play Doom '16 or W40k Space Marine 2. But a lot of people play GTA for violence without a reason which I don't get. Stealing cars and wreaking havoc in a city centre. What's the point? Do people really fantasize about messed up shit like that, really?

This is why I didn't get all the criticism against Cyberpunk 2077 that you can't do the same there. Of course you can't, of course the game mechanics won't allow you, because it's not GTA in the future, it was never meant to be played like that, which is more than fine by me.

 

[friocasa]

In the 90s... I can't remember a game being more than $49.99 unless they came with an accessory like the N64 expansion pack, in San Diego at least. I remember when games went up to 59.99 people were super pissed. What game do you remember on SNES that was 90$? (not attacking you, just generally interested)

50$ in 1995, adjusted for inflation, is 104$ in 2024

The avg hourly wage was 12$ vs 30$ today in the US

 

[boidsonly]

Not only will folks pay $100 for this, they'll pay that for early access and then review bomb it for being broken upon release. We gamers are a sick bunch.

 

[Melvis]

New Era? Pfft been over $100 -$150 here for yrs!

 

[80-watt Hamster]

In the 90s... I can't remember a game being more than $49.99 unless they came with an accessory like the N64 expansion pack, in San Diego at least. I remember when games went up to 59.99 people were super pissed. What game do you remember on SNES that was 90$? (not attacking you, just generally interested)

I don't remember $90, either (maybe in Canada or Australia?), but do remember the top-flight Squaresoft titles (Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger) went for USD70.

 

[Gucky]

If opinion is simple, it it delivers content for the money, then it is worth it.
For 90$ that means an optimized game with excellent graphics, many many hours of gameplay (at least >200h) and no MTX.

 

[colossusrageblack]

In the 90s... I can't remember a game being more than $49.99 unless they came with an accessory like the N64 expansion pack, in San Diego at least. I remember when games went up to 59.99 people were super pissed. What game do you remember on SNES that was 90$? (not attacking you, just generally interested)

SNES had Chrono Trigger for $79.99, Super Street Fighter II was $69.99; Sega Genesis had Phantasy Star IV for $99.99; N64 Conker's Bad Fury Day was $79.99. I personally remember going to Walmart on Christmas eve to pick out a video game, I wanted WWF WrestleMania Arcade for SNES and they had it priced for $90, my parents said absolutely not. I don't know why the price was that high, but everything I could find now says it was $59.99. Maybe my region was higher for some reason.

 

[k0vasz]

1) I'm not sure whether there are other IPs which could pull a base price of $90. And even for GTA6, it needs to be REALLY good on day1, too. Games can easily flop nowadays
2) They should lower development costs by not spending an avarage of 4-7 years with the development of one single game. Development times just got ridicolous.

 

[dirtyferret]

I've been saying it for a while and I'll say it now: AAA gaming is dead.

I wouldn't say they are dead as much as the vast majority of them suck. BG3 was a AAA game (huge budget and developer grew to a AAA workforce) that was worth it because it gave me on a personal level hours upon hours of play through. Civ 5 is another AAA game that gave me hundreds (and hundreds) of hours of play. Diablo series, MMO's like WoW & FFXIV can be well into the hundreds of dollars when you look into the base game, expansions, monthly subs (for MMOs) and if the person enjoys them than there is value in the cost.

AAA is not dead so much as AAA more often than not gives you crap value. 10-15 hour single player run through. Mind numbing multi player. Carrot on stick treadmill grinding. I'll gladly pay for value but I think most people won't pay for shiny graphics, celebrity voice cast, tons of motion capture video, when paired with what most people would describe as boring stories & game play.