Who cares when it releases, you know it’s gonna be crap.
What’s with half the commenters acting like GTA V isn’t a great game?
Y’all know GTA Online is a different game technically, yeah? The single player of GTA V is still there and even better now that Enhanced is on PC. Rockstar didn’t fuck Up RDR2s single-player Mode so why assume they would on this?
I still haven’t played GTA5. Does it hold up (single-player) all those years later?
gameplay-wise, yeah absolutely. writing-wise, pretty alright, some hits and some misses. kinda like south park.
I remember liking GTA4 but getting burned out on its archaic in my view mission design.
While at one point GTA was my favorite series and I was absolutely hyped for GTA V, I’m not for this one. I kind of feel like I’m getting a little old for GTA.
Maybe I’ll change my mind after it releases and there’s a good chance I’ll play it anyway, but right now… meh.
I’d pay over $100 for GTA6 personally. And microtransactions aren’t out of the question for me either. I don’t have nearly as much time as money these days. Not that I have a lot of money, but I’ll pay it if it makes the experience better
You have no time, but plenty of money, so you are willing to spend extra money just for the sake of having no time AND no money? Get that corpo dick out of your mouth.
Even if I was a millionaire I wouldn’t want my games to have micro transactions in them. It’s not about the cost, it’s about the fact that as soon as micro transactions are included in the game, the game instantly becomes all about pushing those microtransactions, to the detriment of the gameplay.
Also you are mad if you prepare to pay $100 for GTA VI especially because we all know that it’ll be discounted at some point.
Comments like yours are why the overwhelming majority of video games these days suck.
Yup. “Please bend me over and fuck me for all I’m worth, corpo daddy!” type energy. Some people just can’t get enough of being exploited.
I don’t know why but I couldn’t give two shits about GTA6, maybe I’m just burned out on AAA games
It’s just so meh. Another city, you’re a criminal doing crime. There are just games with much better stories or mechanics at this point. I don’t get the hype around it.
Because it will be full of micro transactions and bullshit content no-one asked for, with anti cheat horseshit that will pretty much be a virus on your computer.
Sad thing is that it’ll still sell millions because most people don’t even know when they are being served shit.
No doubt it’ll also have Denuvo, just to make the game run even worse too.
I’m the same but I may just be getting older. Last game I was hyped for was Cyberpunk 2077 coming off of the stellar Witcher 3 and having followed both games I loved, W1 & W2. Sometime before it released, I just dropped all hype for it and haven’t felt the same after. Haven’t even played it yet either.
Today, I let myself be pleasantly surprised by games I never thought I’d like. I really liked Death Stranding and I’m waiting for its sequel but still no hype… I haven’t even seen the trailer yet and I doubt I will… I’ll buy it and go in blindly. Just have a PS for Sony’s once a year AAA and that’s it for AAA gaming. Most other days, its just AA or indie games on PC… which is where I find a lot more flavor. As an example, this month, I’ve played Minami Lane, MudRunner and Art of Rally and starting Tactical Breach Wizards soon.
Im completelly opposide. Its maybe only AAA game im intrested in long time.
Mostly because of their track record. I have been playing GTA since the very first top down game and every main game in the series has pushed the games further.
Thinking how big leaps every game has done, i cant wait to see what kind of the beast 6 is going to be.
I just want trains to work in this new game. They never make trains work properly they’re always just indestructible juggernauts and are therefore boring. GTA V had submarines but not drivable trains.
maybe I’m just burned out on AAA games
I know I am.
Companies need to grow a spine. Good games sell regardless of what’s out. If your confidence in your own game is so low that you’d push it to a slow release date, it’s probably not worth playing anyway.
that’s not true. games can absolutely get fucked by release dates coinciding with big names. and have.
I don’t know about that one. Games are expensive these days and if your game releases anywhere near the rumored $100 GTA 6, a LOT of people are going to have to choose one or the other, and it’s very unlikely that in most cases they don’t choose GTA6, literally the most anticipated video game of the last decade. Sure you can always buy the smaller game later, but a huge part of the sales of video games is the opening week, when all the hype around it has had time to come to a head, and you’re influenced by the fact that lots of other people are playing it.
Yeah good games will always sell SOME copies. But if you thinking that a game even releasing in the same month as GTA6 won’t have a permanent impact on that games sales, you’re smoking the reefer.
if you thinking that a game even releasing in the same month as GTA6 won’t have a permanent impact on that games sales, you’re smoking the reefer.
Maybe they should stop trying to peddle bland-ass live service games that live and die by their players numbers then. A good solo game might take a hit to its initial sales but should recover in the long run.
A good solo game might take a hit to its initial sales but should recover in the long run.
It won’t though. This feel-good theory that if a game is “good” then it’ll just make the same amount of money it always would have otherwise is not supported by any real world evidence. And even the most hypothetically high quality, ethical, game making company is still a company in the end, and companies need to money to pay living wages and keep people employed making new games. And if the games they are putting out are high quality, they probably have competent leadership. And competent leadership isn’t going to gamble the future of their company and livelihoods of their employees on an unproven feel-good fantasy espoused only by people on Reddit and Lemmy who’ve never run a business before.
If the game is good, doesnt need an active playerbase to survive (ie isn’t entirely based on multiplayer), and the company is already reputable, it has no reasons to not sell decently in the long run. Also if an (already established) company’s future is jeopardized by a single game not doing well, I’m sorry but it’s not well managed. Ask me how I know.
That’s just not how these things work. Launch windows have a documented history of being uniquely impactful to the long term success of games, movies, even products. It would take some serious evidence to the contrary for you to claim otherwise.
Also if an (already established) company’s future is jeopardized by a single game not doing well, I’m sorry but it’s not well managed. Ask me how I know.
That’s not really here nor there. It also isn’t really true.
I think what you’re saying is true but perhaps you’re both talking about different things. I think you’re speaking about the reality of the situation whereas the comment OP is talking about the risk averse nature of large game studios. I don’t think it’s the same thing.
Also, I think I’m part of a growing minority but if gta 6 reviews are bad I’m not buying it until I hear it’s been fixed. I’ve been burned so many times 😭
I’m buying it regardless of reviews. Which are gonna be amazing anyway but still. I paid full price for Forspoken and actually really enjoyed it. I like the Kojima attitude of (for him it was a bookstore) picking something blindly that calls out to you. It might be amazing, it might be shit, but you learn something from everything you engage with. I just like the surprise of trying something I’ve got a lukewarm interest in and enjoying it a lot. Horizon Lego Adventures and Lost Records Bloom and Rage impressed me recently
Course I play games to play them, not complain about them online all day. And most of the time I enjoy what I find
I know I am buying it once the price goes down considerably. Wasn’t it rumoured to start with 3 digits? I’m a patient gamer.
It’s the exact same thing actually. Their claim was:
Good games will sell regardless of what’s out
But that’s just not true, and game studios of all sizes know that. The risk aversion of these companies exist because of the reality of the situation.
It also has nothing to do with a studios confidence in their game. The quality of a game is light years away from being the sole objective indicator of a games sales. The Outer Wilds is objectively one of the greatest games ever made and has no real peers in what it does. And yet it didn’t make nearly the sales numbers as the latest asset flipped Call of Duty game.
The Outer Wilds was a first game from an indie studio. On this basis alone it was practically guaranteed to not get the success it deserved. And it does deserve a ton of it.
Conversely, call of duty is literally one of the most notorious franchises in the entire industry, and pretty much sells on its name alone.
A good observation. Hence why one of those games can afford to launch during a crowded window despite its lack of quality, and the other, despite their confidence in their work, and the high quality of their work, could not. You’re starting to get it now.
You cant trust reviews. For example dragon’s dogma 2 which i just picked up is a great game. But some people wouldn’t know it based a lot of criticism and bad reviews it recieved when it launched.
Ehh yeah that’s a whole other can of worms. By “reviews”, for me, I mean a bunch of different sources.
And I do that because you’re correct! Trust in those is low.
So “reviews” maybe isn’t the right word. Just tryna keep the comment simple.
I’m not quite sure why they’re so concerned. I suspect they’re actually not and this is just things “analysts” say.
I suspect that the release of GTA VI is going to be lukewarm compared to the release of GTA V, because everyone remembered what Rockstar did to GTA V. People are going to wait around and see how they handle GTA online because they need to do better than last time because last time was ridiculous.
I’m certainly not all that interested in getting it day one and I know a lot of other people aren’t either.
because everyone remembered what Rockstar did to GTA V
Released a fantastic game worth replaying multiple times?
GTA Online =/= GTA V
Oh yeah with all that DLC oh wait
GTA5 is more than a decade ago,.
The older gemers may remember but there is a whole generation that has spung up since.
Edit: a quick look shows there were 1.7 billion people born between 1995 and 2007 i.e. born in the period that would have trurned 18 between 2013 and 2015… This corresponds to 20 of the global population.
born between 1995 and 2007 i.e. born in the period that would have trurned 18 between 2013 and 2015
Nice of you to assume there are no underage players of GTA V
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There’s absolutely zero reason to pre-order the bonuses you get are never worth it and it’s not like they’re going to run out. Hell I didn’t pre-order GTA V and I got it day one on both PS3 and Xbox 360 but just walking into a store on lunch time. And that was a physical media now everything’s gone digital is even less reason to pre-order.
So I’ll not be pre-ordering regardless, but I wouldn’t be pre-ordering anyway because I don’t trust Rockstar anymore. I’m not saying that the game will be bad I’m just saying I don’t trust Rockstar fully anymore. I also don’t trust CDPR anymore because of cyberpunk. Yeah they fixed it but so what, I don’t want to be encouraging that kind of release strategy. Same thing with hello games, If they want people to go back to buying their games by default, these companies have to release some whoppers with zero issues day one to get back their reputation.
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This is so strange. Wasn’t it not long ago that studios were crowding into very specific release windows ( usually november iirc ) so they could maximize initial sales? Maybe the digital release era has changed things. I mean, I get it if your game was in the same niche or smth, but “companies might tank” seems a little much.
Either way, if this is true, eoy 2025 is in for a dry spell when it comes to new games.
Edit: Also I find it hilarious how all these “industry analysts” keep popping up suggesting ominous things despite Rockstar not saying a peep about the game besides the trailer. Almost as if they were paid to do it.
They aren’t crowding into those windows because competition helps their sales, it’s because they expect the biggest shopping period of the year will result in more sales than they lose. And there’s a reason only the biggest titles release in these windows.
Capcom made the decision years ago to release in February/March because they know a November window will drown them.
Over time they realised that, while holiday windows or whatever have high sales, if there’s a better or more popular game coming out then, yours will just be forgotten.
That said, most “industry specialists” are just glorified influencers, so take it with a grain of salt
Sure is a great way to stir the pot, that’s for sure. This article raised my eyebrow so much I just had to share it.
Judging by all the shark card crap they jammed into the last GTA, I fully expect them to shovel a bunch of crap in to make more money: $70 base games, deluxe editions, DLC, micro transactions, social club integration, required internet connections, all of it.
I miss the old GTAs before they got greedy.
As an optimist, I expect more expansions like Gay Tony and for them to simply make fun of microtransactions on the radio.
Ah, full expansion DLC. That’d be nice.
controversial take, but I hope they do delay it. Better a good game late than a bad game early. As big as this release is, it HAS to be good.
Yeah, the Witcher 3 release should have taught the game publishers this. CDPR delayed the launch by several months because the game wasn’t ready to ship yet. And the game was phenomenal, and received rave reviews pretty much across the board. Gamers were disappointed about the launch, but basically went “this game will be worth the wait.”
You realize that rockstar basically invented this strategy right? Almost every release since vice city or San Andreas has been delayed by 6 months to a year to be the best game possible.
I just assumed game companies had been doing that since the 1800’s.
Sure you can argue standard practice has been and should be to deliver a finished game first and foremost. But in the context of modern gaming and setting release dates, Rockstar has historically been unafraid to change a release date to make a better game. But yes before the internet and the ability to patch a game it was standard to make sure your game didn’t suck before letting it loose.
And my comment was more to point out that using CDPR as a shining beacon of consistently solid game releases is laughable, especially when comparing them to Rockstar.
…and they followed it with Cyberpunk 2077’s disastrous launch but ultimate success. So I wouldn’t hold CDPR as a high standard.
I wouldn’t call it a success yet. I just started playing it for the first time yesterday and I have already fallen through the floor twice and the camera was broken causing seizure inducing visuals in one of the cutscenes.
It’s right there in the link. It sold more than Witcher 3, even though it did the wrong thing by releasing early and buggy.
I’d argue that is just another example of why delaying games isn’t a bad thing. 2077 clearly wasn’t ready at launch, and would have benefitted from a delayed launch.
I feel like that one was also due to awful development practices, they had the whole scrapping the entire first 2 years of work thing due to a control freak lead dev who was ultimately releaved of his position (though not until after release iirc)
Funny how CDPR themselves then had a major fuck up with Cyberpunk
If your game can’t even complete with a game nobody knows anything about and doesn’t even have a set release date, maybe your game just fucking sucks?
“Just make good games” doesn’t really work in the age where we’ve got tens of thousands of game releases per year compared to the age of a few hundred games per year.
Well making bad games isn’t working so well either is it…
Release timing is always a critical thing to think about, whether you’re talking about games, movies, TV series, or toys.
I do wanna point out that one of the Horizon games (I believe the second) got pretty screwed by releasing within a week of Elden Ring and didn’t suck. Publishers big and small do need to be careful to not release within a time frame of absolutely massive releases such as Elden Ring and, inevitably, GTA6.
Even if the game doesn’t let you play on release day, I’m willing to bet my kidney that it’ll sell millions of copies and nothing big will be released within a month of it
And the first game released closed to Breath of the Wild
Oh yeah, I forgot just how bad the timing of both releases were. Didn’t the second games dlc also drop right around Shadow of the Erdtree?
A spinoff game, Horizon Call of the Mountain, which is a VR game
big games get delayed, a lot
And yet so many of them still suck at launch.
That’s cause the business side keeps pushing for increasingly unrealistic deadlines and will only accept delaying so much before forcing it out.
Weird vibes in this comment section.
They are all from players who are against things Rockstar did with GTA and what it represents for the industry. But they are not representative of the whole market.
The article is right about the impact for small studios. On the timeline for the game I’m working on, we have a prediction for GTA VI release with a big question mark and we hope to avoid it.
The problem is not that all players will spend $100 on the game. The problem is that the majority of the press coverage, Steam traffic, streamer time, etc. will focus on the topic. Even if there is bad press around GTA, that’s still attention that is not on other games.
I really didn’t know what to expect with this article. That being said, the industry holding their breath on GTA 6 is a bit much, to say the least.
Exactly this. I work in the games industry as well and even big studios are falling over themselves NOT to release anywhere near GTA6.
Nobody believes there won’t be people playing other games at that time. But it’s going to dominate the media cycle for a month, especially if it is either better or worse than fans hope. And the reality is that many, many people have limited gaming budgets. If you’ve only got $100 to spend, GTA6 is very likely to be the default pick at that time.
It’s a behemoth in terms of grabbing attention from both the media and players. All the best laid plans for a successful release can be completely derailed by a game like GTA6.
They want $100 for this. They are trying to make games expensive again.
In my mind, the bigger and more expensive the dev team, the more likely the business people are to be involved. Those business types really know how to suck fun and fairness out of games in an attempt to turn it into unbridled profits.
Buy a handful of games from small independent studios instead of this if you feel similarly to me.
Fun facts incoming!
Cost of “Mario 64” on release = $59.99
Development budget for Mario 64 = ~$1.56mil
Inflation adjusted Mario 64 cost in 2022 = $111.91
Inflation adjusted Mario 64 budget in 2022 = ~$2.91mil
Cost of “Elden Ring” on release = $59.99
Estimated dev. budget for Elder Ring = $100mil-200mil
Mario 64 units sold = ~12mil
Elder Ring units sold = ~28mil
These details are provided without comment. You do the math and decide whether the fact that prices haven’t changed since 1996 might be the reason for some of the enshitification we continue to see.
And now for the comment:
Consumers are horrifyingly resistant to price increases for games. It is directly responsible for many of the shitty monetization models we’ve seen. Development budget continue to rise, even on indie games, while consumers pay less and less in “real money value” over time.
It’s completely unsustainable and the very reason the “business types” get involved, forcing unpopular monetization schemes
You’re very conveniently and likely deliberately leaving out that more than 1/2 the cost for Mario 64 was manufacturing the cartridge…
We’re still talking about ~3 mil to ~150 mil. If the software dev costs for Mario 64 were closer to ~1.5 mil, what does that have to do with the argument being made?
I almost replied from my inbox; glad someone said it before I even got to it haha
meh, I don’t think that the reason AAA games are bad is because they cost less. I think it’s just greed and rushing the developers.
I never said anything about the quality of the games. I’m speaking specifically to the monetization bullshit.
As I said elsewhere: budget bloat happens in a lot of places. Greedy executive and publishers is one place. Overambitious design goals that get scrapped is another. There’s also bad tools workflows, mismanagement, and any number of other contributing factors.
But even indie devs are getting screwed on pricing and making far less than they deserve to be in many cases.
If people keep buying CoD and Assassins Creed, devs will keep making them. And if they can’t increase retail price to cover the budget they will find other ways to do it.
oh, in that case yeah that’s fair, I agree
Now throw in average incomes on the low, medium, and high ends and see if that makes any difference in your criticism of people not wanting to spend so much on a game they might get a hundred or so hours out of.
Hell, throw in the average housing costs and costs of consumables while we’re at it.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the capital structure is fair by any means. I understand all the reasons why people - especially right now - are struggling to justify big purchases.
And I will readily agree that inefficient and improper use of resources is one of the contributing factors to ballooning development budgets
That said, video games are - and I challenge you to disprove this - easily one of the best investments for entertainment. Dollars-per-hour of fun on a 20hr, $60 game is $3. For a live service game where people spend hundreds of thousands of hours playing it can get below $0.10 per hour.
And yet, these days I am finding better games, made by smaller teams, for lower prices (usually between $30-40) from indie devs. The cost ain’t the reason for enshittification, and paying a higher price will not mean we get better games.
This is where it’s at now, ‘smaller’ teams that actually care about the thing they’re making.
We don’t need games made by teams of 19,000 people like AC:Shadows, it’s bloat. Skyrim was made with a team of less than 300.
I simply chose two big, well known, and beloved titles for the sake of expediency.
This problem is not unique to big budget games.
Indie devs are getting screwed too. You saying that you’ve found great games for $30-40 from indie devs isn’t an argument against more sustainable pricing like you think it is.
If the dev budget for the indie game was 5% of the AAA game but the price was 50% then you’ve literally just helped prove my point
The fact is - and I challenge you to prove me wrong here - video games continue to be hands down the best dollar-per-hour investment for entertainment. Even a $60 game that only lasts 20 hrs is still coming in at $3/hr of entertainment, which is very hard to beat. When you look at live service games where people will spend literally thousands of hours after paying anywhere from $60-200 you’re looking at $0.10/hr in some cases.
If you like bigger games, and plenty do, them charging a higher price for it up front makes it more likely that they’re made sustainably. If a game costs $100M to make, the difference between breaking even on $70 versus $60 is hundreds of thousands of additional customers.
Cartridge manufacturing and distribution was hella expensive back then and that took a big bite on any sales.
Digital storefronts do take as well their lion share though, but that’s on sales.
While that may be true, the costs and budgets we’re dealing with today are orders of magnitude higher than they were back then. Physical product manufacturing doesn’t even come close to making up the difference when you factor in digital storefront costs.
They’d ask $1000 for it if they thought people will pay it. No one at Take Two or Rockstar has said this. Most likely is they’ll do that $100 “advance access” thing that a lot of AAA games like to do, where you get the game a few days early. The business hasn’t gotten in the way of the fun or fairness of the campaign mode for Rockstar’s previous efforts, and if it did this time, we’ll certainly hear about it immediately.
Was the $100 price ever confirmed? I thought it was just rumored?
Gaming industry pundits are gooning so hard for the prospect of $100.00 standard games they keep parroting this out hoping it will become true
The only thing Rockstar has ever officially released about the game is the teaser trailer. Everything else is pure speculation and rumormilling.
Are you asking me if I can predict the future?
Well since you’re posting “they want $100 for this” so matter-of-factly, you seem to believe that you can predict the future, Andy.
