I see a lot of people complaining in various forums that games have been increasing in price with new releases sometimes hitting the $80 mark for a standard release. Everyone talks about how gaming is getting to be too expensive compared to how it used to be and nowhere else is this most evident than it is with people that are over 30 years of age and remember the 90's and how much things cost back then.
The problem with their way of thinking is that they are simply comparing the dollar value (or Pounds, or whatever the currency happens to be) and they are not factoring is something that is very important: Inflation.
I found this picture that shows an advertisement for specials that the store was having but someone took the time to adjust all the prices for inflation since then.
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Now that seems absolutely outrageous right? Paying $130 for a single game? That's outright insanity!
Here is the original unaltered image.
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The problem with the whining that goes on these days is that people fail to factor in everything involved in the grand scheme of things. A dollar now is not worth the same amount that a dollar was worth in 1996. It's not even close.
I am reminded of when my father surprised us with an Atari 2600 one day. My family was not wealthy so this was an extremely rare treat for us. The launch price of an Atari 2600 that came packaged with one game was $199 in 1977. We didn't actually get one until the early 80's so I would imagine that the price was probably brought down $50 or so but since I didn't buy it, I have no idea.
If we factor in inflation to $199 in 1977 compared to how much that is in today's money it is nearly $700. Can you imagine the outrage if Sony was to drop the PS5 on us for that much money? I mean, people would still buy it but there would be plenty of moaning about it.
If anything, videogames have become considerably less expensive than they ever have been in the history of videogames. In the past 10 years or so, virtually all consoles have been sold at zero profit or actually at a loss for the companies that make them. They plan or hope on being able to make that money up on game purchases. It is a huge gamble on the manufacturers side of things because some people out there open the machines up and have them altered so that they only ever play pirate games. I know several people that have done this and the only thing they really miss out on is that they can no longer participate ever in online play. Some people don't really care about that though. I am one of them. I also don't want to contribute to the downfall of a wonderful industry though and this is why I have never had this done to my own consoles.
So for all of you people out there complaining that gaming companies are taking advantage of their customers with inflated prices you can sit down... you are wrong. Now microtransactions on the other hand, that is a crock of shit, but at least it is an elective one.
well this is tough to say. There's definitely some other factors that play into this like the country and the economic background of the person. It's really perspective. I also think gaming is expensive especially web3 gaming O.O because of the potential to "earn back money from it" but that's another story. Of course what I'm saying doesn't include free games . I'm mostly talking about games that need to spend money for. IF the game is good then i guess nobody will complain :P but one recent example of a premium game flopping is the dragons doma 2 i think it got a lot of shit lately xD came into my feed
I think that companies were less likely to release terrible games knowing they were terrible back when they couldn't possibly be patched. Then again, games were a lot more simplistic back then than they are now due to limitations in tech.
oh ya for sure. that could be a reason. In the end, it's up to us the gamers whether or not we spend money for these good/terrible games $$$.
i won't say they are taking advantages tho to be clear o.o u are right about inflation
I would say that video game systems have gotten more expensive, at least the mainstream ones. There were super expensive systems back in the day like the 3DO and Neo Geo but even adjusted for inflation, the Super NES and Genesis were cheaper than the latest PlayStation or Xbox.
I think in the 8-bit and 16-bit days, pricing followed an odd trajectory. When I bought my first SNES games not long after that system was released I know at that time new games were typically priced at $49.99. At some point they went up (chip shortages or whatever). However, I think new game prices came down pretty fast also. That's probably true today too though I haven't paid much attention.
That is probably true because of the cost of manufacturing the systems. I recall reading somewhere that from about PS2 onward basically all system manufacturers sell their systems at near zero profit. I'm sure they are all pretty pissed about the fact that someone, somewhere, started this trend. I still can't really imagine the Atari 2600 costing anywhere near $700 (adjusted) to manufacture in the 70's though. But then again Atari couldn't really seem to do anything right and was the king of gaming only because they got there first.
Games were always pricey back then and wouldn't know what they cost now. I thought most people just download he games and don't physically have their own hard copy anymore. I can remember bitching at my kids because the discs were always getting scratched.
This is true for most people other than collectors. I know that I only have a few actual hard copies of modern games. I do kind of miss having a library to show off though.