Development costs now are about 100 times more than they were during the Famicom era, but software prices haven't gone up to that extent," he explained. "
Number of copies sold has gone up a lot.
To be fair, that's not always the result,
But it also doesn't take into account that they already used micro-transactions to offset keeping the price of games where they were 20 years ago. I'd imagine they have no intents to stop with those if they raise the price of games.
I'm not sure Capcom is the best example of that. Their only IP I regularly play is Street Fighter, so I might have a limited perspective on their games.
Also, the price has gone down since those days. I remember when NES and SNES games were regularly $80-120. And they didn't have no special collector editions with exclusive content or anything. That was the regular price.
the price has gone down since those days
And rightly so. Digital distribution has almost negligible overheads compared to something like cartridges or even CD-s.
Wages are also too low, making spendable cash too low, making demand for higher priced games too low.
Good luck with that. It has been over a decade since I bought a Capcom game without a discount of 40% or higher. Raise prices or reduce discounts and I'm sure I won't be the only customer lost.
"Game prices are two low"
...wow, that's it? For a CEO that's nothing comparably. Capcom is a huge company.
Honestly, I'd be fine with games starting out at $100 per title... if it was safe to assume that the game launches in a feature-complete state, has no other form of monetization, and will see eventual price drops and sale discounts over time (looking at you, Nintendo and Activision). Game development costs have ballooned and the $50/60 price points were around for an insane amount of time when you consider inflation. I would rather have seen periodic increases to the up front price than publishers nickle-and-diming us with microtransactions, loot boxes, battle passes and other shit.
I'm at a point where I only buy 2-3 games per year during their launch week. Those are titles I'm excited about and I think it's reasonable to invest that much into my favorite hobby. For everything else, I can wait and play it on a subscription service like PS Plus or Game Pass, or pick it up on a deep discount. My back catalog only ever gets longer.
I like the "expansion" model, where there's a series of large DLCs, maybe half or more the size of the original game. A developer makes a game. If it does poorly, that's it, and they don't do expansions. If it does well, they make and sell expansions until sales fall off.
That lets people get more of what they want if it's good, doesn't force all of the money to be put in place up front, but also doesn't constantly shovel ads in your face.
I could hypothetically imagine microtransactions that I like, but in practice, I haven't seen anything that looks either appealing or cost-effective. Frankly, the smaller the value of the item, generally the less cost-effective it seems to be.
The only significant "small" item I'd like to get -- that no developers seem to provide -- is more music in some games. Like, GTA or Fallout: New Vegas radio stations.
I will concede that for people who play MOBAs or similar online games, where a single game is played an enormous amount, and they stare at the same character for ages, that buying cosmetic items for that character might make sense, to keep the visuals from getting too stale. I don't really enjoy that genre, but if I did, I could see that being worthwhile.
The only times I can recall DLC content really being memorable was in the expansion form.
I'm also a little annoyed that Steam doesn't have a way to let one (optionally, on a per-title basis) be notified about new DLC for titles that one owns. I think that that'd help encourage expansions, which otherwise might not get as much attention.
Is Capcom a publicly traded company? There's your explanation.
And yet games companies are seeing record profits. Where are my record revenues, capitalism?
Dragon's Dogma 2 was in my sights...maybe not now. I mean the game play was cool in the original, but to be honest from what i've seen, it looks more like a graphics over haul than a whole new game. Do i want to play not only full price, but a price hike to boot for a reskin of a game I've already played?
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