we're being priced out of our hobby.

I don't think we'll get priced out on PC. Outside of those that need the absolute latest and greatest performance, I think things will be ok. If the GPUs get too expensive, folks will buy less of them and keep their old cards instead. Developers need customers and will continue supporting a minimum spec that gives them a broad audience.
 
Gaming is one of the cheapest hobbies ever. A shitty little $200 laptop instantly gives you access to thousands upon thousands of games. And even the ones in the OP are platforms that will last you 5 to 10 years.
 
What sucks is how much PC is different than consoles sometimes. Like Sometimes I can't get the game on the right screen after im already sitting down to play it. Or Shader compile shows up, or steam big picture launches another launcher and unlike steamdeck it gets stuck. No controller support for the other storefronts like epic and gog.

I switched to PC to save money still get all the games, but I definitely harmed the ease and quick quality for it.

Yesterday I was playing helldivers 2 and it was running at a bad framerate in default settings , and I could not change them because it was multiplayer time with my best friend, so I just played at 30 fps.
 
ePXA7Yz.jpg
This is how games use to be priced, wow, kinda similar to today. MORTAL Kombat 74.99, I wish consoles were $199.99 today.
 
EverydayBeast said:
ePXA7Yz.jpg
This is how games use to be priced, wow, kinda similar to today. MORTAL Kombat 74.99, I wish consoles were $199.99 today.
Click to expand...
Personal theory, but I feel like the reason why MK was so expensive at the time was because it had a huge arcade presence. Maybe they thought that making MK too affordable on home consoles would kill all the money they were making on the arcade versions.
 
Sub_Level said:
Gaming is one of the cheapest hobbies ever. A shitty little $200 laptop instantly gives you access to thousands upon thousands of games. And even the ones in the OP are platforms that will last you 5 to 10 years.
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This thread makes literally no sense. Anyone with an adult job in a western country can easily afford to game.
 
Gaming is as cheap or as expensive as you want it to be like most hobbies. Buying three games is a lot cheaper than buying 50 games. I haven't bought the new Assassin's Creed yet but I will come Black Friday when its 50% off. What's becoming more unsustainable is buying dozens of games day one for full price which I did in the past. However, I just have a ginormous blacklog of games I will never finish.
 
Kupfer said:
Since new computers have also simply become too expensive, I'm hoping for a powerful Deck 2
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If you
  • are fine with 1080p upscaled to 4K
  • 60fps
  • buy at least 6 games a year
you can still build a nice PC relatively cheap that blows all handhelds out the water and is cheaper than any console with sub and accessoires 4 years in max.
 
Price increasing of hardware and games is only going to push cloud gaming and subscription services ahead eventually. Wouldn't be surprised if it's not an intentional thing.
 
EverydayBeast said:
ePXA7Yz.jpg
This is how games use to be priced, wow, kinda similar to today. MORTAL Kombat 74.99, I wish consoles were $199.99 today.
Click to expand...




I see these things being thrown around everywhere.

Y'all are forgetting the main context.

It took $30 or so to manufacture a single N64 cart.

It takes < $1.50 to manufacture a BR Disc, not to mention digital content has no disc manufacturing costs associated at all.

This comparison has never been in good faith.
 
adamsapple said:
I see these things being thrown around everywhere.

Y'all are forgetting the main context.

It took $30 or so to manufacture a single N64 cart.

It takes < $1.50 to manufacture a BR Disc, not to mention digital content has no disc manufacturing costs associated at all.

This comparison has never been in good faith.
Click to expand...
Also, any game sold in retail store has Walmart, Amazon, best Buy etc... taking their cut (whatever it is... maybe 20-25%).

A $70 cartridge after rom cost, retailer cut, packaging and shipping, and also wholesale cut for any stores who dont get supplied direct leaves hardly any leftover for the game company. Most people buy digital now. A company with their own storefront gets it all, and any third party companies losing 30%, still gets 70% of the pot.
 
You can still get into videos games for way less than golf or cars, but a high-end experience is crazy expensive. You're implicating every corner of consumer electronics with video games. It's a confluence of video, audio, computing, and networking. No other consumer electronics hobby is like that.

I've been getting into the audio end of things more and more and it's a strange place to be. Compatibility is an issue with consoles since Xbox and Switch don't support UAC/2. Playstation 5 does, but not everything is compatible. For PC, you can go crazy nuts and get whatever DAC/Amp combo you want. Then there's the actual headsets and headphones to consider. And microphones. It gets real crazy real quick.
 
adamsapple said:
I see these things being thrown around everywhere.

Y'all are forgetting the main context.

It took $30 or so to manufacture a single N64 cart.

It takes < $1.50 to manufacture a BR Disc, not to mention digital content has no disc manufacturing costs associated at all.

This comparison has never been in good faith.
Click to expand...
Plus cost of living was overall cheaper. No myriad sub services, cell phone fees, much cheaper housing and health insurance, cheaper cars and fuel/electricity, and so on.

A couple on middle class income can't afford to buy a house now days. That wasn't the case during N64 era.
 
If you run the math and compare game prices in the 90s all the way up to current and correlate that to game development costs - even on the low end games would cost roughly $500 each with a 10% correlation.

If you even just use a 1% correlation game prices should be by all accounts at minimum $100 each.

The math: Take the overall % increase in game development cost and apply 10% of that to video game cost to the consumer - you get $500 per game. If a meager 1% of that - you get $100 per game.

The gaming community has had it so GREAT as far as price increases go compared to just about every other form of entertainment. Book prices have tripled in the past 15 years alone, movie tickets are through the roof, concert ticket prices are astronomical compared to 10 or 15 years ago.

We should all quit complaining.

You can disagree all you want, but the numbers show the full picture.
 
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Insolent said:
Play old games via emulation
Much better than 99% of current gen shit
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That's what I've done the last year or so.

Got severall teras of retro games I have not enough time in my life to get through all that.
 
The switch2 game price increases made me curious to know how much each game costs on average if you just buy the exclusives. Assuming $70/game plus system price, each game costs $186 if you buy five. Increase that to ten games and it goes down to $128 each.

It's interesting thinking about games this way. I'd like to try something similar for PC but it's tricky considering you're always upgrading hardware and use it for other things. But still am curious. Thinking of using the price of a new graphics card every 4 years divided by the total spent on games during that period.
 
I'm guessing the UK prices for Switch 2 games will have the nice conversion of $90 > £90.
Giving that the national minimum wage isn't even £90 a day before tax, having to work 2 days just to buy a game...
I know people won't see it that way because they get their wages monthly, but that's what you'll be doing.
15 hours work + 1 Switch game.
It a joke.
 
adamsapple said:
I see these things being thrown around everywhere.

Y'all are forgetting the main context.

It took $30 or so to manufacture a single N64 cart.

It takes < $1.50 to manufacture a BR Disc, not to mention digital content has no disc manufacturing costs associated at all.

This comparison has never been in good faith.
Click to expand...
Not to forget that the overall install base for consoles was way smaller. A successful console back in the 90s sold about what the Xbox One sold last gen, which is considered paltry nowadays when Sony and Nintendo firing on all cylinders can move well north of 100 million consoles along with DLC, online and all the other monetization methods.

But as others have said, $70 today doesn't land the same as $70 in 1995, because just the cost of being alive today is exorbitant, never mind having money for games or anything else superfluous.
 
NeverYouMind said:
Tech and software prices fall over time. Entertainment on the cheap is abundant. If you desire something new while sticking to budget then keep an eye out for deals or promotional discounts and stick to things you really like instead of having a passive interest in.
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Actually not yet, and it's entirely thanks to the incompetence of the gaming software industry. Very few of the really demanding games are good. 2070+ owners are doing fine for the foreseeable future.
 
If Playstation and Nintendo continue with their stupidity and self-centeredness... I'll get a high-end gaming laptop or an Asus ROG Ally Z1 extreme or the MSI claw and hack it... so they'll stop bothering me.

Overall, there are still games I want to play on PS1, PS2, especially PS3... So I don't give a damn about the new graphics.

Even better, because they support me by saving.
 
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this thread popped off. wow

People can say "stop being poor" all they want but the page number does prove this is a problem more than one person is facing at least
 
Shaki12345 said:
VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET.

You guys can change what's happening. Just fucking VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET.
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Yes dear friend.


But the problem is the stupid YouTubers who are also a nuisance... And the fat Orange, who is addicted to Coca-Cola.

Like Bukele and Milei's bootlickers.
 
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GHG said:
Yeh, but the fact is you can still put together a reasonable gaming PC for under $1000.

No, you're not likely to be getting a max settings 4k etc, but you'll still get a decent rig that you can enjoy games on while taking advantage of all the cheap games available.
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I have an RTX2080 8gb card.

To get an actual, appreciable, noticeable bump in performance, I'd have to spend at least $500-700, and that's just for 1080p. If I want 1440p, it's $1k.
 
Tg89 said:
Doubt.

By the time the Switch 2 lifecycle is over, the amount I've spent on the hardware + software will be less than a mortgage payment probably.

It ain't that deep. It's an incremental increase.

Grocery prices? Now that's a thing.
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So you gonna buy like 2 games and the console or something?
 
Right now is prime time for a new company to barge into the market. 4 years of development is enough for a new console.

I moved to steam deck because I have ran out of patience with Xbox having zero exclusives under the guise of "we lost the console war pls sub to Xbox game pass so we can gaslight you into thinking we made PC's"
OENAI9H.gif


Edit: Xbox sales were I live have crashed too, during the One era they were everywhere. Now the second hand market is dominated by jailbroken switches with the odd Steam Deck and PS5 in there (in small amounts)
 
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dezzy8 said:
So you gonna buy like 2 games and the console or something?
Click to expand...
This is sort of the plan that I'm taking moving forward. I only plan to buy two games from the legend of Zelda series and the Xenoblade series. And those games has to be brand new main line entries. I am not supporting spinoffs or remakes.

So basically what I'm saying is I'm no longer supporting the video game industry outside of the Nintendo Switch 2, the legend of Zelda and Xenoblade games.

And if I'm being completely honest with myself, the Xenoblade series is on a thin rope with me. And I say that simply because these games are costing an arm and a leg nowadays and I really just can't afford them anymore.
 
The inflation argument to justify the exorbitant cost of games today is silly btw.

Most consumer products do not scale pricing in line with inflation because if they did that linearly then they'd price themselves out of their respective markets. Price elasticity of demand is a thing (& has it's limits) and across all employment sectors globally wages have not grown with inflation and have in fact stagnated significantly since 2008 pretty much.

Secondly and separately; video games are some of the few consumer products that benefit greatly from the exorbitant privileges of marginal (physical) unit cost scaling as distribution media costs have scaled back considerably (e.g. high cost NES carts vs cheap optical media today). Not to mention literally zero unit cost scaling for digital distribution. Coupled with the economies of scale in distribution growth as the global market has risen from about $4.9B in aggregate turnover in the early 90s, to around $191B circa 2021 (that's a colossal ~38.9x increase in market size).

When your market has grown exponentially (with more gamers playing than ever before, well into the millions, and projected to grow further to about ~$600B by 2030), and your costs have collapsed over the years, there is literally no fucking justification whatsoever (other than well… greed fuckos!) to see unit prices increases over the same period. Even moreso when IAPs have created further, extremely lucrative monetisation streams for publishers beyond storefront consumer purchases of these products.
 
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PectacularOz said:
I'll take 1 Horizon/God Of War vs 10 South of Midnight/Avowed's
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I'd take South of Midnight and Avowed over Horizon and God of War anytime.
I like all of them though, and very much looking forward to playing Forbidden West at some point.
But I really enjoyed Avowed and South of Midnight, liked Horizon a lot and found both "new" God of War games to be quite boring for much of the playtime.
 
Iced Arcade said:
Price increasing of hardware and games is only going to push cloud gaming and subscription services ahead eventually. Wouldn't be surprised if it's not an intentional thing.
Click to expand...
Renting will always be more expensive than owning. Cloud gaming is just renting a remote computer, and if hardware price goes up then so would the cloud infrastructure costs. So the price would go up in tandem.
 
archangelmorph said:
The inflation argument to justify the exorbitant cost of games today is silly btw.

Most consumer products do not scale pricing in line with inflation because if they did that linearly then they'd price themselves out of their respective markets. Price elasticity of demand is a thing (& has it's limits) and across all employment sectors globally wages have not grown with inflation and have in fact stagnated significantly since 2008 pretty much.

Secondly and separately; video games are some of the few consumer products that benefit greatly from the exorbitant privileges of marginal (physical) unit cost scaling as distribution media costs have scaled back considerably (e.g. high cost NES carts vs cheap optical media today). Not to mention literally zero unit cost scaling for digital distribution. Coupled with the economies of scale in distribution growth as the global market has risen from about $4.9B in aggregate turnover in the early 90s, to around $191B circa 2021 (that's a colossal ~38.9x increase in market size).

When your market has grown exponentially (with more gamers playing than ever before, well into the millions, and projected to grow further to about ~$600B by 2030), and your costs have collapsed over the years, there is literally no fucking justification whatsoever (other than well… greed fuckos!) to see unit prices increases over the same period. Even moreso when IAPs have created further, extremely lucrative monetisation streams for publishers beyond storefront consumer purchases of these products.
Click to expand...

You left out the rising game development costs. If someone read your post they would think development budgets are the same today as 40 years ago. When the complete opposite has happened.

YOu also left out that the dedicated gaming hardware audience has stagnated. A big reason game prices increased less than the rate of inflation over the decades was the hardware makers were able to grow the audience. That's not happening any more.

Also your market figures include mobile gaming which is a different beast and much larger. The subsequent prediction is worth the pixels it occupies.

YOu also left out that inflation affects labor costs. The massive sudden boost in inflation due to the pandemic has largely resulted in roughly corresponding increases in labor costs. Low end wages around me have gone up a lot. I like to point out that Taco Bell pays $15/hr to start. They weren't close to that 5 years ago.

last, contradictory to say, in your 2nd paragraph, that companies can't increase price with inflation without pricing themselves out of their market and then conclude the price increases had no justification other than greed. I mean you're saying companies can't raise price without f'n themselves but then did it anyway for less reason than inflation. That doesn't make sense.
 
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