Game prices are too low, says Capcom exec
eurogamer.net
Capcom's president and chief operating officer has said he thinks game prices should go up.
Haruhiro Tsujimoto made the comments at this year's Tokyo Game Show, Nikkei reported. TGS is sponsored by the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association, a Japanese organisation which aims to support the Japanese industry, which Tsujimoto is currently the chairman of.
"Personally, I feel that game prices are too low," Tsujimoto said, citing increasing development costs and a need to increase wages.
I think my salary should go up
Have you considered being a CEO for a gaming corporation?
I’m still working on “Be attractive. Don’t be unattractive.”
Have you seen many CEOs? Those aren't requirements.
Everyone: "Games are getting WAY too expensive."
Out of touch executive: "Games are too cheap! Why are our sales going down? I promised the shareholders infinite growth!"
Games haven't gotten more expensive since ever. Like I said above, The Original Donkey Kong for the SNES was 66 usd. It releases in 1994.
That's a very US-centric view, at best. I paid about 23 dollars for a brand new copy of Half-Life 2 in 2004.
I live in Sweden. But saying it cost 799sek in 1994 might not give you a good idea of its cost.
Fair enough. Still, games used to be vastly cheaper in my country and the asking price for the basic version of Starfield is 80 USD. There is no way any game is worth this much of my income.
Like I said. The price tag on Donkey Kong from 1994 says 799sek which in today's market is worth 66 usd. I can't be arsed to follow index and calculate how much that was in -94 but it's a lot more than Starfield.
My only point here is that games haven't really increased in price ever. Anyone claiming it has, is wrong. We can discuss the other parameters all day with (un)finished products, mtx, bugs, paid dlc etc. The fact still stands that games in 2023 haven't vastly increased in price at all. And we have a lot of free options now as well that didn't exist back in the ninetees.
In 1994 you were buying a physical, manufactured product which you owned.
Now you are temporarily licensing access to something that doesn’t exist, can’t be transferred or resold or backed up or modified, has unlimited reproduction potential for no cost, and sells at scales unimaginable in 1994 dwarfing all other consumer markets in total revenue.
Games are dramatically overpriced.
If you buy a game today, does it come with a free SSD to install it in? Does it have a paper manual and a nice box? Is it even finished? Games aren't cheaper, you're just getting scammed.
That was as expensive as it was back then because the game released on what is effectively a PCB. Which was expensive to make.
How expensive? Because accounting for inflation, $66 in 1994 is worth about $136 in 2023.
The expense was probably quite considerable. Not only do you have to have the game ROM on a chip, you would also need Nintendo's lockout chip too. If your game had a battery save system (DKC did) you would also need to buy a RAM chip and watch battery too. That's ignoring any enhancement chips as DKC didn't use any (but many other late generation games did).
And all that before you get to the fact that the only who could officially make these boards was Nintendo. Meaning there isn't exactly much competition driving prices down. Sure, Nintendo couldn't quite take the piss the way they could in the NES days, as Sega was all too eager to try and attract new games for its console, but unless you wanted to completely remake your game, you're dealing with the big N's bullshit.
The boards could probably have been made much cheaper today than in the 90s, as ROM memory was expensive AF, even the couple-of-MB ones used in the consoles of the day.
There's a reason PS1 and Saturn games were massively cheaper to buy than N64 games.
No matter what price they make games, have no illusion that developers will be paid more. This is to pad C level pockets.
$80 for AAA games is already super expensive. I buy most of my games on sale now.
You know what, I'll bite. For this to work though, let's agree on two things. First, the game they're selling shouldn't be a hot pile of garbage on day one. Second, I don't want to even catch a whiff of microtransactions or subscription based models. If we can nail those down, I would be fine with a price increase. As it stands, the sticker price is just the cost of entry in the vast majority of games. They are still bringing in cash well after the initial purchase.
It's funny how it's "the game's are not expensive enough" and not "we don't know how to manage our or money" or "our profit are too high". Fuck those capitalists.
Oh the stupid shit head "games are 100 times more expensive to make now" but you sell thousands times more and there no physical media anymore is irrelevant I guess... Assholes...
If they weren't profitable at the current price they wouldn't be charging the current price.
And "budgets keep going up!"
Whose fault is that, guys? Were those numbers placed on you by a witch's curse? No. You spent $100M on one game, it made $300M, so you spend $200M on the next game. Games didn't get twice as hard to make, between those decisions. They didn't require twice as many people or twice as much time. You're just treating them like a factory where more capital in means more revenue out.
The original Doom was made in nine months by a team that fits in an elevator. Yeah, it's simpler than modern games, but they had to make the nearly-unprecedented engine and all their own tools as they went. It's not like anything's harder, now. People have basically recreated that seminal title as solo one-week game jam projects. A modern handful of professional computer nerds can pick from a handful of modern high-end toolchains and start banging out content, today.
If the market for video games only supported six-digit budgets - there would still be video games. Big ones, fancy ones, creative ones, whatever. Would they be the spectacles that currently get advertised to death? Nope. But they also wouldn't produce as many unstable bug-fests as those sprawling mega-projects. Nor would they be announced in 1999, previewed in 2006, delayed in 2017, and launched to middling reviews in 2025.
Studios that aren't injected with obscene capital and forced to deliver "AAA" money-trees tend to shoot their shot and move on to the next game. That's how they survived and grew as plucky little private affairs, before some publishers swallowed them whole and turned them into a sequel factory for their breakout hit.
If your games cost too much money to fail, stop giving them more money.
I'm already waiting for games to go on sale in order to avoid being an unpaid bug tester, so sure do whatever you want.
Not surprising for the man who thinks an iPhone port of an 18 year old GameCube game should cost $60.
Are you talking about RE4? Because they were actually talking about an Apple port (iPhone, iPad and Mac, with people being able to play on all platforms with one purchase) of the recent remake, which is a 2023 game that only really borrows the story and some layouts from the 2005 game.
And even then it only borrows the bullet points of the story. I prefer the approach they took with this game compared to say FF7's where the story definitely feels like it's improved if you are more familiar with the original.
Are you referring to FF7 remake's? Because you definitely get more out of it if you've played the previous games and watched the movie since it's quite literally a sequel to them. I really enjoy their approach to it.
I'm not saying RE4's isn't the case either. I just don't think it's a one or the other kind of scenario and they're a little different as to why as well.
I mean... if it looks and plays like a touchscreen- and battery-limited version of the $60 PS5 / Xbox Whatever game... fine?
Of course if he also expects one cent of optional or recurring fees on top of that, he can get fucked.
Lower your budgets, ship more often, stop treating products like services.
Personally, I feel that game prices are too high. Patient gaming is where I'm at.
Besides all of that, I don't have the time for all of these games maybe cut down the scope of the game, go back to linear, 10-20 hour games and if its an open world don't make it a huge empty sandbox with most of it being unused or with a boring game loop. If a game publisher decides to jack up prices then I expect top notch quality with no fluff included anywhere and that it works day one the fact that I have to mention that is sad, then and only then to me such a high price would be justified which has not been the case for some games in recent years. Finally, if a full priced game incorporates f2p monetization and battle passes, then to me its price increase is not justified in my book.
I think the subscription based stuff is decent value for now. Run 2 years behind the current and you hardly have to buy anything.
The only games I have for my PS5 that I "own" are God of War Ragnarok that came with it, and Baldur's Gate 3.
I don't/can't pay full price for games now as it is so good luck with that.
Patient gamer for life I guess.
Didn’t these chucklefucks just charge over a 100 bucks for all the content in their TMNT collab? Super fuck that guy.
"Man who stands to gain from an increase in game prices advocates for increase in game prices".
Seriously though I'm not sure there's much more room to go on the top end when it comes to prices rises. I've got to think at some point you'll just push more people into buying at sale, or waiting for a game to hit their subscription platform of choice.
Maybe it's time we re-evaluate what makes a AAA worth £75 in the first place? And, what role do micro transactions have in this system, because anyone who's ever spent £75 on a new AAA game will know there's plenty of other ways they try to skin the proverbial cat.
If anything market got so big, we should be getting efficiency of scale...
Greed clowns can't help tho
If the market could support higher prices, they'd already be charging them.
I honestly don't care what Capcom does. I couldn't tell you the last time I bought a Capcom game.
Capcom lives off of their good IPs from the 90s and Devil May Cry, nothing else.
As the great Jerma985 once said, "Fuck Capcom!"
You listening to a psycho?
Over a company of psychos? Probably.
I remember getting Donkey Kong on release for the Super Nintendo and it was more expensive than most games are right now, 66 usd. Name one thing that has the same price in 2023 that it did I 1994. It's insane.
They were a lot cheaper to make back then too.
These days that's indie game territory.
The Donkey Kong you bought in 1994 had to pay not only for development, but also for the package, for the circuits (think a 1TB SSD in 2023), for distribution, etc. Do you see modern companies having to pay for any of that?
You seem to miss the point it was almost 30 years ago and they spend 18 months developing with a team of 20 people. Read those numbers again. Damn, the electrical bills alone to create Starfield most probably surpasses the entire development cost of a handful of SNES games combined. Yes, old games had manuals and came in physical form but those components where cheap at the time.
I'm not saying game SHOULD cost more. I'm just claiming games haven't become a lot more expensive.
My dad still reminds me that when he bought me Dr. Mario for NES on release, it was $90USD. I remember seeing many a game at Toys R Us with price tags of up to $120.
But I can name plenty of games in 2023 that cost more $66. Shittons of console titles are $70 now!
None of which come with the media used to play, most don't even have a box. If you think games are cheaper now, you're being scammed.
$66 in the 90's vs $70 in 2023 isn't cheaper because games are digitally distributed now? What are you smoking? Can I have some?
You're illiterate, I see. Show me a digital release which comes with a box, manual, and the media used to play, and I'll concede.
Apparently you're illiterate because I was asking how that makes them cheaper. None of those things matter in the slightest and would only cost marginally more to produce.
$70 is still more than $66, regardless of that unnecessary shit.
You're arguing that media used to play (i.e. a FUCKING SSD in 2023) costs marginally more? Find me an SSD that could fit Sea of Thieves for less than 25 USD (and isn't trash). If you're a shill, delete your account.
How is this part of the discussion? What did a SNES cost? This doesn't matter. Consoles and hardware always costs money. We are talking about the games here. Or do you want to take in to account what a decent TV cost in 1994 as well? And the second gamepad? We can't compare life as a whole. Saleries. Living cost. Everything matters, yes. But then we can just end the discussion right here and right now because we will never arrive at anything but ifs and buts.
Basic fucking inference, ever heard of it?
We aren't talking about the "console" used to run the motherfucking game, or some peripheral. A game for SNES comes with it's own fucking storage – the bloody cartridge – while a modern digital game doesn't. If you can't get two neurons to fire at the same time, then the discussion really is over.
Nintendo used cartridges up until pretty recently... as far as I'm aware, the prices never exceeded $60.
Digital games and physical games are the same price on the Nintendo Switch. They were the same on the Wii U, the Wii as well. Nintendo never stopped selling physical games. It's the same on PlayStation as well with the same price. At least it was on my Ps4. The larger piece of plastic didn't cost more in the 90s compared to the smaller piece of plastic in 2023. The manual/handbook also didn't cost anything noteworthy to produce back then. I really don't know where you are pulling these costs from.
Holy fuck, imagine being so completely alienated from the process of creating technology that you believe pressing disks costs the same as soldering circuits.
I'm still puzzled you compare soldering circuits 30 years ago with pressing a disk today. Games took a year to one and a half with about 15 people to develop compared to teams of 100 working for years. Like I stated earlier, the electrical bills alone to create the new AAA titles today are probably equal to the entire development budget of the AAA titles 30 years ago. However we twist it, we pay the same or less for games now than we did 30 years ago. A lot of games are even free now if you don't fall into the pit of buying skins. We are in a good place.
OIC... You're just an absolute dingus who has no fucking clue what they are on about. Cartridges were only slightly more to produce than a CD, and Nintendo still makes their games on cartridges (fancier ones than the SNES, too) that cost the same as the digital release. The only time this wasn't true was during the 64 era, when an earthquake shut down the manufacturers of the carts and fucked up production. Do you work for Capcom? I feel like you'd fit in.
I buy physical copies of ps4 games for under $10 pretty regularly. You can find some absurd sales if you know where to look and how to keep an eye out.
Good fucking luck playing that game without downloading anything...
I'd rather play the release version of a game than no version.
As much as I don't want to see game prices increase, I've been shocked to see that they haven't kept up with inflation at all. Especially since the cost of developing games has skyrocketed.
Some are. BG3 could have been double and still worth it. I'd say most capcom games are overpriced as is.
Quality can only increase. If people have to think twice about buying games and don't preorder every half- finished game
Ah. The old preorder my bullshit game before you realise we stopped putting effort into it to finish the fucking thing scam.
To be fair, he is partially right. It's insane that games have basically been the same price since forever, the only reason they stayed the same is cuz more people could afford computers/consoles and in contrast to every other industry, making a new either physical or digital copy of a game is dirt cheap, so the more users the more profit.
Idk if it actually makes sense for games to be more expensive yet tho.
Prices are comparable because a cartridge in the 90s was as expensive, comparatively, as an SSD is today. Have you ever bought a game and received a free SSD with it?
You also have to ignore economies of scale. Nintendo was a huge consumer of chips globally just for gaming. That market is now mature, and gaming isn't as big of a piece as it used to be. There's also way more games being sold now, call of duty gets more day one sales than most n64 games ever sold, which made disc's super cheap. Now you have digital distribution which is practically free, and companies are getting more of a games price than ever before and it's still not enough.
As long as my country gets regional pricing I don't care, raise them in the US all you want they have plenty of money.
Right, we're all millionaires over here. Yup, not living paycheck to paycheck at all! No sir!
And the fun part is, you've still had a decades long lifestyle of having low prices by exploiting weak labour laws in poor countries! And if they raise prices by using your local labour you'll still cry capitalism. Isn't it fun?
I think regional pricing is unfair. A company can use regional labor, to sell a product in a market where the labor is more expensive. At a higher price.
So the company gets to take advantage of geographic arbitrage, but the customers can't. That feels unfair
Whaaaat? Capitalism benefits capital and not workers and consumers? Preposterous.
The MSRP for Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges in the mid-80s, adjusted to today’s U.S. Dollar, would average around $150-200.
I don’t think games should cost that much, but we stuck with the $60 price point for literal decades so it’s not completely unreasonable for someone to talk about raising prices.
(I also write this while having only bought one game? two? In the past year.)
Resident Evil 2 sold about 4.5 million copies on PS One, Resident Evil 2 Remake has sold around 12.5 million copies so far and climbing.
They’re making more money now than they ever did, even with games costing more to make. More customers is supposed to equal economy of scale, not fuck it lets charge out the ass so executives can make more money than they’ve ever made in history.
The economy of scale is what lets companies operate at higher costs. According to Wikipedia RE2 cost about $1 million to make. $1m might still buy a PS1 caliber game, but the remake cost at least an order of magnitude more. Many games now cost nine figures; GTA6 apparently cost $1 billion.
I’m not saying games should haphazardly inflate with everything else for the sake of share holders, but I’m open to the idea that the formula used twenty years ago to decide that AAA games should cost $60 might be out of date.
Online sale have reduced distribution costs and unlimited scaling compared to physical media, so successful games are far more lucrative now than they were and unsuccessful games don't have losses from overproduction and returns from stores.
If selling at the current rate wasn't profitable, gaming companies would have stopped making games by now.
Certainly a factor that should be included in determining what a game costs, as is the 30% off the top taken by Steam, Microsoft, and Sony for most digital sales. Distribution in 2023 was not a factor in determining the current max price for a standard edition non-sports game, which was set in the early 00s.
I'm also comfortable seeing games that cost less to produce carrying lower price tags, as in many cases they do, Hades and Hi-Fi Rush coming to mind.
They continue to make $60 games, yes. No one can say whether some company would have made the greatest game of all time last year if they'd been able to sell it for $70, or $80 or $100. Maybe they're making it now as GTA6.
Brick and mortar stores are closer to a 50% cut, so 30% is actually a better deal.
That formula has to include charging what the market will bear. They can certainly increase the price and sell fewer copies, and maybe that’ll be more profitable for them in the end, but they certainly can’t jack up the price and assume all their current customers will stump up to grow their profits.
People’s income hasn’t increased all that much, the wealth gap in many countries has only grown. Games cost more when they were a niche product, and cost less when the audience and potential sales grew. Maybe they’d prefer their billion dollar industry went back to being more niche and only for the wealthy.
Adjusted price is a common talking point here, but it ignores the other side of inflation... that wages have stagnated and rising prices obviously means that people have less spending money.
Consider also that there is a lot of choice with the back catalog on PC as well as free games (that people can make in their spare time at no cost thanks to FOSS tools and free information). Pre-broadband, gaming was more of a take-it-or-leave situation.
So yeah, I think most people already see increasing prices as being motivated by greed. And some people likely see the $60 price as already greedy when games are often filler and spectacle (with poor QA testing on top of that, because they know people will pre-order it anyway, and then buy the later DLC or cosmetics).
@MomoTimeToDie
The problem is the game industry, in the meantime of never going beyond the $60 threshold, found a far far more lucrative way of making money than just raising the MSRP. In fact, they found multiple ways of making money: skinner boxes, loot boxes, micro transactions, season passes, FOMO storefronts, etc etc. And even though we may agree that the MSRP eventually has to increase, they won't suddenly give up on those anti-consumer, predatory practices.
It's not unreasonable but at the end of the day, we buy these games to waste time. There's not a whole lot of justifying why im going to spend more on something i use to just unwind when i can buy plenty of 20$ games that will give me hundreds of hours of entertainment
The MSRP for a NES cartridge includes the circuits, the manual, the box, the physical space, the license and a finished game. Do you get any of these with modern AAA games?
How much of the cartridge sale was profit to the developer?
The hardware of the cartridge cost money. Distribution to retailers cost money. The retailers took their cut.
I wouldn't be shocked at all if the publisher's net revenue per game is significantly higher in real dollars than it was in the NES era.
Okay but PS1 games were similar prices and printing CDs is cheap.
They sell vastly more games than before. And there isn't a media anymore. And they should have increased their productivity in all these years.
Video games are not a good. They're a digital product, a service. The cost is completely decorrelated from the amount you sell. Which is why it is so profitable.
Can you help me understand your comment? What does MSRP mean?
Ah, sorry. It stands for “Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price.”
In the U.S. the law doesn’t allow a manufacturer to require that retailers sell their product at a particular price, but they’re free to “suggest” one so that’s how we ended up with the MSRP.
It doesn’t carry any real weight, but it generally serves to anchor consumer expectations for a product’s value. (It also gives retailers an easy metric to compare sale prices against.)
Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price