What's The Next Big Pop Cultural Push?

[Ruin Explorer]

From memory I read an article a typical PS2 game cost 4 million to make.

If that's true, a typical PS2 game would have to sell 270k-ish copies just to break even, which was pretty high sales numbers back then.

And PS2 benefited from an insanely large install base, much, much larger than other machines which must have had similar development costs. So that seems a little high to me but I don't know.

Adjusted for inflation most expensive back then is close to typical now for AAA.

Do you mean game prices or development costs? Presumably game prices? Because it's definitely not true of development costs.

From a consumer perspective if every game was $500 then every game would need to have 500 hours of fun gameplay - minimum. Like, that is serious, "I bought a Switch just for Breath of the Wild," level territory.

Yeah game companies have been doing tons of research on whether they can increase game prices for like, 20 years now. And what they consistently find is that if it's more than about $10/decade of increase, the unit sales are likely to absolutely plummet. Going up to something like $500 you'd probably sell like 1% as many copies as expected, if even that.

 

[Zardnaar]

If that's true, a typical PS2 game would have to sell 270k-ish copies just to break even, which was pretty high sales numbers back then.

And PS2 benefited from an insanely large install base, much, much larger than other machines which must have had similar development costs. So that seems a little high to me but I don't know.


Do you mean game prices or development costs? Presumably game prices? Because it's definitely not true of development costs.


Yeah game companies have been doing tons of research on whether they can increase game prices for like, 20 years now. And what they consistently find is that if it's more than about $10/decade of increase, the unit sales are likely to absolutely plummet. Going up to something like $500 you'd probably sell like 1% as many copies as expected, if even that.

Development costs.

Games are under priced if anything imho. It's why they're going heavy on micro transactions and playing it safe with IP.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Games are under priced if anything imho.

They really are not for the profits they're pulling in and the sales numbers they're doing.

You seem to be just completely ignoring literally half the equation.

 

[Zardnaar]

They really are not for the profits they're pulling in and the sales numbers they're doing.

You seem to be just completely ignoring literally half the equation.

Think you'll find a lot of those profits ate on a few titles and via microtransactions.

People complain about lot boxes, microtransactions etc but without them I suspect without them you should be oaying double or more for the games.

Consumers may not be willing to pay that which means you would have vastly less games selection.

This generation is already notorious for it's relative lack of good titles vs PS2 or PS3/360.

If the few good games very few are exclusive. Hell a good chunk of the games played are older titles. 2023 7/10 iirc were older titles.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Think you'll find a lot of those profits ate on a few titles and via microtransactions.

No, I'm accounting for that. I'm not randomly assigning numbers, dude. I'm talking about from the actual sales.

People complain about lot boxes, microtransactions etc but without them I suspect without them you should be oaying double or more for the games.

I don't think so.

I think the opposite would actually be true - we'd be paying the same for games, but games would have significantly production teams and budgets. And I think that would be a lot healthier than the insanely inflated production teams and demented budgets we have today.

Because you seem to be unaware of how people respond to prices. $50 and $70 are relatively similar, but $100 is something else, and $200 is something else to that. 90% of people just never make casual purchases over about $100. Even fewer would spend $200.

So those prices just wouldn't work if you wanted to sell millions of copies.

Consumers may not be willing to pay that which means you would have vastly less games selection.

Nope. That's an irrational belief. We'd see smaller budgets on games, which, ironically would mean we'd likely see more varied games, and more risky games.

This generation is already notorious for it's relative lack of good titles vs PS2 or PS3/360.

No, it isn't. Why say something obviously wrong and silly like that?

We're literally in an videogame RPG golden age, and we've got insanely good games everywhere, and you're claiming there's a "relative lack of good titles". Absolutely impossible to justify. You cannot argue this or provide any evidence to support it. I could destroy this ridiculous idea on indie titles alone - I wouldn't even need to use AAA titles!

 

[trappedslider]

Maybe I should start a general video game thread

 

[Zardnaar]

No, I'm accounting for that. I'm not randomly assigning numbers, dude. I'm talking about from the actual sales.


I don't think so.

I think the opposite would actually be true - we'd be paying the same for games, but games would have significantly production teams and budgets. And I think that would be a lot healthier than the insanely inflated production teams and demented budgets we have today.

Because you seem to be unaware of how people respond to prices. $50 and $70 are relatively similar, but $100 is something else, and $200 is something else to that. 90% of people just never make casual purchases over about $100. Even fewer would spend $200.

So those prices just wouldn't work if you wanted to sell millions of copies.


Nope. That's an irrational belief. We'd see smaller budgets on games, which, ironically would mean we'd likely see more varied games, and more risky games.


No, it isn't. Why say something obviously wrong and silly like that?

We're literally in an videogame RPG golden age, and we've got insanely good games everywhere, and you're claiming there's a "relative lack of good titles". Absolutely impossible to justify. You cannot argue this or provide any evidence to support it. I could destroy this ridiculous idea on indie titles alone - I wouldn't even need to use AAA titles!

I'm talking about prominent games with high scores. Not indie titles.

We also have games like Concord $400 million and it doesn't exist anymore.

Look at say metacritic and 90%+ games for PS2, 360,PS4. Compare to now and eliminate indie titles (they're indie for a reason). See how many are AA or AAA tgat casuals may actually know about.

You're also missing the point ongames costing $500. I know it's uneconomic but with games posting $100-400 million that's what we should be paying imho.

Game development costs are also why some games tank unless they sell 10 million copies or attract whales to milk. Live service type games.

Game development also takes 5-7 years on big titles. It's one reason you're not getting that many sequels. If they started on Baldurs Gate 4 tomorrow it would arrive in time for PS6.

PS2 for example had 3 main line GTA titles. PS3/Xbox had 2, PS4 had 1 (GTA Online).

High scores on ps5. Note lack of exclusives
Best Games on PS5 - Metacritic

PS3 has 49 games rated 9.0 or higher. PS5 has 28 not many are exclusive.

Best Games on PS3 - Metacritic

Metacritic aggregates music, game, tv, and movie reviews from the leading critics. Only Metacritic.com uses METASCORES, which let you know at a glance how each item was reviewed.

www.metacritic.com

PS2 has 58.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Look at say metacritic and 90%+ games for PS2, 360,PS4. Compare to now and eliminate indie titles (they're indie for a reason).

No, I won't eliminate indies.

Many PS2, 360 and PS3 titles were done indie-sized budgets - i.e. hundreds of thousand or low millions (yeah some indies are even lower).

You're just trying to fiddle your way out of this. You know you're wrong and the idea that games are "worse now" is an absolute joke.

Game development costs are also why some games tank unless they sell 10 million copies

In order to tank unless you sold 10m copies, you'd need to spend $490 million dollars on development lol.

Not even Concord did that. The only game I'm aware of that's even rumoured to have a budget near $490m is Destiny 2.

So no, that's nonsense.

Game development also takes 5-7 years on big titles.

PS3 has 49 games rated 9.0 or higher. PS5 has 28 not many are exclusive.

Dude...

Do you not see how these figures are connected?

 

[Micah Sweet]

My guess is that the zeitgeist is likely to move towards either post-apocalypse (see the success of the Fallout TV show) and/or hopepunk.

The way that the MCU manages to remain relevant is that they don't make just "superhero movies" so they can play around with genre a bit more and lean a bit more towards whatever way the zeitgeist is flowing.

I'm always in the market for more post-apocalyptic content.

 

[KYRON45]

Anyone know where i can find statistics about video games?