Good thing the cost of making a video game has dropped significantly over the years. Hardware is significantly cheaper than it was 20 years ago and game engines which used to cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars cost nothing nowadays. Needing a few hundred people to churn out a title? Thats a management issue.
Except they'd argue that pricepoints of games
shouldbe rising, despite lower operating costs (the part they try to obfuscate). Adjusting for inflation, a title should cost around 130$ in today's dollars. But, with the price of engines, hardware, manufacturing, printing, etc. all going down, they've been able to stay steady around that 50-70$ mark. They'd love nothing more than to be able to sell you a title for 130$ no questions asked and be able to more easily pocket all the profits of cheaper engines, cheaper infrastructure, cheaper labor, etc. They know they can't sell games at that 130$ pricepoint, so they cut it up into bite sized pieces. That way, they still get their 130$, but it gets made a lot more palatable to the average consumer if they only have to throw 60$ away initially and another 70 over the course of 3-6 months. American consumers
lovepayment plans.
It's the same reason wages in the US have stayed so stagnant. People don't notice that they are being fleeced as long as the costs of goods stays relatively proportionate to their income. Which they are, thanks to cheaper labor, robotics, GMOs, etc. We should have a
lotmore buying power as consumers than we do, because costs of goods (most, not all) is fucking astronomically low and only getting lower.
