Sheikah

You're assuming this is even a problem. For all we know the price reductions mean they make more money overall by selling more copies than if they held the price at £60 throughout the generation. I don't think we became trained, I think it's more a case that people, generally, do not want to pay £60 or £70 for individual games. It is a lot of money. I honestly think it's as simple as that. Many people just do not inherently value games so highly. Is there any advantage to keeping the price fixed at £60 (or whatever the RRP is) for 6 months instead of 3? The way I see it, you have people who will buy at launch or close to, who are willing to pay full price to get their hands on the game right away. Then you have people who have a price in mind at which they are comfortable paying (e.g. £30), perhaps because they are not in a rush or overly sure about the game. Those people are willing to wait. I don't think that having longer intervals between launch and that reduction necessarily makes sense. People who are going to wait are going to wait (whether 3 or 6 months), and people who buy around launch have already bought the game. I suspect Ubi's timing with the discount for Fenyx Rising was based on when their launch sales dropped off. I guess at that point, what's the use in keeping it at the highest price?

So you think if all games never budged from £70 launch price that is the solution? Should this be applied to films too, always around £15 to buy, years after release, with the price contantly adjusted for inflation? People and the industry aren't the problem here, and it's Nintendo who are the outliers. Media in general depreciates in value over time, not because content owners fucked up their pricing and taught people to expect discounts. Keeping a price at £70 for the whole generation when nobody is buying it anymore is just cutting off your nose to spite your face. I'm sure publishers have the data about when most copies get sold - my understanding is that a lot of copies usually get sold at launch, but for many games there can often be a drop off until you see a discount. That probably explains why some games get discounted fairly quickly (i.e. in under 6 months).

The people determine it, and the people spoke. People did not rush out to buy Days Gone at 60 quid, and instead waited for discounts. Meanwhile Witcher 3 sold 4 million copies at full price in the first 2 weeks. This shows a lot of people will pay full price, but only if they think it's worth it. Honestly though, we can't seriously expect all games to hold their £60/70 price tag throughout the generation like Nintendo do. It's not viable - and that's not all down to people unreasonably 'expecting' discounts. It's reasonable to expect a discount over time like you would renting a film. Not everyone has the funds to shell out £70 every time either, so price reductions mean that everyone can game.

@Jonnas I think we are agreeing here, why not price them lower to begin with. Because £70 (what it now is for Sony) is too high, it's at a level that causes you to take a sharp intake of breath. If games stayed at that price they are likely to not do so well, unless they are a critical smash. Like I mentioned, Disco Elysium recently launched on PS4 at with something like 20% off for a week as an early bird discount. That's basically how it should be - early adopters getting a better deal. That's a fair trade off given that some bugs were present at launch. And for a full game it was also very reasonably priced.

You don't see why a game of lower quality with bugs isn't worth £60? Why would it be worth £60? Loads of people bought Witcher 3 at full price at launch (4 million sold in 2 weeks), if the quality is there people will pay it. Enough people didn't buy Days Gone at launch at full price...that's literally why that guy is complaining.

People only have so much money, if all games were priced at £60/70 and stayed there then people would have to be more selective. Games like Days Gone that were buggy at launch and not critical smashes would be the games not making the cut. If I have £120 I could buy 6 discounted games at £20 each. In a world where games stay at £60/70 the whole generation I would be able to buy 2 games at most.

You're missing the point. Even if people didn't expect price cuts, the point is that it was not worth £60 at it's buggy launch, nor years after launch. So even if it just stayed at £60 forever, a lot of people would never have bought it. People don't have the money to buy every game they want at £70 or £60, they would just end up skipping some games altogether. That's the very reason they get reduced.

Those games like Shovel Knight cost relatively little to begin with, so keeping them close to retail price is not so much of an issue. Yooka Laylee was also dirt cheap via its Kickstarter, which was heavily backed. And Yooka Laylee was definitely discounted heavily within the generation it launched - unlike many Nintendo games. Tell me, you think keeping Days Gone at 60 quid for the entirety of the generation would have worked out for them? That they would have seen adequate sales? Remember this is not a God of War-level experience, and it had quite a lot of bugs when it launched. I think your approach is very extreme and does not take into account the nuances of each particular game. Also, you're confusing what works for Nintendo with what works for everyone else. Everyone else is not Nintendo, ergo everyone else should not behave like Nintendo. Nintendo are very much the outlier in this scenario - if everyone copied what Nintendo were doing and every game was full RRP (60-70 quid) for the whole generation, people simply would not be able to afford as many games, or wouldn't want to buy as many (particularly less critically favourable games). You're also discounting the fact that customers expect sales and discounts now, making it even harder for them to accept that games could become "stuck" at the full 70 quid asking price for the generation. People absolutely would be making purchase decisions based on the price of games. Rather than buy a 2-year-old game which costs 70 quid, why not buy 3 discounted games that cost 20 each? For less than stellar games, that's basically what would happen.

As Microsoft have acquired Game Pass, all Bethesda's releases (including all future Doom games) will release onto Game Pass at launch, instantly "devaluing" them. Because if you can get it on Game Pass at launch, it is no longer seen to be a 60 quid game. This is a problem separate to reducing prices - Game Pass is eroding the perceived value of games, because you can play them all for next to nothing. You've also got to remember for games like God of War, they're made as system sellers. Unlike Nintendo, who absolutely want to make a good profit on all their games (and hardware), Sony have a different strategy. Sony do not ram microtransactions into these games because their objective is not to maximise profit. Their goal is to increase system sales by enticing people to pick up the console to play the exclusive, and to improve their console's line up relative to the competition (very important - they want you in their digital ecosystem, not the competition's). So it makes sense that Sony would want to reduce the price of GoW reasonably soon - the more attractive the price, the more people will be tempted to pick up the PS4 to play it. With regards to third party titles that get reduced quickly, I get the feeling that the decision on when to lower price is based on a lot of factors. It's easy to say "all publishers should always keep the price at RRP (60 - 70 quid) for years to change the behaviour of customers", but in practice would that work? For games that are mediocre or bug-ridden at launch, beyond the initial clump of people who buy games at full price, do we think it's realistic that keeping games at 70 quid for years would work out well in terms of sales? I don't think so. I think a lot of people just do not value most games at what the current RRP is (60-70 quid). Also, how do you coordinate literally every publisher to agree to this new approach? You don't; if you're a publisher, you can't control the fact that all other publishers are going to reduce the price of their games in a timely manner. So if you decide to keep your game at full price for a few years, and it's not exactly the next Witcher 3, chances are you're not going to sell many copies. Especially with a big selection of other much cheaper games available to the customer; people will probably buy those cheaper games instead.

I think the problem is the starting price. At 60-70 quid, lots of people just will not want to pay that, not unless it's a truly special game anyway. Even if it is truly special, some people just will not pay 70 quid for a video game. So whether they drop the price rapidly or after 6 months, for many people it won't matter. These people are willing to wait however long because they don't see the price as fair or good value, and probably wouldn't be able to buy many games if they were all stuck at full price for several years like Nintendo games. Let's consider Days Gone in light of your criticism about dropping the price too rapidly being bad. The truly "bad" thing in this case though was the state of the game at release, and to a lesser degree, the fact it wasn't a critical success like God of War. So if they kept the price of that game at 60 quid for a long time like you're suggesting, most likely they would not have sold many copies beyond the initial launch period. This would have been very bad for the developer/publisher. Ideally they'd want their game to stay at as high a price as it could for as long as it could. But honestly, keeping what was (at the time) a somewhat mediocre and bug-ridden game at 60 quid for a long time is just not realistic. Nintendo get away with it because they're the exception and their games are good. If everyone did what Nintendo did, people wouldn't be able to afford nearly as many games. Well, I say they get away with it. There's tons of "lesser" NIntendo games (including remasters) that they've released that I won't buy because they're pretty much always full price. I haven't bought Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury on Switch because I had it on Wii U and don't want to pay full price for it again. If you want a good example of a decent pricing/discount system look at Disco Elysium, which recently got released on PS4. That launched with an early bird discount of something like 20% if you bought it in the first week or so. That way early adopters actually get rewarded, not punished. It also worked because the game was priced fairly at release - i.e. it was priced at a level that felt actually worth what you were getting. I don't contest that there are some people who nearly always wait for cheap prices (e.g. below 20 quid), but then the question is if every game was maintained at full price (i.e. 60 to 70 quid) for the whole generation, would they buy nearly as many games? Almost certainly not, is my guess. And the games they won't end up buying will be the Days Gones.

The trouble is though that if prices never dropped then some games wouldn't sell. Not everyone has the money to buy lots of games if they were always 60-70 quid each, you'd probably see people just buying the most popular and critically revered games. The Days Gone person who complained highlights how the argument doesn't make sense, Days Gone was buggy at launch and not exactly the best game ever. If the price stayed at 60 quid (which I believe was the RRP) you'd hardly see anyone buying it. Not because they thought they could hold out for a discount, more like because they just wouldn't value it at 60 quid experience.

Great stuff. It's the complete edition too, I never had the DLC so will be nice to play it.

Probably the best spend of 20 euro PSN credit ever.

Ok, I'll bite. Which games are you talking about here? By "often" I'm taking that to mean at least half, and "new" must mean within the last few years? So which are these games with "barely distinguishable" gameplay? I can't think of two recent new IPs where the gameplay is even remotely similar. God of War is nearly all close melee combat, Horizon Zero Dawn is primarily bow fighting and using wire traps to topple big robot animals, Days Gone is mostly gun fighting hoardes of zombies. Ghost of Tsushima is swordplay, standoffs and stances, Dreams is a game builder, Astrobot is a platformer. Honestly, which games you talking about? I don't want to believe this is a hyperbolic statement, don't disappoint me now.

I hope it's good, but I'll be waiting for a price drop. I do like roguelikes but Housemarque's output has never really hit it off with me. I know, I'm special.

No, I'm not arguing that at all - just using your logic in the reverse situation. If games can be criticised as being "too similar" for having stories with depth, then equally we can criticise Nintendo's output for mostly all having too simplistic stories. I don't agree with any of these criticisms, by the way. Just showing you that this reasoning doesn't make any sense.

People don't play Mario for the story because the story is rubbish. Doesn't mean there isn't a story driving the experience though. There is literally a story and reason given for why you must go and do the things you must do in Mario Odyssey. You're basically criticising the other games for having a good story, not because they are "story-driven games". And that's pretty mad when you think about it - arguing that games are too similar because they all have some depth to their story. You could just as easily argue that Nintendo games are too similar for having basic, shallow stories, no?

Your argument really doesn't make any sense. What does "story-based" even mean? If it has a story that's driving the experience then it's story based, no? So Zelda, Mario, and Pokemon are all story-based games. If you look at games like Bloodborne where the story is told in a way similar to Metroid Prime (via lore and notes), you can't be suggesting that it's the same category as, say, TLOU? Or Spiderman? The storytelling and depth to the story is so varied between all these games. It's making your attempt to lump together these games as "all the same" seem really silly. Nobody is playing Ghost of Tsushima and walking away from that thinking the storytelling or presentation of the story is similar to TLOU. Nobody!

But that's the thing, many are not even the same (or similar) genre. Because "third person adventure" is not a genre, it's a broad term that can describe entirely different games. Spiderman is a completely different genre to TLOU. In fact Ghost of Tsushima is an open world game, whereas Last Guardian isn't. Yet both can be defined as "third person adventure" games. In fact so can Pokemon Sun/Moon, and Zelda, and Mario Odyssey - so I guess Nintendo are putting out too many of these now? I'm sure you can see, this is a pointless and unhelpful way of categorising. I'm saying that it's a false diversity. It's diverse only to newcomers - anyone who has been with Nintendo for the last 20 years will find very little different about their main games. Ronnie was talking about PS4 games being made to a "formula", which is exactly how games like Smash, Mario, Mario Kart and Pokemon are made.

But that variety comes at the cost of fatigue. Nintendo's big games are mostly sequels to games we have seen time and time again. Can you really talk about diversity in their big games when a lot of that comes from the 10th (or whatever) iteration of Mario Kart? Or Smash, Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon? In terms of staleness or the "seen that before" feeling that diversity is supposed to combat, Nintendo's output simply does not do that, because their series are ancient and made to a formula. The other games you're mentioning like Hyrule Warriors are some of the most stale, overdone games out there, even if more work than normal was put into the Zelda version. People can complain that there's a lot of third person "adventure" games on PS4 but as you can see, within that category the games can be very different (e.g. compare Bloodborne to The Last of Us, or to Spiderman - completely different games). In fact "third person adventure" is such a ridiculous catch all descriptor that seems to have been made up here to try and win an argument, given how much diversity there can be within that category. It'd a bit like complaining that the SNES had one too many 2D games.

Why am I now talking about sequels? Because you're complaining that the PS4's exclusive games are all very similar ("third person adventure games") and "made to a formula". I'm saying that there's nothing more similar and formulaic than sequels to games we have played before, of which we see many on other consoles. Your list is also incomplete, you're missing off new exclusive games like Bloodborne too. In terms of third person new IP exclusives on PS4 there was Bloodborne, Horizon, Days Gone, Concrete Genie, Ghost of Tsushima, Death Stranding, The Last Guardian, The Order 1886. How many new IP exclusives (that were big games) came out on Switch or X1? Maybe a lot of Sony's exclusives are third person but they're all very different games, and at least a lot of them are new IPs. You're making the point that Sony are risk averse - yet Sony released far more big new IPs than the other two last gen. Far more.

You say built to a formula but many of those games are very different, and there's a good amount of totally new IPs there too. Compare this to Nintendo who rely on almost all sequels for their big games, or Xbox who have very few exclusives, and they're still doing a much better job than everyone else.

After checking this out it does indeed sound good, and well received. It is the sort of game that you have to wonder if it might come to Plus though, or get even cheaper down the line.

I haven't played this game, but found Dunkey's video funny. It really does look toilet.

You're getting overly hung up on the word "remake", is my take. My understanding is that if it was a remaster you would have been fine with that, but if it's even better than a remaster visually then it's disappointing? The point of this remake was not to reinvent the wheel. Bluepoint generally don't do that. It was to bring a highly requested game that was lost to the PS3 to the PS5. Of course if was going to get a graphical overhaul, it was a PS5 launch title. And the graphics here are incredibly important, whether you see it or not. The entire point of upgrading to PS5 is down to the graphics - otherwise it could have run on PS4. If they don't show what the machine is capable of then they're not putting forward a good argument for people to upgrade. Can I ask, have you played the Souls games? It seems to me that you are demanding gameplay reinvention for the sake of it and I'm actually not sure what you're asking for, or why. Which bits of the gameplay need redesigning? Which parts were you not happy with?