To disambiguate, what does a big budget and budgeted titles mean? Well, the two are different sides of the coin these days.
Big budget titles have a lot of production value, highly experienced and talented people in large numbers working on a game, that gets a lot of marketing and name recognition before it makes money. Half the time these games make dollars on a penny cost. Other times, they do things like merchandising, in-game monetization, higher tier packages, and so on. In order to recuperate with costs.
The other end being budget titles go all the way from games like Hellblade, Wasteland 3, Kena: Bridge of Spirits, to the gargantuan library of indie games out there. So there are plenty of indie games to check out, that's fine. But what does the title elicit? Where am I going with this? To answer that question, you have to dive into why today's triple AAA market does much an easier job getting away with making sloppier games, despite having so many resources to work with.
I want to buy games, but I can't because these games are expensive. Most of the stuff I bought on sale are super cheap, but I've wanted to play the new Kirby game or finally get Bayonetta 3. That isn't happening anytime soon. When it comes to most of us out there, whom are broke and are dealing with this price surge that even Microsoft caved in to, there needs to be mitigation. Most of these games barely come on sale, and when they do, it's just already cutting off like a small chunk of the hyper priced product.
That's where the middle market comes in, where games that are cheap and well-made, can challenge the big market. And not from Indie titles, because those can get away with being genuinely good with very small budget, just solely based on talent, and a bit of something else sometimes. The budget titles I am talking about, should be challenging the industry, like the recent Plague's Tale title that I've played. It costs 50 bucks to buy, and yet it's one of the good single-player games I've played thus far.
Waste Not What's There
A few days from now, God of War Ragnarök comes out, and the review embargo is singing high praises across all the media spectrum. I honestly want to touch a game like this, provided someone lend me their PS4 or I could buy another one. I can't do that now. But if I did, I would probably be able to enjoy the heck out of the game. Though, as a PS5 owner, I would start asking certain questions about its price justification, especially for being Sony's biggest blockbuster title.
It is being sold for 70 USD for the PS5, and the kicker is it won't be able to squeeze out all the visual features. It does have features like 3D Audio, haptic feedback, and visual options. But they did all the work for the PS4, meaning you'll see everything there not being left out on the last gen system. According to an interview with Bruno Velazquez.
So I am paying additional money, just to enable features available on the latest gen console. Should I pay extra to enable HDR 10 on my hypothetical QHD high refresh rate monitor with HDMI 2.1? The logic doesn't seem sound, and why Sony is doing this, is beyond me. The better visual options change little.
The new Plague's Tale game sells for 60 USD instead of 50 on Steam. But, the game boasts like tons of things to check out for the next-gen title. I wish my God of War game had something like this going on, this isn't just about 10 extra bucks, it's about the standards they're setting in.
And funny thing is, if you look for games like Hitman 3, Stranger of Paradise, or Maneater on the PlayStation store, they have the same price for both PS4 and PS5. This 10 dollar extra thing should be for games that actually do bring more benefits to their respective systems, I mean, I understand game developments hard, but least justify it properly. And speaking of game development costs.
Learning To Cope
I get why DLCs, special editions, merchandising, and so on to make the least extra money just to recuperate development costs. But, let's be honest. Most AAA games that take advantage of this doesn't bother to put quality where it should count. The terrible Fallout 4 Pipboys, Dying Light 10 million dollar package, and then there's recent Ubisoft's absolutely false GOTY edition for 120 USD.
I miss the days when game developers got comfortable with a game, and so released expansion DLCs so that players could continue to play their favorite games. No, it's too much to make that much content now. Most DLCs now need to be cosmetics instead or, worse, in-game monetization. Though, if that's the case, why is Assassin's Creed Valhalla still getting all this DLC content?
There was a time that talent and perseverance ruled over any high budget games, long as they knew what they were doing. Today, as long as you have access to capital, you can get all kinds of talents. But that doesn't fully determine the output of a good game. Hence, I guess it made sense why Xbox started buying game's studios that have mostly worked on indie and middle market games. Because they know that's an easy market to tap into.
Long as you present content that is affordable and has no grand money making scheme behind it, it'll deliver on its well deserved expectancy. Getting free contents without feeling like they price gouge. Industry is a lot bigger than it used to be. So it's fair to consider putting good faith into projects from the little guys.
Quality Assured
Let me tell you a story about a game called ReCore. A game made by Xbox Studios, and Keiji Inafune's then Level-5. At the time it came out, the game's release was a disaster. Buggy mess, terrible load times, game balancing and pathway issues, there was a plethora of problems to deal with. A year later, the game's definite version comes out, and it fixed all those problems that everybody knew. I am talking about this, because I played it, and man, was this a really fun game.
Just over a month ago, Kena: Bridge of Spirits gets more updated features after its Steam release. Like Newgame+, and newly added in-game items that change the gameplay too. I know most other single-player game do this, sometimes just to get people into buying them again. But, there's nothing I like more than developers still putting care into a game that's already finished. Unlike most triple A devs out there.
More middle-market games can do this, if they continue to do so, restoring player's faith in the continued service thing done right, then they'll be willing to be less incentivized to stupid, scheming methods of making money. Yes, I am also talking about you, Square Enix. At least Konami is changing directions now. If companies want games selling well, they need to know exactly what players are looking for.
So I guess here's my rant done. There's still time to turn this around for good. They have so much capacity, but the more moves the triple A market keeps making, the more difficult it'll be to get out of those ugly habits.
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