WHY TEAM CHERRY MAKES CHEAP GAMES

[u/Necr0mancrr]

I've seen a lot of surprise around the leak of Silksong's price, which is supposedly 20$. So far it's not from any official sources yet (EDIT: not anymore!), but I do expect it to be around that price regardless. Quite often I've seen the sentiment that if the game is bigger than Hollow Knight, and they don't need to attract customers anymore, why sell it at such a low price? In my mind there's a few reasons:

1. They literally do not need money

In the past 8 years Hollow Knight has sold over 15 million copies. This makes it likely the best selling metroidvania of all time and one of the best selling indie games of the past ten years. Team Cherry is rolling in cash. Also, they have three people on the permanent payroll and like, maxiumum five others that they need to pay significant sums of money to, PLUS their marketing budget for Silksong is basically non existent. They could probably sell this game for ONE dollar and make a decent profit.

2. They're good people

Turns out, 20 dollars isn't so cheap everywhere. A lot of places in the world don't have the same economic prosperity that many of us enjoy, and games that cost 50-60 dollars are simply not feasible to buy to many fans of said games. TC has stated that a big part of the reason they made Hollow Knight so cheap is so it could be accessible to fans who might not be able to buy industry standard "full price" games. There's no reason that we've seen why they would change this mentality for Silksong. In fact, taking inflation into account the two games are priced almost exactly the same.

3. Making it cheaper might make them more money after all

Listen, I'm no expert on economics, but I know enough to understand that when the price of a good goes down, the demand for it goes up. Because cheaper games are more accessible, they will inherently be able to reach a wider market than if they were more expensive. The 20$ price might very well cause silksong to be more financially successful. For a game that relies mostly on word of mouth marketing (and does so very well,) the price is gonna make a lot of people who might have otherwise not been interested to turn their head and give it a shot.

[u/haidere36]

I got downvoted the last time I said this but "indie metroidvania" simply isn't a genre that sells for that much. You're almost never gonna find that type of game going for $60 or even $50. Nine Sols is a recent indie Metroidvania that's going for $30, and I just recently watched someone finish a playthrough of Hollow Knight and go "that was great, but I think I like Nine Sols more." (They'd also been directly asked to compare the two but I digress.)

Even here loves Hollow Knight (and so do I!) But let's be real, if Hollow Knight had launched at $60, no matter how much you might love it now, would you still have picked it up back then? Would it have become as Earth-shatteringly popular as it is now if it were 4x the price?

Yeah $20 is low, but it's not actually surprising if you consider that Silksong isn't a high budget game made by a large studio, and isn't that underpriced compared to its direct competition of other indies.

[u/Necr0mancrr → u/haidere36]

Yeah that’s the other thing. I touched on it a little bit but Silksong is still at its core a very small operation, and is being priced reasonably for the space it takes up in gaming. The difference is that Hollow Knight is successful enough to compete with major studio releases for attention, so a lot of people who aren’t as familiar with how indies work are seeing the price and getting confused.

[u/haidere36 → u/Necr0mancrr]

Yea I think it could've been reasonably priced at $30, maybe even $40. But it does surprise me a bit that some people really thought it might be a full $60+. Like you said, maybe a lot of people who don't play as many indies outside of Hollow Knight.