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[Walter Matthau]

When games are cheap, consumers buy more than they can realistically ever play.

 

[Hibs]

you can

people see those price points as a lesser quality product

Are you sure? I'd say those on PC don't.

 

[Hibs]

Probably. Inflation is an exponentional function, don't forget. Just type some values like 60, 50 or 40 USD into the calculator, set the year to 2005 or whatever and see what happens. For reference, assuming a rate of 2% inflation per year, nominal prices would double in about 35 years, and increase by 50% in about 20 years.

I'm sure there are other factors in play though where raising the price of anything is generally a bad idea to consumers, like it costing them more money, in a bad economy, where everyday things cost more, so why pay $100 for a game, when you need something else? Yes, now we could argue about how games are a privilege and not a right.

But what about those games costing less than $60, $70 or $100 that provide more hours of entertainment than others? Why would you choose to willingly spend more for less, supporting higher costs for less value? You can argue those games are to your taste, hence you support the cost, but now we're not actually talking numbers, but opinions.

Why pay more for less? What games should cost more? Every game? Only AAA games?

Honestly, we should makes game be an auction. Pay what you think their worth on release. That would be a fun experiment.

 

[Imp the Dimp]

I'm sure there are other factors in play though where raising the price of anything is generally a bad idea to consumers, like it costing them more money, in a bad economy, where everyday things cost more, so why pay $100 for a game, when you need something else? Yes, now we could argue about how games are a privilege and not a right.

But what about those games costing less than $60, $70 or $100 that provide more hours of entertainment than others? Why would you choose to willingly spend more for less, supporting higher costs for less value? You can argue those games are to your taste, hence you support the cost, but now we're not actually talking numbers, but opinions.

Why pay more for less? What games should cost more? Every game? Only AAA games?

Honestly, we should makes game be an auction. Pay what you think their worth on release. That would be a fun experiment.

You're close I think. Generally, wages increase with inflation (in fact, rising wages likely contribute a substantial amount to inflation). That is what people mean when they say real wages have stagnated for a while - this happens when nominal wages don't outpace inflation. However, if you have a product that does not keep up with inflation, then its real price is effectively sinking. Because your nominal wage is increasing (on average) but that product is staying the same nominal price. Therefore, what you consider "price raises" are at best attempts to stabilize the real price of games. Adjusted for inflation, box prices haven't increased in ages.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Are you sure? I'd say those on PC don't.

yep. PC gaming is not about that.

 

[ArtHands]

Sony should consider increasing their games to $100. I wouldn't mind forking out $100 for a PS5 game

 

[That Damn Kid]

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

Games are a pure luxury and entertainment, so they can’t get too out of control with prices. Not all games are worth $70 or even $50 and with the ridiculously exorbitant prices of Season passes, DLC, microtransactions, predatory practices and incomplete, broken games it’s hard to justify all game prices going up because of inflation imo.

 

[0neAnd0nly]

NeoGAF even attracting the CEO’s of game publishers now!

Welcome!

 

[Marvel14]

$70 for a game like God of War Ragnarok, TotK or Elden Ring is just insane when we paid $100-130 for SNES and N64 games if adjusted for inflation. Games are multiple orders of magnitude better than in the 90s and not only that, they beat virtually all other entertainment too in terms of value for the money. Would you have considered any of these three games a bad deal at, say, $110? That seems hard to believe given the crap you bought in the 90s for those prices and higher. Box prices for games are probably among the most inflation resitant things I can think of and the nominal price increases don't even make up for inflation. Gaming's day 1 real prices have greatly decreased since the 90s and more or less stagnated for the past ~10 years. Obviously, that's just box prices and companies have varying business models these days but generally, you can just buy a game for a basically all-time low price during what is probably the all time highest quality era. It's (good) insanity.

Completely agree..It costs £12 to watch a 2 hour film at the cinema. A 2 hour online escape room costs £18. A 90 min shuffleboard £13. Elden Ring and TOTK easily have 200 hrs of entertainment content. To get that much entertainment time out of other entertainment options would cost easily £2400. Even if you cap videogames at 80hrs entertainment you're still talking about £1000. Games give you that for less than £80. It's a steal.

 

[LRKD]

Maybe 10 years ago you were right, but modern gaming, hell no!

 

[lyan]

And every bigger publisher, as well as smaller ones, are posting profits.

Not my beloved tri-Ace though they rarely publishes and mostly develops.

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

Yeah, sure Elon Mark Tim Jan.
We should also pay 500€ to watch a big blockbuster movie, that's a well know fact. Also cars and houses are damn too cheap, let's go to the million. Let's make game only for the richest, why be poor ? If you don't have money, just buy it !
Some people are really bored.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Next time you’re at a retailer buying a game, hand them $100- $150 and tell them to keep the change.

No one’s stopping you from paying more for a game if that’s what you want.

 

[onnextflix5]

Is this guy living in some alternate reality or something, games are to expensive for while now, I think ps2 prices were perfect, we could buy new games for £30-£40. £70-80 is a complete joke.

 

[Sushi_Combo]

Is this guy living in some alternate reality or something, games are to expensive for while now, I think ps2 prices were perfect, we could buy new games for £30-£40. £70-80 is a complete joke.

Annual game releases at 100$ is an expensive investment. But the AAA game that provides something new/different can definitely provide value.

 

[TheGrat1]

Yup, you can get hundreds of hours of entertainment and unmatched replay value for a few dozen dollars or even free. Some new home video releases rival the cost of new smaller games for just a 2 hour movie.

how long before games ask for your first-born?

 

[Raven77]

Games should cost roughly $100-$125.

You are exactly right in that they offer the best value for your dollar of any entertainment format.

 

[Pimpbaa]

Paying OVER $100 Canadian (including taxes) is bullshit. You can give someone a $100 playstation gift card and they can’t buy a new game with it (games on sale or indie games sure, not new AAA games). This shit just pushes people to services like game pass or ps plus extra. Or to always never buy day one and wait for sales. And yeah games used to be more expensive during the cartridge days due to inflation (and the high price of ROM), but that’s why I rarely bought games then (rented almost everything). I bought considerably more games when the PS1 came out.

 

[TropicanaTwista]

Agree OP, never got the outrage over bumping games to $70. Gaming has literally never been cheaper. With the amount of content you get, like some games are legit 100+ hours, $70 is nothing for a form of entertainment. Not to mention the amount of quality f2p games you can download, spend HOURS on there and not pay a cent. It's pretty crazy. And hell if that is still somehow too much for people, you can some to ps+ or gamepass for what 100 something a year and basically not have to buy a single game again.

Not that I want to pay more (that's just stupid of me as a consumer) but I do worry about the future. I'd rather pay more if I knew the quality would remain the same, rather than keep paying 60 or 70 and have the quality fall off a cliff. Feel like with these sub services and how often people bitch about pricing, that's the direction we are heading though.

 

[Party McHardy]

If a game can’t hold my attention for more than 10 minutes it’s not even worth a single dollar.

 

[Majormaxxx]

GAAS
microtransactions
Cosmetics
Pay to win
Day 1 patches
Unfinished games for months
Identity politics

 

[Shubh_C63]

It IS Cheap.
It's funny because earlier game prices were way costly and our parents used to buy that. Now they are way cheaper but its money out of our pocket now

I just compare game prices to when I eat outside and man cafes are so fucking costly that way. That's just 2 emotes and a skin I just ate lol
Now if only games were good

 

[Hoddi]

Sounds like their problem and not mine. Games are supposed to be cheap because they'll otherwise never be mass market products.

I have zero intention to pay $100 for games just because a small handful were expensive to create. If they can't turn a profit then that's a budgeting problem and I'm not gonna pay for their mistakes. Let alone when most of it goes to marketing the damn thing.

 

[Noxxera]

$70 for a game like God of War Ragnarok, TotK or Elden Ring is just insane when we paid $100-130 for SNES and N64 games if adjusted for inflation. Games are multiple orders of magnitude better than in the 90s and not only that, they beat virtually all other entertainment too in terms of value for the money. Would you have considered any of these three games a bad deal at, say, $110? That seems hard to believe given the crap you bought in the 90s for those prices and higher. Box prices for games are probably among the most inflation resitant things I can think of and the nominal price increases don't even make up for inflation. Gaming's day 1 real prices have greatly decreased since the 90s and more or less stagnated for the past ~10 years. Obviously, that's just box prices and companies have varying business models these days but generally, you can just buy a game for a basically all-time low price during what is probably the all time highest quality era. It's (good) insanity.

If you're poor they're definitely not cheap.

 

[mxbison]

People who think gaming is expensive haven't tried a lot of other stuff.

 

[93xfan]

Some full priced games are well worth it and would be worth double, but others don’t deserve to be half the cost.

Smash Ultimate is a great example of a passion project that is well worth the investment. Actually paid $120 due to buying all the character DLC packs and a few Mii costumes. The game was absolutely worth that in my mind. Halo 3 as well was such a complete package and felt like a steal, making it easy to justify buying the DLC map packs

 

[PendekarRajawali]

$70 for a game like God of War Ragnarok, TotK or Elden Ring is just insane when we paid $100-130 for SNES and N64 games if adjusted for inflation. Games are multiple orders of magnitude better than in the 90s and not only that, they beat virtually all other entertainment too in terms of value for the money. Would you have considered any of these three games a bad deal at, say, $110? That seems hard to believe given the crap you bought in the 90s for those prices and higher. Box prices for games are probably among the most inflation resitant things I can think of and the nominal price increases don't even make up for inflation. Gaming's day 1 real prices have greatly decreased since the 90s and more or less stagnated for the past ~10 years. Obviously, that's just box prices and companies have varying business models these days but generally, you can just buy a game for a basically all-time low price during what is probably the all time highest quality era. It's (good) insanity.

 

[Imp the Dimp]

Sounds like their problem and not mine. Games are supposed to be cheap because they'll otherwise never be mass market products.

I have zero intention to pay $100 for games just because a small handful were expensive to create. If they can't turn a profit then that's a budgeting problem and I'm not gonna pay for their mistakes. Let alone when most of it goes to marketing the damn thing.

Do you acknowledge that we routinely paid >$100 in the 90s for N64 and SNES games if adjusted for inflation? Obviously, competition has driven prices down but you make $100 sound more outrageous than it is. Games would probably still be S-tier value at that price point and we did in fact pay that sum 25 years ago for day 1 prices.

 

[NinjaBoiX]

You’re not wrong, but I refuse to pay £70 for a single game. I’m not one of those gamers that MUST play it as soon as it comes out, so I just wait until it’s cheap or on a sub service.

 

[nikos]

Games provide an absolutely insane amount of value for money.

I've always compared game costs to food, drink, a night out, other forms of entertainment etc. Even if I get one night of enjoyment out of a game, it could be worth it. These days, most games cost about as much as 2-3 drinks.

 

[ahtlas7]

I’ll decide how much it’s worth to me. But feel free to send them all the $$ donations you like. I’m sure they will take it.

 

[AV]

Agreed, I always find it incredibly funny when people scream and moan about a game that they know they'd put 100+ hours into costing $70. A nice meal for two costs more than that and will last you like 90 minutes.

Doesn't mean I'm not gonna try and squeeze my dollar, though. Buy physical AAA games, play, sell, buy cheap digital indies.

 

[Klosshufvud]

Agreed, I always find it incredibly funny when people scream and moan about a game that they know they'd put 100+ hours into costing $70. A nice meal for two costs more than that and will last you like 90 minutes.

Most $70 games are absolutely not worth 100+ hours. The number of games I've played over 100 hours is just a handful. The meal comparison strikes me as disingenious since slaughtering an animal, shipping the meat, having a cook make it and waiter serve it is obviously not comparable to software being downloaded/stored on a disc.

$70 games is harmful to the industry. It further stagnates the industry to established franchises. When people need to pay that much for a game, they opt for the safest choices possible. Nobody wants to spend $70 on a game they'll play for 1 hour with no chance of refunds. So it's no surprise the publishers with the big brands were most eager to push for $70.

I feel like the quality of this discussion would have been significantly better if a game purchase wasn't constantly being compared to completely irrelevant things such as meal purchases or drinks.

 

[peish]

no i disagree, games are getting too expensive for me to plonk down.

on the other hand console hardware is too cheap. i bought a ps5 digital gow bundle for equivalent to usd450. i think it is a steal at this price.

 

[LazyParrot]

You are exactly right in that they offer the best value for your dollar of any entertainment format.

I'm not so sure about that. Finding entertainment that costs literally nothing is easy af these days. Hell, it has been for decades if you count shit like non-pay TV and radio.

 

[Imp the Dimp]

I'm not so sure about that. Finding entertainment that costs literally nothing is easy af these days. Hell, it has been for decades if you count shit like non-pay TV and radio.

Yes, but I would argue that gaming provides incredible quality as well and given how the industry is thriving, that seems to be a common sentiment. It's not just about killing time for the lowest price. Good games provide high quality entertainment.

 

[Klosshufvud]

Yes, but I would argue that gaming provides incredible quality as well and given how the industry is thriving, that seems to be a common sentiment. It's not just about killing time for the lowest price. Good games provide high quality entertainment.

The industry is thriving by what terms? In profits made to a handful of publishers and some indie devs on a lucky break? Sure. The industry is thriving creatively or in technology? I disagree wholeheartedly. Gaming is a shadow of its former self. We peaked during 6th gen and afterwards games have just dropped in quantity and quality alike. Paying more for games and increasing budgets for games have not solved these problems. I'd argue they've only made things worse.

 

[Imp the Dimp]

The industry is thriving by what terms? In profits made to a handful of publishers and some indie devs on a lucky break? Sure. The industry is thriving creatively or in technology? I disagree wholeheartedly. Gaming is a shadow of its former self. We peaked during 6th gen and afterwards games have just dropped in quantity and quality alike. Paying more for games and increasing budgets for games have not solved these problems. I'd argue they've only made things worse.

Well, I disagree. I think gaming is much better than ever before but I won't fight with you about your own preferences. I would say it's thriving in terms of adoption. People are increasingly turning to gaming because of how appealing it is in terms of quality and price. It's amazing value.

 

[IDKFA]

Some of the comments here must be from publishers.

Games cost are currently fine. They're selling at the price set and publishers are making a profit. Why should they cost more because of the amount of hours of enjoyment I get out of it? That makes no sense.

I purchased a pack of playing cards five years ago for around £3. I've gotten hundreds of hours of enjoyment from that single pack. Should the company who made them charge £100 for the pack of cards because of the hours of enjoyment I gained from them?

And people saying how Snes and N64 games cost over £100 back in the day adjusting for inflation. SNES and N64 games could only be played if you owned a physical copies. These were on a cartridge which was expensive to manufacture. It wasn't like a cheap CD that the PS1 used and digital distribution wasn't a thing.

 

[Filben]

Tell that book publishers and authors. 10-15 EUR for a paperback book that give me 10 to 20 hours of enjoyment depending on its length.

 

[AV]

Most $70 games are absolutely not worth 100+ hours. The number of games I've played over 100 hours is just a handful. The meal comparison strikes me as disingenious since slaughtering an animal, shipping the meat, having a cook make it and waiter serve it is obviously not comparable to software being downloaded/stored on a disc.

$70 games is harmful to the industry. It further stagnates the industry to established franchises. When people need to pay that much for a game, they opt for the safest choices possible. Nobody wants to spend $70 on a game they'll play for 1 hour with no chance of refunds. So it's no surprise the publishers with the big brands were most eager to push for $70.

I feel like the quality of this discussion would have been significantly better if a game purchase wasn't constantly being compared to completely irrelevant things such as meal purchases or drinks.

Alright, cut it into almost a third. 35 hours, $2 per hour for entertainment, against a comparable medium? What does a cinema ticket cost? What does a brand new Blu-Ray cost? What does an album cost?

Obviously there's no 1:1 comparison point because not all games/movies/albums/whatever cost the same and not all $70 games are going to provide you with that much content. Hell, I've seen some people on the internet sincerely try and argue that games aren't worth much because, and I quote: "you can just get a library card and read books for free".

It's an age old discussion and some people are just cheap, there's no two ways about it. If you can't afford $70 games because that's a luxury, that's totally fair enough. But the people who can, and who spend hundreds and hundreds of hours in Call of Duty only to bitch and complain that it's not worth their money? Cheap. Before we even bring inflation into things and recognise that games are cheaper than they've ever been, but I understand that in a lot of the world wages aren't being increased to meet that inflation in the first place.

 

[Imp the Dimp]

Some of the comments here must be from publishers.

Games cost are currently fine. They're selling at the price set and publishers are making a profit. Why should they cost more because of the amount of hours of enjoyment I get out of it? That makes no sense.

I purchased a pack of playing cards five years ago for around £3. I've gotten hundreds of hours of enjoyment from that single pack. Should the company who made them charge £100 for the pack of cards because of the hours of enjoyment I gained from them?

And people saying how Snes and N64 games cost over £100 back in the day adjusting for inflation. SNES and N64 games could only be played if you owned a physical copies. These were on a cartridge which was expensive to manufacture. It wasn't like a cheap CD that the PS1 used and digital distribution wasn't a thing.

It doesn't matter if I'm Bobby Kotick's account. Deal with the substance and not with my character. Prices are obviously "fine" because the price is ultimately determined by the market. If publishers could charge more, they would. But market conditions won't allow for it. My point was to acknowledge the amazing value games provide and to highlight how hysterical the discussion about nominal price increases is, when in fact they barely cover inflation. Real prices for games haven't increased at all and it's a little silly and entitled to demand that real prices continue sinking. I understand that you can't always adjust every price for inflation off the top of your head, but you should at least be a little aware of macroeconomic mechanisms when discussing the economics of an industry. Nominal prices only tell half the story.

Secondly, assuming that production of cartridges is cheaper than hosting digital games (which sounds reasonable) - that doesn't mean publishers have an obligation to lower prices by that amount. That makes no sense. Real prices (real price = inflation adjusted price) will however still organically go down, because lower production costs allows for further undercutting of competition. That is the mechanism by which prices stay low or fall. And lastly, your understanding of pricing just seems off. The production cost don't necessarily factor into pricing (they can determine the price floor, but not necessarily). Suppose I were to paint a picture in 5 minutes and it sells for $10.000 on ebay. Suppose a less talented clone of mine paints the same picture but it takes him 5 days to do so. The production cost is vastly different, yet the market value of the product didn't change. Your understanding of economics wouldn't be able to explain this hypothetical, therefore it is to be rejected.

Tell that book publishers and authors. 10-15 EUR for a paperback book that give me 10 to 20 hours of enjoyment depending on its length.

Sure, if you like books they are good value but I would argue games can rival that.

 

[Klosshufvud]

Alright, cut it into almost a third. 35 hours, $2 per hour for entertainment, against a comparable medium? What does a cinema ticket cost? What does a brand new Blu-Ray cost? What does an album cost?

Obviously there's no 1:1 comparison point because not all games/movies/albums/whatever cost the same and not all $70 games are going to provide you with that much content. Hell, I've seen some people on the internet sincerely try and argue that games aren't worth much because, and I quote: "you can just get a library card and read books for free".

It's an age old discussion and some people are just cheap, there's no two ways about it. If you can't afford $70 games because that's a luxury, that's totally fair enough. But the people who can, and who spend hundreds and hundreds of hours in Call of Duty only to bitch and complain that it's not worth their money? Cheap. Before we even bring inflation into things and recognise that games are cheaper than they've ever been, but I understand that in a lot of the world wages aren't being increased to meet that inflation in the first place.

Honestly I don't think the people who play CoD are that bothered by the $70 price tags. Those people usually only buy CoD so they're less sensitive to price increases. These price increases negatively impacts those buying more games, with some being riskier purchases. The incentive to make a risky purchase is lowered when the baseline is $70. This is why almost every AAA of this age is a known franchise or brand. Creating brand new games and genres is too risky in the days of high budgets and consumers already hooked on other franchises.

I think if the quality of games was high across the board, I could justify $70. But personally I am more bored than hooked by the majority of AAAs I've played the past years. But sure, if you're absolutely sure what you love to play, then $70 is a modest investment for that entertainment.

 

[kyussman]

What's quality is diffferent for everyone though.There are a lot of big budget games around that I would not consider quality products because they have very little thought put into the actual gameplay and too much effort spent on making them look good......I would agree an actual high quality game with 40hrs of gameplay is good value for money these days at current prices when compared to a blu-ray or CD(yea,I'm old I still buy these,lol.)

 

[AV]

Honestly I don't think the people who play CoD are that bothered by the $70 price tags. Those people usually only buy CoD so they're less sensitive to price increases. These price increases negatively impacts those buying more games, with some being riskier purchases. The incentive to make a risky purchase is lowered when the baseline is $70. This is why almost every AAA of this age is a known franchise or brand. Creating brand new games and genres is too risky in the days of high budgets and consumers already hooked on other franchises.

I think if the quality of games was high across the board, I could justify $70. But personally I am more bored than hooked by the majority of AAAs I've played the past years. But sure, if you're absolutely sure what you love to play, then $70 is a modest investment for that entertainment.

I think the larger problem is people's willingness to just bend over and accept all-digital. There's a certain poster on this board who actively celebrates this and having his options limited by a corporation while simultaneously complaining about some games being too expensive and waiting for sales. As if previously he couldn't just buy a copy of the game on disc and sell it on for 90%+ of its value if he didn't enjoy it, or shit, even "hate-finish" the whole game and do the same thing. Steam's even better, giving people 2 uninterrupted hours to try a product, before which they can get a no-questions-asked refund if they don't like it.

At the same time, I've been called cheap for doing just that. Swings and roundabouts.

 

[Spaceman292]

$70 for a game like God of War Ragnarok, TotK or Elden Ring is just insane when we paid $100-130 for SNES and N64 games if adjusted for inflation. Games are multiple orders of magnitude better than in the 90s and not only that, they beat virtually all other entertainment too in terms of value for the money. Would you have considered any of these three games a bad deal at, say, $110? That seems hard to believe given the crap you bought in the 90s for those prices and higher. Box prices for games are probably among the most inflation resitant things I can think of and the nominal price increases don't even make up for inflation. Gaming's day 1 real prices have greatly decreased since the 90s and more or less stagnated for the past ~10 years. Obviously, that's just box prices and companies have varying business models these days but generally, you can just buy a game for a basically all-time low price during what is probably the all time highest quality era. It's (good) insanity.

Haha what the fuck are you talking about you chode

 

[Hydroxy]

Maybe you come from a rich family otherwise you wouldn't say this. Games are expensive. Especially when you consider you need to get the deluxe edition which includes season to get complete experience as many games cut content from the main game to sell as dlc so the entire experience is atleast $100-120 which is a lot of money. Especially if you live in a country with much lower purchasing power compared to US. Not to mention most games launch is buggy and broken state so you don't even get a good quality experience for purchasing at full price.

 

[kubricks]

Game's price is ultimately dictated by the market, not by gamers or your sense of justices. Feel free to charge $500 for a $100 hours game and see it fails instantaneously, $5/hr is still cheaper compared to a movie right? lol.

Comparing video gaming price to movie, dinning and night out is just nonsense. These activities are done so for their social interaction with others most of the time, the entertainment itself is just a bonus.

 

[KungFucius]

This is insane. Comparing games today that come on cheap or free media to the cost of games that came on carts with custom chips is utterly asinine. The cost of any product is determined by what can be profitably and what the market will bare. Expensive SNES games sold a pittance compared to today. Also they provided about the same entertainment. Maybe more than games today. Just because a technology has improved does not mean it has to cost more. I think I paid 300 bucks for VooDoo GPU back in the day and needed to buy a 100+ video card to go with it. That doesn't mean that an RTX 4060 is cheap for the quality it provides. Things get better.