Topic: Are Video Games Too Expensive?

In the US, the entire Game Boy line was typically $30 for a full-price game, raised to $35 on DS and $40 on 3DS.
PS2/Xbox/GameCube were normally $50 for any AAA game new.

Nintendo decided to adopt the rare downloads program but apply it to common games too. With Switch you'll be seeing BotW be something like 100 US Dollars!

Indeed, in almost every sense, from production to marketing to selling. Then you have manipulative loot box/freemium systems propping up games post launch that are supposedly 'premium' experiences and never mind the mandatory 30/40 sometimes even 50 dollar season pass for 'AAA' games and the money train just seems out of control. You can't even have a genuine award show in this industry without it being littered with advertisements and gauche/tacky sponsorships that just stinks the place up, and that's not even mentioning the fact that the official YouTube uploading of this year's VGA was content IDed because free money!

And you know what, even with this industry being plainly what it is I can accept it (mostly) in good humour. Where I personally draw the line is when devs/publishers/rabid fans try to pull a fast one with the dozens of examples of "OH GAMES HAVE TO MAKE THEIR MONEY AT SOME POINT!" rubbish when defending these practices. Well where the point when games make their money? Is it when they break records with preorderers? Is it with the ridiculously expensive season passes? The loot boxes that are wormed into the gameplay experience for everyone just to whale off of the susceptible ones who buy them in droves? Or is it when Nathan Drake promotes Subway or Master Chief is surrounded by Mountain Dew/Doritos?

Because as each an every E3 lowers down a $$$$$$$$$$$$$ brand new car from the roof onto the stage, I grow more and more tired of those excuses. Just own up to your greed videogames and I'll accept it.

Nope.

Especially in the age of indie games, and especially after the PSone came along and made N64 games looked ridiculously overpriced, which has (thankfully) affected and maintained that price point ever since.

The only thing I think is overpriced are the third party games on each consoles respective digital store. In my opinion, digital should be cheaper, and the lack of any physical parts should reflect this.

£54.99 for most games is too much, and most of the 'big studio' games have season passes and DLC add-ons which unnecessarily inflates the overall price even more.

TL;DR - Are videogames too expensive? Nope. Games are actually cheaper than ever!

Not at all. I remember 80 dollar video games from my childhood so I am very much ok with 60 dollars and below as is the case now. Plus there are so many sales and programs now that you really don't have to pay full price for games anymore. Game companies are making a product and they have to turn a profit. I am surprised with the increasing costs of games that the prices haven't gone beyond 60. Honestly, I want to see a price increase so that devs can stay afloat or have more funds to take chances on games and franchises.

If you are turning your nose up at 60 bucks or worse the folks that want to burn down the eshop (since that is usually 20 or less) you might want to stick with indie gaming or find a cheaper hobby. If you are in high school or whatever...get a job. Gaming is a pretty sustainable hobby if you are over the age of 14.

@Peek-a-boo I think it's really naïve and too simplistic to narrow down and compare modern videogames to those of 20-30 years ago and just say "well the RRP is actually cheaper with inflation so we're getting great deals!". Fact is that videogames have changed massively over 5 years, never mind 20. If £50 got you a game and that was done and done nowadays then that comparison might be apt but we're being incentivised to buy things on top of that £50 for a range of things in a range of games that were taken for granted years ago- cosmetics, post game content, cosmetics, difficulty settings, different modes, cosmetics, actual reward systems, cosmeticscosmeticscosmetics.

We're getting more bang for our buck a lot of the time (though The Order 1886 was still a thing that happened last year and some games are ruined by a bloat of content) with online modes (that run on subscription networks we pay for) and much prettier and advanced games with the better technology but saying that videogames "are cheaper than ever!" just because Super Mario 64 cost £50 20 years ago and £50 nowadays could get you The Witcher 3 at launch or Bloodborne is giving modern videogames far too much credit. I could also easily give the example of last year's Star Wars Battlefront, a £50 virtually online only game that had about 4 hours of unique content at best before you started doing the same things over and over and over again, and the only way to get any more out of it is to buy into the £40 season pass. For all intents and purposes that game was £90-100 as far as I'm concerned for all of its content and EA typified the greed of modern gaming by carving up that great game that was always going to sell well.

So yeah that's my stance on things summed up over my two comments. Not just to who I responded to but I feel a lot of people are simplifying things too much by looking sorely st the £50 RRP as videogames only cost. I mean, a good amount of big games this holiday had you either pay £20 (I think it was that much can't remember exactly) to get the game at launch or wait an arbitrary 2-3 more days.

Videogames have changed a lot.

At the end of the day the answer to this thread is simple. Ignoring slightly socialist tinged approaches to this question the simple question is whether or not games are too expensive. You can graph that. If games were becoming increasingly too expensive? You'd see less progressively less games being brought per system as the years go on. But you don't see that. What you actually see is the reverse.

Here's a new question: what about platforms for games? Are gaming PCs and consoles getting too expensive? Should console manufacturers and console creators consider making cheaper console alternatives? Should console developers maybe even slow down the increase of power in their consoles (I mean, after all, Sony and Microsoft are trying to force 4K into their consoles when most people don't even have 4K TVs and those who do are reporting problems.)

PS: I'm not trying to suggest anything. I just want to know what the site thinks.

@KingMike Granted, that doesn't account for inflation. I don't know if it changed too much, but it does have some influence.

@skywake Well, there's a whole lot more influencing the increased purchases of games than just price.
1. The demographic for games has increased wildly since 1977.
2. Gaming has started been taking seriously by a small subset of culture (i.e. us and people like us).
3. Several of the consumers for games are adults who can make more frequent purchases.

Also, look at the end of your data there. the console sales dip dramatically.

@MrMario02
Your three points are entirely irrelevant. If the demographics have shifted in order to make the audience more capable of buying games? Then the games have become more affordable for the audience it now attracts. I don't necessarily agree with your assessment but whether or not I agree doesn't matter. It's irrelevant.

I was also wondering whether or not I should have explained or included the current generation. I knew someone was going to look at those last three dots and forget what they were actually looking at. I thought more highly of people on this forum, my mistake. So here's a visual explanation, this is what happened to the 360's tie ratio over the years

It ended up having the highest tie ratio of any console thus far. Where along that line do you think the PS4 and XBOne are? How far along the line do you think the Wii U got before Nintendo stopped supporting it with new games? In terms of years on the market? We're about in-line with 2008. I thought it went without saying, people own more games for their console at the end of a console generation. This generation hasn't finished yet.