Capcom president Harushiro Tsujimoto claims that the prices of video games need to increase to meet ballooning development costs.

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Or maybe don’t make expensive games.

    The AAA market seems to be chasing a business model that isn’t there any more. I don’t know why game developers still chase photo realism, it isn’t what makes money.

    • coltorl@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is all software, companies keep finding excuses to tack on “features” that increase development cost which eventually lead to necessary price increases.

      In the professional world you will rarely ever hear project managers and leaders ask the question “would our customers rather pay extra for feature X or save money by sticking to their simpler feature set?” This is because development is nearly always started with the long term goal of incorporating a feature into the product to increase the overall “value” of the product. This increased “value” of the product then means that the company should charge more for it.

      I am ranting now.

    • verysoft@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Not to mention until it’s actually photo-realistic, it looks uncanny. It’s better to find a style and use that than to chase realism imo. But then again, these AAA games just add a bunch of foliage, some god rays, maybe a sprinkle of rain and people are oooh, aaah-ing and coughing up their cash.

    • Chet_Awesomelad@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah they always ask “Why won’t people pay $100 for our video game?” and not “How about we DON’T spend $100,000,000 making ONE video game?”

      • natryamar@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Remember when Microsoft burned $500,000,000 and still couldn’t make a decent Halo game

    • pancakes@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      There are still good AAA releases, it’s just that 95% of AAA games are not worth the price.

      I would argue the old business model still works, it’s just that most AAA games studios don’t follow that model anymore. Back in the day, a full priced game didn’t have DLC or MTX, was an actual complete game, and focused more on the fun than the profit making. Games tried new ideas, they innovated instead of chasing whatever fad is popular at the time. It’s the modern AAA game business model that is the problem and doesn’t work anymore.

      • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        If 95% of the games aren’t worth the price, then there is something wrong with that business model.

        Yeah, a full priced game might not have had DLC or MTX, but it was more expensive adjusting for inflation and didn’t have nearly the quantity or quality of in game assets as current games do.

        And old games definitely chased fads, they were just different fads at the time fed in part by the differences in game economics.