Xbox controversially raised the base price of its mainline games to $80 in an announcement a few weeks ago. Now, it seems to be backtracking. Good, I say.
We were already seeing this at $70: the market is largely unwilling to support games getting any more expensive right now. And even though we had $90 SNES games back in the mid-90s, without adjusting for inflation, I think we can also say quite definitively that the market expanded exponentially as prices got lower, relative to inflation and in absolute terms, in subsequent years. Increasing prices further is pricing out those people. Plus, we’ve got tons of low-cost options that can often be higher quality than the games charging $70+.
Consoles are a walled garden - the only reason they can do what they do is because of the lack of options for the customer to use their hardware.
PCs are the only gaming platform (apart from perhaps smartphones) that have an open framework untouchable by publishers or game platforms. You don’t have to publish with Sony and Microsoft, and the majority don’t.
Unless your console has homebrew, you will always be screwed by the platform holder.
open framework untouchable by publishers or game platforms
Splitting hairs here, but Steam is a pseudo monopoly at this point. Sure, one can not publish a game there, but that’s hard. And on multi-store releases, I don’t think publishers are allowed to undercut it on other platforms.
Which is fine since (even though 30% is not cheap) Steam is behaving and working well…
We were already seeing this at $70: the market is largely unwilling to support games getting any more expensive right now. And even though we had $90 SNES games back in the mid-90s, without adjusting for inflation, I think we can also say quite definitively that the market expanded exponentially as prices got lower, relative to inflation and in absolute terms, in subsequent years. Increasing prices further is pricing out those people. Plus, we’ve got tons of low-cost options that can often be higher quality than the games charging $70+.
Consoles are a walled garden - the only reason they can do what they do is because of the lack of options for the customer to use their hardware.
PCs are the only gaming platform (apart from perhaps smartphones) that have an open framework untouchable by publishers or game platforms. You don’t have to publish with Sony and Microsoft, and the majority don’t.
Unless your console has homebrew, you will always be screwed by the platform holder.
Splitting hairs here, but Steam is a pseudo monopoly at this point. Sure, one can not publish a game there, but that’s hard. And on multi-store releases, I don’t think publishers are allowed to undercut it on other platforms.
Which is fine since (even though 30% is not cheap) Steam is behaving and working well…
For now.
and steam is going to keep behaving well because they are very aware that they are replaceable if they dont, cant replace sony on my ps5 tho
Are they?
They crushed other storefronts pretty good. They have a loyal following.
Maybe they won’t go full GFWL, but I fear they could enshittify substantially with the critical mass they have now.