Become a patient gamer. This winter sale, I bought probably 25 games totaling around 30 dollars. It's enough to keep me busy for the next 5 years.

Games should be cheaper to make, too.

See, that's the conundrum: big companies make huge investments and want a ROI. They dump 100+ million dollars on a game with a team that's over 200 people and expect 10x money back.

Shit has ballooned out of control in the corporate world and Indies have to fight tooth and nail against each other, bigger players, shovelware and older titles

I haven't spent more than $30ish bucks on a game since ... 2013?? I think the last game I paid full price for was gta5 on ps3

Do y'all not know about the bargain bin and steam sales...? Is everyone so up to date on their backlog you can't wait a few months for that price to drop to 50%

It doesn't take long, Doom the dark ages has already hit that discount a few times iirc

The $60/$70 price tag on video games from major makers is an entry fee, it doesn't get you the full game anymore. You have to pay for luxury editions, expansions, microtransactions of some sort, battle pass. It's cheaper to start a tabletop miniature army than play video games now.

Great news!

They are!

... Just typically not the overproduced and overpriced corpo ones.

Wanna drive down AAA game prices?

Stop paying them!

Support your favorite indie or AA game today!

Don't like games with predatory microtransactions?

You'll never believe this, but you can also just stop playing games with them!

Get all your friends onboard with the plan, fight the man!

Have you met our lord and saviour, retro gaming?

They become cheap if you're patient enough.

Or live with AA and indie games like many of us do, at tell AAA publishers to get fucked by not spending money on their live-service crap.

Every time - every single time - I've purchased a major AAA game anywhere close to the release window in the past 10 years, it's been a mistake. Pay a shitload more for a half baked, buggy, unfinished mess.

At this point I just don't buy big time releases within 6 months of launch. Even when I'm certain of the game itself, it just ends up being a mistake.

Just don't buy Triple A titles.

The last "AAA" title I bought was elden ring for 30$ (unless you count Silk Song)

There are plenty of indie style, A or AA studios that are in the 5-30$ range.

The more people who move over to that type of mindset and buy from small titles, the more apt that large companies are going to lower their prices.

Yeah but the IMPERATIVE IS ON US to make sure that the industry (AAA, AA & Indie) are on their best behaviour.

Like as an example, a game that looks like it would run on potato PC should run on one

Or do not allow a game to cross the recommended requirement of 8 GB ram etc...

Pricing is dictated by what someone is willing to pay for it.

For me, $70 USD is too much for the average game that is being sold at that price tag because those types of games(AAA/AAAA) are:

• Broken at launch
• Unoptimized/framegen crutch
• Basic features missing
• Nickle and dimed to all hell

Again, not all, but the average AAA slop title usually has one or more of the above points.

BUT, that doesn't mean that Indie games at $20 USD are a "steal" or "bargain" either. There are many Indie games I bought at their launch(Silksong), but others I have waited for a decent sale.

If everyone stopped buying games at $70 USD then prices would fall and/or projects going forward would be re-evaluated to either keep costs/expectations down. But people are paying the $70 USD so that price point is here to stay.

Fuck $70+ games.

Check out ITAD then... lots of ways to make sure you get stuff super cheap.

https://isthereanydeal.com/

There are plenty of cheaper games out there. Go on whatever virtual store and check out current sales, and simple games made by small studios.

Cult of the Lamb, Spiritfarer, My Time at Portia, The Last Campfire, Arise: A Simple Story and What Remains of Edith Finch are all worth checking out.

This may sound crazy, but hear me out... $70 might just be relatively cheap right now, when considering historic prices and inflation.

So about 20 years ago, I used to work at a game shop and at that time all new AAA console games were all $50 and I believe the switch to $60 happened just shortly after I left.

That said, a quick web search says that there's been 65% inflation since 2005. $50 x 1.65 = $82

So at least when compared to other products, $50 to $70 is not a huge price jump.

Now all that said, this does not account for the added cost of micro transactions and paid dlc which didn't really exist in 2005. So the actual lifetime cost of a top pricing tier game may actually be higher than $70. Honestly, I have more of a problem with that than with the higher base cost, hidden costs are deceptive.

Edit: I looked it up, the switch to $60 actually happened in 2005, I was probably still working there when it happened. If we were to do that same calculation starting with $60, that's $60 x 1.65 = $99. So there's food for thought

They already are. It's called - sales.

The problem are people going out in droves, willingly spending $70 or more on special editions. They've caved to FOMO and it is a them problem.

We're still in the best age of gaming where there are sales in all directions.

Bloomberg's all broken for me, so going by the snippet:
I get the impression the absolute majority of games aren't even past the 40 USD threshold, including the majority of successful games I see in the wild. If the snippet considers the AAA games as a good sample for the gaming market, I'd argue otherwise, that they're a loud minority of games, and a decaying one at that for multiple reasons, including the bloated prices.