While Take-Two is riding high on their announcement that a GTA 6 trailer is coming, its CEO has some…interesting ideas on how much video games could cost, part of a contingent of executives that believe games are underpriced, given their cost, length or some combination of the two.
He’s certainly correct, at the purely analytical, quantitative level. But if humans were purely analytical and quantitative, then laissez-faire capitalism would function perfectly.
The problem arises from games having more costs than just monetary though. The cost of a film, asides the ticket price, is a couple hours of sitting on your ass. The cost of a video game, willingly paid by every gamer, is actually hours of practice with hand eye coordination, various video game systems and conventions, time spent learning that specific game, etc etc. You can see, objectively, this is a lot of “investment” required. Which is one of the big reasons not everyone is much of a gamer.
The executives should be factoring this cost in too though, because your subconscious does when it decides how much “fun” you’re having at whatever you’re doing right now.