I do not understand the entire "GTA VI will crash the industry" argument.

So, one game will cost 100$. It might even sell. Why the fuck does that mean, that all other companies should immediately change their prices to an unsustainable ones? If noone buys it, they can return it. If people buy it, they have no issue.

So, what are people talking about with this claim?

@LukeAlmighty
>I do not understand the entire...
Me neither. Gamers are not strong willed enough to actually protest, in a meaningful way, a massive price increase. So even if every single AAA studio out there follows Rockstar's lead, and increase base price to $100 or more, little will change. People will buy bad overpriced AAA games and feel scammed. But they're already buying bad games and getting scammed, and little has happened to rectify it.

I wonder if the narrative that the industry will crashed came from gamers that are coping that they will have to pay more $$$, cause they know they can't control themselves from buying slop. So they try to fearmonger, hoping the industry will reconsider the price increase.

@LukeAlmighty Also, can we stop pretending like games haven't had price increases already? What do you think all the Deluxe Editions and whatnot are? Pretty much every single time, things included in the "premium" editions of games used to be standard features. Or the countless cases of DLCs that got cut out from the game in the final stretch to sell separately. Games haven't been $60 in a loooooong time.

@alyx
Exactly. People unironically payed for Monster Hunter Wilds on mass. They bought Oblivion again, and I am supposed to be sad, that the same people will be milked..... again?

This will not affect Factorio, X3 or literally any game made for non-cow audience.

@LukeAlmighty @alyx I've been saying this about $80 Mario Kart too. Games are not $60, they just seem like they are. Everybody has spent more than $60 on a game before. Fuck, look at all the popular MMOs. You pay for the game and all the expansions and a monthly subscription. It's well over $100 to play FFXIV for a year at the most basic level but nobody complains about it because it's good. They feel like that it a justified price. OSRS is $100 a year minimum. So if GTA 6 comes out and it's $100 but you get hundreds of hours out of it and it's this massive blockbuster title, is that not worth it? I would so much rather pay $80 for Mario Kart World than $60 for the majority of other AAA games out there. And that's exactly what I've done for a long time lol, in the past decade the only full price AAA games I've purchased are Nintendo ones. If you don't count the ratchet and clank or FF16 pc releases at least, but those came in at $50 instead so it kind of just half counts. Meanwhile, I bought breath of the wild, tears of the kingdom ($70!), smash ultimate, Mario kart 8 deluxe, animal crossing new horizons, and Kirby and the forgotten land on switch. Those games were all worth the money to me, with the exception of maybe AC because I kind of got fucked when my Nintendo account got hacked but that's a different story.

Anyway, point is, yeah... People are already buying games over $60 even if they don't realize it but they do so because they think it is worth their money to spend more on it. If that's the case, then there's nothing wrong with a game coming out of the gate providing that value up front and center and wanting to charge more for it.

As for the rest of the industry, they're already struggling to sell games at $60 and $70. Hell, cheaper than that for some of them. There are plenty of FREE live service games that are getting completely destroyed. It's really not about the price. If they think raising their prices to the same level as Nintendo or Rockstar, potentially the two highest quality studios, they are going to be in for a rough time.