@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.

@beardalaxy @alyx
> Nintendo
> Higheat quality

Rest of that post is correct, but bruh...

@LukeAlmighty @beardalaxy @alyx You're gonna complain about Nintendo being listed, but not Rockstar? Bruh...

@ChristiJunior @alyx @beardalaxy

True... I guess it's because R* does so little actual work, that it's hard to compare to cringe farm that is Nintendo.

Last R* game I played was absolutely briliant. It was 10 years ago, but it was briliant.

@LukeAlmighty @alyx hey, I don't personally like Rockstar games and I'm still willing to give them that honor. I fucking love Nintendo games, I think they're the cream of the crop the majority of the time. That's why I'm not concerned about the price at all and VERY clearly not many people actually were in the end lol, just looking for something to complain about.

@beardalaxy @LukeAlmighty @alyx Another issue is that Normie gamers (the kind who have made GTA, Mario Kart, Pokemon, FIFA etc some of the biggest selling games ever) don't actually buy that many games on a yearly basis anyway, so for them games rising in price isn't that big of deal, it's just another example of inflation being a bitch.

For hardcore gamers like me the costs are gonna add up in a much more nasty way, but then again, since hardcore gamers are much more committed to the medium they're also more willing to eat the higher costs (like they already did with DLC and 70 dollar games).

Companies only really get burned when they release a product that's overpriced AND bad, like the launch era PS3.

@ChristiJunior @LukeAlmighty @alyx from what I know about the PS3, the price was actually still low in relation to the manufacturing costs. But, it was still too far out of most people's reach (including what they would need to make use of all of the features, like an HDTV). They packed so much shit into that thing lol.
They ended up cutting the ps2 back compat and cut the price down, and sold them at a loss for quite a while. The only thing that really ended up helping to turn the tides were the console revisions, the slim and super slim models. At that point, the stuff Sony did originally was much cheaper. The PS3 was a little too cutting edge for the time it released.

@ChristiJunior @alyx @beardalaxy
> According to SteamSpy, the average number of games per Steam user is approximately 10.86.

Enough said...

@LukeAlmighty @ChristiJunior @alyx ehhh I don't think that's the greatest metric. Are they judging ACTIVE steam users or the total amount? Think about all the dev accounts that only have the dev's games on them too. I've got one of those. It has one game xD it's not uncommon at all for big studios to have tons of those for testing purposes and for all intents and purposes, they are seen by steam as just normal accounts.

@beardalaxy @ChristiJunior @alyx
Suuure. I myself have 4 accounts... And about 400 games total, so the average should still be completely elsewhere.

@beardalaxy @LukeAlmighty @ChristiJunior
You can have as many dev accounts as you want, I still don't think you could be enough to skew metrics. I'm more concerned about Counter-Strike players that regularly have multiple accounts with just CS to evade bans or smurf. But even those are a drop in the bucket.

@beardalaxy @LukeAlmighty @alyx Imagine thinking Mario Kart is worth more than sonic racing or Forza because it has a Nintendo logo on it. TOTK ran at 15 fps and uses a very simple cel shaded style and reuses the entire map of BOTW yet it's somehow $70 crazy how many corners were cut for the game to still be overpriced.

@KaiserKitty @alyx @LukeAlmighty I still feel like I got $70 out of TotK tbh, even though I ended up being of two minds about the game. It reuses the same Hyrule but there's so much shit added and changed, in fact there's kind of TOO much imo. I got really burned out.

I'm hype for crossworlds too. Judging by how much I've played Mario Kart games vs how much I've played the Sonic Racing games though, I think an extra $20 is REALLY worth the price there. I have maybe like 50 hours combined in the sonic ones, whereas I've put 300+ into mk8dx alone.

Way too much Nintendo hate out there lol, I don't get it. I hate their litigation shit, but their games have always been things I know I'll have a great time playing if I buy them. Like man, I had never played a Kirby game before (outside of air ride). Pre-ordered Forgotten Land and was extremely pleased, it's one of my favorite games ever. There are some nintendo games that have questionable quality every now and then, but I think that overall they have an amazing track record that goes back farther than most studios have even existed.

@KaiserKitty @alyx @LukeAlmighty also forza is REALLY not my thing lol, it's not even close to being arcadey enough. NFS is about as close as I get to realistic racing and that says a lot lol. I tried playing horizon 5 and I didn't like how it felt to play, nor did I like the way the races were handled. Nfs is a lot more structured in that regard.

But hey, I can tell it's got a lot of effort put into it and I can recognize it's a good game even if it isn't really my thing. Funny enough, I think it's also $100 if you want all the content lol. Maybe it was $80? Point still stands.

@beardalaxy @alyx @LukeAlmighty and ive put hundreds of hours in the binding of Issac so it should cost $100. A party game is meant to be repayable that doesn't mean the game should cost more. My issue is Nintendo is open that this pricing has nothing to do with game budgets and everything to do with perceived demand. Buy $80 Mario Kart and that tells Nintendo there is a demand for $80 Mario or Zelda. Hell at that point why not offer $100 Pokemon it's one of their biggest franchises with a loyal following. Supporting the Switch 2 is supporting blatant price gouging from a company who used to discount their games to $20 two generations ago.

BTW Mario Kart World wont just be $80 lmao. I fully expect them to offer at least $20 of DLC later down the line. The track lineup is smaller then launch MK8D lmao.

@KaiserKitty @alyx @LukeAlmighty can't really compare mk8 track count to mkw track count because mkw is going for a different thing entirely with the in-between tracks. Can't really compare 2D, small-scope indie games made by two people over the course of 15 years to a massive team making a huge, 3D game over just a few years either.

I'm really excited to play the game, I would have paid $80 for it if I had to (got the bundle instead so it was $50). I'm paying $120 to go see fucking babymetal so I can be right up next to the stage for 2 hours. There isn't going to be value in everything for everyone, obviously, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth it to some people still. Hell, this is why so many people still stick with consoles instead of pc gaming, because they don't find as much value in a more expensive pc when the cheaper console plays the games they want just fine anyway. That's totally fine.

@KaiserKitty @alyx @beardalaxy
Btuh...

TOTK is literally peak gaming, and the graphical style is legendary. It is working perfectly both for immersion and clear readability of the scene.

Yeah, I will spit on the Nintendo's infinite recyclation of games with microscopic changes per iteration, but TOTK was an awful example to attack.

@LukeAlmighty @KaiserKitty @alyx TotK's story is pretty bad, but the characters are still good. The way all the mechanics work is brilliant, but it can make things too easy. I actually enjoyed all the changes to the overworld the most. Sky islands felt a little uninspired and the depths were cool at first but really wore on me.

The game was really too big for the switch, honestly. The fuse mechanic did tend to tank the frame rate pretty hard and there wasn't enough permanence with physics objects in the game world because it just couldn't store all of it. Thankfully I've got a hacked switch so I was able to overclock and the frame rate wasn't as bad, but that's definitely not a normal experience to have with the game.

Despite its flaws, I'm still glad I played it and I still think it was worth the $70 I paid for it. It's got enough going for it. It's still in my top 100.

@LukeAlmighty @KaiserKitty @alyx as far as graphics go, Nintendo has that nailed down and they have for a very long time. Put some higher res textures for the menu elements into wind waker or smash bros brawl, render them in HD, and they still look amazing. They have it nailed down. Then you've got Metroid Prime 4 swinging it's 4k60 dick around looking better than any of that raytraced shit that needs to run at 540p internal resolution and stutters whenever it tries to load in grass in the distance.

Dude, file sizes too. Smash Ultimate is like 17gb and it is their biggest game. I think MKW will be 22 or something like that? But then you have Kirby and the forgotten land which is somehow smaller on switch 2 despite adding more content. How does that even happen?

@alyx @LukeAlmighty I gonna wait for a sale. game prices are insane enough already.