Why are fighting games so expensive?

[Spindles]

These games are always full price, £49.99 and also sell lots of dlc.

Why is this the case? They aren't big games with lots of assets and there arent' thousands of peopel working on these like work on other big titles that sell for this amount, they aren't complex games...it's just a handful of characters and each has their own fight area. They are really simple fighting games made by small teams.

These games are nothing like the scope that open world games or even fps games are so why are they so expensive? Don't you feel like you're being ripped off?

Also this isn't a case of "you can't afford it", this is a case of why are they charging such high prices for such simple games.

[(.)(.)]

Want a proper fighting game, go play Hyper DBZ.

[iSurvivedRKelly]

Originally posted by Teaspoon:

It's because the audience for fighting games isn't as big of an audience as something like Call of Duty, GTA, etc, and they have to charge full price to turn a profit.

Also the graphical fidelity of games like MKX, MK11, and Injustice 2 don't come cheap, nor does a lenghty cutscene heavy story mode, along with various other features.

\o/

[Senseo1990]

Originally posted by Spindle:

Why is this the case? They aren't big games with lots of assets and there arent' thousands of peopel working on these like work on other big titles that sell for this amount, they aren't complex games...it's just a handful of characters and each has their own fight area. They are really simple fighting games made by small teams.

You dont know much about fighting games and development it seems. This part is completely wrong. Plus what Teaspoon said.

[iSurvivedRKelly]

They are so expensive because they are taking advantage of young people and huge names like Mortal Kombat, Street fighter, Tekken.

They are not small player bases. Alot of indie companies make some pretty complex games which sell for around $30. They still make money off of a low player base.

To say that if they sold this game for $50 + dlc & that they wouldn't make a profit is rather laughable.

Always look at the publishers, they give you a good idea of what their pricing is like and therefor what kind of prices to expect from their games.

Like EA games, the pound for pound king of overpriced games. Including DLC some of their games are $180+ and they are absolute garbage. Reskins. Shallow MP no campaigns.

That's why gamers follow developers and publishers and get to know which companies they can ensure to get bang for their buck.

At the end of the day i could sum up your question in two words.

Warner bros.

Not all fighting games are expensive. Only the ones with big names.

~Motal Kombat
~Street FIghter
~Tekken
~Dragonball Z
~Naruto

All huge names so they know they can charge whatever they want and fans will buy it.
After the failure of Mortal Kombat X, i got it on sale for like less than $10. With all the DLC.

So if you're like me and don't want to feed pigs just for the sake of it and can wait a bit to play the game. Just hold off a bit. The prices drop drastically on most games within a year.
Hell, i've got so many games i ca't find time to play them all anyways. So 6 months is nothing to me.

Only you can decide whether it's worth the price. Opinions always vary on prices. What is worth is for some is not worth it for others. Some people are tight with their money, some blow it like kids in a candy shop.

Up to you.

[omed_86]

I partially agree. Not because I think it takes less work or are easier to make, but because fighting games nowadays come with much less content than they used to in say, PS2 era.
Like recent fighting games come out and we ask: will it have arcade mode? lol

But take a game like Tekken, with around 30 characters on average, and each character having above 100 and 200 moves, and they have to all be balanced together somehow. And all the different figting styles and research that has to be done... etc. that is a lot of work.

Anyway, fighting games used to have a lot of unlockables and side modes and mini games that can keep you busy for a good while. Now if you're not competitive or not a hardcore fan then yeah maybe not worth getting full price.

[MatthewKai]

more goes into fighting games than you think. Mortal kombat X had about 2 hours of story cinematics alone. All the moves probably requires them to hire real matial artists to perform all the moves for each character. Then you have the krypt, online mode, all the enviourements, etc

[Marjan]

Originally posted by omed_86:

I partially agree. Not because I think it takes less work or are easier to make, but because fighting games nowadays come with much less content than they used to in say, PS2 era.
Like recent fighting games come out and we ask: will it have arcade mode? lol

But take a game like Tekken, with around 30 characters on average, and each character having above 100 and 200 moves, and they have to all be balanced together somehow. And all the different figting styles and research that has to be done... etc. that is a lot of work.

Anyway, fighting games used to have a lot of unlockables and side modes and mini games that can keep you busy for a good while. Now if you're not competitive or not a hardcore fan then yeah maybe not worth getting full price.

I'm totally on your side. They take a lot of time to develop because of things like balancing and the core gameplay. The design has to be top notch, that people want to play those games everyday, for years. An open world game like the Witcher 3 of course has more content but it doesn't need so much design polish. The fighting in Witcher just has to work, it doesn't have to be great nor balanced in all it's aspects. Still, full price seems to me is too much with most recent releases (SFV, Tekken 7, Dragonball FighterZ). With NRS games tho, you mostly get a lot of content (story and arcade modes, customaziation, etc) so I think If MK11 has as much content as, let's say Injustice 2, full price seems reasonable.

[omed_86]

Originally posted by seMpai:

With NRS games tho, you mostly get a lot of content (story and arcade modes, customaziation, etc) so I think If MK11 has as much content as, let's say Injustice 2, full price seems reasonable.

Yeah but even compared to previous MK games, say Armegaddon, they still lack in conent. It does look a lot of content, and the story is pretty good by fighting game standards, but they're all just different towers/universes and your ultimately just doing the same thing.
And Injustice 2's case, I actually got bored fast, because unlocking stuff is a tedious grind and everything becomes too difficult after a certain level.

I am looking at MK11 customizations and they look sick! But then I remember Injustice 2 mother boxes and crystals and I go: Oh right, forgot about that :S

Maybe I am going a bit off topic here, but you know how everyone ****s on Ubisoft? However in AC Odyssey they allow you to change the look of your armor regardless of stats, at anytime, for free. And remember how hard it was in Injustice 2? I enjoyed that game for a while and it looked amazing, but everything in it was needlessly grindy imo, and it didn't make me want to buy crystal, it made me wanna quit.

If MK11 turns out to be the same, I'll just wait for Komplete edition and get it on PC instead of PS4 to bypass the grind XD Unless the PC port is ****.