• Newsteinleo@midwest.social
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    1 month ago

    If you assume 25% of player will buy at 80, 50% will buy at $50, and 25% will buy at $20. Per 100 buyers they stand to make $5,000. However if they start at $50 with 75% of buys buying at that price, they will make $4,250. This is about maximizing profit by selling to fans with deep pockets first then discounting latter to captured the rest of the player base.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 month ago

      That tactic would work if it was a multiplayer game or a major franchise but with a single player cookie cutter game there’s no urgency for me to get started and no FOMO. It just isn’t that interesting of an IP

      • Newsteinleo@midwest.social
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        1 month ago

        right, so that would put you into the 50% or the lower 25%, but there are people that will buy higher price, and as long as there is 1% willing to buy before the first sale it is worth it for them.

      • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        People still will, because lots of people spoil, some like watching streaming etc. When new stuff comes out and I’m not ready to start it, it often also involves stop visiting certain communities, discords, etc.

    • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      So if we assume the world is a magical place where poor people don’t exist, it makes perfect sense.

      • Newsteinleo@midwest.social
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        1 month ago

        That is exactly how people making these decisions think. Its all numbers to them, there are no people involved in their thinking.

    • billwashere@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      But what they don’t take into account is that 75% all at once creates an excitement buzz around the game that ends up causing even more sales then would ever happen otherwise. Look at games like Pokémon go or PalWorld that generated so much buzz. I tried both of them because of the hype and I normally wouldn’t have bothered otherwise.

      • Newsteinleo@midwest.social
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        1 month ago

        With a game like there has probably been existence market research to account for how much buzz the game will get. They may even be counting on the buzz to sell more copies at full price.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      1 month ago

      I think I had it on my wish list because I was never going to pay full price and then when it came down in price I looked again at it and I just thought nah, I actually don’t care. So I never bought it.

      They’re not exactly starting from a solid foundation.

      If any game was going to get away with being $80 it’d be something like grand theft auto or one of the next call of duties, not this one. But maybe they’re trailing it on a game that they know will only be moderately successful at best anyway, that way they don’t lose huge amounts of money if it fails to win over players.

  • Owl@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    i will continue to enjoy my indie games that cost me 5€, thanks.

    better yet my free games like warframe that have cost me nothing and given me thousands of hours of enjoyment.

  • SSTF@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Setting aside prices, I’ve seen an unexpected amount of sourness directed at the first game. While the first game wasn’t a greatest of all time RPG and had flaws, I found it overall enjoyable enough and it was clearly a project with some passion that I didn’t regret sinking time into it.

    I expect similar of the sequel, with hopefully improvements based on feedback from the first game. I plan to have fun with the game, and it is a bit tiring to see things like the pricing prompting people to badmouth the game itself when they are separate things.

    Am I going to pay $80? No. No I’m not. This is a single player RPG though. There’s no FOMO of getting left behind on the multiplayer unlocks or the lore of a new season. It’s a singleplayer game. Put it on the wishlist and buy it on a sale. Simple as.

    • zaphod@sopuli.xyz
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      1 month ago

      The first game wasn’t bad, but it didn’t really feel like a full price title.

        • zod000@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          They probably meant that it felt like a game that was stripped down and shallow compared to similar AAA “full price” games and I completely agree. After playing the first one, I wouldn’t only consider buying this new game if it was at least 50% off.

          • ErableEreinte@lemmy.ca
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            1 month ago

            To be clear, I find this rhetoric pretty silly given that price has no influence over a game’s intrinsic qualities and vice versa.
            I’m not arguing for games to be priced higher either, because a lot of that money likely wouldn’t end up going to the devs, but I think the price argument doesn’t stand either way.

            • TheMetaleek@sh.itjust.works
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              1 month ago

              Pricetag sets expectations, simple as that. It is documented that no matter the product, people have more trust in a more expensive product than a cheaper one, even if they are actually identical. And thus, people also rightfully expect more of a more expensive product. Let’s talk about cars for example : if I buy an old overused small one just to get from point A to point B, I’ll be absolutely satisfied if I paid a few hundred bucks, and absolutely not if I paid a few thousands.

              Same with games, if I have a small indie game entertain me somewhat for a few hours, I’ll be super okay if it cost me a few bucks, and super not ok if it cost me 60 or 80 euros. The intrinsic quality may not change, but that was never what was discussed in the first place.

              • ErableEreinte@lemmy.ca
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                1 month ago

                I think the equivalence doesn’t apply, because a car is a functional product and you should expect price to correlate with added features.
                Indie games, as well as AAA, can offer similar quality levels at wildly different prices, so price doesn’t (shouldn’t) enter the equation imo.
                Quality, possible enjoyment and my tastes are what I take into account when buying a game or not, not its price point, so that might be the difference.

            • zod000@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              So, just so I am clear, you think that it is silly to want different amounts of quality or value from products based on how they are priced?

              • ErableEreinte@lemmy.ca
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                1 month ago

                That’s not what I’m saying.
                What I find silly is to expect price to correlate with quality in the video game space, because you have Indies as well as AAA, with wildly different prices, ultimately offering similar qualities. Price shouldn’t come into the equation when talking about a game’s quality or “value” imo.

                • zod000@lemmy.ml
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                  1 month ago

                  I guess this is just a difference in how we look at it. I have for decades now used what I perceive as quality/value to decide whether I should buy a game or whether it may be worth if later if it goes on a steep sale. For example, some AAA game that get polarizing reviews or is known to be very short might be an instance where I’d be not be inclined to pay full price because to me, it wasn’t worth the price. Raising the price of a game to $80 means that I personally will want more value out of it. I just bought a game on Steam yesterday for $20 on sale, which was to me worthwhile. If it had been $80, there is no way I would have bought it.

    • radix@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I’ve always maintained that the first was a fine game that was tanked by the price. It was priced to drive gamepass subs, not sell the game. At $35-40, it would have been received much better, imo. Years later, now that it’s more appropriately priced, it seems to be more well-reviewed.

      Unfortunately the second is going down the same path. It may take 5+ years for the game to be appreciated to its fullest (assuming no glaring issues), through no fault of the devs.

    • Barbecue Cowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 month ago

      It sounds nice, and yeah, that’s primarily publisher responsibility, but developers are allowed to talk to their publishers about pricing strategy. Framing it as if they have zero responsibility is a bit of a cop out. Limited comments and we don’t have the full story, but it makes it kind of sound like they didn’t even bring it up.

  • zecg@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Just as heads up, Obsidian, I’ll require this to be at least 75% off if it’s good and over 20 hours of single-player campaign. If it’s shorter, I can be enticed at 90% off. I’ll wait for a few years, no problem, my family group backlog is in the thousands.

    • Goodeye8@piefed.social
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      1 month ago

      Them: “we don’t set the price”.

      You: “I’ll buy it if you set a lower price”.

      So people don’t even read the headlines anymore?

      • zecg@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        No, I’ve seen it, that is feedback and it should be invaluable to all interested parties, not only those who set the price.

  • notgivingmynametoamachine@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Yar har fiddle dee, 80 bucks a game just ain’t for me, yar har fiddle and fat, I’ll just fucking sail the high seas numbnuts publishers, good job trading the 60 bucks I was willing to pay for the 0 you’ll be getting from me now.

    And remember kids, if buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing.

  • But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Support your local libraries. My city’s library system is so good that I borrow games on release day all the time. You get them for 1-2 weeks, Most games that are older than a few weeks you can keep for up to 3 weeks, which gives me plenty of time to knock them off my list. Im sure I’ll get this one soon enough, im currently playing AC Shadows which I borrowed

    • Psythik@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Borrowing games from the library? How does that even work? Do they give you a Steam login and just change the password every 2 weeks or something?

      • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        There’s these things called consoles, that let you put a disk in, they both contains the game and a license to play it. Though these days some games just sell an empty box with a code to download the game.

        • Joeffect@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Unless it’s a switch 2 then all you get is a key on the cartridge… Biggest waste of time on both sides

          • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            Some games, some are on cart too. Switch 1 is actually probably the best because just about every game is fully playable unlike ps and Xbox which require patches often to run alright. Switch 2 I hear cyberpunk is fully on the cart, but I doubt many publishers are willing to pay for the bigger carts, so we’ll probably see a lot of third parties be just the key, which is ridiculous.

        • Psythik@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          What a bizarre concept. I doubt they’ll ever catch on. We already have computers, and you don’t need any fancy “discs” or “empty boxes” to play games on them, either. Just download what you want straight from the internet.

          • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            It’s great, I can lend my friend the games he doesn’t have, and I can do the same with his games. In this way, we can play many more games than we have the money for. Especially useful since we’re in the US, and internet infrastructure is still poor here, his only option is satellite, which takes far too long to download anything.

            • Psythik@lemm.ee
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              1 month ago

              Yeah but who needs friends when you have millions of random strangers on the internet to talk to? The infrastructure issue is a problem that I’m too urbanized to understand. My neighborhood alone gives me the choice of cable, DSL, fixed wireless, and fiber. Move to a place like this, and you won’t need friends or these newfangled “con-souls”.

  • 4grams@awful.systems
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    1 month ago

    I really enjoyed the first game, not AAA new game price enjoyment though. I mean, I got as much fun out of it while playing as I have anything else, it just wasn’t as rich and deep as a fallout game. I give it a pass since it’s establishing a new universe but as much as I liked it, it’s most certainly a blue light special fallout clone.

    So, asking inflated AAA prices seems, somewhat short sighted. I’d absolutely pay what I did for the first game, 80 bucks is a hard no for me though. I might buy it when it’s cheaper, but by then I’ll likely have seen enough clips, read enough reviews and gotten busy enough to just forget about it.

    Bummer.

    • M137@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      You don’t need to get just new games. Do what a ton of people do: wait till they’re on sale. There is literally no hurry, wait till any game reaches the price point you think its worth. And then you get the best possible version of the game, both in terms of patches, most of the time with DLC included and the modding community has had time to make stuff (if that’s relevant).

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    1 month ago

    Wasn’t the first game entirely average? And now he wants $80 for the sequel.