Diablo 4 is $69.99.

[Fencers]

All due respect, but I wouldn't base my economic choices on the decision you made to have multiple kids. Taking 4 people out to an event should obviously cost more.

3 copies of D4 cost me more than those movie tickets.

~$200 for 2 hours of entertainment is still a lesser value than ~$170 for 3 copies of D4.

Value is relative to the consumer. If one feels they might get enjoyment out of D4 then it is worth whatever they are willing to pay for it. Just like the movies, a haircut, a lunch out, sports recreation, etc.

$70 is nothing relative to other mainstream entertainment and pastime options. Especially when considering the finite consumption of some forms of entertainment or hobbies, such as the movies relative to a 10+ hour game.

[Aliven]

That's a personal quirk though being a completionist. The same as someone that wants to hoard all loot. That's just how someone is choosing to behave. Not the actual function of the game systems.

Well, loot so far is not locked behind paywall.

- - - Updated - - -

As time has gone on I realize more and more that the people who have a problem with the cost of games that has essentially stayed the same for the past 20+ years are people who cannot financially afford to waste time playing video games.


100 dollars is a movie and a nice lunch/cheap dinner at this point. I get so much more entertainment value from even a mediocre game.

Its not about paying 70$. It is that there is f2p monetization schemes on top of it, and with some of the most expensive, even looking at other games which do the same. Should be no surprise, immortal is predatory even by mobile games standards.

[DeltrusDisc]

You know how much video games were in the 1990s? $60.
You know how much video games have been, through thick and thin, through the Great Recession, through inflation, through 9/11 and many wars? $60.
$60 in 1996 would be worth $115 in today's dollars. You can afford it. If you can't afford the extra whopping $10, you need to really consider your life decisions or maybe hold off and save up.

[rhorle]

Its not about paying 70$. It is that there is f2p monetization schemes on top of it, and with some of the most expensive, even looking at other games which do the same. Should be no surprise, immortal is predatory even by mobile games standards.

It is a bit silly to say that a battle pass is a free to play monetization model when it is so ubiquitous now. Steam may have started the trend with the free to play Dota 2 but it has since grown beyond its origins. Diablo 4 is hardly the most expensive form of monetization when looking at other games. It is always strange how people feel the need to make Diablo 4 out to be the worst of the worst when its monetization is average at the worst.

[Ghost of Cow]

False equivilancy. Cartridges were hella expensive to make and were the main bulk of what you were paying for. As soon as 3 1/4" disks and CD's become the norm the price plummeted because the medium was super cheap.

That's...just flat out false. Games remained plenty expensive when they were on floppies and CDs.

[arkanon]

And those games were also much shorter.

There were some HUGE games on cartridge....

[Tech614]

False equivilancy. Cartridges were hella expensive to make

An SNES cartridge costed $15 to make and the games went up to $70-80. An n64 cart costed $30 to make and games still went up to $80.

For the n64 games that is $100 worth of profit in today's value to split between retailer and publisher. For SNES games that is $125 worth of profit in today's money for the same.

So yes, they where expensive, but lets stop the bs cope acting like they didn't have massive profit margins even with them being more expensive to produce. A PS1 game costed $1 per disc to make and where typically sold for $40 which is nearly $77 in today's money. N64 games had higher fucking profit margins even while being way more expensive to make.

Video Game companies are going to charge the profit margin their analytics say they can get away with. This has been true and will be true until the end of time.

[Adamas102]

$70 is nothing relative to other mainstream entertainment and pastime options. Especially when considering the finite consumption of some forms of entertainment or hobbies, such as the movies relative to a 10+ hour game.

Whenever I see this argument I just imagine how few hobbies most people are apparently exposed to. Yeah, $70 is nothing relative to say going to overpriced movie theaters, or a crippling addiction to buying Warhammer minis, or owning and maintaining a yacht. On the flip side, there are plenty of hobbies were a $70 sunk cost is definitely not "relatively nothing".

F2P games exist, so the idea that $70 is a small amount even looking at just video games is silly.

[Biomega]

Video Game companies are going to charge the profit margin their analytics say they can get away with. This has been true and will be true until the end of time.

Companies, period.

People have a tendency to somehow isolate gaming as though it was a special kind of business. It really isn't, aside from industry-specific characteristics that any industry has. Gaming companies still operate under the same general principles of business economics as other companies. You put money in because you expect to get more money out. You determine your profits by what you think you can get away with. You value customers only insofar and as far as they serve as generators of profit SOMEWHERE down the line. And so on.

Maybe because this is a hobby with a tradition of being highly invested, even to the point of it being identity-building, that people take it very personally when gaming companies behave like companies - in ways they probably wouldn't ever consider doing if it was say a bank or a grocery store or whatever. But ultimately they're businesses, and businesses have certain principles of operation.

[Adamas102]

Video Game companies are going to charge the profit margin their analytics say they can get away with. This has been true and will be true until the end of time.

You can actually see what Blizzard's profit margins are if you take a look at the ATVI quarterly report.

For Q1 2023 it was about 19% net profit margin. Not bad, though King's tends to be above 30%. The majority of revenue comes from things like subscriptions and micro-transactions nowadays. In fact, ATVI could give away all their games for free and still make a profit (net income is higher than product sales). That number isn't really broken down by segment so we don't really know how Blizzard's product sales compare to their revenue from other sources, but a game like D4 is obviously designed to drive those other revenue streams up (unlike D3 which relied almost exclusively on product sales).

[Jastall]

Whenever I see this argument I just imagine how few hobbies most people are apparently exposed to. Yeah, $70 is nothing relative to say going to overpriced movie theaters, or a crippling addiction to buying Warhammer minis, or owning and maintaining a yacht. On the flip side, there are plenty of hobbies were a $70 sunk cost is definitely not "relatively nothing".

F2P games exist, so the idea that $70 is a small amount even looking at just video games is silly.

Free to play games don't make money out of free players tho. Hell that other Diablo game shows how they can easily have a far more scuffed monetization than anything retailing for 70 USD.

Also, just using the hobbies and activities of my close friends and family as reference, 70 USD's certainly not nothing but it is not significant if one gets a lot of hours from the game which I assume many people will.

Going out and partying is certainly a ton more expensive per hour unless you buy like two drinks a night for whatever reason.

Knitting can balloon into the thousands easily if it's something you do every day.

Collecting, well, much of anything gets quite expensive. Warhammer minis are a classic example of course, but stuff like Magic cards can easily be a lot worse. Even diecast cars can start racking up in cost.

Tabletop games in general aren't cheap either, if you buy a couple of them a month.

Speaking of cars, there's one hella expensive area of interest even before you factor in sports cars and the like.

Sports vary a lot. If you just play soccer casually then yeah you can get away with a ball and a pair of shoes every couple years. Ice hockey is another matter altogether, and extreme sports are then several cuts above more often than not.

Traveling is of course very expensive and only got moreso recently.

Amateur photography or music costs get very, very high once you get into it seriously.

Of course none of those comparisons are perfect, and gaming costs aren't limited to the price of games. At minimum you need a platform, usually a console (cheaper than the vast majority of PCs that can credibly run D4), a TV which most people will have anyway but whatever, and perhaps a few accessories. I wouldn't say it's a cheap hobby, but it's hardly an expensive one when stacked up against the competition. And of course like any hobby there's a range of costs, you can just play a couple f2ps on the phone you'd pay anyway or you can get a 15K and up monster PC and buy loads of titles and spend hundreds per on microtransactions if that's what makes you happy somehow.

Diablo 4 doesn't seem outrageous value compared to other titles. Going by precedent the leveling process alone will be a couple dozen hours, plus whatever endgame one partakes in or not. The upfront price is on the higher end, but while the in-game monetization isn't to my liking at all it's far from the most bullshit I've seen either. If I pay 100 CND tax in but get that many hours out of my purchase by the time I put the game down it would have cost me a dollar/hour. Hardly something that I'll lose sleep over.

[chrisisvacant]

3 copies of D4 cost me more than those movie tickets.

~$200 for 2 hours of entertainment is still a lesser value than ~$170 for 3 copies of D4.

Value is relative to the consumer. If one feels they might get enjoyment out of D4 then it is worth whatever they are willing to pay for it. Just like the movies, a haircut, a lunch out, sports recreation, etc.

$70 is nothing relative to other mainstream entertainment and pastime options. Especially when considering the finite consumption of some forms of entertainment or hobbies, such as the movies relative to a 10+ hour game.

You wouldn't buy 3 copies of D4.

- - - Updated - - -

There were some HUGE games on cartridge....

I said what I said.

Comparing the era of Skyrim and BOTW and Assassin's Creed to anything on a cartridge is a straight up joke.

[PC2]

I'd pay $150 to play Diablo early. I want Blizz to make money and I don't mind if they reduce the price pretty quickly after launch. *shrug*

[Unholyground]

Canadian after taxes new games come up to 103$. So I've been picking and choosing my game purchases very carefully. This is why Game Pass is a really good subscription because you don't have to Fork over tons of cash all year long for games.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

When I was a kid you could get a cheeseburger for a dollar. Now its like 5... and my grandpa only paid a nickle... I wonder what happened to this world!! /s

[Baraden]

It'll be available for half that within a month or two

When you have thousands of games out there already, there is zero reason to be buying any game day 1 - so you can't complain when paying full price really

[Mysterymask]

You wouldn't buy 3 copies of D4.
.

I mean if you have a family that all wants to play you kinda do...

[rhorle]

You wouldn't buy 3 copies of D4.

Multiple people and/or multiple platforms. Progress is cross-platform but you still need to buy a copy for PC, Xbox, and PS5 if you want to play between them. Then you need a game license if you have a family member that wants their own account.

[Fencers]

You wouldn't buy 3 copies of D4.

Me, husband and son. We have separate PCs, consoles, and B.net accounts. Is there a way for 3 of us to play via one copy?

[Shockzalot]

Don't buy it, I didn't. It's not a cash grab to the extent of Diablo Immortal, but it's still pathetic regardless.