Topic: PlayStation Plus | OT |

Deze stijlvol getekende cartoon was gebaseerd op het eerste deel van de Zelda-spellenreeks, die nu met The Legend Of Zelda The Wind Waker (Nintendo Gamecube, 59,95) zijn tiende aflevering ingaat.

Metroid prime; in Metroid Prime speel je de premiejaagster Samus Aran die jacht maakt op de gevaarlijke space pirates. Prijs: 59,95

This is coming from newspaper archives I have access too, so I can't really get you links to websites.

@Kidfried @Octane @BAMozzy that was a good read. Thanks for posting everyone.

Theres more than a few ways to look at 'game development' and primarily the driver for high costs is the marketing budgets have escalated and often cost more than making the game, but they include those costs in the game development budget which has meant the big games errr cost more to make, although it doesnt, at least not as often as the publishers make out.

Octanes spot on here, I used to regularly read stock holders reports on trading companies such as EA, Capcom, Activision etc and compared to what I read about in regards to their financial difficulties its normally tied into a none console related project failing to work out like attempts at cracking the mobile market or games not selling as expected. They restructure constantly so the jobs for employees arent exactly 'safe' wherever they are having a bumper year or not so that line of defence is questionable.

And the prime example is take two pushing micros further into its marque titles. When one of those titles is the best selling full price game ever! Its all bs and we need some financial whizz outside of pachter to write some proper articles on the matter so we know exactly where we stand and stop the volley of fake news.

I find the whole price of games vs cost of development etc. an interesting topic so forgive me the ramble on. I completely understand the argument that game prices haven't changed since approx 2005 when it hit the $60 mark but that the cost of developing high end graphics, cut scenes etc. have risen massively on AAA games. In principal, I would not have an issue of new game releases went up by $5-10 if it meant all the other season pass, micro transactions rubbish went away.

Simply put, every business would happily put up its prices if it felt the market would accept it. $60 as a price point seems to be a sweet spot for consumers. Game publishers do a lot of research into pricing and the fact the price hasn't risen is that they feel that people won't buy their games.

What the escalating price has meant for publishers is an increase in risk which is why we see the homogenization of games - people playing it safe to hit the biggest number of consumers as possible. They also want to maximise revenue from their product. The one and done routine of many players mean that games get traded or don't return to titles and move on which makes it hard to leverage any other revenue from their investment.

MP elements, MMO style mechanics are all methods for keeping players invested in the game - to keep the game and ecnourage others to buy it. If players regularly return, you can try to sell them more elements hence why you see season passes and microtransactions. Now again, I have no problem with people loving games and investing more time and money in it. It helps build communities, attracts more gamers and all the good stuff. Expansions can sometimes be tremendous value for money for gamers - take TW3. To maximise revenue and investment, TW3 brought out several expansion packs that if all bought with the base game raised the price from $60 to over $100. Now that content was not as expensive to produce as the base game. The mechanics, assets etc. already existed but a lot of effort went into the story and design. CD Projeckt Red made an extra $50-60 dollars on the base game producing content that didn't cost as much as the base game (but was still a significant investment) but the consumer easily doubled their content with the game. Win win.

However, this is an exception. What most publishers want is to maximise revenue by producing as cheap content as possible. Hence season passes when the quality and quantity of expansions are not known or cheap micro-transactions for wearables or maps or only a few hours of story content. These are far cheaper to produce but are not priced accordingly. They are overvalued. It is these elements that are driving up the huge profits for publishers and why they are trying to make these core parts of the game mechanics.

In conclusion to my ramble, games are costing more and more to produce but profits are higher than ever without a price rise on the base game. A rise in the base game would make them more revenue and a bit more profit (though retailers or distributors would probably rise their cut) but I don't see publishers doing it or if they do, it won't mark the end of additional content. The profit on a base game is only ever going to be so much because of the cost of producing. Publishers now see the base game as the platform to deliver ongoing content that is cheaper to produce and more profitable for them.

@Rudy_Manchego The thing is, people say the cost of game development has gone up, but we have no numbers to back that up either. Sure, it's not unrealistic to assume, but for most games we have absolutely no idea how expensive they were to make. I believe CD Projekt Red dropped a 40 million number once, but that's all I can remember. And even then it's in the publisher's interest to make the budget seem to be as big as possible.

But Uncharted 4? How much did that cost? What about a game like Mario Odyssey?

If they go mental on marketing, and spend twice as much on that than on the game itself, should the gamer be held accountable for that? Should those costs be factored into the price? I think those are interesting questions.

And whenever you hear people talk about Destiny's budget, assuming it's as big as some say it was, you have to wonder where it all went wrong if they truly spend that much on game development, while other companies can create experiences that are just as good, if not better, for a fraction of the development costs.

I also think that as micro-transactions, loot crates, day one DLC, pre-order bonuses, season passes and all become more ingrained in the industry, the more difficult it will be to ever rise the base price of video games.

@Octane Very good point - I did a little reading and numbers are hard to come by. Publishers don't announce budgets very well. In real terms, I've seen articles on Kotaku showing a general year on year rise on budgets but then Wikipedia has a list where it is adjusted for inflation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_ga... and you can see that games like FFVII make the list in comparison.

You can also see that marketing is way more than development costs on this list. Destiny is an interesting one in that they built that game concept from ground up, plus infrastructure costs etc. That had a troubled development in a lot of ways but I guarantee that the development costs for Destiny 2 were a lot less as it is practically the same game.

You are right about the base price not rising. Publishers want to make the base game as enticing as possible so they can see you extra content because, as I said, extra content is cheaper to produce and far more profitable. If you spend, say $1 dollar on a skin for a game, that is actually 1.67% of the base game and the cost to develop is minimal. Publishers don't want to raise prices and put you off buying, they want to keep it low to get you hooked and sell you profitable content.

@Rudy_Manchego I doubt that list is complete though, unless Horizon and Uncharted had a combined development and marketing budget of less than $50m. In that case, well done, I guess. But indeed, the inclusion of games like FFVII is interesting, which shows me that expensive games have always existed. At least as long as 3D games have been around. And the most expensive game according to that list came out nearly a decade ago. But again, I wonder how accurate it is, since a game like Battlefront didn't make the list either.

Cinemablend did an article on Battlefront (2015), and according to them, the development budget was around $50m, with another $100m alone for the license (but I'm not sure if they pay per game, or just for the 10 years they have the rights). Even if you add another $100m for marketing (Cinemablend put the estimate at $50m), they have made that money back several times over, with at least 12 million copies sold on PS4 and Xbox alone, and that's without the digital copies on consoles and PC.

But as @BAMozzy brought up earlier, it's kinda interesting that the games that sell a guaranteed 10 million copies, and are guaranteed to be profitable, are the same games that ''need'' the micro-transactions on top of it all.

And that's why I'm a bit wary of it all, something smells fishy. There's no transparency, and numbers don't seem to add up.

@Rudy_Manchego 1 million copies would be $16m in that case! I know Steam takes a 30% cut, or so I've heard. So a publisher makes around $40m for every million copies sold on Steam. If you buy an EA game from their own online store, they obviously get 100%. That's why the move from physical to digital (16-20% to 100%) means publishers can double their income several times over without having to do a lot at all. That's why everyone's pushing for digital, to work the retailer out of the equation. Although street presence is still very important. Digital can be anywhere from 20% up to 50%. For example, I believe Destiny 2 sold more digital copies than physical copies.

Anyway, 40m+ budgets for development alone are quite big, and not every game needs it. So I doubt that's the norm.

@Octane Ha ha will rewrite that as my maths was so off!

What also isn't being mentioned - re cost of games, is that we on consoles already pay more for exactly the same game as the PC version. We are essentially paying a premium already for playing on the consoles, that little extra maybe for some person or two to port the game over and optimise it for our platform as PCgamers have to do their own optimising by playing with the settings to get it to run at the standard they want (or will settle with).

It seems that the majority of games cost less than £100m inc their Advertising budget. Tomb Raider (the first) is around £100m according to that wiki list and despite selling only 4m copies, was considered Profitable by the end of 2013 - before they re-released the difinitive edition! It since gone on to sell more than 11m copies - I assume therefore that the 7m additional copies are pure profit...

The Witcher 3 cost around 46m to make with nearly the same budget going on Advertising yet made 63m in the first half of 2015 alone - before sales of DLC or GotY editions....

As for costs, Shenmue 3 and Final Fantasy 7 are both games made in the 90's - that's 18-20yrs ago and both in the list as some of the most expensive games ever made - more expensive than a game like the Witcher 3 for example. FF7 is the 3rd game on this list behind CoD:MW2 and GTAv (two games that were extremely profitable).

Of course that list isn't up to date and all inclusive but if you were to look at the biggest selling games in recent years, most of them will have some form of micro-transactional content. CoD has had Micro-transactions in the past 3-4yet always ends up as one of the biggest selling games - always profitable despite maybe falling numbers in sales but it still often has the biggest opening weekend of any media. EA also claim that Mass Effect Andromeda was a financial success yet didn't sell in big numbers. In EA’s financials, Mass Effect: Andromeda is held up as the title that drove the company’s financials, referenced multiple times as a significant factor in generating revenue. That game was rumoured to cost 40m - a similar figure we see in games, not inc Advertising costs - but it seems that 2m is enough to start turning a profit. Maybe not as much 'profit' as publishers may want or have 'predicted' to their 'share holders' but its still 'Profit'.

@KratosMD I am fine with the cessation of PS3 offerings, but I had hoped we would still get Vita titles. However, if they offer enough PS4 games that cross-buy with Vita, then I’m fine with it.

Im gonna be honest, I keep forgetting to download the games on vita. Im literally using it in extreme circumstances now like Im away with work (very rare) or I spend the night at my mums (1/2 times a year). So for me I cant see it affecting me too much.

While I will miss Vita games, at the end of the day they are drying up and won't make a big difference. As long as they remain available for download on those I have already added, I think I can live with it.

I just cancelled my PS Plus membership, for the first time since I joined back when it started.

It's great we are getting games like Bloodborne and R&C now for people who haven't already got them but if this is the way it's going I'd rather wait and see and buy membership on a monthly basis.

I don't plan on using online play much now that Destiny has gone all the way down the shi**er, and i won't get round to Monster Hunter for a while yet.

So what's left? The discounts. These are pretty great, but I'm buying less on the store these days as I'm trying to make the most of the games I buy instead of jumping through releases like I got into the habit of last year.

So that's where I'm at - seems a shame in a way. A few years ago I'd have said it's rediculous to own a PS4 and not have a Plus membership.

@KratosMD yeah, the games this month are awesome don't get me wrong, but that's why I've already owned them for 2-3 years lol. I'd much rather take new (good) indies and smaller games over what I already have. But to be fair good indie releases are becoming fewer and fewer.

Still hopefully some gems I missed will come through down the line.

@kyleforrester87 The end of an era.
Well, I can see where you’re coming from as far as I don’t play online much, but I like the convenience of constant access to my IGC. Weirdly, I don’t access it but sporadically, but it’s comforting to know if I ever can’t find anything to play in my backlog of 20-30 physical and digital games I own, then I have 100 games in the IGC cloud I can download and play at anytime. Yeah, silly, I know. Doesn’t happen real often. So right now I’ve basically been paying $4 a month to play Fez a couple times a month 🤔
And I will download and start Bloodborne this month, since it is the hot topic now and it’s almost like a second release of the game with all us newbies playing for the first time.

I don't always get my money's worth, but with 5 games a year I really want, it's still a must for me.

3 months in and so far this year I picked up:
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness & Rime.

I think that's roughly half of the yearly membership fee payed for via the IGC.

Think I've still got ~18 months left. I thought about stacking up another year due to the current sale, but the service has lost a bit of value for me with the Vita offerings being faded out.
Think I'll top up the next time it falls to <£35.

@kyleforrester87 Thank you for posting this. For a while now, I've wondered why I have PS Plus and reading your thoughts and ultimate decision has helped me out.

@RogerRoger it kind of feels like I'm betraying myself not being a member 😂 But really the service is just gearing itself toward a different type of gamer now, so it doesn't make sense for me to have active membership.

@kyleforrester87 Yeah the indie scene has really gone down the swanny lately. It was a golden age a few years ago and it was fun while it lasted.