The shift to digital delivery has thrown a wrench into the conventional economics of media I think. The price we paid for music, then movies, then games was never really tied very closely to the cost of the physical media. Yet when the physical media went away there were a fair number of folks speculating that the prices should drop as there were no longer physical goods to pay for. Instead, we got something like chaos, where prices sometimes went down, sometimes went up, and sometimes stayed the same.
The physical media sort of provided a baseline for pricing, independent of its actual cost. People “knew” how much a record or a CD was worth, at some level, and while they didn’t want to pay more when things went digital, they were not dismayed really when prices stayed the same. Unconsciously perhaps we were understanding finally that we were paying what the market felt the content was worth, independent of the distribution medium. Perhaps the same is happening with games now that digital distro is pretty much the dominant method to get games in people’s hands.
Of course, there is nowhere near the same level of consensus about “worth” around games that there seemingly was around albums. The tiering of game pricing is much more pronounced than in music, and has been going on since before digital too. Without the floppy/CD/DVD to provide a sort of reference point, games are free to fluctuate based on market determinations of their worth as content, rather than as “this box with something in it.” And that probably means a lot of volatility.
this really makes me sad. Was super stoked and looking forward to it after finally playing it. Seemed more done and with more content than many games that have released in the last 5 years, feels like they are so afraid of failure they are going to make it a sure thing (to fail)
Not surprised they delayed Skull & Bones. The last time they demoed it, it looked old and not very interesting. I know Hark likes it, but I saw very little to like in it.