Wall Street Analyst: Gamers are overreacting to EA's Star Wars controversy; publishers should raise prices

Of course gamers overreacted, they are the most crying bunch of ass hats ever.

@heirren: Sure that's a fair point. But the individual gamer is still getting a fantastic bargain. If you told me back in the SNES days that games would get THIS advanced, THIS massive, THIS pretty, THIS rich with features and content, and yet cost (in real terms) half as much? I'd have been delighted.

lol, no. It's good to see a stand starting, with CDProjektRed tweeting out against the practices, and the creator of Plants Vs. Zombies being fired for supposedly not wanting to include pay-to-win.

I'm paying $90CAD for games now, and that's fine if what i'm getting is worthwhile... If i'm being corralled into purchases in order to advance in a game, then that's just a shitty business practice.

Wallstreet is calculating the game values incorrect. Who plays the same game 2.5 hours per day 365 days a year?

AAA games are fewer and far between, and when they come out, they should be polished and not riddled with glitches or half assed work (IE: Mass Effect Andromeda). Adding in micro transactions should be done in a manor that makes gamers WANT to buy things, not block things behind a paywall and FORCE gamers to pay to win. In BF2 when a gamer decides not to pay the game becomes an un-fun grind with minimal progression. This takes the fun out of the game and I could understand that in a freemium game but not a full blown $80 game.

The way I see it, MT aren't so bad if they are implemented in a consumer friendly way. They should offer extra content to the game, but not be the game itself. This is where EA messed up, they got greedy, they are now getting their hand slapped because of it, and the stock holders are not happy. That's where crap like this wallstreet guy come up and complain about costs being too low with out of context calculations because their shares have dropped in price.

@locopatho:

Well what a game is worth is up to the individual. It's subjective. For example I personally don't care for massive games like Grand Theft Auto or open world games. They are filled with content yet the core of the game--the player to screen interaction--feels half assed. I find more value in a game like Wave Race or Street Fighter, where the "content" of these "grocery list" games is within the gameplay and not what is on paper, if that makes sense.

The issue that is overlooked is what the product is that the consumer is buying. I go to the store; am I actually in buying Battlefront 2? That's what the box is labeled. But wait what are these hidden costs? It's deceptive. It's reached a point where I do not bother with those platforms. I swear buying games on Xbox or PlayStation feels more like buying a console within a console than a piece of software.

More or less. Games nowadays cost less than they used to back in the '90s. But many gamers may not realize it if they don't take inflation into account.

Another factor is the cost of cartridges. Much of the budget for games went on manufacturing cartridges. When taking cartridge manufacturing costs into account, games back then were more expensive to make than games today. If a company over-estimated demand, then that could've tanked them (e.g. what happened to Atari in the early '80s, with Pac-Man 2600 and ET).

On the other hand, publishers back then were able to hold back supply after the game is released, and only manufacture more cartridges after release as demand rose (not unlike Nintendo's console manufacturing strategy today). For companies that followed this strategy, the costs gradually went up only after release. Whereas today's production budgets are from before the game is released, making it riskier.

You aren't seeing the big picture here. Sure they are making a lot of money. But their goals are to make more money quarter after quarter and year after year. If they are starting to spend more money to make games and make the same amount of money then their bottom line is going to pay the consequence. Also shareholders are going to make sure they don't go over a certain budget for a game as they won't be as profitable. If cost of games are going up and they aren't making as much profit as they use to, then something is wrong. Also...yes it is going to be greedy as they are there to make their shareholders happy so their stocks will continue to rise and will give them more money in the future to invest in the company..

So you are telling me that these developers are spending millions of dollars and they shouldn't cost money as the previous one was just released 12 months ago?

Well now we're down the rabbit hole of personal preferences, which is all well and good, but bears no relation to how games are ACTUALLY made and sold. Grand Theft Auto V simply IS bigger, prettier, more advanced, with more content and modes, than pretty much any game from the olden days. This is just fact, and it all costs money to develop, and they want their profit too. GTAV ain't gonna be dirt cheap because you don't value it. Gamers have clearly said they WILL value this stuff, in general.

I agree, but in the olden days (SNES, etc) you were extremely likely to buy a game that was short, shitty or broken, with only fanboy review mags and the good name of some developers (Nintendo, Capcom, etc) to go by. Pity the poor gamer who spent 70 pounds on Daikatana or other similarly broken games. At least Battlefront 2 has a heap of content, is apparently fun to play mechanically and won't break, even if you never touch the FTP stuff.

The earnings reports speak for themselves. These AAA publishers are not having any trouble being profitable so far, despite the increasing cost of game development. Yet these publishers and their defenders like the analyst in the CNBC article plead poverty to justify bullshit like the pay to get a leg up or grind for a stupid amount of time like they were going to do with SWBFII. This is escalation, beyond the WYSIWYG systems of years past or strictly cosmetic loot boxes of Overwatch, and be under no illusions that this escalation is designed to squeeze more and more money out of gamers.

Which, again, brings me to the question I was posing to Pedro with the post you just replied to, and I am now posing to you. If, as I have demonstrated, the AAA publishers are so far not having any trouble being profitable with the status quo, why should we, as gamers, reward, excuse or even defend these escalations. And if on the other hand, the business model they are employing are really as unsustainable as they claim and require these escalations to survive in the long term, why should we, as gamers, reward, excuse or defend them doubling down on it? Would it not be better in the long run if these AAA publishers are forced to rethink their business model and try something that might be more sustainable?

And lastly, again, I hold zero expectations for anyone; not gamers at large nor the game publishers, and certainly not the shareholders and investors. As far as I'm concerned, we're just discussing hypotheticals here.

When's the last time you saw a commercial or trailer for a movie that headlined a character that isn't even in that movie or is planned for a sequel, instead?

Yeah, that's what I thought. It's not okay to d-ride an iconic character like Darth Vader only to put them behind a pay-wall. You know this.

Maybe stop trying to make games like movies? :D

+1

"Oh you don't want to hand over more money for less content? You are just overreacting!"

But then there's an issue with the marketing, not necessarily with the micro-transactions.

Yes and no.

Yes, the cost of games has stayed relatively the same. I paid 50 dollars for a game 25 years ago, and 30 dollars for an expansion pack; I pay 50-60 dollars now, and 30-40 dollars for a season pass. Pretty much the same price (maybe even less with inflation factored in? I don't know).

I think the cost of production is needlessly high, however; who asked for Josh Duhamel and Idris Elba in Call of Duty, and how much did they cost? I won't go on my usual tangent of "they could have spent the money elsewhere making a better game" but that's how I feel. Do we really benefit from these voice actors, in video games with shitty writing and plot? Even the best, most well-written video game is still mediocre by film and literature standards.

These video games, these alleged AAA titles with their budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, are completely unnecessary. I'd argue if developers and publishers got a grip on things, they'd find that production would be less expensive than it has been in the past; half the kids in high school want to make video games, there is no shortage of programmers, liberal arts majors wondering what to do with their degrees, and so forth. You can pay these folks 20 dollars/hour out of college and have them do the menial stuff.

But no, we have to Jean Luc Picard voicing the emperor in TES Oblivion for five minutes.

I feel independent game development is a good example of this; don't try so hard on the things that "don't matter" (shiny game engines, big-name actors, huge but underutilized game worlds) and make a smaller, higher-quality game and release it at a lower price, selling higher volume. While there always needs to be the juggernauts of the industry to drive tech and technique as those require some money, I think it is getting a little out of hand.

yep.

The worst part about it is the people mouthfrothing over lootboxes the most aren't even people that would put any serious time into these games.

Anyone that actually plays competitive type MP games regularly gets enough boxes from playing to unlock most of this stuff without noticing. I play Paladins and I don't even play everyday, just log in and I've got every character unlocked and a bunch of cosmetics using the weekly free crystals.

People will put hundreds of hours into the Witcher 3 but whine about spending 80 hours to unlock Vader. I really don't see a difference between this and taking a month to get a full set of gear in WoW or Destiny.

And I get the possibility of lootboxes making games pay2win. But people are QQing about potential not the actuality for most games. I haven't really experienced that in any of the games I play and I play mostly games with lootbox mechanics. The people that make these games know that doing that would not sit well with their core fans, that's why the bulk of this lootbox stuff is cosmetic.

So the big gripe is really about cosmetics. And that's not even legit to me either since the cosmetics were never promised to you as part of the base game.

Not if the management teams involved issue an edict to marketing not to use DLC material in the initial promotion of a product. I'm not letting them off that easy. For that matter, were you this forgiving of Hello Games? I think not.

People accosted a new indie developer to no end for the same thing. Why give the fattest cat of them all any wiggle room?

Not surprised a greedy rich bastard is agreeing with other greedy rich bastards.

That's pretty far from the truth. Gamers (as in the mainstream) are quite docile and through the years have increasingly adopted to heavier and heavier monetization practices.

You're trying to equate enthusiast minority to the entirety of the largely ignorant spectrum.

This is a case where EA reached so hard it created ripples far beyond "whiny" gamers.

I'm sure there's a not-insignificant number of people who would be happy to pay $80-$100 for a Battlefront II that didn't have a completely fvcked progression system.

Comparing video games to TV shows and movies, yeah OK uuumm GET BENT!

different industry, different monetary value, not comparable. Those analytics mean absolute jack shit, the only purpose it serves is to try to cover EA's greedy ass.

What you wrote here is technically correct, but all this post really does is call into the question why AAA publishers exist in the first place. Right now in 2017 AAA publishers are at the point where their main method of making more and more money involves means that directly make the games they publish worse than they otherwise would have been. Its not like the developers themselves are really seeing much of any of that microtranscation $$$ winfall anyway; most of them may as well spin off into their own independent studios at this point.

I think most rational people see this.

The problem starts occuring when you can only get the content through gambling means, or made incredibly difficult otherwise. Aesthetics and boosts are not the end of the world.

Random Crates for anything more than aesthetic (and even then are dodgy as f*ck) is a p*ss take.

It would like me paying a years subscription to Netflix, then Netflix turning around going "You have the base package, this comes with 1-2 good tv shows, and the rest are mediocre, to get more you can buy are Netflix TV Show Loot Crate! get 3 shows per crate! some great, some bad!"

Only in reality... its more like:

Chance of Bad Show 60%

Chance of Average Show 30 %

Change of Good Show 9%

Chance of "That show everyone wants" 1%

It's not good for anyone, thats where i draw the line at least.

Here's a thought for Team My Games Aren't Expensive Enough. Why don't you buy nothing but mmorpgs for the next 5 to 10 years? Certainly, this will send a clear signal to the industry that they should charge top dollar for videogames.

There has to be enough of you to make this work. Go ahead and put your money where your mouth is. You can move that needle, I believe in you.

To be fair, I would pay subscriptions over loot crates any day.

Since "Games as a service" is become more common, I would at least support a fixed rate that provides the ongoing development as apposed to gambeling my money away on things that I likely won't get because most of the good stuff as a 1% drop chance.

You used to have to pay for expensive cartridges. So it's not really fair to compare it to way back in the NES/SNES eras. Every since optical media the actual manufacturing costs have become almost negligible. Which is why there are mountains of some of these big games produced. Granted I'm sure development costs have gone way up since even the PS2 era, I don't think it's always money well spent. Let's face it, some developers can pour $100,000,000 into a game and still have it end up technically unimpressive (or even inferior) compared to other developers doing it for $!0,000,000.

And of course micro-transactions are more "cost effective", incrementally it costs them nothing. Practically infinite returns - which is why we see all those micro-transation laced "free to download" mobile games advertising on television. There is money to be made, but as we saw with Star Wars there is also a balance of what you can do when you are also charging $60 or $80 up front for the game (the Deluxe of Star Wars is $80 and all it really gives you is a couple of MP boosts and skins).

Lol

@lrdfancypants: I think games just seemed more space-age back then. X-Wing was literally space age. Weird stuff like Sim Ant and Lemmings... it was like a new world emerged in your crummy tan PC. When Myst came out for Win 3.1, it was mindblowing... no sprites and vector graphics from real-time games looked anything like that. When I went to pick out floppy disks I was excited about the strange novel experience I'd have.

lol ...greedy rich people wanting more money?, not surprise though...stuck in an economy that continually needs growth like an evil parasite..money will be worth less & less...its gonna crash & die soon. :P

Its because the people who hold a lot of stock in EA are brokers and investors. So its not okay to have a company that makes reasonable profits, sustains itself while growing at a reasonable rate, no no no, they have to have everything. 100M profit is not enough, we need 1B.

@madrocketeer: There is no way a wall street investment analyst isn't going to do the number crunching due diligence.

I was series 7 registered from 1993-96 and we crunched numbers because you cannot lie or argue against numbers. They are what they are. We all know the price of a game hasn't gone up for over a decade. I also know nobody goes into business to simply get by. Maximizing profit is the goal.

Pay to win and other things are shit. But businesses won't stop trying to maximize profit. Others may call it greed, I accept it as the goal of business. And I don't have to buy.

And yet developers like Ninja Theory successfully built a AAA quality game, independently, on a relatively low (for that market) budget, and charged less than $59.99 USD.

If game production costs are getting too high for developers/publishers, then they should change how they make games. Capitalism is a funny thing. It's driven by the consumer, not corporations.

Or better yet, make games for the Switch since they'll be more affordable to make, and get better returns without worrying so much breaking above 1 million sales.

@cainetao11:

I know, mate. As I said, I have zero expectations for anyone and everyone involved in this, and I consider every argument I posted in this thread to be hypothetical. I just want to bury this silly "games are getting more expensive to make" excuse. They don't technically need the extra profits, nor are their business model so unsustainable as to convincingly plead poverty that anyone should believe. These AAA publishers do not deserve or need such excuses; they exist to make as much money as possible, plain and simple.

@foxhound_fox: And yet developers like Ninja Theory successfully built a AAA quality game, independently, on a relatively low (for that market) budget, and charged less than $59.99 USD"

Oh and there are a few, as in 1 in 1000 people that recover from lung cancer to live many years. How often has Ninja Theory done so? How many others are doing it consistently? That example is anecdotal. It isn't something that a business can bank on happening everytime out.

@madrocketeer: They don't technically need the extra profits but I don't technically need to play video games. Calling out others for wants rather than sticking with just what is needed is stupid. Like I said, I don't know of anyone that goes into business to get by or make what they need. And I don't think it's wrong to want to maximize profits in a free market, capitalist economic world. There are things like pay to win that are shit and EA got the message at this point.

@cainetao11:

I'm not calling them out on the greed or the excess. That's just human nature, and I have no desire to change human nature. Like I said, I have zero expectations. What I'm calling out on are the excuses used to justify them, specifically the "games are getting too expensive to make" excuse. My goal was to demonstrate the fallacy of this excuse.

So you'd pay more than 100 dollars for a game (mind you, the 40-60 dollar model made the games industry bigger than Hollywood) and you do preorders and im assuming DLC? You're just a bad consumer.

@madrocketeer: Fair enough. As Id love to tell a ceo when they say games are getting too expensive to make is, "they are getting to expensive to make and still see a growing profit margin, sure" but not too expensive period.

@cainetao11:

Yup, sounds about right to me.

Belgium and Hawaii disagrees

@carlquincy: Belgium isn't held to the US constitution.

Games may be the same price but developers are making more now off that $60 since most sales are digital. They do not have to worry about shipping from trucks or ships, packaging, cost of the blu-ray, and all the other costs to get a physical copy to the store.

@madrocketeer

Check that image link out. Evan Wingren, the analyst on the OP, is heavily connected to EA.

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source:

FluffyGames from Imgur

Yep games next year are going to cost $20 more.

@anthonyautumns:

...

Sorry, I just recalled how the guy claims to be a "gamer," and now I'm imagining an Ouroboros - scratch that, a looped-around human centipede - of greedy rich arseholes.

Are we sure about that? GTA V for example made $1 billion in sales in about a week and a half on just PS3 and Xbox 360 and the game costed $265 million to make, this isn't even factoring in all the money made later on in the PC, PS4, and Xbox One versions of the game. Another example would be Battlefield 1. Battlefield 4 cost $100 million to make and was on 5 platforms but lets assume Battlefield 1 costed $150 million to make if game development prices truly have increased. Battlefield 1 in its first week sold 3.46 million copies at retail on consoles alone. Lets just multiply 60 by 3.46 million and we get $207.6 million dollars and we'll takeaway 30% for Sony and Microsoft and any other cost we get about $145 million in first week sales and this isn't including any money made off DLC, Deluxe editions, Collectors editions or even the sales of the PC version which EA would get 100% of the money for most copies sold since most PC gamers buy digital and would mainly buy it through EA's Origin store. This is just first week sales never mind that Battlefield 1 was the second best selling game of the year and breaking records in franchise sales. So tell me how EA can justify microtransactions. Also you're assuming AAA developers/publishers don't get any multi million dollar sponsorships/endorsements from Sony, Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Gamestop and other gaming related brands (or even non related) when in that case they nearly or all do. That certainly cuts back on some cost.

Even if games are costing more to make it gets negated by the growing amount of gamers which are buying games. Heck there is massive demographic that has mostly gone unnoticed which is China. More than half of PUBG's 20 million sales are from China, GTA V has sold over 800,000 copies on PC in China, Overwatch sold over 5 million copies on PC in China. Neither PUBG or GTA V were actually marketed in China, Chinese gamers just happened to have discovered them by chance from Chinese streamers that picked them up on Steam. AAA publishers and developers could easily start partnering with with Chinese publishers to have their games officially there and marketed. If they want to do the microtransaction crap so badly they could just turn the game F2P for China if its multiplayer since Asia doesn't have much of a problem with it.