It feels to me like the closer we get to the Nintendo Switch 2’s June launch and the, apparently, $80 games associated with it, the more people are fighting with themselves over what is and isn’t worth it. But at least Sony veteran and previous head of PlayStation Indies Shuhei Yoshida is free from inner turmoil – he thinks relatively expensive, high quality video games are unequivocally necessary.
“I don’t believe that every game has to be priced the same,” Yoshida continues. "Each game has different value it provides, or the size of budget. I totally believe it’s up to the publisher – or developers self-publishing – decision to price their product to the value that they believe they are bringing in.
Yoshida continues to say that, “In terms of actual price of $70 or $80, for really great games, I think it will still be a steal in terms of the amount of entertainment that the top games, top quality games bring to people compared to other form of entertainment.”
“As long as people choose carefully how they spend their money,” he continues, “I don’t think they should be complaining.”
This is like when the music industry said CD’s should cost 40 to 50 dollars instead of 12 dollars. There was only one good song on most CD’s. Look where CD’s are now. I don’t see how they can justify 80 dollars a game when they don’t even make a physical copy anymore. It’s now just an SD card with a key on it. They’re still downloading the game itself from the internet.
I agree with you about CDs but I’m not sure I understand your point about physical copies. If they’re still buying and shipping a physical SD card, from a production perspective, I’m pretty sure that’s the same cost regardless of whether it’s a key or a full game. And considering that digital copies of games tend to be the same price as physical ones anyways, I think the physical aspect is pretty negligible and doesn’t factor into the price in any real way.
Well, if i have the entire game on the physical device and it doesn’t come with arbitrary DRM stuff, i can still enjoy it in 20 years on the old console even if all the servers are shut down.
I recently saw that used Gameboy Advance SPs go for the same price like when they were new. Old Gameboy games also go for similar prices like when they were launched. Because no matter where or when. As long as the console and the cartridge themselves are working and there is electricity, the games can be enjoyed.
That is a gigantic difference from a consumer perspective, no matter what the physical production costs are.