Bruce Dias 
It seems as though it was a long time ago since all a gamer needed, was a few coins and some spare time to spend down at their local arcade with their friends. However, since those heady days, the gaming world has changed out of all recognition. First came the consoles and the arms race between Sony and Microsoft for dominance in the tech field. Nowadays, mobile play has taken over. Alongside mobiles came the age of streaming services that allowed gaming to become accessible for more people than ever before. It is in fact estimated that there are over 3 billion active gamers in the world today.
In this rapidly changing environment, many games developers are finding themselves in a difficult position. Like the movie industry, making profits isn’t as easy as it once was. There are reasons for this, which we’ll go into shortly.
But the bottom line is that the cost of any big-name game being released could soon reach the milestone of costing $100 or above. Some developers and analysts genuinely hope this will be the case, for gamers it won’t be such good news.
How Online Casinos Have Adapted To This Situation
The sector that has been gradually converging ever closer with gaming has been the online casino world. All of the best online casinos in Canada will need to have the most up-to-the-minute titles and the slickest technology to deliver them to players. Although it works on a very different business model to other games, it faces some of the same challenges. The most relevant one in this case is the increasing cost of developing online games like roulette, blackjack and slots.
The money within this side of the gaming industry is not generated through buying the games. It instead originates from the increasing number of players; alongside the amount each one chooses to spend within the games. They achieve this through offering new and existing players a range of different incentives and bonuses that are specifically designed to both recruit new players and retain existing ones.
Unfortunately for the gaming industry in general, this is not an option that is open to it, and it also faces many other challenges that also need to be addressed and overcome.
Why Is The Gaming Industry Becoming So Expensive?
The commonly held belief is that technology should gradually become cheaper as time goes on. Think back to the first computers and remember how they were beyond the pockets of many. Unfortunately, this is not what has been happening in the gaming world. As the technology around gaming has gradually become more sophisticated, the costs of developing the games themselves have risen almost exponentially.
While the exact figures are kept closely under wraps it’s likely that many hundreds of thousands of working hours, if not millions, go into developing a game. Rockstar got themselves into considerable PR hot water when it was revealed that 100 hour weeks were the order of the day for staff working on Red Dead Redemption 2.
Wanting to avoid similar publicity for their next major game release, the hotly anticipated GTA 6, they have no doubt had to increase both the workforce and the wages they are paid. And that’s also why it’s the game that could break the $100 barrier. That’s not to say that other developers are dreading this prospect. Already, some have admitted that this may mean it’s carte blanche for them to increase their own prices.
What’s more, they justify this by pointing out that not only is the cost of developing games increasing, but the purchase price has also failed to keep up with inflation. So, over time, the once highly profitable sector has lost its sparkle.
Do Players Just Want To Play For Free?
It is rare to come across the terms free and game in this day and age due to the financial landscape of the gaming world. But the preponderance of free games has also meant that more and more gamers believe that they shouldn’t be paying to indulge in their favourite pastime. On one hand however eSports has brought the chance of huge riches for the best players in the world.
For the game’s developers, it is a matter of revenue, which has to be generated from somewhere however it has been amply demonstrated by games such as Fortnite, that this isn’t a problem. To add to the woes of developers of paid-for games, there are the streaming services to contend with. For a moderate monthly payment, players can have access to a wide range of titles and never have to buy another game again. One just has to look at the music industry to see the effect that this model has on the artists with CD sales being very much a thing of the past.
So, this really could be a crossroads moment for the traditional gaming developers. New console development and upgraded editions of games make it hard to utilise the games you have already purchased but will the bold stroke of marketing the first $100 game be the dawn of a new era or be the beginning of the end?
Only time and future sales figures will tell as the current prediction is the market will grow by 6.4% in 2025 alone.
