Topic: If Team Cherry can do it..

With Silksong... £20 wtf! (they could have easily charged double that) then why the hell can't Nintendo!
I know, I know it's a different type of game but it's been in development for 7 or 8 years now and is no doubt a premium title with plenty of content.
You know I think that most people would probably just buy this even those with zero interest in the game just to give the giant middle finger to all those corporate greedies out there that still think it's OK to charge £80 plus for a AAA game.
It doesn't shine a great light on Nintendo's own releases if a third party is able to offer something of such quality at such a low price.

It's good that they didn't get greedy and charge a lot more to take advantage of the hype but it's around the price that I would typically expect to see for an indie 2D Metroidvania. As someone with no interest in playing it at launch as I still have to get around to finishing the first game one day, I'll just leave it on my wish list till there's a good sale.

It's a good price but I think they also can do it since they know they will sell massively. Most other indie metroidvania won't even see a tenth of what Team Cherry sells I think. (Iirc Hollow Knight sells for 8 million copies)

Team Cherry is basically just four people. They can pay themselves a six figure salary for eight years and still not have to sell a particularly huge number of copies to break even at twenty bucks apiece. Given that projected sales are probably upwards of ten million, they could probably sell it for cents, even.

AAA games with teams in the hundreds, with additional thousands of contractors and budgets in the hundreds of millions are obviously going to need a lot more sales at a higher price to cover their costs. I suppose that the real question is whether that large an investment in developing a game is truly worth it when smaller teams can still make very good games on far smaller budgets. I don't think that Nintendo are even close to the most extravagant in this direction either.

Well they'd certainly start listening if enough people did wouldn't they.

Yeah, no better way to stick it to a company than buying something from their storefront. They'll hate that.

@darkfenrir it actually sold over 15 million… simply absurd. Silksong could sell half of that and be a massive success

Isn’t this by a team of like a dozen people? I would think that factors into deciding the cost of the game.

@SplatRay001 Oh ok, thanks for the information!! Yeah that's even more than expected, and even if we say that 75% of the sales are on half price or something, it's still A LOT. Like, that's A TON. Most games never hit that amount.

That’s not all, once again they localized the price to different markets. It costs R$ 59.99 in Brazil, which is ~$11.00 USD. That’s insanely cheap for a game of this quality.

However, it has to be considered that their production costs are way lower than AAA game development.

What games are retailing for £80+?

I don't think your 'regular gamer' (and I mean those that aren't scattered around forums like these) is going to give a flying f*** about the increased production costs of AAA games all that they're going to see is 'Hey this is a good little game and it is a Helluva lot cheaper than Nintendo's own cash grabs' so here we go lets fill our boots.
So here we go again, in a roundabout kinda way are AAA games and will they continue to be too expensive on Switch 2... Uhhhhh

It doesn’t matter if the “regular gamer” cares or is aware of it, it factors into the price regardless. If it costs them X to make the game, and they know the ip behind it will likely sell Y copies under normal circumstances, then they can estimate the best price for the game to both cover the production costs and some profit. With a larger team working at one of the biggest game companies at the world for a competitive wage, that’s going to come out to a lot more money to cover than a small indie team.

You are comparing a small company with very little overhead to an giant corporation. That would be like me saying why doesnt McDonalds have similar prices to a ma and pa hamburgers stand. I think you need to take a lesson in business before posting a thread like this.

You know I think that most people would probably just buy this even those with zero interest in the game just to give the giant middle finger to all those corporate greedies out there that still think it's OK to charge £80 plus for a AAA game.

This is a big assumption. As cheap as it may be, why would someone waste money in a game they have no interest in the first place?
My rage against companies would have to be greater than my disposable cash for me to do that.

Bigger company = bigger costs. I don’t claim to know their finances, but it’s likely they spend more on developing a game than Team Cherry does, given the sheer number of people they employ for one game. Do you really think something like Silksong cost the same to make as something like Mario Kart World? Tears of the Kingdom? Donkey Kong Bananza? Not to say that Silksong is inferior in quality to those games, but Nintendo employs many more people than Team Cherry does, so naturally covering all of their wages will cost extra, which means they have to charge more.

Yes, pricing out consumers is another factor they have to account for, and I’m pretty certain they do. The fact that they continue to price games like this is a sign that it isn’t really much of a threat to them with their current pricing scheme. Whether a game is worth $60, $70, even $80 is up to the customer, and, given how well games at these price points have done, I would say they are to the majority of customers, at least with the games that have been offered at those prices. If most customers will pay the price, thats its worth.

It's simply not fair or reasonable to compare a company like Team Cherry to a company like Nintendo or Ubisoft or Take2 etc. Team Cherry is in a very special situation in that it has an almost guaranteed hit game that could be built with a very small team and that is their sole game.

Nintendo et al are developing an publishing lots of games - they have to in order to create and support a broader platform (and if they don't create and support that platform then there's no market that exists for Silksong to be sold into). Many of those games from Nintendo will be speculative and lose money. Others will make money but a high investment in perceived superior graphics (integral to the sales potential) means that they will cost a lot of money to make. In short their successes have to cover the losses elsewhere.

As an aside - consumers do typically appreciate that games with 3d graphics cost far more to make and are far more willing to pay higher prices for them.