[RobLach]

That’s not true at all.

Video Games have been growing with such a strong trajectory that what consumers expect at a bare minimum in a new release is a large increase in risk for a game publisher.

For example Super Mario World was made by less than 20 people and sold for $69.99 at launch in 1990. That’s nearly $140 in today’s dollars.

Now take into account that a modern AAA game has at a minimum a 150 person staff, with the more content heavy games breaching 500 people; if your game is a flop your studio is dead despite having years of successes before. The margins at $60 don’t provide enough cushion so publishers are continuously scrambling for extra revenue they can get away with before consumer backlash.

The current model is very fragile and not entirely sustainable. It exploits the passions of recent graduates by giving them salaries 30-40% below market only because they’re working on games, with the work being not at all different than working on spreadsheet software except for having serious crunch-heavy deadlines. The attrition rate over 5 years is over 70%, which also leads to those who merely didn’t leave instead of the most qualified being in leadership positions which makes any changes to processes very difficult.

[falcolas]

Something that's not brought up often with this argument - the sales scope for modern games. Super Mario World was doing well if it broke 10,000 or 100,000 sales. In contrast a major game these days will break 100,000,000 sales.

$60 is also a bit of a red herring, since $60 is the base price for a game - when you start throwing in all of the special features, the price of a game climbs to over twice that amount. And that doesn't even cover the microtransactions not included in the gambling category - 4-5 expansion packs each the price of an indie game, skins, poses, voice lines, etc.

Let's not forget that EA have openly stated to their shareholders that not having loot boxes in their games doesn't affect their revenue. Either they're lying to their shareholders, or to us. I wonder which one it is.

These companies are raking in tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. That's not the sign of a fragile market.

[GVIrish]

> Something that's not brought up often with this argument - the sales scope for modern games. Super Mario World was doing well if it broke 10,000 or 100,000 sales. In contrast a major game these days will break 100,000,000 sales.

Your numbers are way off. Super Mario World sold over 20 million copies worldwide. Every full Super Mario release has sold millions of copies.

Conversely, even the most popular franchises sell in the tens of millions range. GTA V is one of the few approaching the 100 million mark.

Back in the day games were in fact more expensive, but a lot of the cost was in the cartridge. Games were certainly much less expensive in development costs. Modern console game prices have been locked at around $60 for well over a decade. These games are hideously expensive to develop so publishers have resorted to gaining revenue via DLC, microtransactions and loot boxes.

Naturally, publishers have become greedy in this environment and are using these deceptive revenue streams to pad their profits. And really, these practices probably would've arisen even if the price of games kept pace with inflation.

[falcolas]

You're right, I should have worded it differently. Companies went from a market of a few million of potential customers to hundreds of millions (more if you count mobile gamers who are subjected to even more microtransactions) of potential customers.

[jpambrun]

This argument is missing the average amount of unit sold now versus then. Without it these numbers are meaningless.

Edit: As an illustrative example, if we neglect economies of scale we should be paying 5,000-10,000$ for our personal computers.