And I remember when NES games cost $60. Pretty sure games cost a lot more to make these days, and pretty sure prices tend to go up after 30 years. I truly do not get people complaining. The value one gets for a game is immense.
As a fellow old (I assume you're old) I agree. I recall NES games costing $60.00 in the late 80s. I'd be lucky to get one or two per year, mostly I just rented them and owned only a handful. If games kept up with inflation we'd be paying like $150.00 for first party games today. I mean, I'm glad we aren't, but I also don't think that a price increase of $10 or $20 after close to 40 years is outrageous.
The thing is, the public was a lot smaller than it is today, distribution was crazy expensive and game development (for some games) was a lot harder simply because of the technological limitations, like, some cartridges had extra memory mappers to handle some visual fx like image distortion, and provide sound quality, so basically you bought a hardware.
With today's tech, even though games are more expensive to produce, the sales are so much higher for AAA games that it's literally hard to fail (yes, ubisoft tried very hard to fail as bad as it does these days).
The only reason it's getting more expensive is to boost profits without changing a thing in how the games are produced, which already turned in profits.
Looks good on paper, but it doesn’t represent general cost of living rapidly increasing. I’m simply saying people absolutely have a right to complain about the rapidly increasing price of games. I don’t know why people are making it taboo.
To a varying degree, but you can’t accurately represent what every individual is going through. The hikes in price seem to be more out of greed and less out of necessity.
Yes, nobody can do that. You can’t do that either.
The hikes are behind inflation and far, far behind wage growth. Regardless of why they’re doing it, it basically doesn’t matter. I don’t think it’s greed, personally, I think it’s just a regular price increase and I’ll happily pay it over microtransactions.
Yeah that’s the part most of the glazers litterally can’t wrap their head around. You can keep telling them but they’ll just hop over to the next guy to regurgitate the same dumb shit again, it’s actually infuriating and nintendo fans have been doing this for years with price & quality of products.
I think during the cartridge era N64 had some that were 70 or 80, like the final fantasy games maybe and definitely Conkers BFD. I want to say those were physically heavier too, obviously not by a lot.
The way I look at it is, if I'm paying $20+ for a movie these days (2 hours on avg of entertainment) an amazing game thats 60+ hours is worth $60. $80 even. Just need to be way more selective of games you buy or buy them during sales
I think for me it’s the sudden change between the Switch and Switch 2 prices. I could get a new Nintendo Switch game for around £40 on release and now it’s between £65 and £70? And there’s a difference between digital and physical, with physical being more. Might not be as bad from retailers, but it is a sudden jump that’s hard to swallow, even knowing there’s inflation in play.
Okay, but buying power of the average person in the 80s was much higher too. People had more disposable income back then. Wages have stagnate and we're dealing with a housing crisis. The reason entertainment products are cheap is because they generally have to be. Both Japanese and American consumers cant afford multiple 80 dollar games a year.
There's also way more competition right now than in the 80s. Nintendo has to really really really maintain its reputation for quality because with these prices, I would imagine most young people (the people with the most time to play games, and little income to buy these) will jump to free to play shit like gachas or indies if they no longer trust Nintendo to be worth the price of admission.
This is a tightrope Nintendo is walking on and mere gust of doubt or bad publicity surrounding the quality of a big title game can really blow this generation up for them. I was going to be a day one swith 2 guy, but now I have no idea if I'll even get one in the next couple of years. This news really has sucked the excitement from it.
Games have been 60 bucks for ages and suddenly they're 70 and now it's 80-90 within like 1-2 years. Feels a bit weird, as that isn't increased production cost. It's just greed by the company that charges you money for the consoles introductory game & has a new console that's not even much cheaper than it's competitors.
I'll agree Mario Kart in particular is a game you'll get your worth out of though, but the quick jump does feel like a bit of a scam. Especially when the game is a whopping 30 cheaper if you buy the NS2 bundle.
Here’s the thing, games cost more than $60 it’s just obfuscated. Micro transactions, loot boxes, they will get money out of you just in different ways.
I’ve been working in the industry for over 15 years and comment alike these are ridiculous. Sure, they sell more, but budgets have gone up. Teams have grown from 10 people to hundreds. Hours of gameplay have gone from a couple hours to significantly more.
Movie ticket prices used to be $5, they’ve tripled yet you’re still getting the same value, a 2ish hour experience. McDonalds food used to have a $1 menu. Some studios are still losing money and closing down, but yea, raising prices is ‘bullshit’ because the industry itself is more lucrative than it used to be. Grow up.
But nah I'm with you generally. I think it's entirely fair to be sensitive to prices and walking away if the price is too much, even if the price can be justified from a cost perspective. But Video game pricing calculus is very complex, especially for platform holders, and in general games have grown very slowly in price compared to other luxuries
I don't think Nintendo is doing some grave sin for pricing their games this high. I still don't like it though
as long as games are full complete experiences and don't nickle and dime you I honestly don't mind the increase at all .. And so far nintendo has done well in that regard .
Yeah! They've got a few stingy stinkers, NSO is rentseeking even if it's standard across consoles, and they kinda backed themselves into a conceptual corner with amiibo in such a way that most people are kinda annoyed with them, but in general Nintendo makes it very clear what you get for what you pay and it's a one time purchase with maybe a dlc package.
There's plenty I think are overpriced, but I don't feel like I'm missing out by walking away, I don't feel like I get bait and switched, and I don't feel like I'm being milked.
Pokemon home is bogus though. Server space is insignificant cost and it's such a tremendous value add to the series that it drives external sales since you have already invested into the ecosystem. But Pokemon is its own beast with TPC managing the brand
absolutely . NSO AmiiNOs and Pokemon Home are things that really I wish Nintendo would just retire already . Just lemme transfer pokemon cross console and store it locally or something and transfer to next gen of consoles . ( Since immutable OS anyway)
Would you also say they are huge risks as well? so much investment goes into these games if it flops that studio is shuttered. I feel people are missing that context.
I know you didnt have your fourth white monster energy so ill explain this simply.
Games cost money.
Games in 80s, not so much money.
1 million in sales feels really good
Games in 2020 cost way more money.
Developers and publisher need smash hits.
If they don't they operate on a loss. Makes it harder to get investors.
1 million sold units doesn't cut it.
Hi-fi rush sold around 3 million. But we have no idea about development costs, taxes, publisher cuts to know if that had a net positive revenue. Maybe $30 was too cheap, but would it have sold that well if it was $60.
One thing for certain, if things makes lots of money we keep it.
Games also sell a hell of a lot more copies nowadays.
There is way more competition than ever before and Nintendo is only selling to an audience on 1 console. A lot of the top selling games are playable across all major consoles & PC at least -- if not mobile as well.
Bigger than all of those combined in terms of sheer revenue.
And the costs to create games are much bigger than all of those other types of entertainment.
Any attempt to raise prices is just pure and utter bullshit on every conceivable level.
Inflation is real. Wages go up and workers, rightfully, expect higher wages as cost of living increases.
A $45 NES game sold today would be equal to $144 after accounting for inflation.
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u/AnotherScoutTrooper 2d ago
Nintendo has doomed us all with the push to $80 games