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.
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.
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.
No matter what price they make games, have no illusion that developers will be paid more. This is to pad C level pockets.
deleted by creator
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.
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.
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.
$80 for AAA games is already super expensive. I buy most of my games on sale now.
Quality can only increase. If people have to think twice about buying games and don’t preorder every half- finished game
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 was as expensive as it was back then because the game released on what is effectively a PCB. Which was expensive to make.
How expensive? Because accounting for inflation, $66 in 1994 is worth about $136 in 2023.
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.
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.
I live in Sweden. But saying it cost 799sek in 1994 might not give you a good idea of its cost.
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.
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.
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.
deleted by creator
How many units are sold today v units sold in 1994 ;)
deleted by creator
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.
