Capcom’s president and chief operating officer has said he thinks game prices should go up.

Haruhiro Tsujimoto made the comments at this year’s Tokyo Game Show, Nikkei reported. TGS is sponsored by the Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association, a Japanese organisation which aims to support the Japanese industry, which Tsujimoto is currently the chairman of.

“Personally, I feel that game prices are too low,” Tsujimoto said, citing increasing development costs and a need to increase wages.

  • maaj@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    61
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Tell that fucknut Tsujimoto to take a fuckin pay cut if he’s concerned about increasing wages. I’m not paying $80-$90 for a fucking game. Hell, I’m still not completely cool with paying $70

    • Nommer@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      1 year ago

      I’m still not cool with them raising PC games from $50 to $60 almost 20 years ago just because they could and used the console parity excuse due to their licensing fees. I don’t think I’ve bought a AAA game since EA’s stunts around 2012/2013.

      • maaj@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Probably twice this year. Everything else is either a subscription or on sale.

        • Saledovil@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          1 year ago

          The last triple A game I bought at launch was ‘Watchdogs Legion’, to comemorate my new PC. I figured I just build a new computer, so why not celebrate by buying an expensive game. It was a stupid impulse buy.

  • Veraxus@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    57
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    Everyone: “Games are getting WAY too expensive.”

    Out of touch executive: “Games are too cheap! Why are our sales going down? I promised the shareholders infinite growth!”

    • hogart@feddit.nu
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      Games haven’t gotten more expensive since ever. Like I said above, The Original Donkey Kong for the SNES was 66 usd. It releases in 1994.

      • Gabu@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        If you buy a game today, does it come with a free SSD to install it in? Does it have a paper manual and a nice box? Is it even finished? Games aren’t cheaper, you’re just getting scammed.

      • dandi8@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        That’s a very US-centric view, at best. I paid about 23 dollars for a brand new copy of Half-Life 2 in 2004.

        • hogart@feddit.nu
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          I live in Sweden. But saying it cost 799sek in 1994 might not give you a good idea of its cost.

          • dandi8@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Fair enough. Still, games used to be vastly cheaper in my country and the asking price for the basic version of Starfield is 80 USD. There is no way any game is worth this much of my income.

            • hogart@feddit.nu
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              Like I said. The price tag on Donkey Kong from 1994 says 799sek which in today’s market is worth 66 usd. I can’t be arsed to follow index and calculate how much that was in -94 but it’s a lot more than Starfield.

              My only point here is that games haven’t really increased in price ever. Anyone claiming it has, is wrong. We can discuss the other parameters all day with (un)finished products, mtx, bugs, paid dlc etc. The fact still stands that games in 2023 haven’t vastly increased in price at all. And we have a lot of free options now as well that didn’t exist back in the ninetees.

              • Veraxus@kbin.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                In 1994 you were buying a physical, manufactured product which you owned.

                Now you are temporarily licensing access to something that doesn’t exist, can’t be transferred or resold or backed up or modified, has unlimited reproduction potential for no cost, and sells at scales unimaginable in 1994 dwarfing all other consumer markets in total revenue.

                Games are dramatically overpriced.

      • 520@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        1 year ago

        That was as expensive as it was back then because the game released on what is effectively a PCB. Which was expensive to make.

          • 520@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            The expense was probably quite considerable. Not only do you have to have the game ROM on a chip, you would also need Nintendo’s lockout chip too. If your game had a battery save system (DKC did) you would also need to buy a RAM chip and watch battery too. That’s ignoring any enhancement chips as DKC didn’t use any (but many other late generation games did).

            And all that before you get to the fact that the only who could officially make these boards was Nintendo. Meaning there isn’t exactly much competition driving prices down. Sure, Nintendo couldn’t quite take the piss the way they could in the NES days, as Sega was all too eager to try and attract new games for its console, but unless you wanted to completely remake your game, you’re dealing with the big N’s bullshit.

            The boards could probably have been made much cheaper today than in the 90s, as ROM memory was expensive AF, even the couple-of-MB ones used in the consoles of the day.

            There’s a reason PS1 and Saturn games were massively cheaper to buy than N64 games.

  • 108@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    50
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    No matter what price they make games, have no illusion that developers will be paid more. This is to pad C level pockets.

  • Pavidus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    36
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    You know what, I’ll bite. For this to work though, let’s agree on two things. First, the game they’re selling shouldn’t be a hot pile of garbage on day one. Second, I don’t want to even catch a whiff of microtransactions or subscription based models. If we can nail those down, I would be fine with a price increase. As it stands, the sticker price is just the cost of entry in the vast majority of games. They are still bringing in cash well after the initial purchase.

  • bouh@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    36
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    It’s funny how it’s “the game’s are not expensive enough” and not “we don’t know how to manage our or money” or “our profit are too high”. Fuck those capitalists.

    Oh the stupid shit head “games are 100 times more expensive to make now” but you sell thousands times more and there no physical media anymore is irrelevant I guess… Assholes…

    • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      If they weren’t profitable at the current price they wouldn’t be charging the current price.

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      And “budgets keep going up!”

      Whose fault is that, guys? Were those numbers placed on you by a witch’s curse? No. You spent $100M on one game, it made $300M, so you spend $200M on the next game. Games didn’t get twice as hard to make, between those decisions. They didn’t require twice as many people or twice as much time. You’re just treating them like a factory where more capital in means more revenue out.

      The original Doom was made in nine months by a team that fits in an elevator. Yeah, it’s simpler than modern games, but they had to make the nearly-unprecedented engine and all their own tools as they went. It’s not like anything’s harder, now. People have basically recreated that seminal title as solo one-week game jam projects. A modern handful of professional computer nerds can pick from a handful of modern high-end toolchains and start banging out content, today.

      If the market for video games only supported six-digit budgets - there would still be video games. Big ones, fancy ones, creative ones, whatever. Would they be the spectacles that currently get advertised to death? Nope. But they also wouldn’t produce as many unstable bug-fests as those sprawling mega-projects. Nor would they be announced in 1999, previewed in 2006, delayed in 2017, and launched to middling reviews in 2025.

      Studios that aren’t injected with obscene capital and forced to deliver “AAA” money-trees tend to shoot their shot and move on to the next game. That’s how they survived and grew as plucky little private affairs, before some publishers swallowed them whole and turned them into a sequel factory for their breakout hit.

      If your games cost too much money to fail, stop giving them more money.

  • Gurei@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m already waiting for games to go on sale in order to avoid being an unpaid bug tester, so sure do whatever you want.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    23
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    Not surprising for the man who thinks an iPhone port of an 18 year old GameCube game should cost $60.

    • 520@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Are you talking about RE4? Because they were actually talking about an Apple port (iPhone, iPad and Mac, with people being able to play on all platforms with one purchase) of the recent remake, which is a 2023 game that only really borrows the story and some layouts from the 2005 game.

      • Lesrid@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        And even then it only borrows the bullet points of the story. I prefer the approach they took with this game compared to say FF7’s where the story definitely feels like it’s improved if you are more familiar with the original.

        • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Are you referring to FF7 remake’s? Because you definitely get more out of it if you’ve played the previous games and watched the movie since it’s quite literally a sequel to them. I really enjoy their approach to it.

          I’m not saying RE4’s isn’t the case either. I just don’t think it’s a one or the other kind of scenario and they’re a little different as to why as well.

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      I mean… if it looks and plays like a touchscreen- and battery-limited version of the $60 PS5 / Xbox Whatever game… fine?

      Of course if he also expects one cent of optional or recurring fees on top of that, he can get fucked.

  • Sauciness6413@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    1 year ago

    Personally, I feel that game prices are too high. Patient gaming is where I’m at.

    Besides all of that, I don’t have the time for all of these games maybe cut down the scope of the game, go back to linear, 10-20 hour games and if its an open world don’t make it a huge empty sandbox with most of it being unused or with a boring game loop. If a game publisher decides to jack up prices then I expect top notch quality with no fluff included anywhere and that it works day one the fact that I have to mention that is sad, then and only then to me such a high price would be justified which has not been the case for some games in recent years. Finally, if a full priced game incorporates f2p monetization and battle passes, then to me its price increase is not justified in my book.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think the subscription based stuff is decent value for now. Run 2 years behind the current and you hardly have to buy anything.

      The only games I have for my PS5 that I “own” are God of War Ragnarok that came with it, and Baldur’s Gate 3.

  • mihnt@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    1 year ago

    I don’t/can’t pay full price for games now as it is so good luck with that.

    Patient gamer for life I guess.

  • smokin_shinobi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    1 year ago

    Didn’t these chucklefucks just charge over a 100 bucks for all the content in their TMNT collab? Super fuck that guy.

  • SbisasCostlyTurnover@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    1 year ago

    “Man who stands to gain from an increase in game prices advocates for increase in game prices”.

    Seriously though I’m not sure there’s much more room to go on the top end when it comes to prices rises. I’ve got to think at some point you’ll just push more people into buying at sale, or waiting for a game to hit their subscription platform of choice.

    Maybe it’s time we re-evaluate what makes a AAA worth £75 in the first place? And, what role do micro transactions have in this system, because anyone who’s ever spent £75 on a new AAA game will know there’s plenty of other ways they try to skin the proverbial cat.

    • sadreality@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      If anything market got so big, we should be getting efficiency of scale…

      Greed clowns can’t help tho