Why are $70 AAA games slashing prices so drastically?
It's beyond insane to me that a $70 "AAAA" game (kidding, it's AAA) dips down to the absurd price of $5. I've never seen anything like it. Wish the entire Sims 4 "collection" if you can call it that was $5 total, would be incredible, or Starfield.
It happens all the time on Steam and physical retail. Especially when the game is critically panned or is old enough that it's not selling at the original price anymore.
Pretty funny to see the big budget "AAAA" games going from $70 to $5 in just a few months, while seeing an independent game like RimWorld never go on sale and have multiple DLCs that aren't much cheaper than the base game because the former loses interest hella fast, while the latter seems to keep gaining popularity.
Just fyi, Ludeon Studios changed their stance on sales some time ago, in fact it's on sale right now! Never more than a 20% discount though. Factorio however has still never been on sale. But your point still stands
I think part of this has to be related to the idea that you cant do good, creative, interesting things on e the number of cooks in the kitchen gets above a certain size, which might actually be quite small. I mean look at terraria and stardew valley. Microscopic dev teams with impact the size of asteroids in terms of total effect and the long term impact on gaming.
I think "good" in media is an extension of having a singular vision for what you are trying to do. Focus too much on crowd pleasing and you lose the plot.
I completely agree with that. Even the games that made the big companies big back in the day started off being like 3-5 people, tops. Now they have hundreds of people, tons of ideas, along with limited time and tons of bureaucracy. Even if there's just one person making the decisions, it can't be easy frequently hearing good suggestions from other people working on the thing under you and not wanting to try and incorporate them.
Factorio has only ever gone up in price, and the new expansion costs more than the base game did.
"The Callisto protocol" went from release @$60 to free on Epic, in less than two years. That's the fastest I've ever seen a game depreciate.
Instead of lowering their prices over time and so sales are less significant of a percentage, they keep the original price indefinitely and just have lots of sales. This makes the percentage off much higher than if they had depreciated the regular price as it should. Pretty common these days.
This also pleases the Steam Store algorithm god. A big spike will bump the game up in the charts, then the algo will serve it to more people in the store and more people will buy it. The more sales momentum a game has the more the algo will show it in the recommended sections.
Luckily I started to only buy games after comparing on isthereanydeal.
The slow burn lowering prices over time also maintains a bit of long term income for a maintenance team to patch and improve the game. This game is 2 years old and is getting slammed down to $5, that says to me they're just trying to cash out on whoever is left that wants to buy it but hasn't, and then I'd bet this game never sees an update ever again afterward.
This shit winds me up so much. It used to be that a game would be full price for 6-12 months before moving onto a budget label at a vastly rexuced price.
Nowadays games are full price forever, except for the few days a year when they go on "sale" and get reduced to what they should've been all along. During which time the publishers get to act like they're being altruistic and doing us a massive favour.
The steam fall sale is going on right now.
Rope people in with the base game discount and flood them with DLC is the EA way.
I bought Witcher 3 AND ALL dlc for like 8 dollars last year during this sale.
Pirate triple a and buy indie.
Its what both of em deserve.
Nah, just don't play the AAA bullshit. It is not worth your time to pirate
that one depends on ones opinion tho.
personally? all the ones i did try where dogshit.
But one womans trash is another man or womans treasure as they say.
This is the way
This is the way
They're showing their true value.
These are old games
The price regularly seen is just there to make them seem that they have more value than they actually do
I pirated the game and it included all the DLC. Then I played it for a few hours and was glad I didn't spend 5 dollars on it.
Bro, it's the Autumn Steam sale...it says so in giant letters on top of the steam store page.
but 80% is a lot more than the usual 10-20%
These sales always have crazy deals like this. It's nothing new. Some are better than others.
Yeah, but the 10-20% sales are for good games.
$70 price is for people who are really impatient and then sales are to capture price sensitive people over time. Not unusual. It's why I wasn't bothered by the $70 retail price, since I knew I'd never have to pay it. It's just a tax on the impatient.
Because recent AAA games are so trash noadays and also the main thing is that the price of the game isn't their main source of income anymore.
Sell game cheap get em hooked on spending more money in game on used condom hats or whatever garbage they sell in their games
Because they're desperate to recoup some of their money for development and the game hasn't sold very well. Case in point: Suicide Squad is 3.49 or 4.99 for the deluxe edition. The game sold like trash so they desperately want to make some more money and hope people will go like "well it's only 5 bucks. I may as well."
Absolutely this.
Last ditch attempts to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
The Steam Autumn sale is right now. Almost everything is on sale.
There are people willing to pay $80 for your game, $60, $40, $20, $10, and $5. You might be able get someone willing to pay $10 to pay $15 with good marketing, but you will never get them to pay $60. So when you've gone through most people willing to pay $60 and $40, you might as well go through the rest of the market. It doesn't cost you that much more than you're already spending on servers, so why not make that extra money.
It's funny I was going to buy it until I saw EA account required and Denuvo.
Is there a way to exclude specific anticheat like denuvo from ever showing up in the store? Would love to add tags to perm exclusion list or something
Because it's not just about money, that's why you hear about the number of copies sold more than gross revenue, it represents number of interested people that can buy another product at X dollars. Every now and then exec put up big sales, pump the numbers up before the big reports.
That's also why Nintendo games neeever go on sale.
Also, some Steam sales are amazing. 90% off, is great, but not that rare.
Because it's badly reviewed and sales have dried up...?
Also because it is loaded with microtransactions, so they can make that back and more if they get you hooked.
Exhibit A:
nfs games up to and including MW 2012
These are solid, enjoyable entries in the series. Peaked with Underground 2 and MW 2005, but the takeover/acquisition of Criterion pumped new life into HP 2010 and MW 2012.
Exhibit B:
nfs games released after MW 2012
These are dogshit. Heavy dlc, meh progression, horrible to play on a keyboard, stupid upgrade systems (cards? cards? are you removed, EA?), always-online, shitty online servers, horrendous physics, so arcadey that they make actual arcade racing games look desirable.
You'll note that this game is in the second group.
I got it as a gift a couple weeks ago, they paid $10 for it, which I was holding out for >$5 to buy myself; it's actually better than the last iteration, but not by much. That game - heat - I thrashed on at launch and 6mo later, and when the premium or whatever edition dropped to like $1.25, I finally bought it (10h demo before) and honestly, I want my $1.25 back. Here, $5 for unbound is about right, near the upper limit.
If they hadn't killed Criterion (the reboot is in name only, the talent jumped ship with the forced merge), nfs might be awesome still. They have to do a metric fuck-load to save this series. I have almost every game, I'm a massive fan of the series... But for the past decade, it's fucking dogshit.
How is it insane? These games are made to take your money, so they quickly get cheaper until they no longer make meaningful sales. It's why you should never buy AAA games for the first 6-12 months (if ever honestly), they will very quickly be a lot cheaper after the publishers scam from the initial hype purchases.
You said it better with just don't buy AAAAAAAA games ever...
Most are absolute garbage.
I completely agree, I never buy them.
Unbound was basically dead on arrival, its practically just heat with re-shade and barely any actual new content.
With the same shitty unoptimization I might add. These games were horribly optimized for what they are. My 8750 and 1060 should not be struggling with this game at 1080p
EA Game 🤮
Because NFS Unbound sucks. Never in my life have I tried to refund a game so quickly. Couldn't make it past the first hour of the game.
The characters just won't shut up, I'm trying to drive not hear people yap about how the illegal street racers that cause millions in public property damage and multiple fatalities each race are so oppressed by the government.
Ah, is that the one where you had to endure teenagers trying to do the cool talk for like 15 min before you can even see a car? Uninstalled and refunded straight away.
Because it's two years old?
No it's the damn autumn sale right now. AAA games stay at full price for years when not on sale.
Only if they're good games that people are still interested in playing. Crappy games slash prices all the time. Exhibit A: Suicide Squad
And because it was kind of a shitty game.
It's called idiot tax. (hint: not the discounted price)
Black Friday sales are crazy sometimes
Because most people won't/can't pay these stupid prices just for an average/poor experience.
Because broke niggas like me can't afford 20$ for a legitimate skyrim copy even tho I got 1800 hrs in that game
NFS Unbound wasn't taken too well by the community. I recently replayed NFS Heat (which was the release before unbound) and it is still a great modern NFS game!
The "sale" price you see here is effectively the "standard" price. Publishers know that most users will just wait for a sale to make their purchase, and that those too desperate to wait will be willing to pay any inflated "full" price they set.
Instead of gradually lowering the prices, publishers tend to keep the original price and give it higher discounts as time goes on. People read it and think "wow, it's 90% off! I can't miss this deal!" and buy the game.
Because it is ... Black Friday!
Is there a new title coming? My car feed has been featuring a real build of the Most Wanted (2005) M3 GTR recently from BMW. I see franchise sales often when a new entry is coming out. I don't see any announcements though, so maybe it's just because it's rated so poorly
Edit: no news of a new title, but the Borderlands franchise has a sizeable discount bundle on Xbox, at least. Bl4 is coming. But it's also a sale weekend anyway
Poorly received games with tons of other venues of monetization outside the box price.
I don't know whether it's the case here (it's the biggest sale of the year regardless), but often game developers will have licenses for some of the content in the game (music, most often), and when those licenses are soon expiring they do a fire sale on it. The previous Forza Horizon game comes to mind.
It's about volume.
Selling a thing to a million people for $5 makes more money than selling it to a thousand people for $70.
They'll most likely return the price to $70 before long, so they can pick up a few whales who miss this sale and aren't patient enough to wait for the next one.
Then... Why not just price it correctly to begin with? Huh.... I'd buy some of these newer games if they cost a reasonable amount. Starfield out here charging $70 for a 5.5/10 game
You charge the highest price you can for the people who don't want to wait, then drop the price once you've run out of those customers. The temporary price of a sale creates a sense of urgency that it won't be this cheap again for a while, and positive word of mouth from the sale customers drives more sales for a little while once it returns to full price.
Starfield wasn't worth $70 to me, but I bought it on sale for $45 a few months later.
Then… Why not just price it correctly to begin with?
I can't speak for the people pricing these things, but suspect the answer has to do with whales, perceived value, shareholders, regional economics, and various other things.
I agree that lots of games are overpriced, though.
Price tier strategy. Get impatient people to pay $70 because they need to play ASAP. And then sales to get people who won't pay $70. Pricing low permanently misses out on getting as much money from people who are willing to pay more throughout the year.
Is this a complaint? I see nothing wrong.
Most AAA's are arse and barely sell so easy decision to make them cheaper to get them sold.
I played that game for free.... Glad I didn't pay a single dime for it.... It was ass
Unbound is an exception because 1. it's not super new, and 2. it did quite poorly iirc
Personally got it at £30 and even then it ran poorly on my Steamdeck at lowest settings so I wasn't interested :(
I used to see them all the time on Playstation. Kingdom Come Deliverance and Prey are $3 right now, Control and Shadow of War are $6, Serious Sam 4 is $6 (I might get that one). There are others too. But not as many as there used to be though.
Is this game any good?
Absolutely not. This game is more interested in yapping in your ear than letting you race.
It's okay, I'd highly recommend playing it on console though. No EA account required on console unless I'm mistaken. EA games on PC are notoriously ass.
I love the Forza series — someone tell me enough about these to go and take advantage of major deals.
Ya race da cars
Ask a more specific question? I've played all of them...