No. Because it sounds like he's only ever been an employee.
That said, the person he's replying to is also completely wrong. It's a very high risk industry. But it's also a huge spread and can easily have wide margins. So much dev cost gets flushed away with incompetent management and budgeting, and trying to tie that to margins and risk is silly.
It depends, as it always does, with the studio, its circumstances, and its funding methods. But to apply that to Nintendo here is nonsense. Nintendo isn't upping the price to the mean due to inflation. It's leading the mean simply because it can.
This inflation argument is interesting. If they don’t raise prices they are effectively lowering prices. Seems very strange to not consider inflation.
Yeah but it's a misunderstanding of the economic dynamics involved with game development.
Yes prices are going up and salaries are too. But costs are also coming down. Digital delivery means dramatically lower distribution/manufacturing/storage costs. Audiences are broader and the market might be more competitive but it's also a lot deeper, meaning there's more people playing games now than ever before. And you're also looking at reduced costs in engine licences as more and more devs build in-house (especially Nintendo).
Not to mention building online services and subscription models and alternate revenue streams through micro-transactions and in-game markets.
And, sad as it is to say, without unionization you're looking at an unregulated workforce where there are more devs/artists than jobs and so the pay fluctuates based on need as opposed to experience - which a capable team can price in their own experience and contract out at their own rates. So it's all very manageable if you know what you're doing and have good connections.
All that to say that while I can understand the price bump to $70 (somewhat; again - it's studio/game/project dependent), $80 from Nintendo is just because they can, not cause their hands are tied.
Nintendo is just acting like Apple here, plain and simple.
I don't really think anything Nintendo puts out is going to be a High Risk. They're able to coast on their name recognition at this point.
Look at Pokemon (not MADE by Nintendo, but made FOR Nintendo), they ship absolute trash and people freak out and buy all 7 editions to get every pokemon
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u/UpperApe 1d ago
I love reading comments from redditors thinking they understand industries they have zero experience in lol