i remember buying the new generation tomb raider 10 years ago not having a disc and noone caring
They held at $50 for so so long. As soon as they saw they could get away with $60 it’s been like a bucket of blood into shark infested waters.
Does anyone remember when they said digital games would reduce prices?
For them… never seen them go down for us.
Look at GTA 5 sales. Just wait for a deep discount. The initial price is just for the whales. Paying full price does not get you a perpetual discount on the shark cards or whatever they’re called. You still gotta pay full price for those. The purpose of the game is to sell those online currency cards. The initial price is just for those who want in sooner. I’m willing to wait a year or two, get it at deep discount (or buy it used), play the single player campaign, and then never touch it again.
or buy it used
I’m not sure how you plan on doing that with the “physical edition” being a digital download code in a box. And, that’s probably the point—to drive more sales by eliminating the used game market.
I’ll never spend more than 20 quid on a game.
I’d be surprised if their code was any better this time around. And the previous round it was rather simple to spawn in your own in game money, defeating their entire business plan.
I also wonder if vibe coding will contribute to their foot gun.
What’s the point of a physical edition with no disc?
Meh, I was always going to pirate it anyway.
That was my thought on it. It’s not a physical release without a physical componant
This is like fortnite classifying its release as physical because its dlc had a code that was in a game case.
Wasn’t even going to pirate it
I’m going to remake it in Godot, call it Big Robbery Sedan and sue for infringement on my trademark
It’s so people can impulse buy it for others as a gift at Walmart.
i hoped it was clickbait, because it comes with a flashdrive rather than a disc, because the game won’t fit in a disc.
it doesn’t look like it
Why the heck release a phsyical edition in the first place then? Just seems like a huge waste of plastic otherwise.
so that normies could buy it in stores and gift it to their underage children for thanksgiving
Physical buyers seem to be way more in the minority tbh
I’d be too, if physical copy meant a box with a code on a slip of paper inside
yes, but as long as it makes a profit it doesn’t really matter, why would they want to lose money on a chunk of population
So the physical edition is £20 more… for an empty box.
The world we live in
Omg but think about how much that box is gonna tie my massive box collection together! I have so many boxes, but this one–this one is the one that will make my box collection complete. They’re charging that extra premium because they know I’m right on the verge of completing my collection and this is their last chance to bilk me out of even more money before i retire to the bahamas with my collection
The ultimate edition seems to be digital only, the box with a code is the same price as standard
It’s just for retailers who wish to sell it in store
Remember when video game launches were fun and exciting and you couldn’t wait to get your hands on it, literally?
Yeah, I dunno… maybe I’m just old now but this day and age feels like that techno dystopian trope I’d always find in the games and movies I used to play and watch excitedly as a youth.
They still are, just not from these corpos. I am still excited for launches from small teams of maybe 3-10 people working on their passion projects.
I’m excited for Streets of Rogue 2, and that’s kinda similar to GTA.
We already know what is going to happen because we’ve seen it all before. At launch the game will be riddled with bugs, there will be obscure server connection issues (for a singleplayer game), complaints, sadness, tears and anger. I’ll pick it up when it’s on sale and if it runs on Linux.
Politically correct billion dollar anti union slop flop… like taking a monster energy drink from a baby. Brought to you by the same Epstein island EA games types. The fallout is going to be glorious. Gaming is for rich folks chasing something they will never catch. If it is not in my hand with no internet then it is not worth my time.
Gaming is for rich
Have you looked at any other hobby? Gaming is still one of the cheapest hobbies. You can buy a game for $5 an have fun with it for a 1000 hours. Meanwhile you aren’t getting anywhere close to a cinema ticket for that, which would only entertain you for 2 hours.
I have my doubts that it’s one of the cheaper hobbies. In my eyes it’s one of the most expensive ones you can have. It has a high entry level cost(if you are a PC gamer likely 1k+), plus a moderate to high upkeep cost(new games @ ~30-70$ depending on quality) to keep in the hobby. It’s also one of the few hobbies where you are expected to upgrade at least every few years in order to stay relevant. Not to mention the cost of any subscriptions you have as part of the hobby such as gamepass, your ISP, humble choice, etc
Most hobbies are a cost to enter, then a relatively small upkeep style cost. For example engineering, fishing, scrapbooking, puzzles, hunting, even crocheting or knitting are all you buy the tool for it, and then maybe spend a yearly cost for new supplies or a license to do the hobby.
Gaming the cost never goes down. You are either buying a new game cause the old one was completed, or upgrading your parts.
You are just making an argument that it’s possible to spend a lot of money on gaming, which is true. It’s possible to spend a lot of money on most hobbies. The question is how much are you required to spend to take part. In the current AI bubble it is more expensive than it should be, but I bought a Steam Deck for $399 when it launched, and there are so many free games you never have to spend a dollar.
Yeah, keeping up with new hardware and latest games will cost you, but you don’t need to do that. Since you bring up fishing, a fishing license you have to renew every year, fishing rod and all required gear, will already cost you many times that amount.
I’m making the argument that gaming is not a cheap hobby.
It can’t be cheap regardless of what is stated.
The cost of your steam deck alone has already ate up half to two thirds of what I have spent fishing in the past ten or so years and that’s with a rod, a few ice fishing rigs and buying a yearly fishing license.
Gaming is not a cheap hobby. There are ways that you can make it cheaper, but I would never agree that it is one of the lesser expensive hobbies.
I think I would have to agree with your metric of 400 being the starting point., because the Steam Deck is probably the cheapest option you can have for a gaming system at this point but that’s not going to provide you with any games. You are going to have to find some way of doing so, and for someone who just spent $400 on a gaming unit, that probably means you’re going to be spending money on the Steam store. Because it’s not like Epic Game Studios allows you to retroactively redeem every freebie they offer. (by the way, unrelated, but Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 has been put as a freebie again on Epic Store this week, and if you didn’t grab it the first time, it is a good game.). You would be locked down to buying, waiting or finding one of the various gatchas that Steam has on the platform and then hoping that it runs without having to install a custom proton like dw or something
I spent $150 on my rod, another $100 on my ice fishing rig, and I have spent 30 a year for my fishing license. You can also include the boat, if you like, which would be $50 that I spent 15 years ago(second hand), but I generally fish off the shore.
Now, I will agree with you that if you’re doing deep sea fishing, that’s where the $$$ is. My parents do that. I couldn’t do it. Because that’s like $1,500 for the boat trip, or buying a boat that can handle the ocean. on top of the at minimum $300 deep-sea fishing poles because everything needs to be stronger and weighted
But I definitely don’t agree that fishing as a whole is a more expensive hobby than gaming, that concept is absolutely ludicrous to me. an entry or minimalistic fisher vs entry minimalistic gamer; the fisher is going to spend less.
I put gaming a little bit under golfing in terms of expensive hobbies. Because with golf you have a metric buttload of different clubs that you need for it. So it’s a really, really high upfront price, and then a relatively low upkeep.
That’s how I see gaming, a high upfront cost, and a moderate upkeep.
There’s gaming as in games, and then there’s gaming the marketing term. The latter is for rich people.
$5 game is still going to require the console or a PC to play on. And if you want to play the latest title with your friends, it’s going to be 1-2k on the hardware before you can even launch the game.
That minimum price tag is going to allow almost any other hobby too
A $5 game is unlikely to need 1-2k on hardware to launch
And if you want to play the latest title
Well there is your problem, you can’t compare that to gaming as a whole. That’s like saying photography is only for rich people because good lenses can cost thousands, before you even get a camera to attach them to. Which is true, but you don’t need that.
You can take a photo of the same mountain with the latest and fanciest canon or whatever and your grandma’s old film camera, but you can’t play a lot of games with few years old gaming PC
For example my old gaming PC with 1st gen Ryzen and rx6600 while quite new (~2018-2020 I think) is already severely underspecced to play some modern games even on lowest graphics settings. Luckily I don’t have any interest on playing anything except a little classic wow and oats, so don’t really care of upgrading
I very much agree, it’s hard. But I also think that older games are still just as fun. There are whole emulation communities that just play retro games. That’s an extreme example, but gaming is a very wide hobby and whatever your budget it, you can probably find fun stuff to do.
Hobbies cost money. Spending $1000 which can last 5-10 years doesn’t make anyone “rich”
Having $1k+ disposable money makes you kinda wealthy though
Not really. It means you can save your money.
You should probably research a bit how much people earn on average, and not just in your own country 😉
You should understand that terms are relative rather than zero income = normal while any more = rich. I’m currently in an underdeveloped country. I’m aware of what poverty is. But I also understand how words work.
In any case you’re missing the point entirely. Compared to many hobbies, gaming can be affordable. That is what was being discussed here. Besides hobbies like taking walks, you won’t find many that cost less than a few bucks a month.
Sure but you can get a cheap second hand PC or a laptop or a console to play that 5 dollars game and it’s a one time purchase.
Shit you don’t even have to pay 5 dollars, there are plenty of games that are free. I’ve been playing Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead for hundreds of hours and haven’t paid a cent since it’s a free game, it’s updated daily and it can run on basically any PC since it’s an ASCII game. This is like complaining that it’s too expensive to get into woodworking because you have to buy a hammer.
And if you want to play the latest title with your friends, it’s going to be 1-2k on the hardware before you can even launch the game.
Get friends that don’t ask you to spend 1000 dollars to hang out with them.
yarr harr
physical edition will not contain a disc
Just a reminder for you G*mers. That when Valve did this shit you defended it vehemently, so don’t be a hypocrite now.
you may wanna consider the fact that subcultures contain more than one individual and they are not in fact a homogeneous biomass with a single opinion
Phew, thank you. I’m tired of all that lumping together, it never makes sense
Hence why I said G*mers.
Gamers, gemers, gimers, gomers, gumers, and sometimes gymers.
Gwmers if you’re Welsh.
Or gaymer if you are a furry
Good. The games I’ve got on physical disc need installing, and the disc is effectively only proof of ownership at that point and is only needed to start the game. Plus I see no point having to install a 32gb game from disc, then having to download multi-gb updates for it.
I also don’t need a disc getting misplaced/broken. I’m fine with digital, so I don’t need or want plastic pollution either.
I get the sentiment, discs that just get the ball rolling on the install and don’t actually give you the game in a playable state offline feel just as pointless as a code in a box if you keep games and don’t trade them in for cash/credit.
I really wish that games still read off the discs themselves instead of installed to storage. I hate having to manage console storage when you can only play like 5 games at a time before having to delete and reinstall something and you wasted your whole night on that instead of playing a game.
And for those that care about preservation and ownership: Physical releases on DRM-laden consoles aren’t the solution either. DRM-free products on a free platform are.
