Bethesda Founder: "Game prices might increase."

The problem with making games cost more is that it will only increase piracy. Some players that are ok with buying a game for $50-60 when released might not want to pay $80-90. So they pirate the game.

Also I bet we would see a decrease of people buying the game at launch and an increase of people buying the game only when it is on sale for at least 50% off.

And it might also piss-off parents that buy games for their kids, specially console games. They already cost quite a bit, if parents get annoyed at always have to fork so much money to get games, they will buy less games (specially since the cost of living keeps increasing while salaries are not keeping up with it). I guess in the console and cost department, what we would see, would be Nintendo outperform the other console companies. Nintendo always seems to keep their prices on a more "affordable" level.
 
I dunno about Bethesda being the new EA when T2 is doing that well enough. But I won't buy games beyond $39.99, I'm too cheap for anything higher.
 
This is clickbait of the highest order.
Christopher Weaver hasn't been directly involved with Bethesda/Zenimax since 2002 and he did not say games should be more expensive, rather that publishers might increase the base-prices if they can't sell shitty lootboxes and other microtransaction bullshit.
This nickel and dime approach to payment may well backfire as it interferes with the flow of a game and disallows for players to lose themselves in its play-world
...
Players may have to absorb the increasing costs of creating AAA games to allow publishers to remain profitable.
...
The nice thing about teaching students is, I don’t have to worry about the economics anymore.
Click to expand...
The original article is pretty interesting:
https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel...der-christopher-weaver-on-video-games-w514666

edit:
Changed the thread title to be less inaccurate.
 
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I don't think I've bought a game for 40+ bucks since Wasteland 2. For me it's too much of a gamble. It's hard to know if a game is going to be worth it within 2 hours (steam) so refunding is seldom a realistic option for me as it is far too short to get a proper judgement of a game and I mean I can get annoyed with the simplest things that starts grinding my gears until I feel sickened by the game.

Divinity Original Sin for example is a game that I started to enjoy but grew tired of because I hate diablo loot systems and the constant combat shoehorned in every 20 ingame meters as well as a boring save the world story and a setting that felt inconsistent to me. So I spent what? 20 bucks on it? Well to me that's 20 bucks down the drain.

Every player isn't going to be the same as me with these issues so I'm only speaking for myself but I don't trust games anymore. Spending more than 15 bucks on a game is something I'm wary of because I know that there might be something in the game that fucks up the entire experience for me. Maybe it's the slow walking speed or the combat animations or the story or the UI or the animation played for picking up items. I have no idea what might be the breaking point for me. So the highest I'm willing to go is not 60 bucks for any game what so ever. It's 30. And that's only if I'm extremely excited for a game which I rarely am (only game I can think of is the next Mount & Blade game).

So sure, increase your prices. I don't give a shit. I haven't bought a game for 60 bucks in ages and I'm still going to wait until their games sold at base price for 90 bucks goes down to 15 bucks on a sale. I have loads of games on my backlog that I have to get through. I don't have a compulsive need to buy the latest and "greatest" so whatever. And if they never go down to 15 bucks? Well I'm not buying them then am I? Tough shit.

I never understood how anyone can waste 60 bucks on a game anyway when if you just wait a year or two it'll drop in price. It's not like the game is going anywhere and it's not like you don't have a mountain of cheaper games to play already, ESPECIALLY if you're on PC. Only difference is online games, you kind of wanna be there when it is highly populated.

Funnily enough I've been playing great game after great game these past 2 months. Dragon Age Origins, Dragon Age Inquisition, Gothic 3, Risen, Risen 2 and currently playing and enjoying Risen 3 and Lego Worlds.

I haven't paid more than 15 bucks for any of these games individually. :shrug:

So yeah I WANT them to increase their prices. It'll be fun to sit back with some popcorn and laugh at all the twats who actually go out of their way to pay 60 bucks in the first place whining about how 90 is too much.

[edit]

Oh and obviously if they were to do this across the board then you'd definitely see a drop in sales because of obvious reasons. Games are already expensive and like I said there's a mountain of old games so if there's a choice between 90 bucks or 30 bucks which do you think a parent or whatever would get for a present?

Seasons passes, on disc DLC, day 1 DLC, pre-order exclusives, microtransactions, lootboxes and maybe one day an increase in base price. If they NEED to do this kinda scumbaggy shit in order to make a profit then the problem isn't one the gamers' side, it's on the publisher/developers side.

However I doubt it has ever been a "need", it's probably just a "want" for the most part.
 
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Even if prices did increase, I doubt it would change much in the industry which is shitty as it is. People are already actively supporting shit like 150+ euro cosmetic DLCs, intentionally cut content sold as DLCs, microtransactions and lootboxes. And I bet something else is coming down the line.

If that something is *just* price increase, people will keep buying. There may be boycotting in the beginning, but over time people will get used to it, just like everything else.
 
Well, as PlanHex hs said already, it's not that clear cut. But in this day and age of patching, DLC, post-release support and other wankery, games are more expensive to maintain, let alone make, but what nigh any sesnible studio will do is justify their time investment with stuff like that, free updates that will mean player influx thus more dough rolling in, or DLC content for the same effect but a bit safer on the investment. You can't just increase the price of your games while your competition doesn't and expect to do fine, it'd be terrible for them sales wise.
 
“Players may have to absorb the increasing costs of creating AAA games to allow publishers to remain profitable.”
Click to expand...
Or we could just let Triple A games die from becoming unprofitable.

Hell, this is starting to look like a win-win situation for me. Either the companies raise there prices, at which case players get pissed off at bad companies, or the companies become unprofitable, at which point the Triple A companies who focus more on maximising profit than making memorable experiences go bankrupt. Win-Win.
 
Weaver is not the first person I have read talking about that the prices of games for computers and consoles should increase.
People here probably remember when the used game market was still a thing that publishers wanted that when people sold on their games, or stores sold second hand games that a part of the payment would be sent to the publisher.
And wasn't there some talk a while back that gamers should pay a fee for the monthly use of Single Player games they had bought?

Either in this topic or on RPG Codex it was mentioned that the development costs had not so drastically increased (well the costs on AAA projects do increase of course per year, especially when expensive voice actors are hired, orchestra, or graphics and effects had a higher budget than normal, etc), but that most of the costs of games go to paying marketing and management.

And that is probably one of the biggest problems with the big game industry these days, over bloated management departments that came into being when games became more and more a billion dollar industry.
Now these departments like management departments in other markets seek to maintain an oversized and expensive company top, expecting consumers to pay the bill without returning much for it (there will always been people denying but there has definitely been a decline in quality and innovation in games, replacing those instead with more complex graphics and other somewhat frivolous features), let alone wanting to face that it is their own cut of the earnings are driving the price of games up to the point that a lot of people with increasing limited disposable incomes decide to delay purchasing a new game when it is first released.
The whole season pass model and in general poor DLC content has not been able to change people's decision on this.

Personally I agree with a lot of people here who say that they wait with buying new games when they have been first released, preferring to get a copy instead that has all the additional content that is released in the months afterwards, or until it is finally priced down.

But major publishers depend on people buying games on day one, just like Hollywood studios make most of their money during the first week of the release of a new movie, and as long as there are sufficient people who keep doing that despite having learned a lesson in the past that patience is sometimes the better choice, the management types see no reasons review their way doing business and make a number of changes in order to save their companies and eventually their own jobs.

Still I think eventually the industry will have to change and face the fact that the blame does not always lies with the consumer.
As mentioned before and by others, people incomes aren't increasing at the same level as the prices for living costs and other essentials do, and the money spend on a game these days doesn't always provide the same amount of game time as titles of several years ago did. (one of the reasons why this has been done is because publishers want people to buy a new game the moment they have finished the old one, or go online and spend money on various digital items)

Current and former high ranking figures in the gaming industry can talk about how they feel that the prices of games should increase but if they succeed in doing so they will accelerate the eventual moment in which gamers must decide if it is worth buying a new game that week or month, or if it is better to save that money for when more pressing matters come up like new living essentials or a medical bill.

Edit:

I for example prefer to save up money I used to spend on games for drawing commissions, art classes, and other things I enjoy such as books and toys.
 
I would be OK with price increase, if they weren't already selling furniture packs and Pip-Boy skins.

Also aren't Bethesda prices already inscreased? Fallout 4 with Season Pass on sale costs 125 PLN in Poland. I bought all GTAs without 5, Red Faction games and DLC to ARMA 3 for 113 PLN.
 
Yeah sure increase the price just make sure to include all the DLC, skins, expansions and updates for free and it runs smoothly at launch :D

But in all seriousness I refuse to buy a game at anything higher than 60. This hobby isn't getting any cheaper and business men trying to fill their pockets isnt gonna convince me otherwise.
 
If the industry wants to increase the price of games, they should be by law forced to support their games for a much longer time after release. They should be forced to fix every bug ever found within the game for the next 5 years after release or so. Shouldn't be allowed to publish games with bugs they already know about but don't care about fixing before the launch.

Gaming industry is the only industry where it is ok to sell a faulty product with little to no obligation for the companies to fix.
You buy a brand new fridge and if the door doesn't close properly or it makes loud weird noises when it is on, by law you can ask for a working replacement. You buy a brand new car and if the windshield wipers do not work or the seat is wonky and wobbly, by law you can ask for a working replacement. But with games, you can't ask for a replacement product that works, because all the same "model" of that game has the same faults.

And don't get me started on games' "System Requirements". They make System Requirements but many times the game will not work properly even when a consumer has the "recommended" system.

Gaming has been living the big life of escaping legal repercussions because of a lack of legislation towards it (not many countries make laws for products that affect games), and a lack of consumers pressure (taking companies into courts for faulty products).
The only laws usually in place are consumer laws made for general product buying/selling. But gaming differs a lot from other products that are physical.
Governments are quick to make laws about "adult" games (violence, gore, sex, nudity, drug use or references, even bad language), but are very slow to do anything to protect the consumers from faulty games.

If the gaming industry would be more legislated, and companies forced to provide a quality product or be penalized for it. Then I could agree that an increased in price would be in order. The way things are now... It is not justified at all.

If big companies were in financial trouble, then what they should do is cut costs. Get rid or reduce redundant departments, spend less in marketing, stop focusing on graphics, make the games more accessible (run on "weaker" systems), offer some older game from them for free when people buy the new game, make actual good and meaningful DLCs after the game was released, etc.

Also these big companies could just increase the price by $1 on their "big" games on release and they would rack tons of profit. For example Skyrim sold around 15 million copies in the first two months after release (it was still full priced), so that would mean an extra profit of $15 million (over the profit they actually made from selling the game) and that is only in the first two months. Is Bethesda in such dire financial situation that it really needs $300 million dollars of extra profit (if the price increased from $60 to $80) in just the first two months of the game being released?
Another example is GTA V, it sold around 40 million copies in the first two months of being released, with just $1 of price increased, it would make and extra $40 million... And that was just for the XBox 360. Later it was released for Xbox one and even later, released for PC.

But even games that "only" sell 2 or 3 million copies when still full priced would still make $2 million or $3 million extra profit just by an increase of $1...

I really don't understand how it would be justified to increase the base price of a game by 1/3 of it's current price all of a sudden.
 
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Generally, I wait for things to go on sale so a price increase wouldn't really affect me, but I do think a price increase would push for folks to the "wait for the summer/winter sale" mentality.

It's not our fault that almost every AAA game released in the last 15 years has been a glorified monetization scheme in one form or another. The industry did that to themselves and I'm not digging them out of that hole with my wallet.

Modestly budgeted, complete products and responsible business practices are the only way to properly fix this garbage. Instead of spending 250 million to try and sell Destiny to your grandma, Activision probably should have invested that money into making worthwhile content. Also stop wasting money on Hollywood talent. I don't know anyone who has ever bought a video game because of a certain actor's involvement.
 
Haven't they increased income by removing a couple of middlemen from the chain after digital distribution became a thing? Physical data storages manufacturers, transportation companies, shops with their personnel.. All of them getting a share before, being replaced by one fat Gaben, whilst the prices remained the same. What a friggin greed, man.
 
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