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https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1653455896
$20 in 2004, the original release date of this game, is ~$27 now. i'll pay ~$2.50 extra for not only a port, but a port in modern resolutions.
But yeah, such classic is worth the money.
Note that no other games have problems like this. Old games get cheaper. Unless there is some wild brand of inflation that affected nobody in the entire industry except for Bandai-Namco, this simply isn't a argument with any merit.
I love how you just periodically pop up and act like you haven't lost this argument in this thread multiple times already. Especially when you bring up a point that was addressed thoroughly just two posts prior. But some people aren't interested in honest discussions or on learning anything that informs their world view, for that matter.
"Me like game! Me defend game in any context imaginable."
I love Katamari as well. It's one of my favorite games of all-time. I'm just not going to turn into a complete ignoramus as a result. I can like the game and disagree with what their publisher is doing, and despite what some appear to fear, my head has not exploded as a result. You should try it some time.
*edit*
Let me try this argument on you though, even though I think there is little-to-no good faith behind a single post you've made in here:
Katamari Damacy is one of my favorite games ever. I think it's easily worth $200. I probably spent over that when I played FFXI for 1-2 years, and I put as much time into Katamari.
Have I just adequately justified Bandai-Namco raising the price to $200? If this game costs $200 tomorrow, will you accept my rationale as a reasonable explanation? I mean, I just told you how much I think it's worth. Shouldn't that be enough?
That is why new games almost all new "AAA" games have a $100-120 version like Gold or Ultimate or whatever and usually all that includes is the season pass plus maybe some cosmetics. The reason video games have so much DLC is because of people like you that refuse to pay "inflation" prices so instead of packaging it all together in one product they have to milk people to get the full price of the game.
Is that why? Where did you read that?
That might make sense if the base cost of games were $70+ but they are not. It also might make sense if collectors' editions that sell for more than the standard were not being sold well before the time period we're discussing, but they were. Games are still $60 at the AAA level, cheaper when they're indie/low-budget, and cheaper old than they are new (with the extremely rare exception, hence this thread). While they're more common, collector's editions also sell for more money than standard editions, as they always have.
It's incredibly generous of you though, to attribute the wider adoption of these practices to inflation, rather than to suggest that the most infamously overbearing companies employing etra-purchase revenue streams in the form of microtransactions are doing it because they're trying to milk every possible dollar that they can from a title.
For the record, I'm sympathetic. A corporation's duty is to maximize profit. It's up to the consumer to send a message in the tug-of-war dynamic described above. Like when Microsoft tried to bulldog their digital-only XBox One into the marketplace only to have consumers tug them right off of a cliff - a phenomenon that they still haven't recovered from, as Sony's regained their position in that market in regards to MS.
Actually though I was there when N64 games cost $59.99 like Starfox 64 and Super Mario 64. I was there when most PS2 games worth owning cost the same. I remember cheaping out on discount games and getting garbage almost every time with the games I really wanted to play never ever dropping below $50 unless they were beat up used copies. I was there when Oblivion came out with Horse Armour DLC trying to figure out how this new DLC thing worked and what people actually would buy. I watched the game industry shift from releasing complete titles that took several years to yearly releases on major franchises like Assassins Creed coming from Prince of Persia games I was already a fan of or Halo even which typically took 3 years in-between games now coming out with a bunch of useless spin-offs so that they would have enough cash to keep taking 3 years in between major titles.
Where did I read that? Please, I have two eyes and a brain I watched it unfold right in front of me.
You watched inflation kick in and force companies to sell games for the same exact price they've been selling them for in the past 15 years?
Just about everything you described flies in the face of your assertion about inflation, both in general and in regards to the title we're discussing: you're describing a market that is not especially impacted by inflation, where games used to cost significantly more in the distant past, before inflation, than they do today.
The part where you pivot to justifying endless sequels as a necessity to cope with inflation still doesn't speak to inflation in any way whatsoever, and essentially is an exercise in finding dots to connect to justify an assertion that you didn't think through very well before making it. Lett's address it.
While some franchises get endless sequel treatment, a great portion of game releases are also original IPs that spent years in development. That's not a thing of the past. In other words, it is not necessary to adopt an endless sequel model to make a profit - never mind any attributions to that non-phenomenon to inflation.
We need to talk about your characterization of the early and pre-Playstation eras before I even get to the argument. Aside from MSRPs being non-standard and often in excess of $60 ($50 to $80 seemed to be the range as I recall), the lack of standard meant that they would often be sold in stores for much higher. Street Fighter 2 for SNES was supposed to sell for $70 (about $125 in today's dollars, considering inflation), and a local department store near me was selling it for $85. Playstation was the first platform to adopt a hard standard, and within a generation or so, that standard essentially became industry-wide, with exceptions for games that were cheaper to develop or less robust costing less - such as Katamari Damacy
There are a few reasons I want to mention that. First, inflation clearly has had no noticeable impact whatsoever on industry standards or profits. The industry, under lower prices, has generally steadily sold more games to more people and made more money. This suggests that there are other factors that are tangentially related to if not completely unattached to dollar inflation that dictate the prices at which games are sold. When Sony made their calculations and everyone followed suit, inflation does not appear to have played any role whatsoever. If we want to insist that we did, we would have to conclude that it was working in reverse.
It's also worth bearing in mind that development costs were likely experiencing a sharp increase in those eras, where 3D development, voice acting, mocap and higher fidelity assets were being created for increasingly expansive game environments. In other words, video games aren't a product like steel, with fixed practices and set logistics that are going to be impacted in direct correlation with dollar inflation. As the tech develops, aspects of games might be more expensive to produce, require more people or even be easier to produce with fewer people. If anything those, as well as factors such as consumer expectation are very real considerations that belong in a discussion about how the industry determines its prices.
Unfortunately for you and others who have staked out your position on this topic, those considerations do not bear on this re-release of a game that made its profits 15 years ago and that was ported over to sell on an additional platform.
yes, the physical cost of production has gone down, but the intangible cost of man-hours have gone up, as AAA studio teams are much larger affairs than they were over a decade ago. i mean, soul calibur 6, another title from this publisher, was considered a "low budget" game while it had something like 6-7 different development studios working on it. there are literally hundreds of people in the credits.
yes, production costs have gone down due to physical media dying out..... but the publishers didnt just chop the price down, they put the saved money back into production..... which is why we have teams supporting games beyond release with patches and DLC, which was never a thing back in the day.
That is in fact not the price of a new AAA game, not even from this publisher.
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=Price_DESC&category1=998&publisher=BANDAI%20NAMCO%20Entertainment
I'm sorry, I hope I don't come off as rude but you're completely pulling narratives out of thin air here, as well as either misunderstanding or also inventing my line of reasoning for me - I didn't make an assertion about games being overall cheaper to produce at the moment than at another particular moment in time. Let's get to the first part, which is much more important.
That is just not how anything related to this industry works. Game publishers didn't say "hey, here is money we don't have to spend on physical media anymore, let's all invest in in further game development!" It had just become less of a consideration, as physical media is no longer requirement. There is nothing to suggest a relationship between the advent of digital distribution and higher-end production. Which is the best interpretation of what you're offering here that I can come up with. If you're actually saying something else, I'm curious to hear what it is. I can't imagine what it is... There is no direct correlation between digital distribution methods and consumer cost that I have been able to identify. As a matter of fact, digital distribution on consoles tends to cost more for the consumer than does physical media, which tends to on sale and permanent price drop far quicker than its digital counterparts which often never get a permanent price drop.
Additionally, I'm not sure if the reason that additional game content being something that we see more recently than in the past is attributable to anything but the fact that there simply was no internet framework to speak of that could make it a viable format for selling games.
Even if you want to want to theorize that extra-game purchase models, whether they come in the form of special edition bundles/upgrades (which actually were a thing even when media was strictly physical), DLC content or microtransactions, are a necessity today due to stagnant game costs, what you don't have to theorize about is that it's also something that is going to happen as it becomes acceptable practice, whether a company struggles to profit on a particular title or not. For the same reason that countries without any net neutrality may have to buy a special internet package from their ISP that allows them to access Netflix (see Portugal, Spain). For the same reason that every industry that can is automating right now. For the same reason a hot dog costs $12 at a baseball game. Corporations are obligated to try to maximize profit and that is what they will do.
Do you think Activision just can't make their nut, and that's why they have such excessive DLC practices? EA? As I said, you can hypothesize that it might be a necessity in some case(s) but there is nothing to indicate that it's become acceptable practice for any reason other than they can sell the same person who already bought a game even more stuff. Like a show I watched that recently encouraged viewers to purchase memberships for family. Growth has slowed down for their new subs, so they figure: "Hey, I know these guys like to spend money on us already. Since they already have membership, let's get them to spend their money on memberships for other people that may or may not ever get used!" Whether it's "bad" or not is subjective. I have no reason to look at that, however, and conclude that they must need to do that to stay in business. That would be a completely baseless theory.
Are you a dunce or just profoundly dishonest? The top two titles cross $60 and both of them are bundles with season passes. One base game is $40 and the other is $60.
1. Dark Souls II Deluxe(bundle) $93.99
2. God Eater 3(not bundle) $79.99 without sale
3. Jump Force(not bundle) $79.99
4. Ace Combat 7(not bundle) $79.99
5. Dragon Ball FighterZ(not bundle) $79.99
6. Project Cars 2(not bundle) $79.99
7.Naruto To Boruto(not bundle) $79.99
8. My Hero One's Justice(not bundle) $79.99
9. Soulcalibur VI(not bundle) $79.99
10. Ni no Kuni II(not bundle) $79.99
Then finally the price drops a little to $69.99