Can't use the word "buy" if you can't actually buy the thing.
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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If digital, then games should cost about 5 or 10 bucks apiece. The high cost is mostly attributed to the plastic and the distribution (and the greed, of course).
The high cost was never related to the plastic or distribution. Probably the entire DVD, case and booklet came in under $3. It has always been simply the price the publisher thought they could sell it for with regard to consumer demand.
Retailers get a cut. Digital lets them keep a bigger portion of the pie. Sony / MSFT are probably more likely to give them a bigger portion of the pie given that by releasing exclusively on consoles it will move more console sales (and thus other game sales on their platform) given how large this release is.
If consoles didn't give them a sweetheart deal we would see a PC release day 1.
There could be other reasons for that though (although i wouldn't be surprised if you're right)
Development costs of GTA 6 are estimated to be a billion dollars at the low end. The cost of manufacturing and distribution compared to that are nothing.
Take Two are def greedy af though.
No one told them to spend that much on it lol
Indie games are dirt in cheap in comparison to AAA budgets and they can't even justify a ten dollar price tag usually, you may as well give it away at that point.
Uh… development budget?
The cost is the r&d bro. CDs cost nothing to Make.
if capitalism, then price must be the highest to maximise growth.
This, but small indies can't even justify that low of a price tag most of the time. There is a reason that a game like Zorch costing only five bucks surprises people, it's just not that common.
Hell, it's less surprising when a game is free since either you are Fortnite and you'll squeeze your player dry through mtx anyway, or you are Shattered Pixel Dungeon and you just don't care that much. Those who love it so much can toss you a few bucks on Patreon if they'd like.
Look, all I'm saying is that you need to stop reading this and start playing Shattered Pixel Dungeon right now.
Highest price is not necessarily most best for profit. They likely calculated that selling it for 70 or 90 means less profit then selling it for 80.
the higher price means less purchases,
It is an optimisation issue, once you have a reasonable localise estimate on how much people are willing to pay, finding the ideal price is trivial.
Unless there is a public expectation like games being no more than 60$, but then companies try to break those expectations too, that is why lots of releases have special editions with BS addons. to test the waters
Didn’t they spend 2 billion?
I’m not even sticking up for this but yall are insane.
This is why everything sucks. You expect everything for nothing then wonder why your games nickle and dime you for dlc and your food is nasty and your clothes are all plastic.
As a professional artist I’ll tell ya it seems like a poor man’s hobby to make games, write novels, or make music. So you have people that make this shit for the love of the game or a lot of cash and nothing really in between.
I expect it for nothing because the sellers expect it for everything. Just trying to find the perfect balance in between. There is nothing wrong with a healthy profit but it shouldn't feel like rape. It has to work for both sides.
My wife, who's an accountant, never really played video games growing up. When we got married, she liked to hang out on the couch while I played various Zelda titles (I think WindWaker HD was the first one she got really into with me, and she'd become a second set of eyes). She was the one who helped me understand how a video game is maybe the most value for one's money of all the entertainment options. For a long time, games were still around $50 (which was even the price when I was a kid) and she was kind of blown away at the notion that you could pay $50 for something and have like 80+ hours of enjoyment when going to a movie was like the same price for only two hours and going to a play was often even more expensive. An album is still pretty great deal-wise because you can get years of enjoyment out of that. But in terms of a story-telling medium, a video game is still an amazing value for what you get (even at $80).
My problem with what is going on with this game and Sony in general is the idea that they want me to pay $80 for something that, due to DRM, I'm not actually owning. If they want me to pay that kind of money for something that I feel like I have actual ownership of, with a reasonable expectation that I can play it for years to come (like I can with my SNES and Saturn and whatnot), then I'm still happy to pay $80 for it. But I am not given that assurance. I thought Tears of the Kingdom was worth the price (and still do). But I have the card on my shelf and so long as I have a Switch I can play it.