GTA 6’s Publisher Says Video Games Should Theoretically Be Priced At Dollars Per Hour

Thank fuck for indie devs making the best games right now at an affordable price.

I have over a thousand games in my steam library and my most played is dominated by indie games.

The problem is an hour of what. Me wandering around trying to find something described vaguely and being frustrated, is not the same as an hour of well written and interesting dialogue.

Stupid metric by some rich asshole who is solely focused on making more money.

Sounds like someone wants me to not buy their overpriced game.

Theoretically he can go fuck himself. All that is going to do is make games drag out mindless crap with no actual value entertainment-wise.

That's a subscription. He should try it and see how that goes.

The less someone actually plays games, the more this idea will make sense to them.

Gamers, especially older gamers, will know this is a BS metric.

Because everyone here is just reacting to the terrible Forbes headline because that's all people do. Here's the actual content that you can pick apart, instead of picking apart the headline that some Forbes editor wrote.

he thinks GTA is one of the best values on the market. Here’s what he said:

"In terms of our pricing for any entertainment property, basically the algorithm is the value of the expected entertainment usage, which is to say the per hour value times the number of expected hours plus the terminal value that's perceived by the customer in ownership, if the title is owned rather than rented or subscribed to."

So he was just saying that gta is good value for money given their metrics

Can't wait for them to try this, it flops, half the staff gets laid off, the CEO steps down with a golden parachute, the CEO trades places with the CEO of another tech company, that new CEO makes an even worse decision, another half of the staff gets laid off, the new CEO gets a raise, Microsoft buys both companies, Google makes a competing game studio that gets killed before their first game release, and Apple releases their first video game for $3000 that only runs on M2 and above.

I've often come across this sentiment in Steam reviews and it's very reductive to judge games based mainly on this metric. Getting older I have less time for videogames and I value shorter games more. There are games that are extremely valuable because of their high quality even if very short, like the first Portal.

This is why we have companies like Ubisoft trying to game the system constantly with low quality content to pad the game to 100 hours or whatever is fashionable in open world these days. I will take 6 hours of quality single player anytime over 100 hours of AssCreed grinding and ridiculous 'story'

I agree, that's why i think Take Two owe me $23 because i finished GTAV in 37 hours.

Though i hope Wube, Bethesda, and Fromsoft won't bill me for my playtime...

Ok so somebody should ask this CEO how he expects gamers to pay potentially $200 per game.

What an idiot, games are priced at what the market will bear and they've pretty much reached that limit now.

I always prefer a good 5 hour experience over a bland 60 hour experience.

If video games were priced by hours of dev time, I could kind of agree (with the theory, in practice it doesn't really make sense). But let's be honest here - that's not what he means at all.

Man, imagine if movies or books charged you by the hour. Lord of the Rings would make bank!

Then why are not GTA games priced at $20-30?

Calling it now, they're about to introduce a monthly sub for the solo mode.

Unrelated question, does anyone know any good pirate sites?

Of course it's a Forbes article.

They're gonna price it at 100$, i can feel it in ny bones

MW3s campaign for $4. Cool.

By that logic, imagine how much a soccer ball will cost!

Any company that attacks modders can die in a fire. I for one won't be buying this crap.

Check out my new game: Paint Drying Simulator! With real time paint drying action! 6000 hours of play time! Only $129.99!

Oh God, Factorio will cost me my life savings

High quantity, low quality?

Maybe video games should be priced at value per hour

He didn't say it but he wants you to RENT software not OWN it. Make no mistake, this would be BAD for consumers.

Wellllll I think it should be priced by how much I enjoy it. Make a great game, get paid bookoo bucks! Make a shitty game, you get what you deserve.

€200 for Vampire Survivors?

If that cost goes above $1/hr I’ll probably just not buy. That’s my base cost I’ll accept for paying for a game. If I’ve gotten $1/hr I find that I’ve gotten my moneys worth

This only works if you spin this with a product leadership strategy:

Shovelware games that don't offer a solid chunk of hours or any kind of replayability should be priced lower, and proper games should be priced normally.

The thing is, this is not at all how pricing works if you're building a business model. Prices are always heavily influenced by what the consumer is willing to pay, or in this case what they've been used to for years. For as long as I can remember "full price" has always been $50 or $60.

Special editions with marginal bonus content, $10 price increases on the base game and shitty DLC (horse armor comes to mind) are all examples of corporate shit tests, designed to see how far they can take it.

History has proven though, that changing consumer expectations is among the more difficult things to do in a market where alternatives are rampant. Though the whole franchise loyalty thing kinda ruins that, but I'll be damned if I have to pay $200 for a game. That will promt me to just play something else instead.

Man, did any of you read the article?

"Zelnick is admitting that even though maybe this should be the case, that because of the nature of the market, there simply cannot be a pricing model like that, and the move to $70 recently is sort of the maximum they can hope for."