$70
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said that consumers are ready for $70 games:
"In terms of pricing, we announced a $70 price point for NBA 2K21. Our view was that we're offering an extraordinary array of experiences and lots of replayability. The last time there was a frontline price increase in the U.S. was in 2005-2006. So we think consumers were ready for it," Zelnick said.
"We haven't said anything about pricing other titles so far. We tend to make announcements on a title-by-title basis. Our view is to always deliver more value than what we charge, to make sure both the experience and paying for the experience are positive for the consumer."
If you just look at the words, and how they combine to form sentences, then that seems perfectly reasonable. If this was the truth, then it would be reasonable.
It's not the truth.
I wouldn't mind paying $70 for a game that I really valued. No problem whatsoever. But the title Zenick highlights as the model is exactly the opposite; it's the perfect example of doing it wrong.
NBA2K is a huge game. It's really multiple games in one. That seems like it should be worth $70. On paper, you can make that case.
Here's the problem: whenever a game is monetized beyond the purchase price, the game will focus almost entirely on that monetization.
NBA2K is stuffed with microtransactions. Stuffed. And they don't care that you care. So you're not paying $70 for a game, you're paying $70 to enter the free-to-play experience, where you are constantly reminded that you have to spend more money for the best experience.
That's painful. I'm not "ready for it." That phrase makes it sound like I'm bracing for a beating or something, which is what it feels like.
Madden and the EA Sports titles are another good example. Madden is huge now. It's a battleship, and it is incredibly ponderous to play, because EA has stopped pretending that you should be able to define how you play. Features that players have wanted for literally decades will never be added because they can't be monetized. But Ultimate Team mode? That's going to get endless amounts of attention, because it's an opportunity to produce more revenue.
It doesn't seem like anyone can escape this trap. As soon as games add microtransactions, the focus of the developers becomes the microtransactions.
Let's say I went to the mall one day, and I bought a shirt for $20. That shirt is somehow customizable, though, and I can pay $2 each time I want to add something.
If I'm the shirt manufacturer, what am I going to spend my time on? The base shirt? Or am I going to spent 90% of the time on figuring out ways to entice buyers into spending more money on the customization?
We both know the answer.
In effect, that's what some of these games do. Franchise mode in big sports games never gets as much attention as the monetization modes, because the entire job of the game is to funnel you into the monetization modes. Developers never want to make the non-monetized modes too attractive, because then fewer users would migrate to the monetized modes.
It's nasty, and it's never going to stop as long as there's only one major franchise for each team sport (with soccer being the only exception, even though FIFA is much bigger than PES).
There's no reason to stop doing shitty things if no one else is competing with you.
<< Home