The Markets of Video Game Pricing - Day 1 full retail, or wait for a drop?

[Ronnie]

Quote

The creative director and writer of Days Gone has said that players should buy games at full price if they like them, instead of waiting for them to go on sale or be given away as part of services like PlayStation Plus.

John Garvin was speaking to game designer David Jaffe on Jaffe’s YouTube show, where he was asked if he’d heard anything about any “meaningful uptick of engagement” with Days Gone since the game was added to the PlayStation Plus Collection on PS5.

“I do have an opinion on something that your audience may find of interest, and it might piss some of them off,” Garvin replied. “If you love a game, buy it at fucking full price. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen gamers say ‘yeah, I got that on sale, I got it through PS Plus, whatever’.”

“But how do you know you love a game until you’ve played it?” Jaffe responded.

“I’m just saying, you don’t, but don’t complain if a game doesn’t get a sequel if it wasn’t supported at launch,” Garvin replied. “It’s like, God of War got whatever number millions of sales at launch and, you know, Days Gone didn’t. [I’m] just speaking for me personally as a developer, I don’t work for Sony, I don’t know what the numbers are.

Putting aside his dubious logic and naive view of people parting with cash, I think this sums up one of the reasons why Nintendo don't drop their software prices.

I've seen many posters say they'll buy a Switch game at release because "may as well, it won't drop in price".

[Jonnas]

Some time ago, I tried displaying my games by game time. I did think the order was wonky, with Garou somehow not being in the top 5, and Sonic the Hedgehog somehow not surpassing a game I only played for a couple of hours, but I didn't think much of it. But now I see Nintendo just hasn't improved that system stability enough.

6 hours ago, Ronnie said:

Putting aside his dubious logic and naive view of people parting with cash, I think this sums up one of the reasons why Nintendo don't drop their software prices.

I've seen many posters say they'll buy a Switch game at release because "may as well, it won't drop in price".

I've voiced my opinion against arbitrary price drops before (even pointing at God of War's price drop as an example of what shouldn't happen), mostly because I think it devalues the industry as a whole, and I figured the developers get shortchanged the most by the price reduction anyway. But I think this is the first time I see a developer voice something about the impact that this business model has had on them.

[Rummy]

15 hours ago, Ronnie said:

Putting aside his dubious logic and naive view of people parting with cash, I think this sums up one of the reasons why Nintendo don't drop their software prices.

I've seen many posters say they'll buy a Switch game at release because "may as well, it won't drop in price".

Yeah a lot of subscribe to his ethos and it's worked out; me and the bois all Cyberpunk 2077'd right there on Day 0 and honestly we definitely cashed in on that. Luckily most of us managed to polish up out swarve smarts having earlier utilised the exact same excellent business model approach of all buying Day 0 Wii Us 😎 💎✊🏾

[Glen-i]

40 minutes ago, Rummy said:

Luckily most of us managed to polish up out swarve smarts having earlier utilised the exact same excellent business model approach of all buying Day 0 Wii Us 😎 💎✊🏾

But I never sell my consoles, so...

[Sheikah]

10 hours ago, Jonnas said:

I've voiced my opinion against arbitrary price drops before (even pointing at God of War's price drop as an example of what shouldn't happen), mostly because I think it devalues the industry as a whole, and I figured the developers get shortchanged the most by the price reduction anyway. But I think this is the first time I see a developer voice something about the impact that this business model has had on them.

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.

[Dcubed]

3 hours ago, Sheikah said:

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.

Rapid price drops are ultimately a bit of a poisoned chalice for the publisher/developer.  Sure, you make more money in the short-term, but in the long-term? You’re training your audience to hold off on buying right away at full price, because the game is gonna be 50% off in a couple of weeks anyway.

I used to buy non-Nintendo published games at full price; but not anymore.  Even indie titles on Switch are basically guaranteed to price collapse in just a matter of weeks (or even days!) after launch.  You’d have to be a total mug to buy non-Nintendo games on day 1 anymore! Especially with Gamepass as well!

Short-term gain, long-term pain.  You reap what you sow though.

Edited April 20, 2021 by Dcubed

[Sheikah]

42 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Rapid price drops are ultimately a bit of a poisoned chalice for the publisher/developer.  Sure, you make more money in the short-term, but in the long-term? You’re training your audience to hold off on buying right away at full price, because the game is gonna be 50% off in a couple of weeks anyway.

I used to buy non-Nintendo published games at full price; but not anymore.  Even indie titles on Switch are basically guaranteed to price collapse in just a matter of weeks (or even days!) after launch.  You’d have to be a total mug to buy non-Nintendo games on day 1 anymore! Especially with Gamepass as well!

Short-term gain, long-term pain.  You reap what you sow though.

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.

Edited April 20, 2021 by Sheikah

[Dcubed]

1 hour ago, Sheikah said:

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.

Rapid price drops aren’t unique to less critically acclaimed games.  Even GOW 2018 saw heavy discounts within mere weeks after launch.  Going by your logic, GOW shouldn’t have been discounted so quickly (and I do agree that it shouldn’t have been); but it too saw the same fate as every other major release.

Doom Eternal is another great example of a critically acclaimed game; now available for free on Gamepass and around just £15 at retail on most platforms.  That’s just ridiculous! The game is barely a year old, and yet Bethesda/Microsoft basically make nothing on it anymore!

But that’s what happens when the big developers & publishers constantly train people to wait out for these massive price collapses.  And no game is safe, not even the most critically acclaimed titles.

Nintendo games hold their value, not just because of their quality (and not because of some crazy pixie magic), but also because they have resisted the urge to take those short-term gains and have trained people to NOT expect rapid price reductions.  As such, their games continue to sell at full price for years, sometimes even decades!

Edited April 20, 2021 by Dcubed

[Sheikah]

1 hour ago, Dcubed said:

Rapid price drops aren’t unique to less critically acclaimed games.  Even GOW 2018 saw heavy discounts within mere weeks after launch.  Going by your logic, GOW shouldn’t have been discounted so quickly (and I do agree that it shouldn’t have been); but it too saw the same fate as every other major release.

Doom Eternal is another great example of a critically acclaimed game; now available for free on Gamepass and around just £15 at retail on most platforms.  That’s just ridiculous! The game is barely a year old, and yet Bethesda/Microsoft basically make nothing on it anymore!

But that’s what happens when the big developers & publishers constantly train people to wait out for these massive price collapses.  And no game is safe, not even the most critically acclaimed titles.

Nintendo games hold their value, not just because of their quality (and not because of some crazy pixie magic), but also because they have resisted the urge to take those short-term gains and have trained people to NOT expect rapid price reductions.  As such, their games continue to sell at full price for years, sometimes even decades!

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.

Edited April 20, 2021 by Sheikah

[Dcubed]

You don’t need to co-ordinate every publisher to do this; you just need to have some confidence & enough faith in the inherent value of your product to not chase the standard industry price collapse trend.

Nintendo have been able to do this.  Yacht Club Games did this successfully with Shovel Knight; Team Cherry did this with Hollow Knight and Playtonic did this successfully with both Yooka Laylee titles.  It can be done.  You don’t HAVE to follow the wider industry trend with Race To The Bottom pricing.

[Hero-of-Time]

The second Yooka Laylee game got discounted pretty quickly, both digitally and at retail. 

The examples given are the exception and not really the norm. Yeah, it can be done but when digital shops are flooded with games on a daily basis, the only way to get noticed when you’re a small fish in a big pond is to slash the price of your game. There have been a fair few stories from publishers/developers having to do this on the eShop just in order to get seen. 

Ultimately, the likes of Game Pass, PS Now, GWG, PS+, FTP games, Apple Arcade and heavy digital sales that were pushed by Steam, all have eroded the vale of games to the point where everyone wants either something for nothing or at least very little. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve heard on various podcasts people say they love the look of a game but will wait until it goes on deep sale, especially indie games, which are really the developers who could do with day 1 support.

Iwata’s speech/warning about games being free, the race to the bottom and games being devalued has certainly come true. It’s why I find it baffling that a lot of the industry agreed with his sentiment back then and yet here we are 10 years later and the industry praises the subscription services that are doing the exact damage that Iwata spoke of. 

I can see why people don’t want to pay top dollar for games these days. As discussed many times before, a lot of games are buggy messes, released too early and need numerous updates for the thing to run well. If publishers and developers want consumers to lay down their hard earned cash on day one then they need to show that they are releasing a finished product. Days Gone is a good example of this. Why pay full price when you could wait a few months, get it cheaper and have a better version of it?

Broken games, lack of ownership, software being devalued, gaming becoming a throwaway experience...the industry is a mess right now.  

 

[Sheikah]

42 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

You don’t need to co-ordinate every publisher to do this; you just need to have some confidence & enough faith in the inherent value of your product to not chase the standard industry price collapse trend.

Nintendo have been able to do this.  Yacht Club Games did this successfully with Shovel Knight; Team Cherry did this with Hollow Knight and Playtonic did this successfully with both Yooka Laylee titles.  It can be done.  You don’t HAVE to follow the wider industry trend with Race To The Bottom pricing.

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.

[Ronnie]

18 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

Tell me, you think keeping Days Gone at 60 quid for the entirety of the generation would have worked out for them?

Of course not, because gamers have been trained for years to wait for price cuts. Had the industry (Nintendo apart) not shifted to a race to the bottom model of pricing then Days Gone staying at or near full price would have done fine. It wasn't the best game but it was far from a bad one in terms of quality. 

[Sheikah]

Of course not, because gamers have been trained for years to wait for price cuts. Had the industry (Nintendo apart) not shifted to a race to the bottom model of pricing then Days Gone staying at or near full price would have done fine. It wasn't the best game but it was far from a bad one in terms of quality. 

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.

[Ronnie]

5 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

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.

Why not? What's that suggestion based on, the quality of the game?

Quote

So even if it just stayed at £60 forever, a lot of people would never have bought it.

How do you know this? Given Nintendo games prove otherwise.

And don't say that Nintendo games = good quality, because whilst that's true, there's plenty of equal quality games out there that sell for bargain basement prices shortly after.

[Josh64]

I'm certainly wary of buying non Nintendo games at launch for this reason as I have been burned a few times, now it's better to wait a month or two as in nearly every case there is some form of price drop. I remember Impossible Lair dropped really quickly but I didn't mind as I like supporting them, Kingdom Hearts 3 really left me sour, I got that launch day for £49.99 and a few months later it was £29.99 rrp - I saw it in CEX today for a fiver! 

Elsewhere, does anyone think the price of labo will go up in years to come or be something no one gives a shit about ala Wii Mini. I ask because it's not confirmed but seems somewhat likely that most Labo besides the VR kit will be discontinued. 

Quote

[...] the Labo website is no longer up. Instead, going to labo.nintendo.com redirects visitors to a stock store page for the VR Kit. Many are taking this as a sign that no new Labo kits will be released in the future. At worst, it's possible that the entire line could be discontinued soon. Nintendo Enthusiast did some additional research using the Wayback Machine. According to its findings, the Labo webpage vanished on March 5 but was accessible as recently as February 26. The March 5 version of the page only redirected back to the Nintendo home page, however, so at the very least the VR Kit is still getting some advertisement. On the other hand, locating the other Labo Kits requires a bit of digging.

I also saw on Reddit in the last few days a lot of people in America have been finding brand new Labo massively discounted. I doubt we'll get that here though as I haven't seen it in any shops since a few months after it launched. 

Edited April 20, 2021 by Josh64

[Sheikah]

How do you know this? Given Nintendo games prove otherwise. And don't say that Nintendo games = good quality, because whilst that's true, there's plenty of equal quality games out there that sell for bargain basement prices shortly after

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.

[Hero-of-Time]

7 minutes ago, Josh64 said:

I am certainly wary of buying non Nintendo games at launch for this reason as I have been burned a few times, now it's better to wait a month or two and in nearly every case there is some form of price drop. I remember Impossible Lair dropped really quickly but I didn't mind as I like supporting them but Kingdom Hearts 3 really left me sour, I got that launch day for £49.99 and a few months later it was £29.99 rrp - I saw it in CEX today for a fiver! 

It was the same with Resident Evil 3 Remake. That dropped really fast when it was released last year but like you I didn’t mind as I was happy to support Capcom and the franchise. 

You mention KH being a fiver and this brings up another good point about games being cut in price in a speedy fashion and that is their resale value. These days unless you trade a game in within the first month then it’s probably not worth trading in at all. I was thinking of getting rid of a load on my PS4 games but seeing how little I would get for them I figure I may as well just keep a hold of them. 

[Ronnie]

5 minutes ago, Sheikah said:

The 'not worth £60' assessment is based on what else £60 can get you, and what you're getting for it. And it's relative to people's wages too - £60 is a lot of money. And now Sony charges £70 for their games. If Days Gone released now it would be priced £70. You really think that's worth it?

If I can get Zelda BOTW for £50 how can you argue £60 is worth it for Days Gone?

There's no one "correct" price for Days Gone, but the point is that a lot of people would not think it was worth £60. IMO Days Gone was not worth £60 at launch, especially with the bugs.

I don't understand the bolded part. They're both big openworld games with dozens of hours of content in them, so why isn't Days Gone worth a similar price to BOTW? Obviously most people would argue there's a difference in quality between the two but that's ultimately subjective, and is obviously not a good way of pricing games.

The bugs argument absolutely, but putting that aside, sure I don't see why a big AAA openworld game isn't worth £60.

If people spend a tenner (more like 20 in London) to watch a 2 hour film in the cinema, getting 40-50+ hours of interactive content from a game like Days Gone for £60 doesn't seem a stretch at all.

[Sheikah]

I don't understand the bolded part. They're both big openworld games with dozens of hours of content in them, so why isn't Days Gone worth a similar price to BOTW? Obviously most people would argue there's a difference in quality between the two but that's ultimately subjective, and is obviously not a good way of pricing games.The bugs argument absolutely, but putting that aside, sure I don't see why a big AAA openworld game isn't worth £60.

If people spend a tenner (more like 20 in London) to watch a 2 hour film in the cinema, getting 40-50+ hours of interactive content from a game like Days Gone for £60 doesn't seem a stretch at all.

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.

[Jonnas]

I fear we're clogging up the Switch thread. Maybe a thrip is in order? Should I ask a mod to create a new thread about videogame prices?

9 hours ago, Sheikah said:

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.

The Days Gone developer isn't making a rational argument, nor a measured analysis of the industry. He's venting about how things work. He's only describing how "success" is measured internally at Sony, and associated frustrations. He didn't decide the 60-70€ price tag, the publisher did. Hell, the dev himself acknowledges that buying any game at launch is a hard sell, but that's what it takes to achieve success. When you combine it with how much their customers are encouraged to not buy games at launch, it makes even less sense to expect any new game to make a dent during that time.

I see the argument that the game may have been overpriced, but isn't that part of the problem too? Why not release the game at around 30€, and letting it stay at that price? Let it accrue clout, and any sale made after the game's reputation improves becomes significant. My general point is that games shouldn't drop their permanent price the way they do, whether they started at 70 or 20.

(And it's an interesting contradiction. If Days Gone was buggy at launch, but then got better with patches and fixes over the next year... then doesn't that mean the game actually got cheaper as it got better? The more time and work they spend on fixing the game, the less money they make out of it)

6 hours ago, Sheikah said:

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.

[...]

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.

The only thing any publisher needs to do what Nintendo does with prices is confidence, and a willingness to be patient. The latter is missing whenever mentions maximising profits (because we all know that phrase actually means "maximise short term profits"). I think Sony could easily let God of War stay at 60€ for a long time, with very occasional sales and discounts, they just decided not to go that route, instead devaluing it permanently in a year.

And honestly, it doesn't even need to be exactly like Nintendo's extreme, because Red Dead Redemption 2 is still 60€ despite it being as old as GoW. In fact, it's doing what I think GoW should be doing.

2 hours ago, Sheikah said:

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.

Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, and some other indie darlings only get very tepid discounts during sales. While some 20€ games have to aim for 75% discounts, I've never seen Shovel Knight dip below 25%. Hollow Knight I've seen at 50% but even that's getting rarer. That's what DCubed means I assume, they're pricey for the market they're in.

2 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

The second Yooka Laylee game got discounted pretty quickly, both digitally and at retail. 

That one still costs 30€, from what I see. Wasn't that the launch price? I could swear the first one is the one that still costs around 40€, I remember being surprised that Impossible Lair had a lower price than that at launch.

Or are we talking about different things? It's permanent lowering of prices I'm arguing against. Occasional discounts and sales are fine.

[Sheikah]

@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.

[Hero-of-Time]

11 minutes ago, Jonnas said:

That one still costs 30€, from what I see. Wasn't that the launch price? I could swear the first one is the one that still costs around 40€, I remember being surprised that Impossible Lair had a lower price than that at launch.

Or are we talking about different things? It's permanent lowering of prices I'm arguing against. Occasional discounts and sales are fine.

It’s constantly on sale over here in the UK, both retail and digital. It may as well have a permanent price cut. There are a lot of indie games like this. When a new sale starts you just know it’s going to be part of it.

[Jonnas]

1 hour ago, Sheikah said:

@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.

I feel like we took different things from the Days Gone comment. You saw it as him complaining that people didn't buy the game at launch, whereas I saw it as him complaining about arbitrary industry expectations. The common ground is agreeing that the way that game was sold was unfair for both developer and consumer. And not even that lucrative for the publisher, I bet.

By the way, from the way that developer was talking, I thought Days Gone had suffered a permanent price decrease (hence why he highlights buying it at launch), but... it seems not? The game is still at 70€ at the store (just checked the Portuguese one). So it really is just arbitrary expectations?

I see the "10% discount during launch weekend" a lot in GOG and Steam. Is that not a thing for PS and Xbox? I know big Switch games never do it (even third party exclusives), but we know how Nintendo is.

1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

It’s constantly on sale over here in the UK, both retail and digital. It may as well have a permanent price cut. There are a lot of indie games like this. When a new sale starts you just know it’s going to be part of it.

Huh, in Portugal I rarely see discounts like that in retail. There are occasional ones (like when the Mario&Luigi remake was 10€ for a week on a major chain), but they're quite uncommon.

But I do see these two games discounted in digital stores almost as often as Capcom games, it's true.

[Ronnie]

3 hours ago, Sheikah said:

You don't see why a game of lower quality with bugs isn't worth £60? Why would it be worth £60?

I've already said that games releasing with bugs is a big problem in the industry, but it's a separate issue.

Who determines "quality" and therefore what the RRP of a game should be? That's a ridiculously unfeasible way of determining retail price. 

Edited April 20, 2021 by Ronnie