How long can video games continue this "Wait for sale" trend?

Dalisclock

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I'd make the argument that if game devs feel their losing an alarming amount of money due to sales, one would think they'd be wise to question why people aren't buying their game at the launch price but waiting till deep discount or bundle sales? Is the price too high to begin with or is the quality not high enough to justify?

I think the last game I bought at launch price that wasn't already like $20 to start with was Disco Elysium and I wasn't disappointed at all. I was happy to show my support to the devs for putting out something so risky and succeeding admirably(though not without flaws) and that's something that feels very rare nowadays.
 

Chimpzy

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Maybe but even in death we must social distance. Can't have ghosts get the Covid-19 virus
Or, ooooooor ... maybe the dust IS Covid-19, having travelled here from the far-flung future to enact its terrible vengeance on us.

Don't worry, that makes sense if you're dust.
 

ObsidianJones

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What kind of logic is it to see someone ask, "is anyone else feeling the same way?" and assume that they believe everyone else feels like they do? If I believed everyone else felt the same way then I wouldn't ask the question.
Whenever I address someone, I quote them. Even if I don't include all of their text in the quote, I at least snip it so they know I'm addressing them. If I don't address them, I'm mulling out loud on the topic at hand, solely from my viewpoint and based on no one.

I used the first sentence as a general idiom of sorts. Like "Don't count your chickens before they hatch" or "Give (subject) the benefit of the doubt".

Any other comments or concerns, you can PM me over them.
 

Specter Von Baren

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Whenever I address someone, I quote them. Even if I don't include all of their text in the quote, I at least snip it so they know I'm addressing them. If I don't address them, I'm mulling out loud on the topic at hand, solely from my viewpoint and based on no one.

I used the first sentence as a general idiom of sorts. Like "Don't count your chickens before they hatch" or "Give (subject) the benefit of the doubt".

Any other comments or concerns, you can PM me over them.
Well I've PM'd you on your need to update your avatar with a higher resolution version but you still haven't gotten back to me.
 

XsjadoBlayde

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But will the dust buy videogames for full price? And then MTX?

Serious questions that must be asked.
Assuming this is future techno dust infused with the meandering excess energy of dead civilisations, there is a chance for collective memory to manifest as twitches unobserved in the cosmos, perhaps enough to make an unwise purchase or two. Habits are hard to kick.
Maybe but even in death we must social distance. Can't have ghosts get the Covid-19 virus
Hmm, thinking ahead there. Ghost cannot clap for the NHS either. They must remain even more cautious.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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I wouldn't worry about that. Don't forget that you're working from a very small and select sample size. There are plenty of idiots out there still buying the new FIFA or Madden or NBA 2kXX (seriously FFS just use the last two digits again; the 2k thing stopped making sense in 2001) and lots of people buying games so they can be the first one on their block to have it (or for multiplayer titles, so they don't get left out while all their friends play it).
 
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Like many have said, the average gamer is not on forums like this and they buy games on release day a lot (and also play a lot less games than most of us do as well). Recall the MW2 "boycott" way back with that pic of those boycotting it and then those same people playing it.

Like I said in the other thread, I don't really care what the price of the game is as long as I'm in the mood to play it, I'll buy it and play it at that time. Now if it's a game I do want to play but I'm playing something else or not in the mood and I see it on sale down the road, I'll pick it up then. I'll most likely be picking up games like Baldur's Gate 3 (when the full release is out), Gamedec, and Weird West on release (assuming I'm not deep into anything else) because I'm really anticipating those. Also, another reason I don't care about price is because I sell games when I'm done with them, I'm on the last mission of Desperados 3 that I bought full price at launch last month and I'll be selling it shortly after beating the game. Thus, the game costs me maybe $20 when it's all said and done so what's the point in waiting for the game to drop to $20?
 
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My issue with some new games is that they will inevitably release a bunch of DLC and whatnot for it. And then down the line, it's cheaper to just buy the complete edition or whatever while also getting the full experience.

If I buy a game at launch, I'll likely beat it before any of the DLC comes out. And not all the DLC are post game type content, it's often 'middle' content or 'side' content. That I no longer feel like going back to after having already beaten the game.

Also there's just dumb pricing practices. I bought Fallout 4 at launch. I was thinking of picking up the season pass much further down the line when I've forgotten most of it, then I could revisit the game and also mod it to hell. But for no good reason, the GOTY costs more than the season pass? So here we are, they are basically punishing me for buying their game at launch. So I should buy the GOTY version and... gift vanilla FO4 to someone now? Is that it? Can I refund the gift copy?

I'm also from Malaysia. As far as videogames and other international luxuries are concerned - they are that much more expensive for me because I earn a lot less comparatively. Our currency is dogshit piss and has poor buying power. While there are regional prices(on Steam anyway, also a big reason why I refuse to adopt other digital storefronts since they usually don't have regional pricing) to make things more affordable, not all publishers adopt it. A lot of AAA games are basically the equivalent of their US prices on Steam. Both RDR2 and F1 2020 might be US$59.99 but I'm looking at RM219 for RDR2 and only RM95 for F1 2020. Imagine paying 200 dollars for your games. I ain't getting a RM60 AAA videogame short of post launch massive sales.
 

Satinavian

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I don't think the buying preferences of the average Escapist user is any kind of barometer for the wider gaming audience. No user base aimed at gaming enthusiasts probably is. Tho I feel it seems way more common to "wait for sale" on the forums/sites I lurk that have an older user base i.e. 30+ people with jobs, but also all those adult responsibilities like rent, bills, kids, etc.
I am not so sure.

With Steam being now the typical way to buy games, even casual gamers are esposed to sales a lot. And casual gamers rarely don't wait for release day in anticipation and play the full priced games at day one. They either buy by recommendation or after being prodded somehow else. A sale could do that. And even if they find a game they might be interested in, they can put it on the wishlist and wait half a year. Because they are not hyped enthusiasts.

It is different for multiplayer games and for consoles though. But where i live, "casual gamers" tend to not have dedicated gaming hardware like consoles. But nearly everyone has a PC or laptop for other stuff. Often horribly out-of-date though, which is another reason casual gamers often don't buy new full price titles.
 

CaitSeith

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Who knows? Mario and Zelda games rarelly go into sale, and yet, people keep buying them most of the time.
 

faeyr

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Who knows? Mario and Zelda games rarelly go into sale, and yet, people keep buying them most of the time.
Yep. I rarely pay full price for games, but there's always the Nintendo tax. It helps that they're generally good, and feel like big events in terms of criticism and discussion.
 

Drathnoxis

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If the opinions and habits of the Escapist regulars were indicative of the general game buying public on the whole, the AAA landscape would be a very different place, indeed. EA would be out of business, microtransactions would be a death sentence in a full priced game, and the world would just be a better place in general. Unfortunately, the big publishers aren't required to please the hard core enthusiests because there's thousands more only just getting into the hobby every day.
What kind of logic is it to see someone ask, "is anyone else feeling the same way?" and assume that they believe everyone else feels like they do? If I believed everyone else felt the same way then I wouldn't ask the question.
I think it's the mandatory response around here.

I see you don't remember the old days on the Escapist where phrasing your topic in any variation of "Am I the only one who..." was guaranteed to derail at least half the responses into pointing out the obvious fact that you are not, in fact, the only one, regardless of how well explained your actual question was.
 
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Dalisclock

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Who knows? Mario and Zelda games rarelly go into sale, and yet, people keep buying them most of the time.
Mario and Zelda benefit from living in Nintendo's tightly controlled walled garden. If you don't like their prices, you don't really have a choice. You can buy it or not. The rest of the gaming eco-system isn't really like that.

That being said, Mario and Zelda tend to have a very consistent quality to them(a few examples to the contrary notwithstanding), especially for series that have been regularly releasing titles since the 1980s. A ton of name recognition(people who have probably never touched a video game in their life can recognize Mario) and mainstream appeal doesn't hurt either.
 
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happyninja42

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I'm pretty sure these sales are incredibly profitable for all parties involved, especially digital sales. They wouldn't be so common if they didn't make the people money.

I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle. It's not so much that they are losing money by not having people buy it at full price, it's more likely it's "we are gaining money from people who were probably never going to buy our game, but decided to when we offered it half off." So the number of increased sales, even at a discount, far outstrips the loss at full price.

If we're talking physical products, it's still valid, because the markup for most consumer goods, is so high, that even with a price cut, they are making a lot of profit. And it's better for them to liquidate their merchandise, than to have it unsold, as physical objects, in a warehouse.

So no I don't think it's going to be an issue, I think they are making money hand over fist.
 
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PsychicTaco115

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There's SO. MANY. good games coming out, I can afford to be petty picky. The sales help make it all affordable.

More games, more games! YEAH!
 

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The astounding sample size of 24 (roughly, I didn't write out everyones name, just short memory for repeating avatars) people who replied in a narrow timeframe on one gaming forum may not be entirely indicative of a widespread commerce trend. Particularly as people in both threads have identified that they do have some exceptions to the concept as well.
 

SupahEwok

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Addendum to the beginning of the post, after writing to the end of it: I'm kind of combining a response to both this thread and the older "Push for $70 AAA games" thread, because even as OP stated, the topics are similar.

I'm not sure if OP really knows what a price is. I know that several people who have responded about "value" certainly don't know.

A price has nothing to do with some metaphysical value of the "stuff" that goes into an object. A price is simply what a person or set of persons is willing to pay for an object. One person may be willing to buy a game at $60, another person may be willing to buy the same game only at $30. If you sell the game for $60 to person A and for $30 for person B, you did not "lose" $30; you gained $30 that you would never have had if you forever kept the price of the game at $60.

So, what determines what price point a game initially starts at? After all, if you set your initial price at $40, while there are people who will pay $60, you do effectively lose money. Does that mean you should set a game's price at $1000, since surely there'll be someone who'll pay that, and then start stepping down in increments? No, because price is not the only consideration that goes into trade. There's plenty of stuff involving timing and trends and brainwashing marketing. Ultimate, an initial price is an educated and debated guess over what you can sell your product for which will lead to the market saturation needed for memetic spread, whilst not losing too much money off of the top.

The standard rebuttal is: well, you have to set a price above your costs of production and incorporate the cuts of the middlemen along the way, your retail chains and online vendors and console platforms. Well, that's not got anything to do with what a price is, that's just business. You can set a price lower than the value of materials and labor which went into creating your object, it would just be catastrophically terrible business. And yet, it could very well be that that is all that your object is actually worth. It's an assumption of functional capitalism that manufactured goods have value added to them by labor, and yet it is conceivable that labor can have no effect on the value of manufactured goods, or even a negative one. Don't believe me? Well, it's certainly a very odd thing to happen on a wide scale, but it happens all the time on a (hopefully) small scale: waste. Defects. You get a TV which has a fundamental flaw? In real life, typically that's not known about before purchase, and thus does not enter into a customer's evaluation of the price offered, but there are cases where it does happen. Check out clearance bins in your supermarket: food items that the manager has marked down for a quick sale because the food items in question have sat on shelves for too long and will soon be past sell-by dates. Or, take a case that has happened to me: I have an interest in producing artisanal food goods, and was looking around for a small refrigerator that I could use as a drying chamber for cheese and sausages. I checked on Craigslist, and found an entry for a very fancy and large wine cooler, going for only $80. The standard price for that model was somewhere around $800 or $1000, iirc. Looking into it, I found why: although the cooler was brand new, it had been damaged in transport. While the buyer had a new one shipped to him for no cost, the seller didn't want to pay to have the big item shipped back to them, so the warehouse was allowed to keep it and resell it. The exact damage was thus: the door was composed of 2 panes of glass, spaced about an inch apart. The outer pane was irrevocably shattered, while the inner pane was fine, and the door still formed an environmental seal. Functionally, nothing was wrong with the cooler, once you cleared out the broken glass. Yet its perceived value had dropped to such that it was priced at $80. Frankly, it was a total steal for me. And it must have been drastically lower than the costs of parts and labor which went into it. Yet, that was the price it was determined that would sell it.

All that to say: while business can only run if price covers the cost of labor and resources, it does not have to. And that plays into sales: did it cost more than $5 per unit to create this game that is knocked down to $5 for a sale? Very probably. And yet, there are people who will buy the game for $5 who would not buy it for $60, and therefore that's an extra $5 of profit (minus distribution) that would not be had otherwise.

A datapoint to illustrate the fluidity of game prices: I seem to be the only person who remembers that back in the hoary mists of time of 8 years ago, AAA games, when sold via Steam, were $50, not $60 as was standard on consoles even then. Why? The commonly accepted reason was that since these digitally distributed games did not have manufacturing and shipping costs as discs did, the publishers and devs were passing the savings on to consumers. Aww. How heartwarming. Except that today, PC games start at $60 releases, same as consoles, which by the by have also embraced digital market places. What happened that negated those savings? Nothing happened, because it was a lie all along. The truth is that publishers thought that the PC market was barely worth selling to, and had a reduced price because they thought it was what was needed to be able to sell. This was also a time when publishers blamed all their ills of unprofitability on the evils of PC game pirating.

What happened when PC sales rose, thanks in part to being the home of a reborn indie scene? They jacked that price right up to standard and pocketed the extra $10. Because it was never about piracy. It was never about costs to produce and distribute. It was always, and will always, be about what they think they can sell it for.

And today, when publishers cry about money lost on sales and bemoan the costs of modern production. It's lies. It was lies in the past, it is lies now. But let us assume it's true. Here is the truth if what they say is true: THEY ARE DOING BUSINESS WRONG. As established a few paragraphs back, selling below your costs is bad business. Publishers say that prices have to rise above their costs. Even as a truth, that's a lie, because there's another solution: DON'T SPEND SO MUCH. And I don't mean cut salaries, I mean quit hiring more and more people onto single projects. Publishers have a choice, they can choose to continue creating and growing behemoths in the New Hollywood blockbuster model of putting all your money into a few big ticket items and making big money out of them, or they can choose to spread their resources among several, smaller projects which do not cost so much individually. A AAA game can have thousands of people working on it over its lifespan. That's the publishers' choice, to concentrate their personnel into phenomenally huge gambles.

By essentially gaslighting consumers into believing that they are to blame for a consistent rise in production costs, rather than practice restraint in their pursuit of big payouts, publishers are attempting to raise prices, in the same way they've justified microtransactions and lootboxes in the past (and for those with short or young memories: the publishers used to argue that PC piracy is why microtransactions and DLC were industrial changes needed to make up lost sales; it was lies then, and it is lies now, just with a different boogeyman). Don't believe them. They lied about piracy, they lied about microtransactions, they're lying (or in the cases of certain indie devs, simply economically ignorant) about the impact of sales and the price needed for games. The price for games is what we, the consumers, are willing to pay, whether that's $60 or $5. We have the power here, and they hate that. Really think of the term "cash cow", and realize that if the hyperconsumerist publishers had their way, they really would prefer that we be corralled into cubicles and money extracted from us directly at constant intervals. And that they'd still want more.

In short: fuck publishers, pay the price that you're willing for games, and fuck anybody who tries to tell you that companies and corporations need your money like you're a Renaissance patron of the arts. It is not a question of whether sales for games are "sustainable", it is a question of if game production costs are "sustainable". If people will not pay you enough for your product to meet your production costs, I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen, you simply do not have a viable production. That is the producer's fault, not the consumers. That goes for both big games and indie.
 

Specter Von Baren

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Addendum to the beginning of the post, after writing to the end of it: I'm kind of combining a response to both this thread and the older "Push for $70 AAA games" thread, because even as OP stated, the topics are similar.

I'm not sure if OP really knows what a price is. I know that several people who have responded about "value" certainly don't know.

A price has nothing to do with some metaphysical value of the "stuff" that goes into an object. A price is simply what a person or set of persons is willing to pay for an object. One person may be willing to buy a game at $60, another person may be willing to buy the same game only at $30. If you sell the game for $60 to person A and for $30 for person B, you did not "lose" $30; you gained $30 that you would never have had if you forever kept the price of the game at $60.

So, what determines what price point a game initially starts at? After all, if you set your initial price at $40, while there are people who will pay $60, you do effectively lose money. Does that mean you should set a game's price at $1000, since surely there'll be someone who'll pay that, and then start stepping down in increments? No, because price is not the only consideration that goes into trade. There's plenty of stuff involving timing and trends and brainwashing marketing. Ultimate, an initial price is an educated and debated guess over what you can sell your product for which will lead to the market saturation needed for memetic spread, whilst not losing too much money off of the top.

The standard rebuttal is: well, you have to set a price above your costs of production and incorporate the cuts of the middlemen along the way, your retail chains and online vendors and console platforms. Well, that's not got anything to do with what a price is, that's just business. You can set a price lower than the value of materials and labor which went into creating your object, it would just be catastrophically terrible business. And yet, it could very well be that that is all that your object is actually worth. It's an assumption of functional capitalism that manufactured goods have value added to them by labor, and yet it is conceivable that labor can have no effect on the value of manufactured goods, or even a negative one. Don't believe me? Well, it's certainly a very odd thing to happen on a wide scale, but it happens all the time on a (hopefully) small scale: waste. Defects. You get a TV which has a fundamental flaw? In real life, typically that's not known about before purchase, and thus does not enter into a customer's evaluation of the price offered, but there are cases where it does happen. Check out clearance bins in your supermarket: food items that the manager has marked down for a quick sale because the food items in question have sat on shelves for too long and will soon be past sell-by dates. Or, take a case that has happened to me: I have an interest in producing artisanal food goods, and was looking around for a small refrigerator that I could use as a drying chamber for cheese and sausages. I checked on Craigslist, and found an entry for a very fancy and large wine cooler, going for only $80. The standard price for that model was somewhere around $800 or $1000, iirc. Looking into it, I found why: although the cooler was brand new, it had been damaged in transport. While the buyer had a new one shipped to him for no cost, the seller didn't want to pay to have the big item shipped back to them, so the warehouse was allowed to keep it and resell it. The exact damage was thus: the door was composed of 2 panes of glass, spaced about an inch apart. The outer pane was irrevocably shattered, while the inner pane was fine, and the door still formed an environmental seal. Functionally, nothing was wrong with the cooler, once you cleared out the broken glass. Yet its perceived value had dropped to such that it was priced at $80. Frankly, it was a total steal for me. And it must have been drastically lower than the costs of parts and labor which went into it. Yet, that was the price it was determined that would sell it.

All that to say: while business can only run if price covers the cost of labor and resources, it does not have to. And that plays into sales: did it cost more than $5 per unit to create this game that is knocked down to $5 for a sale? Very probably. And yet, there are people who will buy the game for $5 who would not buy it for $60, and therefore that's an extra $5 of profit (minus distribution) that would not be had otherwise.

A datapoint to illustrate the fluidity of game prices: I seem to be the only person who remembers that back in the hoary mists of time of 8 years ago, AAA games, when sold via Steam, were $50, not $60 as was standard on consoles even then. Why? The commonly accepted reason was that since these digitally distributed games did not have manufacturing and shipping costs as discs did, the publishers and devs were passing the savings on to consumers. Aww. How heartwarming. Except that today, PC games start at $60 releases, same as consoles, which by the by have also embraced digital market places. What happened that negated those savings? Nothing happened, because it was a lie all along. The truth is that publishers thought that the PC market was barely worth selling to, and had a reduced price because they thought it was what was needed to be able to sell. This was also a time when publishers blamed all their ills of unprofitability on the evils of PC game pirating.

What happened when PC sales rose, thanks in part to being the home of a reborn indie scene? They jacked that price right up to standard and pocketed the extra $10. Because it was never about piracy. It was never about costs to produce and distribute. It was always, and will always, be about what they think they can sell it for.

And today, when publishers cry about money lost on sales and bemoan the costs of modern production. It's lies. It was lies in the past, it is lies now. But let us assume it's true. Here is the truth if what they say is true: THEY ARE DOING BUSINESS WRONG. As established a few paragraphs back, selling below your costs is bad business. Publishers say that prices have to rise above their costs. Even as a truth, that's a lie, because there's another solution: DON'T SPEND SO MUCH. And I don't mean cut salaries, I mean quit hiring more and more people onto single projects. Publishers have a choice, they can choose to continue creating and growing behemoths in the New Hollywood blockbuster model of putting all your money into a few big ticket items and making big money out of them, or they can choose to spread their resources among several, smaller projects which do not cost so much individually. A AAA game can have thousands of people working on it over its lifespan. That's the publishers' choice, to concentrate their personnel into phenomenally huge gambles.

By essentially gaslighting consumers into believing that they are to blame for a consistent rise in production costs, rather than practice restraint in their pursuit of big payouts, publishers are attempting to raise prices, in the same way they've justified microtransactions and lootboxes in the past (and for those with short or young memories: the publishers used to argue that PC piracy is why microtransactions and DLC were industrial changes needed to make up lost sales; it was lies then, and it is lies now, just with a different boogeyman). Don't believe them. They lied about piracy, they lied about microtransactions, they're lying (or in the cases of certain indie devs, simply economically ignorant) about the impact of sales and the price needed for games. The price for games is what we, the consumers, are willing to pay, whether that's $60 or $5. We have the power here, and they hate that. Really think of the term "cash cow", and realize that if the hyperconsumerist publishers had their way, they really would prefer that we be corralled into cubicles and money extracted from us directly at constant intervals. And that they'd still want more.

In short: fuck publishers, pay the price that you're willing for games, and fuck anybody who tries to tell you that companies and corporations need your money like you're a Renaissance patron of the arts. It is not a question of whether sales for games are "sustainable", it is a question of if game production costs are "sustainable". If people will not pay you enough for your product to meet your production costs, I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen, you simply do not have a viable production. That is the producer's fault, not the consumers. That goes for both big games and indie.
Yes. Either they bring up the price and people are willing to pay for it or people are unwilling to pay for it so they have to cut back on production. But then comes the question of which will happen and if the change will happen gradually and easily or come about violently. My view is that too much money is being spent on the wrong things in games just like you, but I also don't know what will give way first in this but most of the changes (And the most reasonable ones) are to be made on the publisher's side. There's a lot of reasons I doubt the transition will be a peaceful one though.
 

SupahEwok

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Yes. Either they bring up the price and people are willing to pay for it or people are unwilling to pay for it so they have to cut back on production. But then comes the question of which will happen and if the change will happen gradually and easily or come about violently. My view is that too much money is being spent on the wrong things in games just like you, but I also don't know what will give way first in this but most of the changes (And the most reasonable ones) are to be made on the publisher's side. There's a lot of reasons I doubt the transition will be a peaceful one though.
Oh, that answer is simple: the publishers will continue to gaslight consumers to justify consumer hostile practices to get the biggest and most guaranteed payday possible. Today it's lootboxes. Who knows what they'll think of next.

EA, of all publishers, might actually be dipping its toes into smaller, more niche titles developed on smaller budgets, given the upcoming Star Wars Squadrons, produced at AAA quality but launching at $40. Who knows if that indicates the beginning of a trend, or just a way to appease the House of Mouse after the inept fumbling of the Star Wars license thus far.
 
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