Board 8 > $449?! Wow.

(+) Yeah! (+)

We had Blockbuster in the early 90s to rent SNES games instead.

mnk posted...

We had Blockbuster in the early 90s to rent SNES games instead.

Bring back Blockbuster imhotbqh

I guess there's still Gamefly.

mnk posted...

We had Blockbuster in the early 90s to rent SNES games instead.

me and "mike" had a tenuous like six month on-and-off relationship of not deleting each other's ocarina saves

For a 3DS situation to happen this thing needs to fail to sell out on launch and it's pretty easy to just walk in a store and pick up. If people don't make a stand at the start then the price of the system and games will be exactly the same from day 1 until the next system comes out.

I can't imagine this will be a 3DS situation. The Switch is popular and the 3DS launched while handhelds were falling into irrelevancy, was overpriced, and had no games to sell it.

All the back-and-forth about inflation over time is mostly irrelevant. It doesn't matter if games technically don't cost as much as they did in the 90s. If people don't feel like they have the disposable income right now for a $450 Switch with $80+ games, then they won't buy it. End of story.

Like, we're about to enter a major recession / depression. Getting casuals to shell out over four hundred dollars for a gaming console is going to be a tough sell. Switch 1 benefited heavily from being the cheaper option that had Animal Crossing during a pandemic. My sister got a Switch 1 and she doesn't play games. Zero chance she gets a Switch 2.

As much as the internet is complaining right now, I think most hardcore games will pony up anyway in the end. It's the casual market that's looking to be decimated.

Casual revolution of 2007 strikes again

The casual audience will decide the fate of Nintendo just like they did with the Wii U.

KamikazePotato posted...

All the back-and-forth about inflation over time is mostly irrelevant. It doesn't matter if games technically don't cost as much as they did in the 90s. If people don't feel like they have the disposable income right now for a $450 Switch with $80+ games, then they won't buy it. End of story.

Like, we're about to enter a major recession / depression. Getting casuals to shell out over four hundred dollars for a gaming console is going to be a tough sell. Switch 1 benefited heavily from being the cheaper option that had Animal Crossing during a pandemic. My sister got a Switch 1 and she doesn't play games. Zero chance she gets a Switch 2.

As much as the internet is complaining right now, I think most hardcore games will pony up anyway in the end. It's the casual market that's looking to be decimated.

Very well said. The past price comparisons are odd.

It's obvious that if people feel something is too expensive, they won't buy it, no one would dispute that. The question is whether it's "right" for something to cost that much. Or maybe whether it's logical from a financial sense.

The nuance that most are missing though is that, if not enough people are willing to buy something at the price that it needs to be financially viable, it won't get made. Well, some unviable things will still get made, there's a sort of bell curve distribution to the success of projects. But a huge class of games will simply never get made anymore if people aren't willing to pay. It's already happened to an extent and it will get worse. Maybe it's a good thing in some cases, but in other cases, it might be a cost far greater than $20.

Its just tough because Nintendo has generally been more affordable compared to its PS rival.

Sunroof posted...

Its just tough because Nintendo has generally been more affordable compared to its PS rival.

It still is. The PS5 launched at $500, raised to the equivalent of $550 almost everywhere except the US, and then they launched a $700 version that loads of people bought still.

What may happen is Nintendo get hit for this, everybody else waits a few years and prices rise to $80 anyway. It is a matter of when not if frankly.

At least with the PS5 it was a significantly stronger piece of machinery. Is the S2 on par with the PS5s graphics and output and such?

Sunroof posted...

Its just tough because Nintendo has generally been more affordable compared to its PS rival.

a big part of that is because Nintendo's hardware and third party support has always been significantly behind the competition. And that's still the case here, I mean in the Direct they were celebrating the Switch 2 having a 256GB harddrive. So with them now charging just as much for a console that is still failing to catch up to competition that released 5 years ago, and more for games, it just doesn't make sense as a consumer

like there's some stuff I really want on there. I've been begging for a new Kirby Air Ride for like 20 years, and the fact that even I'm at the point where I'm not excited for the console isn't a great sign

as is I barely use my Switch because I also have a PS5 and basically every game that isn't Smash or Mario Party is going to be better on there

I mean its close enough to justify an unadjusted $50-100 difference, yeah. And its certainly enough to justify the $250 difference with the Pro. The Switch released at the same price the PS4 was selling for at the time with a wider gulf. There isnt much issue about the console price the discussion is mainly about the games.

What also seems to be happening is that people in the US seem to think there are $90 games because of the confusion with the physical EU version of Mario Kart. There are not but it could still hurt - people still thought that the Xbox One could not play used games when it launched. So it could well be that $80 actually is acceptable but people still reject it because they think games are $90 when they are not.

Raka_Putra posted...

That's why you wait for 5 years and there are trustworthy secondhand sellers.

^

All I've ever done since the 3DS

You wait 5 years and with inflation the thing will be $500 used

https://youtu.be/lfCOx3WDBDM?si=pf2ygmDEglTWil0u

A game in the 90s was usually made by like 10 people. (In terms of programmers, artists, designers.) For example, Doom was literally made by 6 people IIRC.

But a game today is usually made by hundreds of people (AAA games anyway).

End game credits used to fit on one screen, now they scroll for 30-45 minutes!!

Going from 10->100 salaries is HUGE. From that perspective, games should really should have gone from $50 to $500 each, by now (10x more).

Sure, if a game is $50 and sells 10x better than a hit 90s game, then it should make enough to cover those 10x more salaries. But there's no guarantee that a game sells that well.

Doing some quick wikipedia math, looks like MK8 deluxe only sold about 6.7x more copies than MK64, that's not 10x more. (And MK8 Deluxe is basically the best-selling game of all time, isn't it?)

If we want the video game industry to "heal" and not lay everyone off after every game, then this seems inevitable.

(Unless you want more microtransactions.) (Or unless you can fix the CEO wage disparity, but that's not a video-game-specific problem.)

Epyo posted...

If we want the video game industry to "heal" and not lay everyone off after every game, then this seems inevitable.

The video game industry doesn't need to heal, it needs to implode and be reborn. The current path is untenable. It didn't have to be this way and it did it to itself.

Over the next 5 or so years, the vast majority of AAA studio are going to lose or fire the vast majority of their staff, and many of them are going to shut down. There's nothing that can stop it. Studios simply should never have gotten this big. Games themselves do not need to be this big.

Also sound like the price could potentially go up to more than $449, preorders just got delayed as Nintendo assessed the Trump tarrifs.

Im almost certain the price is going up. Vietnam has an absolutely insane tariff rate and guess where Nintendo moved a bunch of production within the last few years?

If they raise the price on this even further this gen will be a right off for them.

Technically they could ship the consoles to a third country and import them to the US from there. It looks like the government didn't think about that loophole. But unless that third country is Russia, the tariffs alone should add about $50 to the price even without considering the extra shipping costs. But that might still be cheaper considering all countries with Nintendo factories are on the high end of the tariff increases.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Games themselves do not need to be this big.

...So you think gamers are going to be happy spending $70-80-90 on a game that's "just" 10 hours long? We've already seen it time and again how many people talk about the "value" of a game and that they'd rather buy the game that's 40+ hours than the one that's 10-15 hours.

Do DLC to add content? People whine it should have been there at launch.

Wait until the game is complete and well bug tested before launch? People complain it takes forever (see Silksong).

Decrease the graphic fidelity and assets needed? "Game looks like shit"

And on and on it goes.

I don't necessarily disagree with your statement. But it's really much more on the gamers to change than anything else.

Seanchan posted...

...So you think gamers are going to be happy spending $70-80-90 on a game that's "just" 10 hours long? We've already seen it time and again how many people talk about the "value" of a game and that they'd rather buy the game that's 40+ hours than the one that's 10-15 hours.

Do DLC to add content? People whine it should have been there at launch.

Wait until the game is complete and well bug tested before launch? People complain it takes forever (see Silksong).

Decrease the graphic fidelity and assets needed? "Game looks like shit"

And on and on it goes.

I don't necessarily disagree with your statement. But it's really much more on the gamers to change than anything else.

I get that people complain no matter what you do. What are you suggesting in response?

Epyo posted...

Doing some quick wikipedia math, looks like MK8 deluxe only sold about 6.7x more copies than MK64, that's not 10x more. (And MK8 Deluxe is basically the best-selling game of all time, isn't it?)

Well they save significantly now on distribution, which used to be a major factor in the cost of the final product.

Epyo posted...

(And MK8 Deluxe is basically the best-selling game of all time, isn't it?)

Not even close to Minecraft or GTA5.

GTA 5 must have some sort of record for the amount of time it sits at the top of sales charts.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Also sound like the price could potentially go up to more than $449, preorders just got delayed as Nintendo assessed the Trump tarrifs.

The blame in this topic has been misguided imho

Seanchan posted...

...So you think gamers are going to be happy spending $70-80-90 on a game that's "just" 10 hours long?

Yes. Game design has solved the "content" problem and has ways to stretch out 10 hours into 50 for those who really want to do that, and the rest of us can skip the fluff just finish the game. Atomic Heart is a great example of this. It can be just like Bioshock if you want, or more like Far Cry.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/c/cf5ba34d.jpg