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The $70 Price Tag Is Actually Indefensible (The Jimquisition) (Patreon)

Published:
2020-11-30 16:08:57
Imported:
2021-01

Content

Even though it never surprises me, it always disappoints me to see games media pundits fall over themselves to repeat corporate propaganda in defense of corporate garbage.

The arrival of the PS5 and Xbox Series X has been used as an excuse to finally raise game prices... after years of using fixed game prices as an excuse to fill their games with predatory monetization. I wonder how they'll justify their microtransactions now! 

At any rate, the obligatory chorus of apologists are backing up the decision with one heck of an argument. The exact same argument they've been using to justify publisher nastiness for years and years and years.

Files

The $70 Price Tag Is Actually Indefensible (The Jimquisition)

http://www.patreon.com/jimquisition http://www.twitch.tv/jimsterling Even though it never surprises me, it always disappoints me to see games media pundits fall over themselves to repeat corporate propaganda in defense of corporate garbage. The arrival of the PS5 and Xbox Series X has been used as an excuse to finally raise game prices... after years of using fixed game prices as an excuse to fill their games with predatory monetization. I wonder how they'll justify their microtransactions now! At any rate, the obligatory chorus of apologists are backing up the decision with one heck of an argument. The exact same argument they've been using to justify publisher nastiness for years and years and years. #PS5 #XboxSeriesX #AAA #NextGen #Money #DemonsSouls #COD #Activision #Ubisoft #GameJournalism #JimSterling #Jimquisition __ Twitter: https://twitter.com/jimsterling Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jimsterling0 Bandcamp of the Sax Dragon - https://carlcatron.bandcamp.com Nathan Hanover - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-8L7n7l11PJM6FFcI6Ju8A

Comments

LonMcGregor

I can't remember when I last paid full price for a AAA game. I pay full price for indie titles all the time because they're usually priced reasonably. I wonder if anyone at these companies has run the numbers on what kind of profits they'd see if instead of making games more expensive, they reduced the price, thus opening up more of an audience that can afford to spend money. Without any kind of window to an alternate universe, I guess there's no way to say for sure, but it sounds like an intuitive enough idea.

Anonymous

Does the fact that AAA game industries are literal thieves justify pirating their games? Starting to look that way...

Anonymous

I think they do run the numbers....then deep discounts on games hours after they launch (EA / Ubisoft) make people think they are getting huge bargains....so they sell even more. Milk the super fans who have to get it day one, then exploit the impulse buying habits of bargain hunters. Add raytracing to a PS4 games - and charge an extra 10 bucks. (the digital foundry comparisons, for cross gen games, really make it hard to justify the difference for any of the games covered) - I am not saying raytracing is not much work, but - remember its mostly just applying a hardware based solution to a bunch of materials. It doesnt warrant the extra cost, any more than a fancy fur shader did in "Kameo: Elements of Power" (if that had a fur shader - it probably didn't). It's tough - before long things like game-pass will help bring an end to this nonsense...and destroy the industry in a whole new way.

RedBedroomRecords

Funny thing is this ain't the first time games have cost 70 bucks for just the standard version, Nintendo charged 70-80 bucks for it's N64 games back in the day due to the fact that they were still stubbornly using cartridges instead of CDs like everyone else in an utterly boneheaded move that led to Sony handily kicking their asses(and I imagine Nintendo's own fallout with Sony is why they were so stubborn about not using CD-based media until the Wii came out). I feel bad for the devs at Ubisoft that worked on these games who have to deal with both the behind-the-scenes abuse and the abuse overshadowing the games themselves and leading to people not playing the game as a result and not being able to see the hard work the devs put in. I wish they'd do more linear games like the Splinter Cell series, as much as I like most of their open-world games I do think fatigue is going to set in at some point. I'm liking Watch Dogs Legion so far but it hasn't exactly blown me away the same way the previous two entries did, part of that is because the whole "recruit anyone" gimmick means the central story isn't as strong, plus it seems a lot easier then the previous games, so far I haven't died once and i've often gone into restricted areas guns blazing and easily walked out, whereas in the last two games if I tried that I would've likely ended up dead, plus as Yahtzee said in his review-specific recruits don't matter much since they all get Spiderbots that can do double-jumps and easily get into most areas and pick up collectibles and disable alarms etc. Anyways 70 bucks is definitely bogus, i long stopped pre-ordering most games and now buy most of my games online off Amazon or Ebay(Legion being one of them) when the price goes down(I noticed Avengers had a big price drop from major sellers on Ebay, going down from 50 bucks to 40).

Ben L.

I haven't watched the video yet, but I'm going to take a wild stab at guessing the argument: video games are expensive to make.

RedBedroomRecords
>>48644942

I paid full price for Last of Us 2(well I traded in a bunch of older games to Gamestop for store credit to buy it)and with that being my favorite game of all time I think it was absolutely worth it, but most games these days aren't, I got Legion, the new COD and Crash 4 off Ebay for around 40 bucks which is much more reasonable. I've got Cyberpunk pre-ordered but after that I don't see myself getting any games new.

Anonymous

"Elder Scrolls: Skyrim coming exclusively to Xbox Game Pass!" Great show again Jim!

Benedict Holland

If game companies did away with all of the additional ways that they make money (apart from MMO's due to server costs being a real thing), I would gladly spend 70$ on a game. If we went back to a time when I purchased a game and I wasn't sold anything extra, skins were part of the game, it didn't have DLC and a dozen editions, season passes, loot boxes, or any of the garbage, game developers would have a modest argument to make. There are only so many gamers with so much time and my guess is that player bases for genres doesn't really grow much. Like, is there anyone who is going to pick up ffxx who has never played a previous RPG? Probably not. Likewise, racing games, sports games, FPS, shooters, they all have a small player base. What we found is that battle royal has a fixed base and people move between 3 games, all of which are free. Good luck prying anyone away from that. But that isn't our world. Our world is one where a soccer game can sell ads in game, have actual product ads appear, sell DLC, season passes, AND have gambling. The game should probably be free and I have to wonder if we are not going the world of two extremes where games will be fully supported by gambling and those where it won't. One set of games will come from Europe and the US while we will turn to Japan for the other, like souls, monster hunter, persona, and more.

Benedict Holland
>>48646321

If someone touched bits on a game, you have no idea what they put into the executable. I would avoid pirated games without extensive knowledge on how to harden a pc.

Anonymous

The Demons Souls remake was $124 Australian in the store the other day. WTF?

Anonymous

In in the UK its even worse they're upping the price from £50 to £70. Whilst still keeping all the microtransactions, all of the launch day dlc, all of the loot boxes and all of the deluxe editions too

Anonymous

This was a great episode, thank you! I wonder if they're going to start raising the price of DLC and Season Pass type things too (or have they already? I feel like they went from like 15$ to 20+$ sometime in the past few years)

Trevor Bond

Yep, another reason not to bother purchasing a console again. I mean, reeeeeeally not giving me reasons to want to buy their products, these companies.

Anonymous

Always great to start the week with the Jimquisition!

Anonymous

I was keen on getting a PS5 until they walked back the PS1-2-3 compatibility from the technical press conference. Jim Ryan's attitude toward backcompat is wilfully ignorant.