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0 pointsfalcolas7y ago0 comments

Something that's not brought up often with this argument - the sales scope for modern games. Super Mario World was doing well if it broke 10,000 or 100,000 sales. In contrast a major game these days will break 100,000,000 sales.

$60 is also a bit of a red herring, since $60 is the base price for a game - when you start throwing in all of the special features, the price of a game climbs to over twice that amount. And that doesn't even cover the microtransactions not included in the gambling category - 4-5 expansion packs each the price of an indie game, skins, poses, voice lines, etc.

Let's not forget that EA have openly stated to their shareholders that not having loot boxes in their games doesn't affect their revenue. Either they're lying to their shareholders, or to us. I wonder which one it is.

These companies are raking in tens and hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. That's not the sign of a fragile market.

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GVIrish7y ago

> Something that's not brought up often with this argument - the sales scope for modern games. Super Mario World was doing well if it broke 10,000 or 100,000 sales. In contrast a major game these days will break 100,000,000 sales.

Your numbers are way off. Super Mario World sold over 20 million copies worldwide. Every full Super Mario release has sold millions of copies.

Conversely, even the most popular franchises sell in the tens of millions range. GTA V is one of the few approaching the 100 million mark.

Back in the day games were in fact more expensive, but a lot of the cost was in the cartridge. Games were certainly much less expensive in development costs. Modern console game prices have been locked at around $60 for well over a decade. These games are hideously expensive to develop so publishers have resorted to gaining revenue via DLC, microtransactions and loot boxes.

Naturally, publishers have become greedy in this environment and are using these deceptive revenue streams to pad their profits. And really, these practices probably would've arisen even if the price of games kept pace with inflation.

falcolasOP7y ago

You're right, I should have worded it differently. Companies went from a market of a few million of potential customers to hundreds of millions (more if you count mobile gamers who are subjected to even more microtransactions) of potential customers.

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