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Xbox first party titles expected to hit $80 USD this holiday; Game Pass pricing currently unchanged.
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Fuck the US for inflicting this on the rest of the world.
At least the ones that voted the orange guy.It’s strange really. You can buy 4 extremely good indie games for the price of one game. And that’s at a 20 each.
And with steam sales and sharing…valve is fun.
you dont own those games brotherman
Not ALL steam games have DRM. Yes, you should buy from GOG whenever you can, but if you use Linux like me, GOG doesn’t give a shit. It can be hard to decide, support DRM free games and proper ownership with GOG, or expanding compatibility with Linux and improve it in general. If its cheaper on steam cause of a sale or something, I’ll buy on steam, then years later like with DOOM 2016 for example, I’ll buy it when it hits like 4 bucks on gog. That way, I have acces to an offline installer, and I show support and interest to valve for investing in proton.
Another option is to buy through Heroic Games Launcher. Heroic gets a cut, and GOG sees what they’d have to do to earn your entire dollar.
What? You can buy gog games through heroic?
Yeah, it just launches a web browser in the client, but behind the scenes, it’s using a referral code in partnership with GOG to make sure they get a cut. So you can support DRM-free and Linux gaming support at the same time.
Oh shit I had no idea. If I didn’t buy so many on my phone I’d be doing this. Next time I’m buying gog on my deck, it’s through heroic.
thanks for spreading the word
looks like the solution i needed for all the smaller more useless launchers. wich it included connectability to ea/ubi/battleNet’s launchers too
Xbox for example seems more solid to me as a gamerscore addict for example. Steam obviously the main standard you wouldnt want to compress
Completely forgot about that, I do really like the Heroic Launcher.
I’d almost argue the same with modern consoles with all the crappy digital bullshit and planned obsolescence
Trying to raise the “standard” price to $80 will have very nice ripple effects of more pricing diversity, where each game will really consider what it’s actually worth, which we haven’t had for a long time. Even now we’re getting first-party Microsoft titles releasing at $20, $30, and $50.
How much is Factorio worth though, everything?
The amount of time I’ve put in it could have cost me $200 and it would still be one of the best $/hr games I have
I bought it long before the steam release, back when multiplayer was in experimental. So glad that there are 1000s of hours that were never tracked so I don’t need to see those.
Steam doesn’t advertise at the scale of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. It won’t have a ripple effect because it won’t change the degree to which artificial hype drives people towards the “Buy” button.
A lot of games priced at $70 right now are having a rough go of it, so charging more on top of that isn’t going to help, but there are the likes of South of Midnight and Clair Obscur launching at $50. If your game isn’t as hot of a commodity as Mario Kart, you’re probably going to try to lure people in with a lower price.
there are the likes of South of Midnight and Clair Obscur launching at $50.
Beautiful games, both. But again, they aren’t having the full court press of advertising like a new Call of Duty or Final Fantasy or Diablo would.
That’s the real cost savings. You don’t need to change $80+ for a game if you aren’t focused entirely on presale figures to justify your studio’s budget.
Incidentally, you also get to focus on a better game. Balatro didn’t need wall to wall subway ads in New York to end up on everyone’s phones.
Steam doesn’t need to. It’s got the steam sale and a hundred million people to share memes of “sale so good spent all my money no time to play all the games I bought in such massive sale”
You don’t need to promote if everyone else does it for you lol.
I think all it will do is raise the ceiling of what publishers are willing to price games at. If they think they can get away with it, they’ll charge $80 instead of $70, with the rest being $70 and less just like it already is now.
To run the games i wanna play would require a pc worth 3 ps5s
Edit: people here don’t like facts, but where I live a pc that matches a ps5 is around $1500+ it you’re lucky. Yes your pc is better than my ps5 in the same way that your Ferrari is better than my Honda. But I like Hondas.
You can play other games, there is so much to choose from just drop the expensive ones.
Again no, that’s not my taste. I’m just saying steam doesn’t work for most people. The convenience of a console alone is always gonna keep me. To know i can buy a game 5 years after the console is released and it’ll run. PC gaming is superior, but it costs way more and takes way more work. Im it’s not convenient for casual people like me, especially since I want to sit on my couch with a controller and not have to interact with a computer
Steam doesn’t work for most people? You sure about that? It has 132 Million active users, that’s nearly double the number of PS 5s that have been sold!
Very odd comparison, you need to buy a ps5 to be a ps5 user, you don’t need to buy anything to be a steam user, you just need to sign up and you’re considered a user.
Very odd comparison…
Not really. There are more people using Steam than own a PS5 or Xbox X. So in what reality does Steam “not work for most people”?
you just need to sign up and you’re considered a user.
You’ll note that I used Steam’s ACTIVE user statistic. That’s not people who just “signed up”, those are people playing games on Steam.
Steam works just fine for most people.
If you can afford the cost of console game prices, more power to you. They’re pricing me out and I know I’ll have no choice but to switch to PC in the future if I want to be able to keep playing games.
*laugh sitting on the couch playing PC games off steam using a tv to display and a wireless controller
What are you even talking about …enjoy paying more for less, and paying monthly to play games while also being locked to whatever terms they decide all willy nilly.
You can also tweak the graphics settings and get a budget PC.
Again, no. Why not just get a ps2? I want current gen games and I know that for this to be comparative on pc it costs nearly triple
I’m playing current Gen games on my steam deck and my 2019 PC build…
Well, that settles it. $80 games is going to be the new standard and Sony will quickly trail along. Oh well, nothing much has changed for patient gamers.
Yeah, buy most games at half price or less, fully patched up and with all the DLCs. Such a joy!
$80 on release day. $60 a month later. $40 a year later. $20 a year after that.
What you’re paying for isn’t the game, its the hype. An enormous component of a modern AAA game’s budget is just advertising. That’s what your $80 is going towards. You’re paying to have people tell you to buy it.
Even assuming you don’t feel like pirating… Just be patient, play something that came out a few years ago, wait for the next Steam Sale, and own the game for pennies on the dollar.
An enormous component of anything is advertising, I don’t see your point.
I agree with the first paragraph, not the ones after
https://mainleaf.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-market-a-video-game/#elementor-toc__heading-anchor-0
As a rule of thumb, you’re looking at 25-50% of a AAA game’s budget going to advertising. So a $40 game becomes an $80 game in large part because the publisher is putting out $10Ms-$100Ms just to raise name recognition and build hype.
Except that if no advertising is done, the game’s sales are probably a lot lower (which is why they do it). If the game doesn’t do well initially, it’s less likely that you’ll find it years later as well
Oh well, nothing much has changed for patient gamers.
Aye. I wait until games are finished before torrenting them.
Feels good being off the consumer bandwagon. Games are coming out faster than I can beat the ones that came out years ago. I have enough digital entertainment for the rest of my life without ever having to spend a dime.
Thank you so fucking much Nintendo for upping the standard and the everyone else falling in line because consoomers didn’t scoff at all and sold out pre-orders
I think it was actually publishers like EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, and Activision that started the price increase. For big titles they started raising them to $70 a year or two ago, then to 80. I think I remember Diablo 4 launching for $80, or so.
I only know this because I refuse to buy from these publishers.
Valve hasn’t gotten the memo yet. Someone email them again?
No no no no someone stop them !
Like Nvidia video cards did during the pandemic…
Game Pass pricing currently unchanged.
That is because the job of Game Pass isn’t to make money, it is to funnel customers into subscription services and destroy the idea that people buy games from artists.
Game Pass either succeeds and destroys the gaming industry like spotify did to music or Microsoft will abandon Game Pass.
GamePass used to be such a good value, but it’s gotten so overpriced. I’d rather keep the money and spend it on a few games a year I get to keep. Plus, not being available on Linux and/or Steam Deck makes it easier to ignore. Never going back to Windows.
People never bought music from artists.
They bought it from record labels.
Whenever you see an artist complain they had a million streams and made twenty dollars, it’s not Spotify that’s keeping it all.
Yeah, subscriptions are trash. Will be glad to see it go when it finally does.
“Artists” lol.
The ratio is 100:1 (1 being an actual artist or a studio still enacting on this believe)It’s happening across the board at every industry.
Rather than try to appeal to a larger audience, they’ve found it’s more profitable to take greater advantage of an ever-shrinking pool of saps.
Mark my words, they legitimately don’t want the business of people with standards or self-respect. They want to cultivate communities where the only participants are Stockholm Syndrome victims and their abusers.
Renting games and music seems like a bad idea to me, but I am in the minority. Buy a new album once a month for $8, after a year I have 12 albums. Pay that to spotify and I have nothing.
Gamepass is priced more aggressively at $12/mo, but I assume it’s a loss so they can eventually raise prices. Even so, if I buy a new somewhat discounted game for $36 every three months, after a year I have four games. With gamepass, I’m pretty sure I end up with nothing.
But I don’t think humans are known for long term thinking.
Correction: It is to make money, but the goal is to get people to subscribe now then jack up the prices once people start relying on it.
It’s already happened and will happen again.
It’s a long con.
it’s bog standard capitalist formula. always has been.
They’ve already plateaued and basically admitted to it. It’s a large revenue stream that’s not as large as they thought it would be, so now they’re going to coast with it and rely on just being a massive publisher instead.
Thank you Microsoft, for taking pressure off Nintendo. 😛
The difference is: Microsoft and Sony 1st party titles go on sale and eventually come down in price over time.
Nintendo first party titles are always full price, even for 5 year old games.
Yup. The reality, while shitty, Microsoft still publishes games on multiple platforms (2 at minimum - PC and xbox). On PC, the games are sold on multiple storefronts with varying discounts and sales. Oblivion remastered just launched with a 17% discount on another store on PC for example.
Nintendo has a complete monopoly on the platform they publish for and completely control the prices.
For me, all these price increases are doing is moving me more towards PC. And to a larger degree off AAA titles all together.
Every game that has a physical release (and even some that don’t) does get sold by other retailers, and those retailers do regularly have sales.
Even, yes, for first party Nintendo games.
The discounts usually aren’t too steep, but games do go on sale periodically. DekuDeals is a fantastic resource for price tracking.
That’s fair… But the point I was more trying to make is that Breath of the Wild, an 8 year old game that has a sequel out, is currently full price. It went on sale earlier this year for 40% off.
40% off a $70, 8 year old game is very different than 40% off an 8 year old game that was selling at $40-$50 without a sale.
The last three games I paid for were Minecraft, Factorio and Dwarf Fortress (pre-Kitfox).
I haven’t needed a new one since that.
Microsoft may as well just cancel their whole Xbox hardware business. Xbox Series is a secondary market for Microsoft games after PlayStation and any console successor they release is going to limp to the starting line. At least the XSX had hype from the Bethesda acquisition and previous Obsidian/Inxile/etc acquisitions
Really we all need a Steam Deck 2 and a stronger Valve produced Strix Halo mini-PC
It’s looking like the Xbox will stick around as a cheap entry point into Game Pass and the games that Microsoft publishes themselves. Yes, I know, it’s not as cheap as it used to be, but still fairly capable for a game machine at that price. The Steam mini PC is likely on its way. A couple of months back, there were leaks of the new Steam controller that leaked on their way to be mass produced after finalizing the design, so they’d probably accompany the living room machine. In the meantime, I have a mini PC running Bazzite that’s been awesome, but with tariffs in the US, you won’t be able to get the same performance per dollar that I got.
As we are all switching from Windows to Linux, I’m actually surprised Microsoft is doing this. I guess they really don’t want to be competitive in the consumer market anymore. I guess they are making enough money through military contracts now that they don’t need to cater to us.
We all? I mean, I have, but we represent single digit percentages of the market, which is why they keep shoving more bullshit into Windows that no one wants, because hardly anyone leaves Windows. The most that this affects Linux gamers is if you like their controllers or individual games that they publish, but that would be the same as on Windows as well.
We all, all of me. I don’t have to care about what others are buying, because Steam and Linux is an amazing gaming experience and they’re the ones missing out. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Truth. I swapped my laptop to linux a couple weeks ago, and then my ROG Ally, and next I’m putting linux on my gaming desktop. Just trying to decide on a distro for that one.
On my laptop I switched from Debian to Fedora and that had a distinct impact on gaming performance, though I think it had more to do with how I had it set up previously. For instance I used full disk encryption for Debian, but skipped that on Fedora, because it does seem to impact games noticeably.
But it also might be because Fedora is more bleeding edge, so the OS itself might actually play a role here.
On my desktop I’ve been running Bazzite and that’s been pretty great so far.
But your entire point was based on the idea that people are switching to Linux in droves…
That was somebody else’s point. I just chimed in with my own take. :D
Oh no.
Anyway.
Even though I stopped buying new games on Xbox for sometime now, numerous reasons to boycott Microsoft I’m sure you have yours too. There is still probably another Xbox console or two in my life due to the over 300 game digital library I have accumulated over three generations due to Xbox Live Gold and Microsoft Rewards.
I still use my Xbox One to play some Battlefield games. But I’m never buying a new console ever again. Fuck Microsfot. Fuck Sony. And you know what Nintendo fuck you too. Price gouging, greedy fucks the lot of them. PC+emulators is now the way to go, fuck all these greedy companies.
A 2TB Xbox Series X now costs more than a PS5 Pro (in the US at least).
That is mental. Xbox hardware division must be bleeding money hand over fist. I honestly doubt they’ll do another generation, and stick to trying to monetise GamePass through PC and streaming. Maybe you’ll even see GamePass for PS6 since they own so many studios now.
They’ll only get Game Pass on PlayStation with Sony’s blessing, which is unlikely. And the next Xbox will just be a PC. I don’t think any of the consoles are in the market of selling units at a loss anymore. Those days are done. So with tariffs and inflation, this is the only way it could go.
EA Play is on PS5.
Assuming MS exit the console market, I don’t see why Sony wouldn’t allow it (as long as they get their pound of flesh from every sale of it). They’d basically just be another publisher.
The breadth of the Game Pass catalog is far larger, and Microsoft isn’t exiting the console market, as much as they don’t care about exclusivity. So personally, I doubt it, but I don’t have a crystal ball.
Yeah, there’s probably a fair bit of overlap between GamePass and PSN Premium games.
I suspect to try and push their own products, we’ll be entering an age where games are $80, and almost never go on sale, purely to make their own subscription services seem better value. And then they’ll crank the price of those as well.
I think all Xboxes have been PCs…?
Yeah, there’s always someone bringing this up, but you can’t just run Steam on it, and that’s what’s about to change. Xbox games still go through cert and need explicit ports above and beyond the PC SKU.
Ya for sure, I’m just speaking on a hardware level. Always been x86 as far as I was aware. I remember bypassing the disk encryption fighting every fiber of my being on the Xbox 1 by pulling out the IDE cable as it was booting to gain access to the HDD 😂
Old games are better anyway. Covid knocks off two IQ points every time you catch it, and it shows in the quality of software these days.
