As The Outer Worlds 2 hits $80, director says "we don't set the prices for our games" and wishes "everybody could play" Obsidian's new RPG
As The Outer Worlds 2 hits $80, director says "we don't set the prices for our games" and wishes "everybody could play" Obsidian's new RPG
When game prices reach 80 dollars, I reach an era where games have ceased to be that important. Path of exile all year long
You don't need to get just new games. Do what a ton of people do: wait till they're on sale. There is literally no hurry, wait till any game reaches the price point you think its worth. And then you get the best possible version of the game, both in terms of patches, most of the time with DLC included and the modding community has had time to make stuff (if that's relevant).
"this is Microsoft fault. Please don't blame us."
Gotta say props for having the balls to say that
It sounds nice, and yeah, that's primarily publisher responsibility, but developers are allowed to talk to their publishers about pricing strategy. Framing it as if they have zero responsibility is a bit of a cop out. Limited comments and we don't have the full story, but it makes it kind of sound like they didn't even bring it up.
We don't know if they tried to "talk" to Microsoft and they said "do as your fucking told."
Absolutely. Sure Publishers want their cut, but it's an agreement between Dev and pub. This just feels like Bungie blaming Acti-Blizz for all the things people didn't like about Destiny.
Microsoft isn't their publisher, they're their owner. You're utterly deluded if you think Obsidian is in any capacity to talk the price down with Microsoft, especially after Avowed failed.
You're trying too hard to put the blame on the wrong party.
With all due respect, outer worlds is a $40 game at best.
As a huge fan of Obsidian I strongly agree with you.
I think I had it on my wish list because I was never going to pay full price and then when it came down in price I looked again at it and I just thought nah, I actually don't care. So I never bought it.
They're not exactly starting from a solid foundation.
If any game was going to get away with being $80 it'd be something like grand theft auto or one of the next call of duties, not this one. But maybe they're trailing it on a game that they know will only be moderately successful at best anyway, that way they don't lose huge amounts of money if it fails to win over players.
Yar har fiddle dee, 80 bucks a game just ain’t for me, yar har fiddle and fat, I’ll just fucking sail the high seas numbnuts publishers, good job trading the 60 bucks I was willing to pay for the 0 you’ll be getting from me now.
And remember kids, if buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing.
Support your local libraries. My city’s library system is so good that I borrow games on release day all the time. You get them for 1-2 weeks, Most games that are older than a few weeks you can keep for up to 3 weeks, which gives me plenty of time to knock them off my list. Im sure I’ll get this one soon enough, im currently playing AC Shadows which I borrowed
Borrowing games from the library? How does that even work? Do they give you a Steam login and just change the password every 2 weeks or something?
There’s these things called consoles, that let you put a disk in, they both contains the game and a license to play it. Though these days some games just sell an empty box with a code to download the game.
Not sure how it works nowadays, actually! As a child I would borrow PC and PlayStation games from the library. They were physical copies of course. But with Steam keys and all I'm not sure!
Imagine they just crack it.
Ah, you’re one of those who think only pc gaming exists
I won't buy this at full price, when Outer World's two goes on sale at 50% or more off, that is when I will buy it! By then, all the major bugs should be resolved, and new content will be making this game even better. I blame Obsidian Games from not trying to shout down Microsoft and fight them in a Waffle House parking lot over this price.
While the company would love you to buy it at launch for $80, they're fine if you wait for a (first party) sale.
Look at the first Outer World. At launch sold for $60. Three months post launch, $50. Six months post launch, $40. One year post launch, $30.
If this new game sells the exact same, but starts at $80, they're ahead. Even if the $80 number scares away a lot of people, they're ahead. Only if it scares away a shit ton of people will it be a problem.
If you assume 25% of player will buy at 80, 50% will buy at $50, and 25% will buy at $20. Per 100 buyers they stand to make $5,000. However if they start at $50 with 75% of buys buying at that price, they will make $4,250. This is about maximizing profit by selling to fans with deep pockets first then discounting latter to captured the rest of the player base.
That tactic would work if it was a multiplayer game or a major franchise but with a single player cookie cutter game there's no urgency for me to get started and no FOMO. It just isn't that interesting of an IP
right, so that would put you into the 50% or the lower 25%, but there are people that will buy higher price, and as long as there is 1% willing to buy before the first sale it is worth it for them.
Space rats make it a buy for me, but I'll still wait until it's 75% off.
Also very true. I’ll just wait.
People still will, because lots of people spoil, some like watching streaming etc. When new stuff comes out and I'm not ready to start it, it often also involves stop visiting certain communities, discords, etc.
So if we assume the world is a magical place where poor people don't exist, it makes perfect sense.
That is exactly how people making these decisions think. Its all numbers to them, there are no people involved in their thinking.
But what they don’t take into account is that 75% all at once creates an excitement buzz around the game that ends up causing even more sales then would ever happen otherwise. Look at games like Pokémon go or PalWorld that generated so much buzz. I tried both of them because of the hype and I normally wouldn’t have bothered otherwise.
Pretty much. Greedy publishers are just following Nintendo's lead that they can fleece gamers for more.
I bought the first one for $20. For the second I'll play on Game Pass, if it is available, or again wait for $20. Maybe even less if I forget about it, which I might.
One of the theories behind this game's price is Microsoft is trying to force more people onto the premium game pass.
i will continue to enjoy my indie games that cost me 5€, thanks.
better yet my free games like warframe that have cost me nothing and given me thousands of hours of enjoyment.
Seriously! I got a $50 steam gift card for Christmas, bought one full price dlc (Shadow of the Erdtree) and like five or so indie games that I've put way more time in!
Everyone can play your game 🏴☠️
Just as heads up, Obsidian, I'll require this to be at least 75% off if it's good and over 20 hours of single-player campaign. If it's shorter, I can be enticed at 90% off. I'll wait for a few years, no problem, my family group backlog is in the thousands.
Them: "we don't set the price".
You: "I'll buy it if you set a lower price".
So people don't even read the headlines anymore?
No, I've seen it, that is feedback and it should be invaluable to all interested parties, not only those who set the price.
Wasn't the first game entirely average? And now he wants $80 for the sequel.
The only thing that stands out thinking about the game is the dialog choices you get when you play through the game with really low intelligence. I think it gets the best ending.
Bummer, but that's gonna be a no from me, dog.
It’s gonna be on gamepass, thats the cheap option.
FitGirl will be the cheap option.
You do you, but to me 99% of pirates are just entitled parasites who’ve never created anything in their lives and as such do not understand why content has a price. For me piracy is only justifiable when you have paid for the content but are being barred from accessing it via bullshit like Adobe DRM.
But pirating shit just because you disagree with the pricing is entitled behavior and I cannot condone it, as someone who thinks I have the right to price my property at whatever price I want. It’s not essential to your survival so you can just not consume it and move on.
Heavy respect to obsidian. Outer worlds is a great game, i wish i could buy full price going to obsidian only. Fuck M$
80? What the hell?
I'll play the game in like 4-5 years like how I played the first one years later for way cheaper. So cheap I couldn't be disappointed with the writing and just enjoyed the solid but unremarkable game
The evolution of game design has basically been dead for a few years now, so shouldn’t the process just get cheaper?
GabeN save us
Then why DRM?
I really enjoyed the first game, not AAA new game price enjoyment though. I mean, I got as much fun out of it while playing as I have anything else, it just wasn’t as rich and deep as a fallout game. I give it a pass since it’s establishing a new universe but as much as I liked it, it’s most certainly a blue light special fallout clone.
So, asking inflated AAA prices seems, somewhat short sighted. I’d absolutely pay what I did for the first game, 80 bucks is a hard no for me though. I might buy it when it’s cheaper, but by then I’ll likely have seen enough clips, read enough reviews and gotten busy enough to just forget about it.
Bummer.
It'll go on sale for $15 eventually. I can wait.
But can we focus on optimizing games so thst it runs on the most potato of potato PCs ??
I think that'll work wonders along with the pricing
Games were $60 three decades ago, inflation hits us all.
Doesn't matters the masses will complain online, bit still pay it.
Setting aside prices, I've seen an unexpected amount of sourness directed at the first game. While the first game wasn't a greatest of all time RPG and had flaws, I found it overall enjoyable enough and it was clearly a project with some passion that I didn't regret sinking time into it.
I expect similar of the sequel, with hopefully improvements based on feedback from the first game. I plan to have fun with the game, and it is a bit tiring to see things like the pricing prompting people to badmouth the game itself when they are separate things.
Am I going to pay $80? No. No I'm not. This is a single player RPG though. There's no FOMO of getting left behind on the multiplayer unlocks or the lore of a new season. It's a singleplayer game. Put it on the wishlist and buy it on a sale. Simple as.
The first game wasn't bad, but it didn't really feel like a full price title.
What does that even mean? And what do you consider "full price worthy" in that case?
I've always maintained that the first was a fine game that was tanked by the price. It was priced to drive gamepass subs, not sell the game. At $35-40, it would have been received much better, imo. Years later, now that it's more appropriately priced, it seems to be more well-reviewed.
Unfortunately the second is going down the same path. It may take 5+ years for the game to be appreciated to its fullest (assuming no glaring issues), through no fault of the devs.
It was a fine game that was tanked by the massive inconsistency of its quality as you progressed. The game starts out absolutely fantastic, but the quality takes a very sharp and sudden fall after a few hours, and then it just sorta ends not long after. It was a very weird experience. Definitely felt like something went very wrong during development and they had to make big changes.
I tried giving it a chance but it just felt like a bad Fallout 3 with Borderlands writing. Got to like the third planet I think and I dropped it.
I really liked Avowed though, which elicited similar reactions.
The expectation that it was an open world modern style Fallout game does seem to be a theme among people who didn't like it. That wasn't helped by pre-release marketing that emphasized it came from the studio that made New Vegas (despite the writers and game leads all being different).
I went in to the game without expectations and found the structure of the game closer to a classic BioWare RPG. Rather than a single huge open world it was a series of curated hubs to travel between. At those hubs there was space to explore but it was more limited and curated than a full open world. The more curated approach meant that the game could be designed with certain builds in mind since players would interact with certain areas coming from known directions, allowing alternate routes or quest solutions for different builds to be placed.
Accepting it as a hub based RPG that leaned into a specialized build made the game click for me.
Besides that I just kept feeling like it was "been here, done that". I remember at one point there is a small village and you have to choose to pull their power source or leave it and it felt so damn familiar, I didn't bother continuing much past that. I felt like if I hadn't played a bunch of elder scrolls and fallout games it was probably great but for me it was so much retreading old ground I couldn't stay interested.
I made it maybe 20 min before I un-installed. I don't vibe with Fallout in general (but I'll suffer through them) and with the writing style, just wasn't my thing. Maybe the 2nd one is a bit more polished and I can get into it cause I heard good things.
The first game was like RPG soul food. It didn't do anything new, the gameplay was fine and the story wasn't bad. Nothing innovative but nothing poorly executed. I think people should look to the game as explanation for why Nintendo doesn't make the 'normal Mario game' they want. Innovation is the simplest way to dress up a game, even if you like the loop it's healthier if the sequel is different.
I honestly don't know why so many game journalists and bloggers are obsessed with innovations, and judge games based on that. A game doesn't need to reinvent a genre to be good and enjoyable.
I know a lot of people hyped up Outer Worlds as a spiritual successor to New Vegas and were disappointed when it didn't reach the same heights of writing. Obsidian not being given any time to make New Vegas and then missing their contracted bonus payout by a single Metacritic point was brought up a lot before release, and gamers trumpeted this new game as what Obsidian could have made without Bethesda mismanagement. Then it came out and had the temerity to be average, leaving fans acting like they'd somehow been betrayed by Obsidian.
It wasn't Obsidian's or the game's fault that people decided it had to be a 10/10 masterpiece, it just got caught up in a stupid fanbase war against Bethesda and its reputation suffered when it couldn't meet people's sky-high expectations.
Obsidian themselves were hyping it up...
The first game got heat for no other reason than it was an Epic exclusive. Pissy pants gamers were upset it wasn't on their monopoly.
I got it for cheap layer (I almost never buy new games) and found it kinda shallow and boring. I wanted to like it, I love the theme and settings but ehhhhhhhhh
It was hyped up to be Space Fallout and I did not get Space Fallout out of it. Even like… Space Bad Fallout. I just got mediocre space game.
Also it was just... Boring.