Contra: Operation Galuga has garnered mixed reviews upon release, and seems to have been disappointing for a Wayforward project, though not out of character for a modern Konami game. Personally I think the graphics are pretty ugly and the gameplay looks a little...off for lack of a better word. It's a wait for sale for me.

But I'll be waiting a long time because the game launched at $40 (with a small launch window discount.) This seems pretty high for a 2D game without outstanding production values or anything else to drive up the costs. I thought that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was priced high at launch (and it is already seeing discounts) but that game, at least, has excellent production values and clearly had money put into it. Operation Galuga doesn't look much better than an XBLA game from 2011, and in fact it looks worse than the Contra game released on XBLA in 2011, Hard Corps: Uprising.

That would be fine if the game played excellently (it seems like it doesn't) but accounting for inflation Hard Corps: Uprising, which launched at $15 in 2011 dollars and $20 in 2024 dollars cost about half as much for a game with a similar amount of content and more polish. And Operation Galuga is far from the only "XBLA sized" game that has launched much higher than games did back then. Almost all the recent Konami games of this size, like Super Bomberman R2, have launched at $40 or higher (Bomberman was $50 but includes more content) and most recent Wayforward games, like River City Girls 2, also seem to launch at a similar price (though Shantae and the Seven Sirens is $30.) Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night remains at $40 base price, albeit with frequent discounts. Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator, a recently released game that got poor reviews and has not gotten any attention also launched at $40. It seems to be a pretty common price point for a new tier of games that sees itself as a cut above most indies and closer to AA games.

Of course there are still lots of true indies that are still launching at $15 (Balatro, a recent GOTY candidate, is an example) and in general there is much more price diversity than ever before, especially among digital games. Games launch at $10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, or 50 pretty regularly, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that when there are games of so many different sizes and budgets these days, but in my view a lot of games seem to be pricing themselves high for what they offer and what they cost to make. The rise from $60 to $70 for "AAA" games was justified by the increased production costs with more powerful hardware, but that's not applicable for something like Operation Galuga, which if anything should be cheaper to make (in inflation adjusted terms) because tools are much better than they were in 2011.

I don't really know how the economics of all this works because I am not privy to internal revenue reports for game companies, and maybe starting higher allows for deeper sales while extracting maximum revenue from your hardcore fan base, but at a time when there are more ways to get games cheaply than ever before I don't understand these big price increases. It certainly puts me off from buying a lot of games at launch that I might otherwise try, and just generally seems like a poor value proposition. Hi-Fi Rush came out at $30, and that game has incredible production values including licensed music and clearly cost a lot to make. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge came out at $25, and that's both a major license and a polished and excellent game. Helldivers 2 is $40 and, well, we can see that hasn't stopped anyone there.

I'm not claiming every 2D or smaller 3D game has to stay at XBLA prices forever, but some of the pricing seems totally out of whack with what's being offered, and as someone who likes to try a lot of games and likes to play games when they're new for "zeitgeist" purposes at least some of the time, it's scaring me off a lot of titles. I have to think I'm not alone here. I just don't understand the strategy. A lot of people will say "if you don't like the price just don't buy it" and...of course I don't. And a lot of other people aren't. But it keeps happening and more than complaining about it (I don't care that much about Operation Galuga, which looks very mid at best) I would like to understand the reasoning behind it.

I love Hard Corps: Uprising.

Game prices are screwed i very rarely buy games outside of a sale anymore, changes in my gaming habits and motivation lead me in that direction anyway but increasing prices probably would have done it too, as i get older the word "value" means a lot more to me. I was quietly hoping Vampire Survivors could have been an extreme example to publishers of how a low price can lead to runaway success but i guess it went ignored in meetings, Helldivers 2 is a good example for higher budget games, but we also had Battlebit outselling Call of Duty and Battlefield for a time.

It doesn't take much looking to find games that might scratch that Contra itch on Steam that seem like no brainers compared to the new expensive one.

Also i watched a video a couple days ago which brought up game prices if you're interested, i remember when publishers were trying to sell people on digital because removing manufacturing costs would result in lower prices... imagine that.

@cikame: How we got from Hard Corps: Uprising to Operation Galuga is a discussion worth having some day. I don't just mean the Contra series specifically or even Konami but the general stagnation and even backsliding of so many series and even genres.

Blazing Chrome is a really good Contra-like and is often on sale for a fraction of the price of Operation Galuga, making that game's price even sillier. I don't really consider Huntdown a Contra-like because it has cover and ammo mechanics and a very different flow to it (a lot less running and gunning and more stopping and popping) but it is an excellent game with much better graphics than Galuga and it may satisfy some people's Contra itch. I really like it, I just think it's a somewhat different thing.

Game prices are totally out of whack. I'm not sure why more teams haven't tried the Vampire Survivors model, which is not too far off from the early cell phone model of sell games cheap but sell lots of them, though for bigger publishers they may have too much overhead to make it work. If you're doing enough advertising that your customer acquisition cost is $3.50 per customer or whatever then you need to sell your game more just to break even. Vampire Survivors got big on word of mouth, which can be a tough thing to tap in to for the big guys.

The AAA game side, on the other hand, is just a mess. The video you posted is somewhat selective in that it talks about how digital distribution makes games cheaper but ignores the fact that base game prices have not kept up with inflation, while budgets have exploded and the AAA market hasn't grown by that much (the vast majority of gaming market growth has been in mobile, which is beyond massive.) We know from a bunch of the document leaks that AAA games are not making massive profits because of how expensive they are (the PlayStation brand's margins are mediocre) so it's not just pure greed that is driving things, it's decisions to raise budgets and also trend chasing that has led to repeated big busts for just about everyone.

I'm not really defending then AAA game publishers or market, but I think that whole part of the industry is just a general mess and pricing is only part of it.

@bigsocrates: One small note i'd like to add on top of that from the consumer perspective, making games is more expensive but the cost of living is also higher and video games are a luxury item, so people are being more picky with their purchases and publishers need to consider that. People will justify $70 for a GTA6, definitely not $40 for unimpressive looking Contra.

Similar to how removing manufacturing didn't lower the price of games do you think that replacing developers with AI will lower the price? I don't think it will, outsourcing to countries with cheaper labour hasn't lowered it either, you also have to wonder why a $70 game that's poorly received can go on a hefty sale so soon after release if the higher price tag was so necessary.

@cikame: Oh from a consumer's perspective I agree, none of this matters. Either your game is worth it or it isn't. And nobody should care that Skull & Bones cost a huge amount and took forever to make. That's Ubisoft's problem.

I don't think replacing developers with AI, if it even happens (and I have my doubts that it will be effective) will change the price at all. Companies just don't pass on the savings to the consumer, at least without robust competition. If anything it will just lead to even MORE DLC being sold and MORE bloat in overbloated games.

Part of the price premium is seeming like a premium product. Launching below $70 (or at least $60) is a tacit admission that your game just isn't on that level. NFL 2K tried it one year with a game better than Madden and people saw the budget cost and thought it was a "budget" title with all that means. I think that's why even games that are guaranteed flops launch at the high price. Plus as an exec you can say you had confidence in the game it just didn't pan out, vs admitting that you oversaw the creation of a turkey.

Also does Suicide Squad actually sell more if it launches at $40 vs launching at full price then discounting? I kind of doubt it. I think Contra's a different story because that's the kind of game that a lot of people might take a flyer on at $20, but by the time it drops to that price the lukewarm word of mouth will be out and people will have forgotten and moved on. There's no reason to launch at a lower price if you have a massive marketing budget that makes sure that everyone will see your game as "big" even if it turns out bad.

But the whole model is straight up broken and wrapped up in egos and old ways of doing business.

We need a better example than Suicide Squad because it had such a huge amount of negativity around it, oo i know, Dead or Alive 6 :D, at least in the UK.

In the US DOA6 launched at the then standard $60, in the UK the standard new price for a AAA game used to be £39.99, sometimes £44.99, but EA realised fans would happily buy Fifa at £54.99 and companies like Koei were happy to follow, people were definitely put off at the time despite good reviews at least i couldn't convince any of my friends to buy it, as non fighting game fans they were actually insulted by the price, non of the big AAA games they were used to buying were that expensive, if it was £34.99 it would have been way easier to get people to try it.

In the case of Suicide Squad i guess we could use the price drop as a data point, it was getting around 400 peak players every day on Steam before a 40% sale and it rose to 1000, it's safe to say the damage was done already but some people were still willing to get it at a lower price.

@cikame: I mean selling 600 copies of a game that cost $100,000,000 or more to make is...not great. You'll always sell more when you drop the price but the question is do you maximize profits by starting high and then dropping or starting lower to try and build momentum.

Your point about DOA6 is kind of the same thing I'm saying. A game like that, which does not have a huge marketing budget and no longer has massive name recognition like it did 20 years ago, can benefit from having a bunch of people give it a shot at a lower price early. That can build buzz and momentum, the same way that Helldivers 2 did, and that acts as a marketing push as people try a game and talk it up to their friends (like you tried to.)

Something like Suicide Squad...that's not going to happen because marketing is already saturated. You're not going to build this initial awareness at launch by bringing more people in. You might bring more people in at a lower price, but many of those are people you can get later with a price drop anyway.

DOA6 could have used a lower price to attract people who weren't sure about the game. Most of the people thinking about Suicide Squad already have an idea about it and how much they're willing to pay. And you get a bunch of money selling full price on launch to people buying into hype, and then sweep up the cheapskates later with price drops and sales.