That's sort of how it works though isn't it? If games at $80 are too much then less people will buy, profits will drop and publishers will either lower prices, or vanish and get replaced by ones that lower prices.
I'm not going to bother reading the article, because you can both be anti-capitalist and participate in the system as it exists today. The developers can't pay rent with good vibes.
Capitalism deals with industry being owned privately.
If you want to complain about Microsoft being a publicly-traded, private-sector company rather than a worker cooperative or part of the government or whatever, okay, at least I can see where you're coming from.
But a socialist economy is perfectly compatible with having high prices.
I'm sure if it was up to the developers and creative minds behind the game this would have never been an issue. Sure, things like inflation have made the process of making games more expensive, but it's not like the extra money is going to actually go back to the developers. I'm so sick of this "games are more expensive to make" bullshit while they treat their employees like garbage and make them work ungodly hours. Micro$oft makes more money in one day than most of us or any of the developers will ever see in our entire lifetimes yet they need to lecture us on why we need to give them more money.
To be clear, I hold no grudge against the actual developers of this game. The first one was pretty decent and I'm sure this next one will be relatively good as well. But remember that we are talking about the company that forced Arkane to make Redfall when they had no desire to make it, and after it failed fired everyone at Arkane Austin and closed the studio. This isn't about making their money back to cover the cost of development, it's about making as much profit as possible with the least amount of effort possible.
Games continue to get cheaper to make as middleware improves and advancing hardware lessens the need for optimisation. If companies choose to spend more on games despite this then that's their problem.
I guess the author learned that being anti-capitalist is somewhat trendy and couldn't resist writing this opus. But this has nothing to do with the game or games in general.
That’s a lot of money for any game, let alone one that will also be launching on Game Pass and, like its progenitor, is smaller scale than other open world RPGs of this ilk.
It's this thinking that led to Starfield and Redfall being priced at $70 and Hi-Fi Rush priced at $30.
I could bitterly rationalise it if this were the release date trailer for the next Fable and I discovered Playground Games was charging me $80
Why? Playground hasn't even made a game in this genre before. Why do you expect that to be more worth $80 than the company that's been making acclaimed RPGs since its inception?
Play that years down the line. The first one was OK but I paid like $15 for it with the expansion. Obsidian hasn't had a clear jump in quality since the MS purchase. Possibly even signs of writing regression with Avowed so can't imagine much hype for this game
Grounded is fun, and 2 is right around the corner, though they did (and plan similarly for 2) to release it in phases in early access and gather community feedback at every step
I personally loved it. I finished it quicker than most games I’ve played the last few years. I was actually surprised. It’s not a long game by any means, but still.
I didn’t love that it started a bit more radical and became more lib over time, but I still enjoyed the writing and gameplay quite a bit. It’s silly fun, and it’s not pretending not to be. It does have a message, but it’s not overtly drab or serious.
Lol, the cognitive dissonance of whining about capitalism because their vidya game got a little more expensive. Not only is the entitlement and hypocrisy off the charts, there are so many ways to play games for cheap and/or free, the criticism is entirely moot. Don't like the price a company is asking for for an entirely optional commodity? Don't fucking pay it. It's not that hard.
Avowed was cool but not really worth the 70. I doubt TOW2 is worth 80, and specifically especially because Microsoft/ActiBlizzard is just following the Nintendo train, which is what everyone knew was going to happen with triple A studios.