fwiw I'm referring to the people who wait for the first price drop (which is roughly 20%), but there are a larger amount of people doing as you say, often waiting a full year. But the picture isn't clear on why they wait- it could easily be that they're waiting for the game to be in a good state and it's hubristic to assume intent like that.
Regardless, I think your broader point isn't echoed in the sentiment from gamers at large. I say "I think" because I'm a technologist and it's not my business to know, although I sit on the same floor as our Consumer Market Knowledge team, and I pick up some things. -- but I can see clearly what I have described just by taking a cursory look at any discussion gamers have regarding the price of games and monetisation.
It's a hotly discussed topic, especially on reddit where there are good examples that you can find immediately[0][1]
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/blsmca/should_o...
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/bbl4cd/how_have_gam...
We're not going to know how consumers actually respond until someone has the guts to try raising prices on a sufficiently large scale.
Mind, I think the better strategy might be to just stop game prices from dropping so quickly. Again, this seems to work extremely well for Nintendo.
> But the picture isn't clear on why they wait- it could easily be that they're waiting for the game to be in a good state and it's hubristic to assume intent like that.
This is its own problem—why are you giving consumers an extra incentive to wait until the game costs less and you will make less money?
Release dates ought to be pushed back by however long is necessary to fix essential problems. This would ultimately benefit both developers and players.
There are, of course, some bugs that will not be discovered until a game has been played by lots of people, so patches will always be desirable. But this is not how post-release game patches are being used today.
Depends what you define as "essential", most problems evolve due to a meta that exists in a game, or is otherwise subjective or only appearing at grand scale.
Others (bugs, mostly) can have a reproduction rate of 1:500,000; We will never find those issues until millions of people have crossed that exact path.
I agree to the principle.
Anyway, when it comes to discounting the game publishers actually don't get much choice, nintendo can do their own thing because they own the platform and the IP; but Sony, Microsoft and especially Valve are absolutely punishing in pushing game costs down shortly after a release. For them, selling more units before the IP is out of the public mind is much more important than having some kind of bigger profit over a longer term.
But this is getting incredibly off-topic.
I'm only familiar with PS4, but it's much, much quicker than that today.
Battlefield V [1] was released Nov 20 2018 for $60, in Dec 6 it was $36 (60% of original in 16 days), and in Dec 18 it was $30 (50% in 28 days) with PS Plus, which you need anyway to play multiplayer.
God of War [2], to take another example not plagued by BFV's troubled release and also being a single-player game, it took at bit longer to go down. It was released in April 20 2018, was down to $50 (83%) in June 8, $34 (58%) with PS+ in Aug 17, and $22 (37%) in Nov 16.
You really pay a premium to play at launch day or a couple of days early by pre-ordering. If you wait a month you usually have the first discount.
There's a nice community at Reddit called Patient Gamers [3]. You don't have to take vow to never buy new games, but people there usually wait at least six months before buying a game. Three super nice benefits of that:
1. Games are cheaper.
2. The game has been patched to fix bugs or add more content.
3. You can read reviews or check the Metacritic page to see if the game is actually as good as claimed or if it's hype based on the trailer. You can watch some real gameplay not carefully produced by the designers.
Still, a lot of people apparently pre-order games or buy mega-deluxe editions for $100, so game companies can get money from that group and then lower the prize a month later for the rest of the gamers.
[1] https://psprices.com/region-us/game/2347184/battlefield-v
• Make newly-released games cost $80+
• Stop the price from dropping so quickly
Everyone seems to think the former will be catastrophic, but consider that after adjusting for inflation, game prices have fallen significantly over the past 15 years or so.
The latter option is easier said than done (since the price is still largely determined by the used resale market), but Nintendo always manages it somehow, so I'm inclined to think it's possible.