1686

many of those stores are legit, though some aren’t.

1687

I don’t really buy that we’re going to see better prices. There was already a race to the bottom in prices with Steam. Publishers have pulled back from that in the past couple years, but there’s still frequent sales and a reason people are still talking about their backlogs. Not to mention there’s already competition in where you can get Steam keys.

I do want there to be other options to keep Steam honest if Gabe retires or sells Valve, but we’re not getting noticeably cheaper prices of this.

1688

Exclusivity and low prices don’t generally run together.

1689

I guess time will tell, won’t it? And let’s remember, it’s timed exclusivity. I mean, who actually buys a game full price during the first year anyway? Better to wait a year regardless, so the game will be fully patched, and the reviews are in.

1690

Most people?

1691

Most people? Most people like in Communist China or poverty stricken India. I wouldn’t listen to most people.

1692

If the market waits a year to buy the game how are developers helped by that? Cash flow is a real thing.

Right now the Epic store is good for developers but it is not particularly good for consumers. It may be good for consumers in the long run if they reach that critical mass and bring more competition to the market. But there is already plenty of competition for Steam no matter how many stores you would prefer to hand waive away and there is none for Epic exclusives.

1693

Also it will be very interesting to see the prices of these timed exclusives once they return to Steam. Many are willing to buy it today at full price on Steam, a year from now?Hahahahahaha.

1694

I agree. That is a marketing challenge.

Something we do not know is whether Epic controls the pricing as part of the revenue guarantees for the exclusivity. If so, I think they will keep the price high for 11 months and then steeply lower it with about a month remaining to get the full amount of sales possible on that platform. Then with the product now devalued, the Steam launch is probably at a $5 to $10 premium from the significantly lowered price.

For example:
List for $50 on Epic
Drop to $25 a month before the loss of exclusivity
List on Steam at $35

1695

Now apply that logic to Epic store and maybe you’ll begin to understand this whole thing.

1696

No, I’m being facetious. There isn’t anything wrong with buying from the Razor store, just like there is nothing wrong from buying from Epic.

It’s just a silly argument that keeps coming up for some reason.

1697

I’ve heard the lower prices argument before - lower prices on digital because there’s no cost of physical goods. Or the lower cost on PC because there’s no licensing fee paid out to the console owners (admittedly we did used to get $50 PC releases). So I’m with you, it makes a good talking point for devs but I’ll believe it when I see it consistently happen.

1698

You could make the argument that, compared to inflation, games have gotten cheaper. Should games be 80 dollars or so, if it kept up with inflation?

Of course, you could make the counter argument, that AAA games are selling better than ever, and so profits should be up because sales up are, and costs to make multiple copies of a game is almost 0 dollars.

And then you also take into consideration that games have gotten bigger and larger in the last decade as well, so games are more expansive to make than in years past.

So, have games gotten cheaper? By inflation standards, yes.

1699

I would consider the argument that adjusted for inflation, the buy-in cost of games is cheaper… and that plenty of things that used to come as part of the full experience are now being parceled out as DLC in the form of loot boxes, cosmetic microtransactions, or season passes. Bringing the full experience closer to $100 (or more).

1700

That is a good argument. But expansion packs have been a thing for a long time, so yes, DLCs can be considered part of the price, but than the price of games in the 90s should be considered higher as well.

Civilization, Command and Conquer, Warcraft, Half Life. All these games had Expansion Packs so, maybe the prices are still cheaper today.

1701

The price of select games was $80 back in the 1980s. The price was brought down largely due to digital distribution. The cost of pressing the disks (or writing to them), printing, distribution and the retailer’s fee made up a large amount of the retail cost of games.

1702

One also needs to factor in volume. A Triple-A hit is selling several magnitude more copies today then they were in the 90’s or early aughts. That should keep list prices down as well in our current decade.

1703

Agreed, but development costs have gone up, haven’t they?

1704

50 < 48?

1705

This! :)
By orders of magnitude.