Game prices for the past 30 years haven’t kept pace with inflation.
I recognise the argument that publishers are shifting larger volumes of units now, which has been a factor that has allowed the industry to keep price increases below inflation for the last 30 years.
Wages not being even close to keeping up with inflation (especially housing inflation) is the real issue here, not the $70/$80 video game.
You should be angry at your reduced purchasing power in all of society, not just with the price of Nintendo games.
(Secondary less unpopular opinion, the best games out these days are multiplatform and released at least 5 years ago, buy them for << $80 and wait for sale the new releases, when they too are 5 years old)
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This is really about late stage capitalism and chasing infinite growth. Every year profits must go up X percentage. There is never enough. So they have to find ways to make it to up, cutting wages and increasing prices is the obvious way.
Game prices are absolutely a problem still. The price of a game is just the entry fee. Then there’s subscriptions, MTX, etc. If you add in everything you need to make a game a complete experience like they were pre-download era, games cost more even with inflation factored in.
Yeah this is absolutely correct. When you look at prices and adjust for inflation $80 now is about right.
The value of money has gone down, and the value of pay cheques and salaries have not increased to keep up.
Unfortunately this often gets sidelined with “what aboutism” - like what about the dysfunctional AAA market, and predatory big publishers like EA that churn our crap, or all the publishers trying to build microtransactions into games. These are also ALL valid issues, but it doesn’t change the fundamentals that video games cost around $80 in 2000 when adjusted for inflation.
The video game industry can be dysfunctional AND we’re also being screwed over by dysfunctional unequal capitalism causing declining living standards at the same time.
no. they don’t even make physical media anymore. the cost is lowered on each copy. they ask for a ton of extra payments. they can suck shit and die. games can be 30 bucks and still stay profitable. the games industry makes more money than Hollywood. stop defending them while they’re trying to pluck your last dime.
How much did a video game cost to make compared to today?
Same thing with movies. With everything.
We’re not playing polygon tomb raider anymore.
how many copies could they sell back then vs now? how much did it cost to make, stock and ship a physical copy worldwide vs being able to provide infinite copies everywhere only using the bandwidth when necessary?
no one’s asking for billions to be spent on games. companies being horribly managed by businessman who have no idea how games work or what’s important in a game, forcing i live service bullshit, chasing trends, making big empty worlds full of pointless busywork does not mean the games should cost 80 dollars.
ninja theory already proved you can make an insanely good looking game with a tiny budget and sell it for 30 bucks and turn a profit. meanwhile the biggest companies including ones owned by evil billionaires can easily shit out concord and starfields wasting years and millions on steaming turds.
also things haven’t only become more expensive. they’ve become cheaper too. there are more tools, better hardware and software for cheaper if not free that allows people to do more than ever before with less than ever before. the indie scene is 1000x more powerful today than it was back then for this reason.
and you’re talking about polygon tomb raider while these companies are trying to sell you recolored skins for 10 bucks even though it took an unpaid intern about 45 seconds to use a color swap on a 2d texture.
While wages are an issue, AAA gaming is more about C-suite satisfaction and the continued growth of the capitalist way of life.
Indie devs can make gold for $9.99.
Indie devs can make gold for $9.99.
I’ve spent less than $20 for all of the Vampire Survivors content, and gotten 250 hours of enjoyment out of it.
Sucks to suck, EA.
A big problem is ignorant Csuite scaling up a games developer studio and expecting more cooks in the kitchen will make a higher quality product.
The indie teams make great full experiences with realistic scope because it’s a team of like 20 or less who are all on the same page instead of hundreds of employees.
Indie devs have infinitely less overhead than AAA game studios, so of course they can.
And they have infinitely less funding and marketing. They don’t have the overhead but they don’t have the benefits of that overhead either and will succeed.
Yes I mentioned the C-suite…
Huh, unpopular opinion.
Does Lemmy know that popular opinions need to be downvoted? Smh…
The unpopular part is that I disagree with the discussion which is microscopically focussed on raging at game publishers, citing corporate greedy as the only reason game prices are so high.
$80 should be an affordable amount of money to spend for someone on an average wage for a game (not unpopular).
I would also like to add that 30 years ago devs had to write the engine and devtools from scratch. Player hardware and optimizations were also massive pain points that needed attention.
I would argue that cost of development has gotten CHEAPER than it was 30 years ago, even when taking the scope of today’s games into account. Not to mention the market is also orders of magnitude bigger.
Any schmuk today can take Unity/UE5/Godot and make something playable in a matter of days. Barrier to entry is practically non existent. Look at Palworld, Vampire Survivors, Among Us, Balatro, Terraria. For studios with AAA-level scope look at Larian studios, Warhorse studios, Eleventh hour games, Hello games.
Large studio execs with 0 substance who don’t know what they’re doing are spouting this inflation drivel as justification to raise prices of their already failing games as AA and indie teams run CIRCLES around them.
What has gotten much more expensive is the 3D modelling and level/gamespace making side of things, rather than development, which is why you see so many indies doing 2D games or simple 3D visuals and procedural generation of the gamespace.
This is partly why indie studios are far more successful at producing games with great gameplay than AAA studios - since they avoid going for hyper-realistic looks and massive hand-crafted levels they can focus on the actual gaming much more, plus its way easier to pivot main aspects of a game if it turns out they’re not actually fun if there isn’t a massive amount of time sunk into visuals and level design linked to them.
Maybe development in the sense that it is easier for programmers to put together the logic of the game, but game budgets are in the hundreds of millions now they have not gotten cheaper. You’re forgetting that artists are needed to create all the high quality textures and objects needed to populate the gameworld. As gamers have called for more and more unrealistic standards of graphical fidelity, more and more budgets have gone to the legions of graphical artists necessary.
They’re still underpaying them, but indies can get away with having maybe one guy as their whole art team. Check the credits for how many studios helped the art for the next AAA game you play.
Honestly looking at the most popular games, I dont think graphics matter to even 1% of gamers. Minecraft, Terraria, lethal company, baltro, among us, all have the graphical quality of a 2 year old drawing.
Publishers are just spending a million to underpay artists solely because ‘graphics’ worked back in the ps2-ps3 era, so theyre still hitting that slot machine hoping for the same returns.
Edit to add: tunic, factorio (technically) Tetris, temple run, hill climb racing, Wii sports (arguably nindendos entire style until recently), human fall flat all have incredibly cheap graphics
Stylized graphics can look great for cheap, but they aren’t a shortcut to instant success. For every successful indie, there are a thousand more that never sell more than a handful of copies.
Yes, the point was that having real-time raytracing and realistic ultra-resolution rendering is not worth the cost either, when games with cheaper graphics are doing better (and also require less expensive hardware)
So?
Doesnt mean expensive ones are an instant success either, if anything I’m agreeing with you that graphics are irrelevant to sales
if anything I’m agreeing with you that graphics are irrelevant to sales
I didn’t say this.
As gamers have called for more and more unrealistic standards of graphical fidelity, more and more budgets have gone to the legions of graphical artists necessary.
This is one of the things I personally like the least about modern games. I don’t want ultra-high detail textures for 4K resolution that will be completely wasted on my not-so-new hardware. Instead, I’d rather have optimized games that don’t intoduce 100+ GB of bloat and require me to set all the graphic options to minimum quality in order to run with a decent fps.
While I agree that 1 person can make a game easier than ever before, game development cost has ballooned for bigger studios.
People love to point to Indie mega hits and say “why doesn’t EA/Activision just make games with creativity like Balatro? This is what the people want.”, but I challenge anyone to actually predict what that hit game is going to be before it takes off.
It’s a big gamble to put games out there and most indie studios don’t make more than 1. It’s not a reliable business model to put these thousand person studios to work on a thousand different solo pet projects.
The problem is throw-away game culture and generally low quality games. A good game can provide you with years of content and would be well worth a >$80 price tag.
But people keep paying the same prices for trash games they play for 2 weeks and then move on. And honestly, they deserve these prices.
But then there’s Factorio for $35
I totally agree with you. And I want to add the games that you can only experience once, like Tunic, PEZ and OuterWilds.
And I’d change the “years of content” to something like “you can play it once every few years and it’s still good”
And I’d change the “years of content” to something like “you can play it once every few years and it’s still good”
I would not.
If you have a game you can only play once a every few years, its probalby a singleplay/campaign only game. THOSE are the issue. Get a game with a good multiplayer and you can play it perpetually … for decades even.
Single player campaigns are literally the best type of games. Fomo bullshit, constant nagging to buy stuff, and relying on internet dickheads for the experience and hoping they won’t just grief or insult everyone the whole time is awful.
And they hated jesus for he spoke the truth.
Fuck multiplayer. Been there, did that for years before it turned to shit.
Modern multiplayer games all just use gambling addiction tactics and FOMO to keep you coming back instead of providing a good experience.
Damn, you’re playing the wrong multiplayer games.
There aren’t many multiplayer games without loot boxes, limited time offers for real money, or pay to win mechanics anymore.
You’re probably right, I wouldn’t know. I play very few games and even fewer recent ones. Last one I picked up is Age of Empires IV, but as a classic RTS sequel it doesn’t suffer from any of the things you mentioned.
That’s a very self-centric view. Single player games exist because sometimes I want to immerse in a game world not deal with 3 randos(or even friends) and do “the objective” over and over. Yeah multi-player can be fun, but it is a a lot less immersive and rarely as relaxing.
Sure, nothing wrong with single player games in general. But I wouldn’t pay $80 for a game that can be “finished” in a couple of days. If people want to do that, that’s fine of course. But don’t complain about game prices if you’re specifically selecting the games with the worst playtime/price ratio.
If you’re “finished” with an $80 single player game in a couple of days either the game was shit or the way you play without doing any side stuff or more difficult achievements means single player isn’t for you. A good single player game is worth replaying or trying new things in. Personally a game that gives at least an hour of play per dollar is worth it to me.
No, I was actually considering multiple playthroughs as well as clearing it to 100%. (Though some games also put in some ridicilous grinds that make reaching 100% extremly time-consuming, those I consider asshole design and are not included).
I’m talking a couple of days playtime, not a couple of days real time.
an hour of play per dollar
That’s only 3.333 days of playtime for an $80 game … I don’t think that is very good.
Do you play 24h a day? An 80h game will take me months. If it is enjoyable for those 80h that is well worth for me. I don’t want to spend hours struggling and getting griefed or playing smurfs just to get to a point where I know the “meta” or whatever. I’m not in the position to grind and compete in those games anymore. I’m done with them except for special occasions. Overwatch, DRG, helldivers etc not fun for me. Yeah, I’ll still play l4d2 or rocket league occasionally. I put my time in tf2 and guild wars, but I’m still in act I of Baldurs Gate III and it’s fun and interesting. Hades is great (though runs are a little long). I’ll get horizon zero dawn and hades 2 at some point. I’m not getting overwatch 2 or whatever the modern multi-player is.
Smash Bros and MarioKart come to my mind. Particularly MarioKart64 and the 4-Player Versus mode (the best)
A lot of people, and I mean a heck of a lot of people, don’t like multiplayer games. And a lot of people don’t like those long games like AnimalCrossing. A lot of people hate sandbox games like Minecraft, and I know a lot of people who hate open world games like the Witcher. I like frustrating games like Celeste and Kaizo ROM hacks, both of them are hated by a lot of people.
There’s games for everyone, and that’s good. The problem is the quality of the games.
Adding to that - Nintendo is one of the few devs that actually consistently provides the kind of games you’re talking about. I feel like Ubisoft selling their next cookie-cutter shopping-list BS for $80 is offensive, but Nintendo doing it is bearable and maybe even justifiable.
I do worry that Nintendo’s $80 price tag will normalize $80 games. Ideally, it would be nice if it instead normalized seeing games at a wider variety of fair prices.
This comment deserves 90$ games.
Are the game developers and artists wages now being increased by the same percentage though? You are correct overall, especially in places like the UK where wages have been stagnant since like 2008 it feels like. But letting a company off the hook for raises “due to inflation” if they themselves are not raising their workers salaries to meet that inflation is bullshit.
Welcome to being an adult and finally realizing capitalism mainly involves screwing the workers and increasing product prices to make investors happy. We were never meant to be happy, just milked to death.
The math works out to be the CEOs pay raise is high enough, that on average with all the other 99.99% of the workers, it has kept up with inflation.
Good news, wages are no longer stagnant! Minimum wage has started to catch up to many professional jobs at this point. Outside of London anyway.
Same with porn. But now, the only fans type sites are ridiculously expensive and you don’t even know what the hell you’re paying for until you pay.
Wow this is incredible. I get to reuse my meme I just made a few days ago! Now that’s what I call value
35 years ago I didn’t get a Super Nintendo or Sega because you could get 12 Commodore 64 games for the same price as a single Mario game. And a few years later my dad got hold of a 286 so we could play DOS games like Wolfenstein.
Wage stagnation is absolutely heartbreaking.
But even if I were making a livable wage, Nintendo’s prices and other AAA are still ridiculous. The Steam wishlist sale life is the good life.
I mean both are the problem, obviously. And they’re both symptoms of tne larger problem, which is late stage capitalism slowly sucking every last drop of labor value out of everyone. Game companies are making more profits than they did 30 years ago, so you can’t tell me they ‘need’ to raise prices. And their CEO salaries are higher than ever, and developer salaries have not risen accordingly to justify the price increase. If a game company said ‘we’re raising our prices from 60 to 90 dollars, but we’re also giving every employee a 1/3 salary increase’ people might not be happy still but it would be a different conversation. But why should people who are struggling have to pay more for nothing except an increase in ‘shareholder value’ and the c-suites salary package? Thats fucked.
The fact that they’re moving more units doesn’t matter, everything, including things for which the price followed inflation, sells more units than it did 40 years ago just because there’s more people on the planet and globalism is a thing.
What matters is that that money goes to enrich billionaires and not the developers making the product people are buying.
Steam takes a 30% cut on the first $10m in sales (then 25% until $50m and then 20%) and they pay their employees a lot more than industry average and the owner is a multi billionaire with a yacht collection. Same shit for publishers, the c-suites are rich from “managing” the intermediary between the development studio and the retailers, they don’t give a crap about the product as long as it sells.
Meanwhile the devs making the games have a hard time affording housing, need to deal with crunches and get laid off once the game they were working on is completed.
And what about us, the consumers? Well we’re no better off than the developers and we’re still enriching a bunch of billionaires while most of us struggle to afford basic needs.
Both publishers and retailers could afford to reduce their cut and lower prices OR to reduce their cut and leave more money to the people making the products they sell and the impact would only be felt by a handful of people (in Steam’s case, by a single person).
Just as a sidenote here, the “issue” with steam is that it doesn’t have any real competition. Steam just does everything better than any other game launcher and that’s probably in part because of their policy.
On the gamedev side they allow you to market to a huge audience as a small creator and give you a chance to make it big (think Balatro, Signal 1, and a lot of other indie games as of recent)
On the gamer side they’ve made buying, updating and doing anything around the games so much easier than it used to be and not a single launcher has been able to do it as good as them. They’ve released one of the best VR headsets on the market that still hasn’t been beaten years later. They’ve released the first good Linux based PC handheld both giving a huge boost to that market and improving proton so gaming on Linux is actually possible (outside of games with anti-cheats that don’t allow linux)
I’m not saying them taking 30% from almost any sale done on steam is good, but at least they are able to give a service for it that not a single other company has done, they’re probably the most pro gamer company in the industry right now (together with game studios like Larian)
Also, yes devs should be paid a lot more for their work and the average person should also have a higher salary to beat inflation cause life is just too damn expensive!
Competition or not, the guy at the top still decided that being a multi billionaire was more important than the quality of life of his clients or the world poorest. No one forces anyone to own a yacht collection. No one forces anyone to be a billionaire. At any point he could have decided to stop accumulating wealth and to give away what he would otherwise gain to charities.
Remember when Musk said if he could fix world hunger for $6B he would do it and then he didn’t? ALL billionaires are guilty of the same thing.
Edit: keep downvoting guys, I’m sure Gaben will be glad you defended him
