• JohnEdwa
          link
          fedilink
          514 days ago

          Just be thankful they haven’t followed inflation of both the value of money, and their budgets. A $40 NES game would be $120 in todays money and it was probably made in a month by three people in a shed, meanwhile something like CoD Black Ops Cold War credits over 9000 people and had a budget of $700 million. GTA 6 has already blown past a billion.

          In fact, video games are currently pretty much the cheapest they’ve ever been, comparatively speaking.

          • phuntis
            link
            fedilink
            English
            1014 days ago

            bootlickers and corpos always roll out this argument while ignoring the growth in players meaning you get more sales

              • Maestro
                link
                fedilink
                614 days ago

                Most games today are cross platform and sell substantially more copies that old console games. Mega Man 3 for example sold just over 1 million copies and was a great success. GTA V, crossplatform AAA, sold almost a quarter of a billion copies.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          413 days ago

          It’s not just that. It’s also that the second hand market is really not there anymore. There are a lot of games that I know I’m only playing once, in this case it makes sense to buy it, then resell it. But it’s not really feasible on PC.

          In this situation, a rental market does make sense. And it also allows more easily to test games you probably wouldn’t have bought. I played Persona 3 this way for example.

          • Lime Buzz (fae/she)
            link
            fedilink
            English
            112 days ago

            One solution to this is companies bringing back the demo which I think should be a thing.

            However, yeah, we agree there are a few cases where actual renting makes sense. I just wish it wasn’t digital.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              312 days ago

              No, you’re right. And combined with the easy refund you get from Steam for example, which would make it basically a trial period, there are a lot of possibilities.

              I was thinking more about very long games that you’re not sure you really will be convinced after only 2 hours. On a Persona for example, 2 hours is nothing, you’re not even going to pass the tutorial.

              Of course a demo is not forced to be at the start of the game, but some games are hard to showcase 😅

              On the other hand, I’m just realizing that we are talking about an actual rental model, which we don’t really have at the moment. Gamepass is a subscription model, which is quite different (and not in a good way)

              So yeah an actual renting model could be cool, depending on its pricing of course.