Not sure I follow sir/ma’am - are you saying R* doesn’t have to price it at 90$ and they’ll still make money?

I mean that’s true, but publicly traded companies are the devil themselves and are required to make as much money as possible.

We’re just going to have to agree to disagree brother.

I’d say you’re cool paying for quantity while I’m cool paying for quality, but even that comparison doesn’t hold up - of course you’re getting more quantity, you’re happy to pay 50-60% more than I am for it.

I prefer games designed with passion, to be good games, over games designed to “Sell the most units”. I’ll take Krav Maga over arasaka-te any day, for what I hope are super obvious reasons.

And the only thing R* is “buoying” is increasing the price of all games for all gamers without an equal increase in quality content - they’re not alone there though, Nintendo is helping. Fuck em both.

And they do.

I never argued they didn’t?

So you want games made specifically for you and cheaper.

No, I want games with focus. A game doesn’t have to appeal to me - I don’t give a shit about racing games but I can appreciate Gran Turismo’s focus on realistic driving simulation (or at least that’s what it was decades ago, I don’t keep up with racing games), and I imagine the realistic driving sim enthusiasts were really happy they didn’t need to play some prop plane flying mini game to earn the color they want for their Charger or to “get all the trophies” and that they didn’t have to pay an extra 5-10-15 bucks for the privilege.

Don’t get me wrong. It is genuinely awesome when it feels like a studio spent years making a game specifically for you (see: most of us Armored Core fans with 6). That works until that audience doesn’t show up. This is what led to THQ and the like crashing and burning a decade or two ago where games were successful but “not successful enough”

Blame the Publishers and human greed for that. FROMsoft seems to have absolutely 0 issue making highly specific games that only pander to a tiny subset of gamers (before ER anyway), and they knock it out of the park 9 times out of 10. Was it the 84 on metacritic that screwed Respawn out of a bonus on Titanfall 1/2 despite both of those games being fucking amazing? I remember that story vaguely (84 on metacritic, no bonus) but might be getting the pub/dev/game wrong. I don’t agree with the “Well, that’s the way it is, get used to it” mentality.

MAYBE that is going to be GTA6. Signs are, it won’t be. Because, yes, GTA 6 might not be catered directly to you. But the vast majority of people are going to love the overall package. Maybe they skip a feature. For example, I love the Yakuza/LAD games. Unless there is a story beat (involving a character I care about), basically nothing can make me do the crane game for more than two or three minutes (so one purchase…). Similarly, I loved Lost Judgment and have a LOT of Thoughts and Feelings on it. It would be one of my all time favorite games if it weren’t for the fucking after school special minigames.

People don’t “skip a feature” in modern GTA games - they skip dozens, or actively complain about them because they’re annoying (Nico, flying, train). Because they’re designed as generic massive time sinkholes for the lowest common denominator.

Yes. And… Rockstar pulls that off. I don’t know why they would actively choose to sell fewer units just to make sure you never play a sequence you don’t enjoy.

Good for them? I still don’t want 90 dollar games that are only 90 dollars because they’re “Include all the things!” bonanza’s where I’m paying for shit I don’t care about.

You can make a ton of profit a bunch of different ways - Spend a decade making a “jack of all trades master of none” simulator that will appeal to most for an obscene price, or create a passion project for a fair price. I prefer the latter. Again, Look at expedition 33 - 2 million units sold, tiny team, passion pouring out of every facet for a JRPG lover like myself. They didn’t need to spend 500 million dollars and a decade with a team of hundreds to produce a GOTY level product, so I only have to pay 50 bucks. Why would I pay R* 90 for a game where for every 2-3 facets I like there’s a facet I don’t care for That I paid for? Why would the general public?

Also, there’s no need to come off so contentious, this isn’t that shithole Reddit brother, we can disagree and still be friends.

I’m glad they’re excited for it, but I’d put money on the fact that they’re not excited for literally every facet of the game, which is my entire point.

I don’t think GTA games are garbage - they’re literally designed to appeal to as many people as they can. The problem is R* thinks the way to design a game is to include 500 things, make the game take nearly a decade and cost nearly a billion dollars to produce - that game has to sell at 90 bucks, and it’s bloated with a ton of shit I don’t care about.

I’d rather pay 50-60 dollars for a focused game aimed at a specific audience (see: expedition 33, JRPG fans) than 40 extra dollars for a bunch of shit I don’t care about in a “jack of all trades master of none” simulator.

Edit: remember bowling with Nico? The train mission? Flying in general? All shit people paid for that actively annoyed them.

At 90 bucks, nearly every consumer is paying some % for bloat they don’t care about, all in the name of making a game that will sell the most units.

Not only that, they produced a game with no major flaws with a tiny (comparable to these mega studios) team AND NO COMPROMISES.

“Man, this game is great but the music is meh” - not at Sandfall.

“Wow, I love the combat but the graphics are dated” - nope, every model is so lovingly crafted they added haircuts and outfits as secret loot

“The combat is the only weak point in this gorgeous, story driven game” not on expedition 33 it ain’t!

Maybe stop spending nigh decades and nigh billions of dollars designing these enormous catch all games that are supposed to appeal to everyone?

I Don’t want to spend 90 dollars on a game that has 400 different things to do, 200 of which I enjoy.

I’d rather give Sandfall 50 bucks for a lovingly crafted, focused game that’s actually, you know, good.

Fuck Reddit and fuck spez! Like you said, the second redditors became an ad commodity that site should have died an undignified death.

Now it’s a place for Nazi sympathizers and boot licks.