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No Manuals, No plastic Covers, No Disc, No Shipping, No Posters. Aren’t they Saving Money?

$100 games and no physical ownership is what happens when morons justify microtransactions in $60 games and price hikes.

The issue is that salaries have not changed much. Cost of living has gone up more than salaries so if they raise prices, video game sales would suffer tremendously.

20+ years ago, PC games came in a A4-sized full color printed (embossed) cardboard box and included a printed manual, pins, cloth maps of the game world (if RPG), and the disc. Eventually, it turned into a 7inX4.5in mini box (non-embossed) and the disc came in a sleeve rather than a case. And no extras. Now there's no box (embossed or otherwise), no manual, no maps, no pins, and no disc.

Another thing people forget is back in the 90s, the gaming population was much smaller. Back then I was a teen and me and a few friends openly talked about video games. Everyone else just looked at it as something 'nerds' do. Now gaming is everywhere and more people are gaming. You don't have to raise prices if your customer base grows.

People fail to realize that we are heading to an era where indie studios will be able to make AAA level of games very soon, forcing big studios to start providing actual value due to increase in competition. Indies are about to flip the market.

When a $70+, 200GB AAA graphics game is shorter and shittier than a $30-$60, 15GB Japanese AA anime game you know big companies eff'd it up.

Depending on what it is your paying for I don’t buy every game for $70 some I wait until the price drops

I feel like a lot of content creators add to the problem of games being overpriced/full of scummy microtransactions. We always say to "vote with your wallets" but then content creators buy $70 games and go all-out whale in cash shops even when everyone knew the game would be shit, "for the content." Content creators have no appreciation for money they spend because as long as they keep churning out content they'll always make that money back.

The price of games are going up but the Quality of the games are going down or games are to Short for the price

ive been saying this for years now and its about time other people are starting to see it that now that we are all digital all the time, they cant use the "well games are more expensive to release now" argument anymore.

Seeing as digital does not need box, paper art or disc why we paying same price

This is why I will always support a physical games option.

Charging 70 plus dollars on games that often aren't even finished because of all the bugs these developers push it out with and then overtime patch it up with multiple updates. Ridiculous.

New games in Canada have been $102 after tax for awhile now.

I dont even buy dlc anymore. By time i clear out my backlog they remaster the game with all dlc included on top of being on steam sale for under $10

That report at the start is in reference specifically to RECORDABLE blu ray disk production, as in blank disks that you can burn data on to. NOT printed blu ray disks like you'd get when buying blu ray movies - those aren't going anywhere.

He forgot about physical advertising like signs in stores and in magazines that almost do not exist anymore

I don't even pay $69 for a game bc it's absurd paying full price when you know months later is gonna be on sale and better optimazed. However, if everybody think like me, this industry would broke for sure lol

The benefit of physical media is that you don't need a internet connection to watch a movie just one off payment of the movie and the player not monthly subscription fees and monthly bills from your internet provider, and if it's a TV show or movie you like to watch multiple times in a year why would you waste your money renting it on streaming services which is basically what you're doing when you're using those services. physical media on games consoles is dead most of the games aren't entirely on the disc you still have to download a huge chunk of it and in some cases there's nothing more than a small file on it.

there are so many overlooked strategies like this... "day one with gamepass" well actually no.. it's day four with gamepass. People get so hyped up with the marketing campaigns of new games that even though they have gamepass, they feel the urge to buy a premium version of that game besides their subscription to play 3 days earlier. The reason why gamers get tired of it really fast, is that every game nowadays is an investment, you buy a game, which essentially from the first minute you play it tries to trigger you to spent more money. Controversial take on this from my end is that gamers also feed this themselves besides dropping the money for a game.. prior to a release they hype is so immense for a new game, a week after the release, nobody talks about the game anymore. With this short hype cycle for a game nowadays they either need to make enough money up front to cover cost or make sure you either invest in a battle pass or w/e which makes you log in over and over since you already spent money up front so you want to get your enjoyment out of it.

Companies who believe games need to be more than $60 without micro transactions need to exit the industry. Use that money to invest in the stock market instead.

Yeah I’ll never pay that much for a game. See you in a discount

This is OUR fault...not the corporations. So heres the thing. Cost is based on what people are willing to pay...,not what they bitch about. The reason they charge these costs is cause people pay them. A value of a product is dictated by what someone will pay. So a 100 dollar game is worth 100 not because of percieved value but because people were willing to and do pay that amount. Until people actually stop paying for it ....and not say they will acting all pravado on the internet and then buy it anyway....but actually not buy it...and enough people do so....they have no reason to lower the cost. Im a consumer..but if I was a for profit company, and i can sell something for 50 and people buy it..and I sell it for 100 and people buy it...why would I leave money on the table. Id absolutely sell it for 100. So I dont blame these 'mega corporations'. I dont. They are doing a common sense thing. If people will spend that money, they will make it that cost. If people dont spend that money they lower the cost. WE are the problem. Not them. Cause despite our words, our actions tell them that the game IS worth 100 cause that is what we are willing to spend.

The games that were $70 plus back in the day had a different board in them. They had a battery onboard to keep the save. Those carts were always more expensive. I remember paying $80 for Dragon Quest for Nintendo.

This is the realest Video you 've ever done for me personally, You Nailed it and could not be put any better its complete nonsense how far this has gone. Its really effected every aspect of the gaming industry.

You are reading the report wrong. Sony is phasing cd-r, cd+r, cd-rw, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, and BD-R storage format and discs because they haven't been mass market relevant since 2010. The report is not a surprise for an antiquated home storage medium. This has NOTHING to do with physical based movies (bluray/ 4k Bluray).

0:58 🗣️THIS POST GOT COMMUNITY NOTED🗣️ Its specifically recordable Blurays discs so unless yall been burning DVDs lately it doesnt effect you at all.

Destiny charged 100 dollars just for dlc lmao

Who remembers when DLC was free?

the only time i am fine with a game increasing its price is after early access/kickstarter/beta or whatever. if you tell people " hey the game is 10$ right now as a thanks for supporting us in early access, but when we launch the game will be 14.99", that is perfectly reasonable.

I think it’s still good to have a disc because if you if it cost too much to buy the games of digital, you can buy them on disk format might be a lot cheaper

10:25 - i noticed something interesting in the xbox store. if you select the standard version of a game , one of the first buttons is 'see other versions' where they have the $100+ copies. but if you select the $100 version from your search, theres no way to see other versions. you have to back out and redo your search

Finally, someone breaking it down. Been trying to explain this since Xbox One was coming digital was shaking up distribution. When PS3 and Xbox One began releasing game with day one downloads there was an agreement reached with all the physical retailers regarding it. The demanded sales parity with physical copies or they would nolonger distribute physical copies of consoles. Physical stores take 30٪ due to storage space, physical distribution/shipping and in store advertising. Digital Stores taking 30% is because physical store did also even though they don't have the same cost. Digital games should be realistically half the cost they are now with more of that going back to developers.

People always miss the most important detail why games cost 80$ back then. In the 90’s memory was outrageously expensive and you can see it the drop in prices from snes/n64 to PS1. And there was more than memory, cartridges had things like super fx or lockout chips for anti piracy. You didn’t only pay for a game, the cartridge itself could cost up to 25-35$.

What isnt helping; and what many people dont understand when they say games cost the same or less as games back then, Prices inflated, but our minimum wages didn't, minimum wage if properly inflated should be double the current average. It takes longer to afford games, and with every other necessity in live jumping randomly in price, people cant buy as many nice-to-haves at a higher price cause they cant save as much as before.

I don’t remember the last time I bought a game at full pop. Sales are where it’s at, usually pick up a hand full of games on Summer Sales etc….

What's really crazy about MTX's in live service games (which as you stated is all games these even if it is a single player game or multiplayer game) is that any of the cosmetics or items that people buy (myself included) is we actually have zero ownership of these items which is the exact same as the games we purchase digitally. For however much I love the digital age for everything that we have but we no longer own any of our digital media any more, no software of any kind and this model needs to change before we all get taken for granted more than what is being done to us now. The digital world is really horrifying.

Another factor to consider is the fact that Sony's intro of CD's over cartridges made production cost way cheaper, with ~10x more storage per unit. DVD & Blu-Ray provided massive gains in byte-per-cm, as well (not sure on manufacturing cost but I don't think it was substantially higher on average than CD at peak). So it's not just production and shipping in a vacuum; it's production of units that could store more per unit, at the same (or lower) cost than the previous medium, thus leading to fewer storage units (i.e. discs) needing to be produced, thus lighter packaging (and also packaging that was more cheaply produced). People argue that "server maintenance" costs are about the same as all of the preceding combined, but I don't see how it could be. Presumably, the data printed on discs was sent to manufacturers from a server. Manufacturers could also (depending on the publisher, developer, etc) also constitute a "middle man" needing payment. While one MIGHT argue that Steam is a middle man, the same cannot be said for the Xbox store, PS Store, or Nintendo eShop. The fact is that it comes down to development costs and trend-chasing behavior on the part of companies (especially AAA). If pubs and devs stopped assuming that a game that doesn't match Naughty Dog in terms of graphics was and is still a good game, and if they would stop assuming that a 15 hour game is not worth buying, perhaps this problem would go away. Not holding my breath, though. With very few exceptions, I'm just buying games on Steam sales a couple of years later and playing older games and remasters on there that are way cheaper anyway.

One big part of this people are missing as well is the used game market. I remember growing up and going to GameStop for SNES games with my dad. They had bargain bins filled with cartridges for $1-$5. We don’t have this anymore. Firm believer that a thriving low cost used market helps keep new prices low. As the death of physical media accelerates, the cost of new games is just going to keep going up as there won’t be a way to buy cheap used games.

I caught this when you were halfway through the video, and yeah. I paid $84.99 + tax for Chrono Trigger, but that price was based on a few things. Cartridge costs, special chip, memory capacity, Nintendo fees and RPG's just being something of a specialty product at the time that you sometimes had to ask a store to order if you wanted it. Even localization cost for games with that much text and built in character-display limitations was a more specialized field at the time, which added cost as well. I never think this stuff means games should be so-and-so price, it's just always been part of my perspective over the years whenever I hear about price grievances, price hikes, what constitutes a game's "value" etc. Hell, I remember Phantasy Star IV being $99.99, but I didn't own that game until it was probably $10 used. Let alone seeing NeoGeo prices in magazines. The argument about distribution and manufacturing costs no longer being a factor is entirely legitimate, but complaining about prices going up started in the HD era and pre-date the ubiquity of digital distribution by at least 15 years. That said, it's not our responsibility to pay for things we don't want in order to cover ballooning development costs that could be solved by simply not making such massive AAA schlock. It's not me that told big publishers to hire 4000 people and have hour long credit rolls, which necessitate assembly line style franchise production.

Gamepass isn't overpriced,

So the short is that development budgets and corporate greed is causing prices of games to increase. Especially when companies only need to budget for ~10% of their sales requiring physical distribution… which is arguably, the only reason games in the 90s were $50/60

When GTA6 comes out you know Rockstar will charge $100+ dollars for some premium edition of the game and a lot of people will eat it up... I predict they will offer 3 days early access that some other games have done and will price it well above $100, and you know a lot of people will pay it.

What I would like to know is the development cost of The Secret of Mana compared to production costs today.

this steam sale sucks there's no actually good prices

I was thinking this whole time that costs for the companies are lower when they’re not charging for a digital copy, so why the high price when costs are lower? It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know why people are so eager to pay up more money than they have to.

If people stop buying microtransactions, how do you think the publishers are going to make up that money? They will probably raise the base price of the games and now we are all paying more and you have no choice in the matter. Microtransactions are optional. I rarely buy microtransactions and prefer having options.

There hasn’t been a game really worth that price in a long time,I used to get the games when the price dropped but it seems to be taking forever for the price to come down anymore,

I literally shi* my pants when I saw price of the SW Outlaws gold version on epic store, I actually thought they’re giving a gaming console along with the gold version!

I waited for the deluxe edition of BG3 for Xbox specifically for the physical copy because (not that I'd ever think Larian would) I don't want to purchase something that later becomes unplayable because the developer decided to stop supporting it. I'm also purchasing blu-rays and CDs specifically so I don't rely on someone telling me that I can only stream it with commercials or whenever they offer it. Yeah, kinda Luddite-like, but if I wanna watch Sons of Anarchy or listen to the band Hash, I can do it on my schedule.

I really don't get how digital media isn't cheaper than physical media. It doesn't make since.

Come to Australia. First party games are now $125 😭

I remember phantasy star 4 being like 140 dollars on release back in like 1992. Prices back in the 16-bit days was just out of control. (99.99 according to Google)

Don't buy them? Wait for sales? Buy from different places?

What I find interesting is that BOTW had DLC, but didn't have microtransactions. Still sold over 20 million copies FULL PRICE. TOTK had NO DLC, no microtransactions, was $10 more expensive and still sold over 20 million full price. Is microtransactions really necessary or is it a symptom of certain games or genres having a shrinking audience.

I can count on one hand the amount of devs I'm willing to give anything beyond $60 for a game. If the game is $70 with dlc or an in-game store, I'm waiting for a sale. I don't even preorder anymore now that everyone wants to be priced at $70

I completely agree with you....I never buy any DLC when it's already in the game when it launches. It's just hidden behind a code that when you purchase it to unlock the DLC

Also in the 90s the second hand market was booming. I traded in one second game for another and only paid the store’s $10 markup. When all games were physical you could easily borrow games from friends as well. Gaming in the 90s was in reality cheaper. Sure, you had to wait a bit after the release to get it cheap. But because internet was in its infancy there really was no fomo.

The problem is these days is that discs now just act as an unlock code. Very little of a game’s info is stored there now, the majority of it still has to be downloaded from the respective platform’s storefront.

I think movie cinemas people dont go as much now cause it takes a month or two before its on bluray / streaming anyway. Our home TVs now are huge, my tv is 65" and OLED so looks so nice... yeah a cinema is MASSIVE but unless its a blockbuster I dont NEED to go see it and pay a ticket to see it once.

We got where we are now because of the “Cosmetic microtransactions are fine” idiots. It has now been taken to the utmost extreme.

How the games are priced are insane now vs 1990's. Skull & Bones is a live service game only that cost 70$. Then there is games with 8-Bit NES graphics that cost the same as Skyrim, Doom Eternal, GTA 5 or whatever. Nintendo are now also charging full price even for low budget remakes and simple GBA remakes. I prefer the 1990's pricing when there were no standard. Low budget games weren't sold as AAA Games back then like they are today.

I wish gamers would be half as vigilant against all the ways corporations rip us off with their profit-driven pricing and enshitification of everyday goods as they are with keeping game's priced locked for the last 30 years.

I’m sick of that as well because the company is charge you a lot when you shouldn’t pay more. I’d rather buy one disc that cheap but if it’s on game pass I don’t mind.

It is not 90% it's been 60-40 /70-30

31:25 i agree the problem with accepting cosmetic MTX is we've now got bankers and banking reps in the game developement itself, you need security in the downloads because personal banking info is basically part of every interaction between entities, while if everything is free you only need to know it was paid for once and can keep that non-dev involvement to a minimum and security tight.

Not to mention the cost of advertising should have gone down bc you watch the trailer on the console they don't have to pay cable companies to advertise their games

Whether people like AC Shadows or not, it’s pretty standard pricing. The main game is still 70 bucks. And most developers these days generally sell separate dlc bundles for future dlc’s. Usually for 40 bucks. Shit even Dark Souls 3 sells a literal Season Pass and had a 100 dollar plus version with it bundled. Selling it bundled with a game is functionally the same as selling it separately. And like them or hate them, Ubisoft dlc’s are generally both lengthy and full of content. To buy them separately, if Valhalla is anything to go by, they’d be 25 bucks a pop. So you actually save 10 bucks here. Most devs honestly do this and no one bats an eye. The 130 version is in place of the usual 90 dollar ‘Deluxe Edition’. The 20 bucks that every developer adds on for some skins and a soundtrack. If people are tired of these things they need to call out the devs they love, not just the Ubisofts and EA’s of the industry. The punchingbags. People ignore it when it’s a game they love or dev they love. Either that or they’re misunderstanding the pricing structure here. Because it’s pretty bog standard if you break it down.

destin, everyone plays lip service to being consumer focused, but you always come across as sincere and passionate about it. thank you!

Its weird to listen to you without the “hard news” voice lol. Happy to have found you again.

there's a big aspect that gets glossed over. Sure physical media costs more. Sure you have to pay for packaging and shipping and everything else. People don't really understand why cartridges were so expensive. And the reason they were so expensive to produce was the memory chips. These ROM chips were very expensive. ROM is not the same as RAM but pricing wise, it was very similar. Every KB and MB was counted and factored. It would like imagining a cartridge as have 16GB of ROM. Sony changed the game because you suddenly took memory out of the equation. Sony games weren't cheaper just to get marketshare. It was far far far cheaper to produce that disc than a cartridge with expensive memory. Nowadays flash memory is so so cheap (it's basically a commodity now) so it's hard to make the correct analogy. But take yourself back to the late 80s or early 90s. Heck, go to the 360 days. Microsoft wanted the 360 to have 256MB of RAM. But Epic showed them what Gears of War would be like on a 256MB system versus a 512MB system. So the 360 ended up with 512MB but this decision reportedly cost them $1 billion in added costs.

I never buy any Micro transaction stuff I think people that do are fool and the gaming industry is actually Laughing at the ones that do because thay got you hook line and Sinkerd

I used to pay £1.99 for Mastertronic and other "budget" games. On casette tape lol. 20 minutes for the game to load. Play the game. No save. Start game from beginning. If you were going to play "through" - you REALLY had to play through.

$70 games are overprice

pricing is a joke. I could understand physically as you had to pay for disk printing (cheap), shipping, shelf space, retailor fees and other stuff. But in the digital age you don't pay any of that and now they charge you even more money.

A big issue is that generation that want everything yesterday and are prepared to pay for it. An even bigger issue is, youtubers twitch streams etc by so called influencers (another name for the crummy sales person who screws you out of every penny before leaving the store) they show of the latest skins etc and make it so kids bully kids who dont have them so all the kids are afraid not to buy the stuff in case they are the one who hasn't.

I had a friend say GTA 6 would be over 100$ I’m like no one will be buying it like that they need every single sale for a game with that high of a production

COD is even monetizing loading screens!!! Ridiculous

The other thing digital media did was kill resale. I know this might be an unpopular opinion, but for me, being able to buy used or sell a game after beating it to save money or recover some cost is something develooers and publishers don't have to factor into profits anymore. It's why gamepass is so awesome to me. It's a rental service, which i use quite a bit for single player games.

the price now to make a game is MUCH more too though like voice actors, artists , size of the games etc you can't compare GTA 6 to secrets of mana on the cost to make the game. Yes they are saving money now not making a disc / box and shipping etc but the production is much larger sure...don't get me wrong though $70 to me is still expensive when I can but a movie on bluray for $20 that cost the same to make as the game if not more

Today’s games are priced way too high on the digital platforms, here in Australia they can be more than a hardcopy which is $125 for a new release. Digital means no distribution, and it’s why I wait for sales. I do not care if that takes 12 months either, I refuse to pay full price.

It's true distribution costs have gone down but development costs are so much more that's why game prices need to increase.

It's made me buy way less games. Back in the PS3/360/Wii/DS/PSP generation games here in Europe I could get them day 1 for between 40-50 Euro. Now its costs 75-100 Euro for games depending on the publisher.

I feel that there was nothing important said in this video besides "price too high". It feels like there is a ton of information that is being glossed over when it comes to the price of video games.

3:22 “We get less” that’s inflation in a nutshell since the beginning of time.

Blame the share and stakeholders who are only in it for the dollars,they ruinned gamingprices!

I dont get how ppl defend price increase... or why, they make record profit and yet wanna more out of us giving us year over year less quality

New Ubisoft games with season pass are 110€ that I find too expensive. My thinking is I'm going to rent with Ubisoft+ for 18€ month and complete it. If I like the game I'm going buy next year when all content is out and by then it has deep discount like 50-60%. Overall it's going to be cheaper to rent and buy later with discount and I get to be hyped with everyone else with day 1 experience. I did the same with Jedi Survivor and I don't feel the need to buy the game.

My understanding about physical disks now a days is there isn’t actually any content on them besides content that says you bough the game. The game itself is getting digitally downloaded. Without internet your game is unplayable

I’ve never paid $100 for a game. Granted I don’t buy games as much as I used to and most of the time it’s in my pc. I’ve never seen the value in buying the more expensive version over the standard. I could care less about the extra junk that comes with the higher price.

I'm game with going back to paying $40 for a games that are 20 min to 2 hours long, or $60 for a game less than 6 hours long.

Hey Destin I hope all is well. Would you mind telling me what headset that is you are using, and would you recommend it ?

Simple: DON'T subscribe to Live Service, Don't subscribe to Games as a Service and definetely do NOT support Microtransactions in Games. FORCE the industry to get a grip of itself and control it's costs and DELIVER on games that people want to play.

And people still asking why piracy exist. Not only because of malware Denuvo but also overpriced games. Not paying anything more than 60. Thats my bottom line. Ill wait for sale

I remember saving up for months to buy Donkey Kong Country in 1995. Cost £60 even back then. The pound was also worth double the dollar back then, so it's like we were paying $120.

digital isn't the main way to purchase its just companies make it harder to obtain physical media... especially if companies are pushing so hard for it, what makes you think they're not gonna play around with numbers?

Sick of paying for overpriced games meanwhile here in canada its $101.00 per game for years😂

I don’t usually disagree but this is a bad take. If we are being honest the cost of games hasn’t scale with inflation the way other form of entertainment has, but it’s consumer base is very very resistant so that’s what’s kept the status quo. But even though the overhead for distribution of games has dropped because of digital, the cost to make AA and triple A games has raised substantially as hardware keeps raising the expectation of what games need to do in terms of fidelity to remain competitive and interesting. They are spending ridiculous money just on sound design and soundtracks alone besides all the cost in manpower, development tools and producing the foundation of the game.