45% discount on Atlus' latest game, down from full price of $114.95.
There's also a free demo to download if you want to give it a try before committing to the purchase.
Persona 3 Reload $48.57. 55% discount, the lowest price so far according to steamdb.
Everything else has pretty much doubled in price over the last 10 years, so it's actually probably not that unreasonable for games to have 'only' gone up 50% from say $80 to $120.
Physical games, sure.
For digital game, I think that's crazy. There's no production, storage and logistical cost, so we should be saving money with that by default.
Sort of.
Made me think, maybe there is a market for selling bootleg game boxes designed by enthusiasts for gamers who want something to put on the shelf? Ship them straight from China where copyright isn't a thing.
@wetsandwich: Yeah, it's called piracy lol.
Pretty common back in the 5th to 8th gen consoles. Pokemon games for 10 bucks, in a dubious language that couldn't save cause save location address in memory might have been different between the different region of gameboys
As a game dev and as someone else has said, the physicality of games isn't the expensive part. The marketing and employing development teams for years is the expensive part. That's not to say I don't share your disappointment of not having cool box sets anymore, but yeah it's a very small puzzle piece; being able to use game key sites or catch online steam sales, you're more than making back the couple of dollars max it costs to give you a disc if you shop smartly.
@mintymoose: For bigger studios with multi hundred million development scope creep, yeah, I can imagine physicality is a tiny part of the puzzle.
But for AA, like Atlus? I think it's bigger for them. There's a reason why team cherry needed to charge $30, double the amount of their digital, and had limited runs.
And that's my issue with the whole industry. There's a massive scope and cost creep, for very little actual return for players. We always get examples every year where the most popular game is never the IP with most development cost. The $120 price tag is especially the worst, because Nintendo is the one who is enforcing it now, and their development cost is generally lower.
The cost of a game is mostly in the development of it, you can buy it digitally and burn it onto a 50c CD if you really want
AAA is greedy. I only buy from them on a heavy discount. Thankfully indie market is thriving. You have games like Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight etc. that are cheaper, easier to run, better with friends, easier to pick, no micro-transactions.
FYI for those with Game Pass Metaphor: ReFantazio is on there
is metaphor a SMT style atlus game or persona style atlus game
persona style
Kinda both: the combat is SMT style "press turn", while gameplay is the same calendar management + S. Links as in Persona games. Plus there are some things that are neither — personas and arcanas are replaced by the archetype system, for instance.
![[PC, Steam] Metaphor: ReFantazio $63.22, Persona 3 Reload $48.57 @ Steam](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/90/921890.jpg?h=5a899eda)
I hate how digital games are all well over $100 these days.