Yes, development costs are going up, I get it. But even AAA titles are releasing unfinished and charging more than $70 for “early access” that has issues.
But games that release every year being this much is a joke. It’s not like they are building a new game every year. Look at Madden, 2k, etc. they are just taking the same engines, making small tweaks, and selling them as a new game.
Meanwhile, Baldur’s Gate 3 gives you infinite replayability for $70. Helldivers 2 gives you an engaging experience for $40.
Maybe I’m just an old man shaking his fist at the clouds, but this shit is getting nuts.
48 Comments
It’s just greed.
Holy crap!! I haven’t seen them this high, maybe just didn’t look recently.
I mean WWE games are one of the few yearly releases in recent years that are like actively shaking things up and doing new things. WarGames last year, Casket/Ambulance/Special Guest Ref this year, MyGM gets better year after year since coming back… It’s not like FIFA.
The reason is that people will pay for it.
Sure there is. People buy them at this price yearly. As long as that remains true there’s no reason to lower the price.
“those video games cost up to and including 70 dollars.” — Marge Simpson in the 90s
also, this seems like AU pricing?
There is a reason, that the people they sell it for will buy it
$100 after tax here in canada for the base game
Of course there is, because there are people who pay for them.
I think, like many sports titles(and call of duty), the people who play these games primarily only buy 1 or 2 games a year, so these devs get very little pushback. Honestly, $70 once or twice a year for your gaming hobby is not bad.
But yeh as someone who plays many games and has to choose my battles, i can’t justify it.
I’m not really interested in wrestling as a product, but the games are really fun so it’s no big deal for me to just wait till they are on sale for $30 in 3 or 4 months.
Reason why helldivers is doing well reasonably priced.and a good game
Remember when they increased the prices from 60 to 70 because you get the game on 2 platform, and because the game costs more to make. Now every game that I see in shops are 80 bucks. With no explanation as to why.
That’s why I wait until it’s on sale for like 20 or 30 bucks in four or five months.
There is no reason for annual games to exist in the first place. They could release annual dlc and a new game whenever they actually implement significant changes.
The market gets what the market wants.
And there’s no reason why people should buy these games every single year, but they still do it, and that’s why studios like 2K, Activision and EA get away with it
MFW games in the 90s cost $80-90… Same games today would cost ~$168.
But yes annual games that add little between versions are ceaseless cash grabs. Vote with your dollar and stop buying this stuff year after year.
Just don’t buy. I never do.
Ignore them and wait for the sale. This will be 30$ in a couple months
ADRENALINE
IN MY SOUL
GIVE YOUR MONEY TO
CODY RHODES
I’ve felt for a while that the annual releases (like sports games) would be the ones that make the most sense to have a live service model.
I don’t know of any way they could do it without still seeming greedy and predatory, but it would still be preferable to annual full price releases with minimal upgrades to graphics and gameplay.
People at my school fricking save all their cash up throughout summer-winter to afford it in the spring
So a caveat here because I don’t know the details in this so someone else should go into it.
So one thing about these annual games is that they often are using real likenesses of people and objects. This gets into things like having to pay the actual people royalties for using their likeness in a video game.
Now these games could use fake wrestlers who look like nothing like the actual people known in wrestlemania and cost 40… but would you buy it and think of it as a wrestlemania game? Or are you buying it because you know the personalities involved?
I’ve heard this applies to thinks like sports games because of using the image of the real people, and vehicles. There was some racing game line that lost the licensing to use the images of the Nascar cars so if they are to release a new racing game, it’d wind up being fake vehicles or something like that as an example.
There’s one: you keep buying them.
Seems fair. I was paying $60 for new dos games 35 years ago.
I think you are confused on how economics work, they charge these prices because people are willing to pay them.
The community of people who play those games need to vote with their wallets if they don’t like it. You not buying the game doesn’t count if you never had any intention of buying it
Yeah it’s ridiculous
The licebses to use faces of famous athletes do tend to cost a lot.
The secret is that nobody is forcing you to buy it
Not the best example you gave of Balders Gate 3 since it itsef was Early Access at full price.
Why not? People buy them. If anything, I don’t see a reason why they wouldn’t sell at that price if it sells good
Specifically in this case and EA sports games I think it would just make sense to go the call of duty route and just make the new games essentially dlcs. I’ll admit I’ve never touched em but hearing my friend talk while he plays it sounds like mostly stat changes and such
Movie tickets are like 30 dollars after taxes for a couple hours.
Most people that buy this game will get a lot of hours of game time and entertainment.
It’s all relative.
To be fair, the $100 one includes current and last gen versions as well as the season pass for the 5(?) DLC’s they have planned. And the game itself actually has made some insane improvements to the series.
And with that said — yeah there’s no fucking way it should be that much, regardless. I miss paying $50 for GameCube titles.
It’s the amusement park monetization model. Season pass available in multiple tiers with so-called “perks”, outrageously overpriced “cosmetics” (merch and food in amusement parks), charging full price regardless of the availability of features (attractions being closed or simply not working properly) and so on.
They don’t cost that much if you stop paying for them. Just saying.
>There is no reason for annual games to cost this much
Of course there is. Suckers pay that much, so they’re going to sell them for that much.
Need people to stop buying them and maybe the companies will drop the price or at least put more effort into development rather than just carbon copying the previous year’s game.
I want to make my own royale rumble with my mates as custom wrestlers, WK23 was on sale for like £7 but I couldn’t justify paying it, now for some reason it’s daft expensive again
Wait until you learn that gacha players are dropping hundreds if not thousands of dollars on every new items/characters which come out, like, every a couple of months.
And, like other comments said, if people keep spending, then the market keeps providing.
Surely development costs are mostly irrelevant to the price of these things? Blockbuster movies cost hundreds of millions to make but it doesn’t then cost $70 to buy the Blu-Ray or whatever. Games cost what they do because for better or worse, people will pay those prices – just ask Nintendo, their first party games almost never have a decent sale but they still sell like crazy.
If development costs were relevant, what would a book cost?
Actually insane that these haven’t moved to live service haha. Guess there’s no reason to
Yes there is – people are buying it.
People in here are focusing on the company and their greed, which is 100% true of course but… I’d be interested in what kind of royalties they have to pay the WWE and the individuals whose faces they used in the game. I’m guessing this goes up every year also. Once again because of greed, but it’s not just the game developers, everyone’s trying to get a piece of the pie now and celebrities, be they movie stars or wrestlers are damn well way overpaid.
People who play sports games aren’t exactly the best and brightest. They’re dumb enough to fork over the dough.
Especially when Madden 11 is the shit. And before that 2004.
Yeah I can’t ever justify that for a game. Especially once that drops yearly and has paid for dlc
there is no reason to buy them annually as well *facepalm*