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.
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