Prepare your wallets for Windows because video games are getting more expensive.
Probably, let's break it down.
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Okay, so everybody's on the hype train for the PlayStation five.
The Xbox One series x or both.
All aboard the 7:30 Hype Train to Hype Town, making stops at Ray Tracing Village and Expensiveville, choo choo!
That's right.
If you thought you were going to get away with paying $60 per game for another six to eight years you thought wrong.
Here's the deal, game publisher to pay announced that the MSRP for its next gen version of NBA two k 21 is going to be 6999 first off nice.
I see what you did there, but also that is $10 more than the PlayStation four or Xbox One versions.
You know what that also is?
That's 2 whole Taco Bell crunchwrap Supremes and some change that I am going to miss out on per game.
Am I probably going to live longer by not eating those cron traps?
Yes.
Are my arteries going to thank me for not eating those cron traps.
Probably, but it doesn't matter because we're all gonna die someday anyway and I need my current tracks if I do the math if I buy 20 full price games over the next generation of console life cycle.
That's an extra $200 I have to spend.
If I buy 50 games at full price, that's an extra $500.
The equivalent of just buying a second console.
That's a lot of money.
Random, but, ultimately delicious tangent aside that $10 price it could be a total fluke, two k could be looking to capitalize on a console launch year.
By jacking up the price of all of their new releases for that console, just so to make a little bit of extra profit.
But there is a little bit of historical context that makes a price increase, likely and also understandable.
Historically, games have hovered around the $60 price point for most ever.
So NAS cartridges back in the late 80s and early 90s were 50 bucks.
And when the NCC4 came out, they were at 70 bucks.
So $10 each way, similar to we have now.
But, generally speaking, we have all been used to that $60 price point, because it has been around for 15 years, 15 years.
That's two console lifecycles.
That price point, got kind of locked in Add around PlayStation three Xbox 360 launch timeframe.
So that's what you're looking at there.
That is a long time to have a price point set when game development budgets have skyrocketed.
And speaking of those game development costs, let's talk a little bit of inside baseball.
So there was a really interesting interview that VentureBeat did with Shawn Layden, who is the former chairman and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios.
And he had a lot to say about the cost of games, game development and game pricing.
Pay maintains that triple A game development prices are completely unsustainable going forward and that every console life cycle the estimate is that the cost of making a giant blockbuster game like your Red Dead Redemption is your God wars, so on so forth, have doubled every console cycle so we're looking at a huge increase In the cost of games from those Xbox 360 ps3 days when that original $60 price point was set to now, this past console cycle late and estimated that those really big games cost anywhere from 80 to 150 million dollars to make That's not including any kind of marketing budget / g on top of just pure development cost.
So now that we've talked inside baseball, what does this mean for you?
Because that's what's important here.
Well, it could mean a couple of things.
One, if the cost of developing those triple A games continues to increase continues to balloon And we don't kind of scale back what we're getting from those games.
The costs of a game is going to increase for sure.
And honestly, I feel like we might even feel a little bit lucky that they didn't increase last console cycle because those games cost a lot or two Shawn Layden is right and the cost of making games becomes too unsustainable.
We're gonna probably see studios start scaling back some of that feature creep, making shorter, tighter games.
So games that are big open world MMOs might have less side quests or less areas to go to.
Or we might see multiplayer games like fighting games feature less characters.
Or we could see the rise of episodic games much like Final Fantasy seven remake.
Games that are smaller in scope and scale might seem like a bummer on the surface, but it could also mean that we might see more sequels In a consoles life cycle, we may see even more games come from our favorite developers.
If they can focus on more than one game every five years, like a God of War might take to make.
Then we just get more games and honestly feel that's a win for everybody.
Right?
There's also something to be said for lower income households, especially right now, who often get into a console life cycle very, very late.
Because the consoles are cheaper, the games are cheaper.
There are a lot more used options available and locking those kids and adults out of.
$70 games or at least making them even more limited in what they can purchase.
That sucks.
Fortunately, we do have price conscious services available to us that help us get more bang for our buck like the excellent Microsoft Game pass.
And also a lot of these games have online components which extended the shelf life and replayability, All good things, don't get me wrong I love spending 100 plus hours wandering around in an open road game, that has captured my imagination.
Who doesn't, but if I had to make the choice I would rather spend $60 on a really tightly crafted and sharp game experience than pay $70 for a bloated triple a blockbuster.
Unfortunately, I'm not the one calling the shots here.
It's the game companies that have to decide.
And if there's one thing game companies like, much like all companies, it's money.
[SOUND] So I guess I won't hold my breath, and I'll start stashing away some of that Crunchwrap money before the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X drop later this year.
I'll start saving after this one.
Just this one.
Promise.
Don't judge me.
I don't know you guys, are you guys willing to pay 70 bucks for a game?
Drop it down in the comments.
Let's talk about it.
Let's discuss while I eat this.
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The best time okay
