Here's an analogy for you:
Let's say you opened a restaurant ten years ago. Your signature item is a hamburger that you charge $8 for. Your customers LOVE this burger, they come back for this burger, and they know they can get this great burger for $8.
Over the next ten years however, the price of beef has steadily risen. You gradually make a smaller and smaller profit off of your burger to the point where you are about to lose money on it. You don't want to raise the price of your burger because it's known as the best $8 burger around. Sure, some customers will pay $10 for your burger, but a lot won't.
So what do you do? You are in business and you have to make money, so you can't afford to lose money on your burger.
You could try raising drink prices or expanding your dessert menu. These are supplemental things (in other words, DLC), that customers may not necessarily need but the extra revenue can help make up for the increasing cost of making your $8 burger.
That helps for a while, but eventually the price of beef will keep rising and once again you are barely breaking even. If you keep raising drink or dessert prices eventually it will drive customers away from them.
You have reached the point where you have to raise the price of your burger to $10 to stay in business.
In this analogy, the $8 burger represents the $60 game and the price of beef represents the raising development costs. Developers don't want to raise the price of their metaphorical burger because that could drive away too many gamers, so instead they expanded their dessert menu and offer DLC to make up the difference.
If you want more content for your games you're going to have to buy some desserts, or be ready to pay $100 for your game. Pick your poison.
Studios are closing left and right because this industry is nearing a collapse. Only the biggest publishers, developers, and IP's can sustain themselves. You know why there are so many sequels to games nowadays, and fewer new franchises? Because a new game failing could mean an entire studio failing. Nobody can afford to take the risk of taking a chance and seeing it fail, so they stick to what works. And if it works, they have to monetize it as much as they can because there is nothing left to fall back on.
This is modern gaming.
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When did the price of running serves continue to rise?
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Edited by TheFrozenInferno: 10/7/2015 2:12:11 AMAs player bases rose? And it's an ongoing expense, they don't just turn on the servers for $X.XX and forget about them.
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Edited by ZMasterDude: 10/7/2015 10:41:46 AMNo I agree but as player base rose so would their income. Also servers do have a run time quote per say. So when they run the server for x amount of time they know exactly how much it should cost them. Not to mention we aren't talking 8 dollar burgers here we're talking 140-180 dollar games and that is per copy(with dlc content). Let's just say that at least a million people have spent this kind of money (which is very likely due to the one million people to attempt oryx) that's 140 to 180 million dollars. So in the end they have a metric shit ton of money. Micro transactions are not going to even compare to actual game sell price unless they sell bigger and better things in the micro transactions like weapons which will break the game. Don't forget these are estimate numbers there's a pretty high error percentage.
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If we're talking Burgers and Bungie how about this... You start off your business with a quality burger (Halo). This burger starts out pretty good thus captivating more people. You eventually make a line of these burgers and as you keep making them they get better and better. Eventually your restaurant is well off and you decide to sell it and profit from the deal. Now everybody knows you make quality burgers. You decide to open up a new restaurant and advertise the best burger complete with fries, soda, milkshake and a pickle (Destiny). When you advertise this burger you show a plump patty and a full plate. However upon arrival to your establishment customers realize the burger on their plate looks NOTHING like what they advertise. Instead we see a cheap thin patty with a small batch of fries and a soda reminiscent of McDonald's. You apologize and promise higher quality food and as a result advertise the new and improved burger now with more meat (TDB and HoW) Eventually people realize you really didn't give them anything special or different. Just a little more. Then you apologize and release the Big Burger (TTK) "Finally!" a Burger that looks exactly like what you advertised when you opened up Destiny Burger...millions of dollars later.
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They aren't raising the price of the "burger" they are charging us for "toppings"
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That's my point. The toppings help pay for the burger. In other words DLC is the only thing preventing games from being $100 off the shelf instead of $60.
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Did you forget that The Taken King is the most bought DLC in the history of gaming? Oh wait, there goes all your points, lmao.
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Where did you get this from? Lmao.
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If you knew how to use google or followed any kind of major gaming news you would've already known...
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Just googled,[i]"Destiny, The Taken King DLC is Best selling DLC ever,"[/i] with no results matching what you claim?
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Hard to validate but there is non-statistical information out there that suggests it was a big success from a sales perspective.
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Odd analogy since restaurants just raise the price whenever they want and you usually get less, not more.
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Well Put!
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Well put.
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That was a terrible analogy. Your comparing a small business barley making ends meet to a major corporation that has money flowing into their pockets...
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It was actually great explanation for people he makes absolute sense. Your negative opinion is not needed and makes you look like an ass
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Actually it makes no sense, as games were $40, then $50, then when the ps3/360 came out they raised the price to $60 a game. So the price increase has been happening over time, so if you can't budget within that you charge more. But instead, they've decided to make you pay for cosmetic things. Which opens the door to charging for other things. It's like taxes. You always see the government saying they need to raise taxes, but for some reason they never lower them. Then they need a fee increase to cover this, and another tax hike to cover that. It never ends, they always want more. Charge 60 for a game and leave it, or charge more. Don't charge up front, then charge for dlc, then do mixrotransactions. It shows your greed, and it's just bad business.
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This is a horrible argument. Better graphics higher quality input means higher priced output Think movies and their budget they use and how the end result looks. Low budget you can see the quality/graphics aren't that great compared to a high budget movie like the Avengers Transformers etc. Your post does not validate the original idea of this post and doesn't discredit my opinion. What you just did was make yourself look stupid by not understanding basic economics. Bungie is a business not a charity bro. Case and point your post is that of a person with a lack of knowledge and actual fact on the subject
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[quote]This is a horrible argument. Better graphics higher quality input means higher priced output...[/quote] This is incorrect unfortunately... With the exponential growth of technology it becoming increasingly easier to create high quality/high resolution graphics all the time. With game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine you can create beautiful comparable graphics with less effort than a lot of "last-gen" games took to make. Bungie probably has their own engine but I guarantee they've made it just as simple if not more simple to do than the aforementioned engines. Not here to argue just wanted to point out that there's a whole other side to the argument not being taken into account.
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Not here to argue Still tries to discredit my post lmao Price increase realistically would be due to user base being increased by the millions More $$ into maintenance But my post was off topic as well I'll admit it But there is nothing wrong with adding the micro transactions of bungie is true to their word stating it will not effect game play
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It was more bugging me because I dabble with gaming engines. My apologies, I just saw it as more of a correction. I went over that response for a good 10 minutes trying not to sound like an ass.
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I misunderstand how charge more, or work within your budget, makes me look stupid. Nickel and dining people after they've purchased a product makes them not want to buy products from a company in the future. Sounds like you need to understand consumerism and economics. Not me.
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I'm not going to explain it to you. Go take economics and you'll understand. It's optional you -blam!-ing idiot
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Yes, insulting me and using curse words is strengthening your position. I see now how I state facts, and am obviously wrong, because you say so, and can insult and curse.
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No it's because you lack common knowledges or normal business practices No point in discussing this with someone like you.