1y ago

Game prices are too low, says Capcom exec

www.eurogamer.net Game prices are too low, says Capcom exec

Capcom's president and chief operating officer has said he thinks game prices should go up.Haruhiro Tsujimoto made the …

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.

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Game prices are too low, says Capcom exec - Eurogamer

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Game prices are too low, says Capcom exec

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98 comments

I think my salary should go up
- Have you considered being a CEO for a gaming corporation?
  
  I’m still working on “Be attractive. Don’t be unattractive.”

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

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

$80 for AAA games is already super expensive. I buy most of my games on sale now.

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.

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

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.

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

Lower your budgets, ship more often, stop treating products like services.

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.
- 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.

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.

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

"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.
- If anything market got so big, we should be getting efficiency of scale...
  Greed clowns can't help tho

As the great Jerma985 once said, "Fuck Capcom!"
- You listening to a psycho?
  
  Over a company of psychos? Probably.

If the market could support higher prices, they'd already be charging them.
I honestly don't care what Capcom does. I couldn't tell you the last time I bought a Capcom game.
- Capcom lives off of their good IPs from the 90s and Devil May Cry, nothing else.

I remember getting Donkey Kong on release for the Super Nintendo and it was more expensive than most games are right now, 66 usd. Name one thing that has the same price in 2023 that it did I 1994. It's insane.
- They were a lot cheaper to make back then too.
  Rare spent 18 months developing Donkey Kong Country from an initial concept to a finished game, and according to product manager Dan Owsen, 20 people worked on it in total. It cost an estimated US$1 million to produce, and Rare said that it had the most man hours ever invested in a video game at the time, 22 years. The team worked 12–16-hours every day of the week.
  These days that's indie game territory.
- The Donkey Kong you bought in 1994 had to pay not only for development, but also for the package, for the circuits (think a 1TB SSD in 2023), for distribution, etc. Do you see modern companies having to pay for any of that?
  
  You seem to miss the point it was almost 30 years ago and they spend 18 months developing with a team of 20 people. Read those numbers again. Damn, the electrical bills alone to create Starfield most probably surpasses the entire development cost of a handful of SNES games combined. Yes, old games had manuals and came in physical form but those components where cheap at the time.
  I'm not saying game SHOULD cost more. I'm just claiming games haven't become a lot more expensive.
- My dad still reminds me that when he bought me Dr. Mario for NES on release, it was $90USD. I remember seeing many a game at Toys R Us with price tags of up to $120.
  But I can name plenty of games in 2023 that cost more $66. Shittons of console titles are $70 now!
  
  But I can name plenty of games in 2023 that cost more $66.
  None of which come with the media used to play, most don't even have a box. If you think games are cheaper now, you're being scammed.
- As much as I don't want to see game prices increase, I've been shocked to see that they haven't kept up with inflation at all. Especially since the cost of developing games has skyrocketed.

Some are. BG3 could have been double and still worth it. I'd say most capcom games are overpriced as is.

Quality can only increase. If people have to think twice about buying games and don't preorder every half- finished game
- Ah. The old preorder my bullshit game before you realise we stopped putting effort into it to finish the fucking thing scam.

To be fair, he is partially right. It's insane that games have basically been the same price since forever, the only reason they stayed the same is cuz more people could afford computers/consoles and in contrast to every other industry, making a new either physical or digital copy of a game is dirt cheap, so the more users the more profit.
Idk if it actually makes sense for games to be more expensive yet tho.
- Prices are comparable because a cartridge in the 90s was as expensive, comparatively, as an SSD is today. Have you ever bought a game and received a free SSD with it?
- You also have to ignore economies of scale. Nintendo was a huge consumer of chips globally just for gaming. That market is now mature, and gaming isn't as big of a piece as it used to be. There's also way more games being sold now, call of duty gets more day one sales than most n64 games ever sold, which made disc's super cheap. Now you have digital distribution which is practically free, and companies are getting more of a games price than ever before and it's still not enough.

As long as my country gets regional pricing I don't care, raise them in the US all you want they have plenty of money.
- Right, we're all millionaires over here. Yup, not living paycheck to paycheck at all! No sir!
  
  And the fun part is, you've still had a decades long lifestyle of having low prices by exploiting weak labour laws in poor countries! And if they raise prices by using your local labour you'll still cry capitalism. Isn't it fun?
- I think regional pricing is unfair. A company can use regional labor, to sell a product in a market where the labor is more expensive. At a higher price.
  So the company gets to take advantage of geographic arbitrage, but the customers can't. That feels unfair
  
  Whaaaat? Capitalism benefits capital and not workers and consumers? Preposterous.

The MSRP for Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges in the mid-80s, adjusted to today’s U.S. Dollar, would average around $150-200.
I don’t think games should cost that much, but we stuck with the $60 price point for literal decades so it’s not completely unreasonable for someone to talk about raising prices.
(I also write this while having only bought one game? two? In the past year.)
- Resident Evil 2 sold about 4.5 million copies on PS One, Resident Evil 2 Remake has sold around 12.5 million copies so far and climbing.
  They’re making more money now than they ever did, even with games costing more to make. More customers is supposed to equal economy of scale, not fuck it lets charge out the ass so executives can make more money than they’ve ever made in history.
  
  The economy of scale is what lets companies operate at higher costs. According to Wikipedia RE2 cost about $1 million to make. $1m might still buy a PS1 caliber game, but the remake cost at least an order of magnitude more. Many games now cost nine figures; GTA6 apparently cost $1 billion.
  I’m not saying games should haphazardly inflate with everything else for the sake of share holders, but I’m open to the idea that the formula used twenty years ago to decide that AAA games should cost $60 might be out of date.
- Adjusted price is a common talking point here, but it ignores the other side of inflation... that wages have stagnated and rising prices obviously means that people have less spending money.
  Consider also that there is a lot of choice with the back catalog on PC as well as free games (that people can make in their spare time at no cost thanks to FOSS tools and free information). Pre-broadband, gaming was more of a take-it-or-leave situation.
  So yeah, I think most people already see increasing prices as being motivated by greed. And some people likely see the $60 price as already greedy when games are often filler and spectacle (with poor QA testing on top of that, because they know people will pre-order it anyway, and then buy the later DLC or cosmetics).
  @MomoTimeToDie
- The problem is the game industry, in the meantime of never going beyond the $60 threshold, found a far far more lucrative way of making money than just raising the MSRP. In fact, they found multiple ways of making money: skinner boxes, loot boxes, micro transactions, season passes, FOMO storefronts, etc etc. And even though we may agree that the MSRP eventually has to increase, they won't suddenly give up on those anti-consumer, predatory practices.
- It's not unreasonable but at the end of the day, we buy these games to waste time. There's not a whole lot of justifying why im going to spend more on something i use to just unwind when i can buy plenty of 20$ games that will give me hundreds of hours of entertainment
- The MSRP for a NES cartridge includes the circuits, the manual, the box, the physical space, the license and a finished game. Do you get any of these with modern AAA games?
- How much of the cartridge sale was profit to the developer?
  The hardware of the cartridge cost money. Distribution to retailers cost money. The retailers took their cut.
  I wouldn't be shocked at all if the publisher's net revenue per game is significantly higher in real dollars than it was in the NES era.
  
  Okay but PS1 games were similar prices and printing CDs is cheap.
- They sell vastly more games than before. And there isn't a media anymore. And they should have increased their productivity in all these years.
  Video games are not a good. They're a digital product, a service. The cost is completely decorrelated from the amount you sell. Which is why it is so profitable.
- Can you help me understand your comment? What does MSRP mean?
  
  Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price
  
  Ah, sorry. It stands for “Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price.”
  In the U.S. the law doesn’t allow a manufacturer to require that retailers sell their product at a particular price, but they’re free to “suggest” one so that’s how we ended up with the MSRP.
  It doesn’t carry any real weight, but it generally serves to anchor consumer expectations for a product’s value. (It also gives retailers an easy metric to compare sale prices against.)

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