Extra Credits
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2018–2021
6:26 · 678K views · Jan 24, 2018
Extra Credits explains from a game developer's perspective why AAA games have stayed at $60 despite inflation, and how that pressure drives DLC, microtransactions and loot boxes.
HN uses it as a short explanation of AAA pricing economics in discussions of microtransactions and game pricing.
4 comments from Hacker News
Extra Credits did a good video on AAA game pricing recently ( this video ) that talks about why developers are going down the lootbox and microtransaction roads. Their argument is basically that AAA games are just way too cheap. The price has been at $60 for a long time, and even though the market has expanded since then, it's still not enough to cover the development costs, which have skyrocketed. Finding other revenue streams has become a necessity. The alternative would be $80 or $100 AAA games.
Related: this video This 6 min video explains from game dev perspective why (AAA) games have been pegged at $60 on release, even though they should be priced higher to be sustainable ($85-$90 in 2018). So game developers tried various ideas to make up for this gap: DLC, perpetual experiences (map packs & expansions), loot boxes, microtransactions...
This sort of thing is going to keep happening, and not just because game publishers are greedy bastards. These days, it's very, very difficult to make a profit on a AAA game at only $60 a pop, but if anyone tries to raise that price the fans will cry bloody murder. So publishers are desperately trying to find ways to make up the difference. Cosmetic sales, DLC packs, loot boxes, anything. Making loot boxes illegal doesn't fix the problem; it just pushes it somewhere else. Source, among others: this video
There's a bit of handwaving and the the video admits $90 is just a gut estimate. However, I think they did try to account for things like that: they started with an estimate games should cost $225-$300 before accounting for larger audience size. Larger market size and efficiencies like reusable game engines are balanced by increased productions costs. The first versions of Final Fantasy just had text captions in 2D. Now they are in full 3D with fully acted voice actors. Starts here: this video