Capcom President Thinks Game Prices Are 'Too Low' - IGN

Prices have mostly been decided by minimum wage. If you want a million people to buy your game, you need a million people to have $60 they can spare.

Capcom President salary is 'Too High'

Even the most terrible AAA games sell millions of copies these days. They more than make their money back with each one, the margins are slimmer but the volume is magnitudes higher than ever. Cry me a river.

They can raise the prices all they want.
I'm still only going to buy them long after all the patches and on discount.

I want to mention the concept of consumer surplus since it's a lesser known economic principle compared to supply and demand.

Put simply, everyone has a price. A static price like $60 will get everyone willing to pay over $60. Some will be willing to pay $90, some $120, and so forth. The latest developments on pricing take advantage of that with horse armor, as those are folks with a higher threshold. On the other end of the spectrum, you have 50% to 90% sales to get the rest of us. Flexible pricing is the main reason companies are doing well, especially in an age of growing economic disparity. Just ask the whales how much they spend!

That said, saying the base price should go up neglects the broader economic situation everyone is in, and the US and Japan hasn't seen their baseline go up. Sadly, companies should know this, that's why prices vary by county. Ever buy a game from a Brazilian website? Much cheaper.

Tldr, dudes a short sighted twat, companies already optimize prices.

Or maybe don't make expensive games.

The AAA market seems to be chasing a business model that isn't there any more. I don't know why game developers still chase photo realism, it isn't what makes money.

The president of Capcom can lick the wrinkles out of my sweat steamed scrotum if he thinks I'm buying another Capcom game after this.

Yeah, games cost more to make than they did on the SNES.

But theres also an absolutely massively bigger customer base buying more games than ever before. So if your big name games are failing to bring in big numbers, that sounds like you and your fellow executives need to step down and let someone who knows what customers actually want run the company. But I bet that thought never crossed his fuckin mind.

Rich asshole doesn't think he's making enough money, News at 11:00.

IT'S ALMOST AS IF THERE IS A DEFINED SOCIOECONOMIC CLASS THAT'S SUCKING MONEY FROM THE ECONOMY

Less infighting, more eating of the rich. Pay the devs, not the landlords. The capitalism system is broken and breaking further. The cost of goods is defined by how much workers need to be paid to make it, and then multiplicatively inflated by how much greed that BILLIONAIRE CLASS wants.

Government is for the people, by the people, that's the ONLY reason it exists. People in, and that want to be the billionaire class have declared war on the rest of us, and it's the government's sole purpose to protect the well-being and will of the people.

The government MUST serve the people.

If it can't, the highest priority is it MUST be fixed immediately.

The longer we flail and wait, the more that obviously hostile class of people grow in power and make fixing this a more and more serious issue.

Like any good leader, if you are failing in your duties, you must self-correct, elect an adequate replacement, or you must be removed, by your own will or by force.

Because life-time is too precious to waste waiting for the conflict to come to a head and burst.

That hostile class is doing everything possible to prevent any of this. Calm down, diffuse, obfuscate, confuse, project, gaslight, lie, cheat, steal, destroy, and gain power to RULE above the-will-of-the-people: the government.

Tell him to go live in the US in a rented apartment on an average salary. Bet he'll change his mind in 3 months.

Tsujimoto also went on to claim that a slow economy wouldn’t have a big impact on video game prices either: “Just because there’s a recession doesn’t mean you won’t go to the movie theater or go to your favorite artist’s concert. High-quality games will continue to sell,” he said.

Yes it does. "Recession" means you have less disposable income to waste on poor quality entertainment.

Yet they keep having record profits.

Capcom games with their gazillion overpriced DLCs that never go on reasonable sales? Funny.

Permanently Deleted

I know that Diablo isn't a Capcom game, but if industry leaders are looking at $90 games with battle passes and in game purchases for $20 horse armor is "too low", then we are truly fucked.

Game prices are already pushing $100+ when you factor in season passes, special editions, and microtransactions. Basically every AAA game has some combo of all of these.

The problem that they're not considering is that if they raise the prices, more people are going to be priced out of buying the games, and will resort to piracy. The cost of living is absurd right now, and I can only afford a handful of $60 games a year.

To be honest, game prices have stayed the same for a very long time, but you can't release garbage and expect people to hundreds for it

Here's my hot take, I agree, but publishers need to increase pay to developers before I will accept a price hike. Until then I am waiting for that discount like I always do.

Every company executive has gotten way too big for their fucking britches. I'm pirating shit again, fuck all of these greedy mother fuckers.

I've never understood why people defend this mentality. Ballooning development costs? Last I checked half of the triple A games that get released spent just as much on marketing as fucking development. Not to mention Video Game revenue has been increasing year on year.

Also fuck these people because how often does this shit release with extra "monetisation" like on top of trying to make games more expensive they also throw in tons of microtransactions, loot boxes and battle passes, platform exclusive content, pre-order exclusive content etc.

When the creator of Stardew Valley can charge $14 for his awesome game, and put it on multiple platforms and release updates for jo extra cost, and not charge subscription fees, and everyone can mod it and be happy, and the creator has made multimillions by now ... Other companies need to take note.

From someone who worked at a company who wasted tons of money and had too many parties, excess staff and ceos who made excessive salaries, if these gaming companies are charging too much they need to look internally to fix issues instead of asking their customers to fuel their greed.

Poor management is the problem. Your overhead has nothing to do with us. You suck at business and cutting jobs is all you do.

Games are not worth more by any means. The market is saturated and AAA games release unfinished and you still make your profits and bonuses.

The problem are the elite shitbags who go to elite schools and get cherry picked by other elite shitbags who continue the cycle of enshittification of the world rather than hiring good hard working Americans within that KNOW their industry and the products where people like Tim Apple and whoever this Capcom CEO ding dong do not at all.

What a fucktard. If games were cheaper, more people would buy them. Nowadays a hell of a lot of people wait until the game is updated and on sale to buy it since most games are released broken anyways. That or they just pirate it. No way I'm spending 1/10 of a paycheck on a new video game every once in a while.

How about your mom is too low, ya greedy CEO bastard.

Well, I think piracy is a viable option.

Some prices are crazy in my opinion.

I generally buy 2 year old games except in some cases.

And in the consoles they are even more expensive. Game price could be higher than on PC and then you also need to pay an expensive subscription (because they charge you for a lot more things than just the multiplayer costs) to be allowed to play in multiplayer.

The player base is also bigger than before. While that needs more post sales support and more infrastructure it is nothing compared to the game.

I think in short the problem here is just the wrong forecasting when planning the game.

lmao

Or.... maybe development costs have just gotten stupidly high? There are a lot of great indie games for a few bucks that pack a heck of a lot more fun and experimentation than a lot of the cookie cutters garbage coming out of a lot of big studios lately. I'm honestly sick of every facet of my life trying to bleed me dry of any spare cent I get.

Cut back on graphics, and I mean this unironically

Cries in Guyana dollars

Balloonimg development costs and yet the games come out full of bugs

I actually agree with him, and I am not an employee of the gaming industry. In the mid 90s N64 carts were freaking $79.99 at one point early on! I realize part of this is because the carts were expensive, but even CD based games were not THAT far behind at $49.99 or $59.99 as I recall. I realize they don't have the same physical distribution costs, but game prices really have not kept up with inflation. Growing up it was a big freaking deal to get a new NES game you damn well better learn to love it, like it or not haha. Now... games are generally much more affordable for the average family, plus if you just wait a bit and don't buy on release (barring Nintendo 1st party titles) they are way cheaper!

I don't think he's wrong. AAA game prices have been basically the same for 20+ years, while the cost of making games has only gone up. I think this is why a lot of publishers push for progressively more aggressive microtransactions, which can often hide the actual price of the game's content. And greed but that's kind of their job.

The idea that BG3 and Overwatch 2 released at the same price point is actually ludicrous. With AAA games, the price is standard and if you don't like the game, oh well fuck you. And I would absolutely pay extra for games from developers which invested more, and had a higher standard of quality. Larian could charge $100 for their next CRPG and I'd be all in. Similarly, I don't think minimally viable cash grab titles or smaller, maybe more experimental titles should release for more than like $30.

I think the indie scene does this pretty well but it's a challenge for AAA, and consumers are somewhat to blame. I think people would balk more at an $80 standard price than a $60 half-complete game with $4k of microtransactions. So of course, studios are going to go with the latter strategy, even though plenty of people hate it.