Can't use the word "buy" if you can't actually buy the thing.

preorder what?..... what are you reserving anyways?

Tell you what: Finish making the game, patch out all the bugs, add some DLC, and I'll consider paying you $5 for the GOTY edition in a few years. Best I can do.

I assume the standard "I didn't wait to see the reviews" cosmetic that all pre-orders seem to give people these days

I’ll just wait for the PC version and then sail the high seas.

Bought about 15 games for that much the other day in the GoG sale. Against the Storm is probably my favourite out of the 3 I have played so far and will probably keep me going for a while even though I want to play the others too.

I can't even be bothered to pirate it

speak with your wallets sisters and brothers, do not rent this bs

Shit article. Counting down to when you can start giving them money for a pre-order we don't even have details about is news!?

But really, if we reward companies for games before they're even released and reviewed, we deserve any and all garbage they decide to give us...

DLC is shit and ruins game balance in GOTY editions.

Welcome to the game! Here's all this amazing loot you bought! Now your first quest is to kill that rat over there with your brand new Fire Sword. Oh yeah, here's your Anglic Armour and your Awesome Horse Armour. You'll have to lug that around in your inventory for a few hours until you find the horse quest though.

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).

if capitalism, then price must be the highest to maximise growth.

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.

The ability to have it all downloaded and ready to go at launch, I guess. Wouldn't be so bad if the price weren't raised out of blatant greed while simultaneously removing the option to get a sellable license via a disc.

Millions will, and Rockstar will make billions, but don't buy it at launch anyway. Get it on a sale or pirate it when it comes to PC instead.

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.

The cost is the r&d bro. CDs cost nothing to Make.

Once again we all suffer because of the stupid majority. Imagine if everyone closed their wallets to the likes of google, meta, apple, rockstar.

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.

I’m going to disagree with you. Things like Shivering Isles added replay value to Oblivion and, to my memory, didn’t include anything that would overpower you in a new game.

If it’s anything like Forza Horizon 6, they are reserving the ability to play the game five days before everybody else.

I still havent played GTA5 because I never found the disc cheap enough, at some point I quit looking for it, really sucks GTA4 was the last game from that franchise I'll get to play, but ending physical discs means I will not buy your console game.

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.

It’s pretty sad you have to tell people to pirate when honestly no one should be playing it at all. even discussing it helps them. If this is so bad, which I think it is because I’ve quit buying/playing games almost 10 years ago, Then the answer is to not engage.

This isn’t food.

There are so many independent studio/artist making things that desperately need your help in anyway. To read share and engage with their shit. Every minute spent with a major corps bullshit piece of entertainment Is time taken away from the independent artist. Every minute you spend engaging with this complaining or not, helps them.

Shame actually works quite well despite what everyone’s been trying to tell us.

Does it though? Pre-orders have been constantly shamed since the '90s and, if anything, they're even more prevalent today without the ability to get anything physical.

In my experience, I'm the one who gets shamed for not being in walled gardens of google/apple/meta when everyone else is. Network effect is powerful

Eh, depends on the game.

Plus, you don't have to use it if you don't want to.

You're preordering your bytes, duh! It's well known that companies run out of bytes when there's massive demand and have to order more from the byte farms. If you don't preorder this, the company might not have enough bytes for you and your download could have to wait a long time until they replenish byte stock!

Pretty sure I paid $5 for GTA5 and not much more for 4 and San Andreas. I think GTA 3 was the last time I paid MSRP.

I agree with both of you, I think it comes down to the scope and type of DLC. An expansion size DLC like Shivering Isles tends to fit in nicely with the rest of a game because the developer needs to plan out when and where you can start to access the new stuff, but a lot of smaller DLC like bonus weapons can be integrated pretty poorly because they want you to get the cool little thing you paid money for and it’s easier to put it in a hard to miss chest or just give it to you early on.

Uh… development budget?

Your paying for the experience people! /s

I absolutely hate it. I always have to try and remember all the random crap that was thrown into my inventory and avoid using any of it for an authentic experience.

Maybe if Epic gets desperate enough after their plan to chase Roblox and slop crashes they'll let you download it from them for free like they did 5

Hard-working crackers worked on this, you better show your appreciation by seeding

I found GTAV at a thrift store for $4.99 several months back. Bought it. Still haven't played it lol

Saw an article a few weeks back that said something about how Rockstar was ensuring availability for the game. Availability? For a download?

Also, why bother pre-ordering? The whole idea of pre-ordering is so that you can ensure you have the game when it comes out because there are limitations on supply meeting demand on the printing of a disc. Again, this is a download. Other than some artificially limited exclusives (which, again, are downloads and will probably be made available again at a later date) there is no reason to pre-order. Unless you want the game to just automatically install for you, I can't think of a real reason for pre-ordering this. (Disclosure: I am old and I practically never download big games--not at launch anyway)

This game is going to be nothing like past grand theft autos. All the people who made the prior games are gone, and now they write by focus group and committee... I think it's probably going to suck.

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.

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.

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.

I mean, maybe?

Most media have a committee or group focus to them.

Even if you're old, those are solid arguments.

The experience of overpaying for something I won't own or control. It's not like a vacation or fine dining.

Even if your IQ < 1 those are solid arguments.

If it is yes, but afaik they won't do that for gta

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)

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.

I also don't understand what pre-ordering means nowadays. sometimes they offer you some sort of extra thing, which makes sense. but why would you preorder if you get literally nothing for it

I've never played a game that was ruined like this. so I'm gonna say it's an issue of shitty games doing shitty game things