How Much Is Too Much?

[Hero-of-Time]

A week ago Jason Schreier posted this article about the cost of games.

Quote

Hiking up prices will cause players to be even more selective in their game choices, which certainly won't lead to more growth. Grand Theft Auto VI and other top titles can certainly get away with it, but can the latest good-but-not-great game from Xbox?

Clair Obscur, Blue Prince and Split Fiction are three very different titles, but they have a lot in common. They are all clear, focused games made by relatively small teams with specific goals. All three use commercially available technology (the Unreal and Unity engines) rather than reinventing the wheel in expensive ways. None of them need to sell 10 million copies to make up for a bloated budget, so they can all take risks that wouldn't be tolerated on a $200 million project.

All three of these top-rated games are designed for a very specific type of player rather than trying to appeal to everyone, which is something you can only afford to do if you're not spending nine figures to make a game. It's why the developers of Clair Obscur popped champagne at selling 1 million copies while EA declared Dragon Age: The Veilguard a failure for hitting similar numbers.
Another thing you can only afford to do if you're not spending nine figures is to sell your game for $50 or $30. Is it a coincidence that the best-reviewed games of 2025 are all cheaper than normal boxed products? Maybe. But it's also evidence that smaller scale and focus can equate to quality.

Best of luck to Xbox and anyone else who tries to sell games for $80. But with countless people worried about the economic landscape and the continued uncertainty around Trump's tariffs, turning games into a luxury good may prove to be a fatal mistake.

It's a good article and its been interesting reading other peoples thoughts on the subject and how people justify their purchases, not that they need justifying as people are free to spend their money as they see fit. I guess the article has been made due to Xbox raising prices across the board, Nintendo jacking up their software prices and games like Split Fiction and Expedition 33 releasing showing that you can still make and release games at a more consumer friendly price.

When Sony raised their prices to £60 a game I flat out refuse to pay and instead waited for a discount or used my money on other games. Thanks to the amount of games out there, it's easy to find something else to play. The feeling of FOMO is no longer a thing that bothers me and so I'm happy to wait to play new releases. 

So my question is this: Do you have a limit of what you are willing to spend on a new game release?

[Happenstance]

Very rarely do I buy a game at launch anymore due to the price. Compare that to just a few years ago when I would preorder any game that interested me and it’s quite sad to think about. Anytime I do get one at launch now it’s usually after buying discounted top up cards to bring the price back down to something more reasonable and even then I’ll probably pay for them over 3 months just to take the sting off.

I get the argument that games can be more expensive to make etc etc but all that’s going to happen is these rising prices will drive people away from gaming. Games may be more expensive to make (and even that doesn’t have to be the case) but we as consumers aren’t exactly rolling in money at the moment either. Nintendo will be the interesting one to watch for me as their discounts are not exactly meaningful or common. An $80 game going down to $60 wouldn’t convince me to buy it.

[Hero-of-Time]

28 minutes ago, Happenstance said:

Very rarely do I buy a game at launch anymore due to the price. Compare that to just a few years ago when I would preorder any game that interested me and it’s quite sad to think about. Anytime I do get one at launch now it’s usually after buying discounted top up cards to bring the price back down to something more reasonable and even then I’ll probably pay for them over 3 months just to take the sting off.

Yeah, this very much mirrors myself. I always jumped on games day 1 that I had an interest in but a lot of the time I never really got around to playing them. It's why I have a decent sized backlog. A couple of years ago I started tracking my gaming purchases and then made an effort to keep on top of them by marking them off an excel chart. 

As for buying games on release day in recent times, again, I'm a bit like you. Both Final Fantasy Rebirth and Astrobot were bought on day 1 but Final Fantasy was done with an Amazon voucher I got for Christmas and Astrobot was bought with Nectar points I had saved up. I've yet to buy any game at full price since all of these price increases occurred. 

[Cube]

Getting Split Fiction for my birthday a little over a month after launch is the closest I've had a game to release day in years. Even then, I tend to ask for discounted games for gifts rather than getting them myself. 

Getting over the hype of playing a game early has been a great thing for me. Having little interest in online (which was further reduced by costs) has also helped. And on top of this, there's also the issues that many games have at launch, with more stuff added over time, so you're getting a better first experience by waiting. When games promise years of content updates, my reaction is more "oh, I can wait to then and play the full thing".

Costs are also why I do my lists, playing lots of old games with the occasional new game. And enjoying older games has made me realise that it doesn't matter when I play a game.

 

 

Also, for using "commercially available technology", Split Fiction is the first game of this generation that has properly wowed me visually. 

[Hero-of-Time]

12 minutes ago, Cube said:

Getting over the hype of playing a game early has been a great thing for me.

I think being part of N-E helps with this. We are a very small community, with most members having partners and kids to support. This means time and money needs to go elsewhere and as such gaming takes a back seat. Sure, we can still discuss new releases but very few of us now get things on day 1 and get sucked into the hype, which in turn stops others from getting sucked in because there is no conversation.  

You look at somewhere like Resetera and a lot of people get a sense of FOMO and buy a game just to be part of the conversation rather than actually wanting to play it. They are desperate to be part of the zeitgeist. 

I think one of the best threads we have on here is the Gaming Diary thread. People on here are playing all kinds of games from different generations and it always makes for a great read.

[Happenstance]

Hopefully the pricing goes the way of the N64 games back then and comes back down. I think there will have to be a substantial push back from gamers though and as has already been said, FOMO is very real and a lot of people will just pay regardless of if they are happy with the price or not.

[Jimbob]

With PlayStation, i've gone down the PS+ route for a lot of my gaming.  And when i get PS+, it's usually on a sale or something.  £120 a year, and you get a heap of games to play isn't too bad value, if you only went this route for your gaming needs.  What's that, £10 a month (ish).  Last game i bought was 2 months back in Assassin's Creed Shadows, and before that was Sonic & Shadow Generations back in October 2024.  I used to get plenty of games Day 1, but that is no longer the case (purchasing that is).

Rest of 2025, 3-5 more games i'm interested in getting.  Death Stranding 2, Metal Gear Solid, Ghost of Yotei, Metroid Prime 4 and Pokemon ZA).  Will any be Day 1, perhaps 2 off that list will be.  Rest i'll wait on a reduction or Christmas monies.  Or wait until CEX has them for a reasonable price and buy then.

Gamepass covers a fair few Day 1 releases, which with them releasing on PS5 (and soon to be Switch 2) means i'll play through Gamepass and save some monies.  Doom Dark Ages is one such game coming to Xbox and PS5.  Cheers to EE for providing Gamepass through my contract, saves me some monies here.

I've noticed the same on Era @Hero-of-Time.  Lot of people buy games partially for FOMO, but you do see some logical peeps who wait for sales and play later on.

Saying that, i'm throwing down £500 on the Switch 2 next month (with a couple accessories) and probably going digital on any purchases to save some monies as well.

Edit: I forgot to add Nintendo onto this.  Nintendo is sort of the one company i make an exception on, and that's mostly because their 1st party games rarely go down in cost.  One prime example we can use here is Breath of the Wild coming to Switch 2 where they are increasing the price for an 8 year old game, and not bundling the DLC.  A game like that is something (around launch anyway) where i'd happily put down £70 to buy as i'd easily get that many hours, if not more from it.

 

Edited Thursday at 03:53 PM by Jimbob
Forgot to add something

[Julius]

The idea put forth by Schreier's title - players having too many options to keep paying an ever-increasing full price for games - is one that I totally agree with and has been rattling around in my head since reading it last week, so thanks for bringing the conversation into focus @Hero-of-Time. 

3 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

So my question is this: Do you have a limit of what you are willing to spend on a new game release?

I think it really depends on the game for me. There are some I'll wait on, others I'll happily drop £70 for on Day 1, heck there are some I will gladly drop more than that on. 

Like yourself, I've definitely noticed myself reining in my spending on games over the last year and a half or so (honestly, probably in large part to @drahkon's spending breakdowns and similar threads on ResetEra making me much more conscious of my spending - thanks for that drahkon ), and I think the main takeaway for me has been the process of becoming more selective about my purchases. It is less about what I want on my shelf or what I want to say I've played, guided by others or influencers or historic Metacritic scores, and more about what I want to make time for and experience. I'll never get to everything, and I think that truly setting in over the course of the last few years is why I'm happy for things to go this way in terms of pricing – it forces my hand and steadies my spending more than I might've otherwise. 

Because I'm at the point now where I have a physical and digital backlog I could easily lean on for several years of gaming, and I think threads like the Gaming Diary helps me focus in on certain titles I already own (the pledge), and also just be more realistic about the time I have for games. 

For me, FOMO is no longer the driving factor behind a Day 1 purchase: it's my own curiosity. Maybe it's because I still feel relatively new to it all, only really getting into games after starting college and joining N-E, but I still really enjoy the excitement of a new release, a Day 1 conversation, seeing how broken a game is at launch first-hand, discovering new things for myself and forming my own opinion before a general consensus is reached, etc. – but I'm just as happy voicing my opinions on older games too. N-E is a special corner of the internet for me which feels so distant from everything else purely because, while sometimes there are disagreements and differences in opinion, I think having your opinion actually feel heard and the potential for a back and forth with someone whose taste in games you understand and trust, and whose opinion you feel more intimately grounded in, is much more important than the number of people who see or read your opinion when you scream out into the aether that is the rest of the internet. There's a lack of dialogue which just seems sad to me. Hell, even a place like ResetEra is too big for me (which is why I've never bother to sign up, amongst other reasons) because it feels like watching hundreds of different conversations happen in a lunch hall all at once, and because of the speed of conversation, it just seems so unnecessarily heated and venomous at times. 

But back to the topic at hand, I think for me it's just about what I'm interested in, at the time I'm interested in them. I think back to November 2019 when Fallen Order, Pokémon Sword/Shield and Shenmue III came out in the space of a few days – I quickly devoured Fallen Order, felt a bit burnt out on games, forced myself to plough through Pokémon Sword, and Shenmue III TO THIS DAY sits on my shelf unplayed (maybe one for a pledge at this point I guess), despite my affinity for the first two games. Listing out what AAA games I'm planning to pick up Day 1 and loosely structuring my gaming calendar around those games helps a lot, and after the Switch 2 launch there is a busy period between August and October where I think things will get a bit crazy (Mafia: The Old Country, potentially Gears, and the Snake Eater remake all in August, and then Ghost of Yōtei at the start of October), but otherwise, I'm just going to watch how things go. Split Fiction I've waited on because I'll play it with my brother at some point over the summer, so why pick it up before then? Nightreign will likely be a Day 1 purchase, but similarly, that's one I'll play with my brother (and potentially my friends, if I can get them onboard). I've also got a gaming market I'm going to this month, but have very particular games I'm keeping an eye out for (and will otherwise just be looking to pick up some more Pokémon cards). 

My spending over the last few weeks I think has been a bit messier than I expected, and is perhaps a prime example of how quickly it can get out of hand, and I also think Xbox's messy curation is probably built on catching people out somewhat with FOMO (and a lack of launch period reviews) – I was interested in pretty much all the games they brought to PS5 last month, and even being sensible I ended up picking up a game I didn't realise I wouldn't be getting to soon.

Indy is on hold until I'm in the mood and the price comes down a bit. Forza Horizon 5 I picked up at launch, the Premium Edition at that, because it's going to be a game I probably sink hundreds of hours into and play with friends, and so early access, the expansions, etc., I'm going to realistically buy at some point anyways. Oblivion is the one I regret picking up because I was actually planning to play it next after MGSV, but I missed concerns about performance on PS5 (which I guess I should've expected considering, well, Bethesda) and so that's just sitting on my PS5 waiting to be patched – in the meantime, I'm holding off on Clair Obscur because I've spent quite a bit. Lunar Remastered I forgot to cancel my pre-order (I don't normally pre-order from Amazon) but didn't send back because I know I'll find a way to make time for them, because I'm really curious about them. 

So, yeah, it's a mixed approach from me. Some games are Day 1, others aren't, and I think indies and AA have a real opportunity to take advantage of these climbing AAA prices and gain a more serious foothold in the industry. You know, aimed at the 10% of us sitting outside of the GTA Online/COD/FIFA/Fortnite/etc. audience which makes up so much of the wider gaming audience today. It's hard to not be a little jealous of those crowds when these price hikes are going on, honestly! 

Edited Thursday at 10:35 AM by Julius

[Agent Gibbs]

Its very rare i will buy a game at launch or full price these days. Launch is usually a mess as theres an overreliance on patches and using initial users as beta testers, then once the games fixed its discounted, so i am not entirely sure why anyone should buy at launch.

That said there are some exceptions, Zelda games for one and oddities, like Indiana Jones which i bought on the PS5 launch, which was a year after PC and xbox - full price but any issues should (and were) fixed.

Would i pay the £80 to £100? that depends entirely on the game and the replay or length of the game. A zelda or RPG i'll sink over 100 hours into? assuming the quality and reviews are there? probably, it seems value for money. If Destiny was Launched tomorrow and it included the expansions? yes knowing its replay value would be there.

But shorter games? even the latest FIFA/COD etc? probably not, the single player needs a minimum length, if theres multiplayer its normally awful at launch and entirely dependant on user base?

Now a days my backlog is shorter, but consists of replays of older games on a SteamDeck or catching up with missed single player games like Spiderman 2 and God of War 2, both i waited about 9months to buy and play. Hell I have a sealed copy of Pokemon Violet because i was bought the double pack and saved that to replay with the DLC and just haven't gotten to it yet.

Steam has been my store front and first party games, or games that i couldn't run well enough on Deck are what i've bought for consoles.

I hope the prices peak and drop, indi devs have proved far better lately, massive AAA games are tick boxes for execs usually, or become that and feel soul less, so aren't worth the cost to justify bloated staff (exec) pay. If games like Expdition 33 can blow AAA games out of the water with 1/10 of the staff, it seems hard to justify the price.

Wierdly GTAVI at £100 almost seems like it would be worth it by my own criteria, it will have the longevity and long single player experience, but the abject milking of fans with GTAV leave such a taste in my mouth i don't want to. It will entirely depend on if my mates buy it and play it at launch, combined with if a progression hit in not buying it will kill multiplayer with friends*

*The whole reason i don't buy the latest COD/Destiny killer or whatever these days is because two or three of my mates seem to either be nepo babies and can play all day, or WFH and play on lunches etc and are so far along, by the time i join they are bored.

[Glen-i]

I only buy a game full price if I know I want to play as soon as I buy it.

So, mostly Nintendo stuff really. And only select series these days. Silver lining of everything there going open world is that it's a lot less tempting if I can tell it's gonna be crap. Everything else goes on the wishlist until a sale rolls around.

Hell, with Virtual Game Cards, I can just borrow digital games off of DCubed. He's got so many Switch 1 games to play, he probably won't even notice I've nicked something until I'm long done with it! Ironically, it might end up being a cheaper generation for me...

[drahkon]

2 hours ago, Julius said:

(honestly, probably in large part to @drahkon's spending breakdowns and similar threads on ResetEra making me much more conscious of my spending - thanks for that drahkon )

You're welcome. Now go and spend more money on another limited edition DualSense

3 hours ago, Jimbob said:

With PlayStation, i've gone down the PS+ route for a lot of my gaming.  And when i get PS+, it's usually on a sale or something.  £120 a year, and you get a heap of games to play isn't too bad value, if you only went this route for your gaming needs.  What's that, £10 a month (ish). 

Same.

Gone are my days of being there day one. It was never FOMO for me, though. Didn't care if other people were able to play before I was, I just wanted to experience the games I'm interested in as quickly as possible for myself  

While that is still true these days to a certain extent, it's much less intense. If I can't find a good pre-order or release-day offer (i.e. 15-20€ off) I just don't bother until a sale.

[Dcubed]

I don’t think there’s really a blanket answer to this question, it really depends on time, circumstance and the game in question.

Switch 2 games are very expensive in general, but you do have to consider the cost of the media it ships on… in many respects, we’re back in SNES/N64 territory; with similar pricing and a similarity expensive storage medium.  I can’t really say that it’s a ripoff or not worth the money, because you are paying for the hardware as well as the software in these cases.  And digital versions do come with an accompanying discount.

Same goes for limited release physical games, where the higher price is more understandable because of the limited nature of its print run reducing economies of scale.  I bought the physical GBA version of Shantae Advance for £50 and I deemed it to be worth it, despite the fact that I could get the upcoming digital release on Switch/PC for much cheaper instead; because the limited nature of an aftermarket GBA cartridge release comes with an inherent cost.  And the novelty of having a brand new release of a long-lost GBA game comes with inherent value attached to that.  Not the same thing as paying £50 for a digital download of the same GBA ROM.

That being said, the rise in prices for Switch 2 will have an impact on my spending habits.  I’ve already heavily cut down on my 3rd party gaming purchases over the past couple of years or so, but there is no way that I am going to buy any 3rd party Switch 2 game (or game for any other current platform) at full price; unless it’s either an exclusive title, or TRULY an exceptional must-have purchase (like Okami 2 for instance).  Because I know it’s gonna price collapse soon enough anyway.  I also have to consider the SD card storage costs as well, which will severely limit what 3rd party games I buy, especially if Switch 2 really can’t support SD Express cards larger than 2TB.

For first party Nintendo titles though? I’ll likely continue buying most of them on day 1, because I know they’re gonna be great, and I know that they’ll rarely go on sale anyway.  That being said, I may wait on re-releases to have the occasional 33% off sale, we’ll see.

Edited Thursday at 02:26 PM by Dcubed

[bob]

I think the last game I bought 'Day 1' was Spider-Man 2 when it released on PC, so I'm not sure if you can even call that day 1, since it was a port of a game that came out a year before. I refunded it anyway when my laptop wouldn't run it. 

 

Before that, I think I bought Animal Crossing pretty close to launch, and so paid full price. 

 

Other than that, I think I buy so few games these days, that there really is no point buying new, full price ones. I'm so far behind, I can usually wait until they're on sale on a console a couple of generations behind.