Why can't games be cheaper? Because the money they allocated to physical production now goes to overhead, management and just the hen-pecking, skill killing, soul draining, talentless technocratic overseers.

Remember when digital games where like $10 cheaper because they didn't have to make the disk/case, didnt have to house or ship the product, & didn't have to work with retailers?

I'm gonna be honest a game having 100+ hours of content is not a value proposition to me. Hours of content means nothing. Most of the time those hours and hours of content are collecting secret blueberries hidden behind waterfalls. Quantity != quality. I'll take 14 hours of life changing Outer Wilds experiences over 400+ hours of assassins' creed completionism grinding any day.

So let me put this in terms where everybody can understand this: _Cost isn't calculated on currency worth, but on relative income._ When my parents bought a house, they bought it for 280K. That same house, today, is over 550K, before bidding (add a 100K). I today, earn the same as my father did back then. Inflation doesn't make these kinds of things better when you realize that wage compensation based on inflation has been lagging behind year over year by as much as 40% relative to total yearly inflation. What you're looking at is not a game that costs 100$. What you're looking at is a game that costs 100$ in an economy that already bleeds you for everything it has, that refuses to compensate you for the damage caused by reckless economic management by central banks and government entities alike, and that calculates your obligations to the state based on the inflation they determine themselves to suffer from. Inflation calculators are lying to you. Because inflation isn't a metric of how easily people are able to spend. That metric is called wage compensation, and that's stopped being proportional to inflation since the 70's.

20+ years ago, PC games came in a A4-sized full color printed (embossed) cardboard box and included a printed manual, pins, cloth maps of the game world (if RPG), and the disc. Eventually, it turned into a 7inX4.5in mini box (non-embossed) and the disc came in a sleeve rather than a case. And no extras. Now there's no box (embossed or otherwise), no manual, no maps, no pins, and no disc.

in 2011 i paid $150 for skyrim collectors edition and got a alduin statue, cloth map, and a artbook. now all i get is some cosmetic skins and a discount on future dlc

Also a big thing is that these games devs, actors, artists and so on were all paid well, right? These were the dream jobs. You get good money and did what you love. So, by removing what we could say to be about HALF of the operation of selling games in the first place (The physical aspect). You could make millions more without changing the price at all. Even going down 10-15 dollars you would still be making more simply because you don't have to buy millions of blank CDs, you dont have to get in touch with all the stores and probably give them a cut, you dont need box art, you dont need the cases in the first place or the boxes to ship them all in. The list goes on. All those small things are 100s of 1,000s to millions of dollars saved. They were able to pay ALL their people well before. They removed half of the production cost, are making worse, low effort games and want MORE while they spend less? Naw. They can eat shit and die. Because you know VERY well that alllllll that extra money is NOT going to the actual people who built the game. It's going right to the shills

That bit about Destiny 2 and Sims 4 reminds me of the Mr. Incredible Becoming Uncanny meme 14:43 *Pulls up Destiny 2 DLC* 14:57 $293.53 16:10 *Pulls up Sims 4 DLC* 16:14 *Spends a full six seconds scrolling down the list* 16:23 $813.79 (and that's with the sales; without them it'd be $969.44)

I don't pay full price for games anymore because they always release as broken. If you want me to pay more, deliver a finished and good product

2:36 "you have to have more customer service" is a wild take when 90% of games you cant find a support email address to email them about issues

I will never understand how digital games can be priced the same as their physical counterparts.. most ps5 games in CAD are $93 regardless if it's digital/physical

Also misses the fact that games are holding their RRP for 10+ years on [some] Digital Store fronts, back in the day older games became cheaper, PS1 had Platinum titles. There are still some stores selling digital copies of GTAV and Skyrim for $70+ and then nations like Australia and possibly New Zealand add 15% VAT (I think they call it GST, but its the same thing) tax on digital purchases.

incomplete games charging $100 is crazy. $60-$70 is already too much for that quality we’ve been getting.

The real problem is the game coming out as 100 dollars and then having microtransactions + pay to win+ paid battle pass + paid 60$ dlc's, back then you paid for the game and thats all you could pay for, the only game people complained back then was WoW having to pay expansions/game/sub

Stellaris is a great example of this barrier to entry due to DLC situation. The base game is cheap but you have to spend $175 to buy all of the DLC, otherwise you can’t play multiplayer or with friends who have DLC’s. It’s a great game but dropping over 200 to enjoy all of the content is absurd.

There was also an era between cartridges and digital distribution when they shifted to CDs(and later DVDs) exclusively. People have no idea how much more went into a cartridge - they were essentially little machines w/ ram, battery, storage. And with the exception of the battery keeping your save data intact on the cartridge, they were of course only "turned on" when plugged into a console that was also turned on. The switch to discs massively cut costs and is one of the biggest reasons most games are still $79.95 or less in spite of increasing costs in other areas. There are other factors, too(such as AG said about how if you have 100x more customers, you don't need to make as much of a profit margin on every sale in order to make the same amount of profit), but the advent of the disc-based era was absolutely huge. It of course also had its downsides, such as loading times being a lot longer. There have been various tricks to cut down on this, but it's only with the ready availability of SSDs that load times have been truly eliminated for a lot of people. As long as the game allows you to install it on your SSD, of course, which most games now do.

in 1999 the average household income was about 68k, today it's 74.5k, if they want the price of video games to follow inflation, nobody will buy games anymore, everyone will pirate. Also back in the 90's, when games were "$150", nobody bought games, we would just physically go to a store to rent a game for less than a tenth of the cost of the game and then beat the game in a weekend. Game piracy was also WAY more common

Sims 4, being a free base game with $800+ in DLC (that's with over half of them 30% off), is absolutely outrageous. I had the same reaction, seeing that list scroll for more than one mouse wheel down.

"50 dollars" "No, sorry. I said 60" "Yea yea... 50 dollars" "No, I said 60"

destiny 2 is completely unapproachable because of all the dlc you have to buy

I will never pay 70 bucks for a game. Wait a year, get it 30-50 percent off, a years worth of patches and fixes. It's a no brainer

I strongly belive that if it wasn't for the indie revolution we would already see $100+ games. You will make less money selling games for $100 than you will selling the exact same game for $60. Most people will give it a pass and buy games like Minecraft where $25 gets you hundreds of of hours of entertainment with all the mods and community features that only exist because the game was cheap and accessible. I've personally lead to hundreds of game sales within my friend group, and 95% of those were games I didn't feel bad pressuring my friends to buy because of low barrier of entry. I got my friends into Vintage Story, because the game was so cheap I convinced at least 8 other people to buy it so we could run a server together. If the game was even $60 I probably wouldn't of bought it, but because the game was $18 I lead to over $144 in sales. The game was so cheap people in my group who didn't want to buy it for themselves got it bought for them. Cheap fun games are like an infection that spreads because a movie ticket is $20 so if I can get an evening of fun with my friends for less than $20 a person its a win. All this to say that AAA struggles to compete with that. I can't even remember the last time I paid full price for a AAA game. I don't buy them at release because they are broken, then by the time they go on sale I just don't care anymore because I'm distracted by some indie game I picked up for less than a bag of chips.

Little correction: All Steam key resellers like Humble Bundle also take a 30% cut! The only way to avoid the cut is selling keys directly through your own online shop which won't move the needle because typically you simply don't get enough traffic to your own store. Also, total adressable market or audience plays a huge role on pricing. If the market is a rather niche but the game is expensive to make, like a high-end space combat game for instance, the price has to be higher than average. Furthermore, because 100x more games are now featured in any seasonal Steam sale than five years ago, the base price has to be higher, so through gradually more aggressive discounting over a longer time period, typically 5+ years, the full range of price elasticity can be served through wishlits, aka anyone buying when the price is right for them personally. Lastly, because game discoverability is the biggest issue especially for smaller devs, upselling through meaningful DLC (expansions, supporter packs, artbooks, OSTs etc.) is vital. /Michael

Same thing with e-books. When e-books first became available, they cost between $.99 to $3.00 and the physical copy was around $7.99 - $10.00. Compared to a physical copy they were cheaper because they weren’t paying for ink, paper, and binding. Now you can’t get an e-book for less than $4.99 and the physical paperback $16.99. ( and that doesn’t include the higher price for a hard cover). It wouldn’t be bad, but these 3-books are not proofread and contain many errors due to the lack of editors because the author skipped over that cost. Worst, there is a lot of self publishers who place their “some assembly required” without informing people that their products are not edited and are self published. Then you have those that try to split up their books into a few chapters and try to sell it in parts. This is is no less an incomplete book that they try to milk for every penny. People forget why these e-books were once cheap and slowly accepting less quality, less story, for more money.

As a developer myself. I cannot tell you how many times i've been told to spend my time on something I know players WILL NOT care about, or care very little about. I've seen people get put on tasks that took them 1-3 months on something I said from the start wouldn't work or couldn't be implemented due to it being too demanding. Such as real time water physics, Unreal engine Groom, over the top volumetric systems, ect.... I've seen months of work down the drain because when they then try to implement it they go "oh we're getting 10 fps. We can't actually use this". Like don't get me wrong. Some of the things are "cool" features that aren't demanding. However they are not priority, Some tasks would be like...stuff you'd do in a patch after the game is released. Not something you'd work on in the damn blocking out stage of the game. Yeah...game dev is harder. However it's made infinetly harder depending on who you're being lead by or woring for.

As a destiny 2 player i always tell new lights to ask people what dlc's to buy because you do not need to buy all of them. Always tell them to either buy the newest one or the one with the best subclass. Recently i have just told people "Oh you wanna play Destiny 2? That's great, don't. Thank me later" cause that game is free to launch, not free to play

1:22 No. Making a game costs exactly as much as you wanted to be. Studios are just throwing more and more money into unfinish-able games for no reason. I think people got so obsessed with graphics that we missed the point and it started affecting gameplay and framerate

It doesn't matter if they make games $100 or even $200, I'll simply not buy overpriced games.

Thors a good guy, but hes making some enemies in the form of corporate overlords. 😂

3:24 is the most accurate depiction of the game market I've ever heard 🤣

I feel like there's a difference between a $160 game that gives you more value than a $70 game that gives you the same value as a $60 game. So while value is definitely an issue, i think games costing more than $60 with no added value is still an issue as well

"It's crazy how many gold farmers now, are from South America" Man, it was always like that, our money = shit. Runescape gold is worth more than the Venezuelan currency. Let that sink in.

There were some comments during the stream that I don't know if were ironic or not, on the topic of South America and their economy, but I'll give a small answer anyways. "how do you have a pc if you can't afford a 5 dollar game" the answer is simple, a game doesn't provide the same value that a computer does, you can save money, buy a computer and have something that will not only provide you with entertainment but also help with your studies or work. There are tons of good free games, and piracy is pretty much the norm in South America. "If you can't afford $2 you can't afford an internet connection" I'm guessing they meant a 2 dollar game, which again, doesn't have the same value as an Internet Connection. They obviously will prefer to pay for Internet than for a game. Internet costs more because you pay monthly etc etc, but if a game is more expensive than what you would pay for Internet, Electricity, Water, etc in a month, then buying said game is not feasible. There are people in South America that can afford to buy whatever they want, but a huge percentage can't. Everything is expensive, from food to clothes, books, public transport to technology, candy, toys, etc. It's not just "a 2 dollar game vs internet" is "a 2 dollar game vs everything else". It's not the developers' fault though, I have friends from South America that have said to me how sad it is for them not being able to buy a 10usd game, how 10 dollars doesn't seem like much, but that at the same time for them, and their economy, 10 dollars can mean a lot and nothing at the same time.

The unapproachable pricing is EXACTLY why Nintendo always prices their games at a slightly lower than average price, but then almost never puts them on sale. Or a game like No Man's sky typically always goes on sale for the same % off. It's better for gamers and for the devs. Price your indie game at $20, release updates for free and never go over 25% off during the big sales.

The higher priced "deluxe" editions I will only buy if I feel the "extras" are worth it for me (including special edition boxes with limited merch), or if they include access to DLC's down the line, which they usually price in the end being more expensive if you get the base game and then those DLC's separate.

The problem with comparing what games cost in the 1990's to what games cost today is that even when you adjust for inflation, it doesn't take into account that wage growth hasn't matched inflation, and that rent and house prices have absolutely sky rocketed, taking up far more of the every day persons disposable income.

The problem with $70 games is there are tons of good games that are cheaper and thus most people buying $70 games don't feel like they get what they paid for.

'Popular voice actors don't matter.' Strongly disagree. The number of people I know who were originally pulled into Destiny because of Nathan Fillion as Cayde-6, Lance Reddick as Zavala, and Gina Torres as Ikora is pretty staggering. Those voice actors made the commercials for that game more than any of the action they showed, and continued to nail their roles for years in a way that their replacements have never quite managed.

God I just love Thor for being so honest. Infinite Aura personality.

The Sims 4 was not originally free to play for the base game, but it's pretty obvious why they decided to make the base game free to play.

Vampire Survivors was a $3 game based on the amount of content.. the amount of content has more than doubled since then.. so i think $5 is justified.

I’d pay that much if the game was actually complete… AAA companies got too comfortable shipping a half baked games with promises to complete it later. No, stop paying those stupid prices.

As someone who started playing destiny 2 at the start of the year, every single dam week my friends would say "you need to buy this dlc" and you quite literally need to buy half the dlcs just to play any content thats not repetitive

As a Destiny 2 player that joke was 100% accurate. How tf am I supposed to convince someone who hasn’t played the series to spend 150+ on the game

The worst thing about Sims 4 is...all the "DLC" are just repeats from previous games. literally nothing new is added.

Yea tha's the point. Most games you buy for a price over 60, are either either multiplayer games, or action games that only give you 10-30h of a campaign. Some have both, and that's fine, but it still sucks if you only want to play the singleplayer and don't give a F about MP. Next, we got the service-games, like Skull&Bones, which was released for 70 on PC or 80 on consoles, with Ubisoft claiming it's a AAAA game - which is only ever possible in terms of invested money, if they invested the money wrong. They already had the base of the game, everybody wanted AC-Black Flags Seafarning as a sole game. It took them around 10 years to create the game, and it's almost completely different from what people wanted. If they just did want they were supposed to do, they would have been done in half the time, they would have need to invest 1/3 of their capital, if not less. They could have sold it for 50-60 bucks and even more people would have bought it. Throw away that battle-pass nonsense and even more people would buy it. Who the F sells a game for 70+ bucks and then implement features for players to PAY EVEN MORE? That's an insult. Now, some increase the value with almost worthless DLCs like recolored skins, etc, some skins might actually take some effort. Some give you digital artbooks, background or OSTs, which you could argue are worth it, but mostly they are not. The only real value increase comes with physical content, be it a statuette, pins, posters, cards, etc. - Ubisoft once gave away cheap pocketwatches - they could have been made better, but it was okay-ish for the price. Back to the game-time: What about the games that actually give you more than 30h to make the price more valid? Half the time the play-time is just streched with huge worlds, forcing you to travel 5-10 minutes or more between locations. Having you to go back and forth for fetch-quests and-the-likes. Now you can technically say "I played 60h to finish the game, so the 90€ were worth it!" only that practically, 20h of that were traveling, not sure how many hours you got for loading-time if that is counted into it too. - Meaning you didn't pay 90€ for 60h, but for

Everything that Asmond stated regarding the price of development for a game (@ 1:19) would be applied to games in the 90s as well (minus the voice over), so the only thing that has changed is moving from physical distribution to a digital distribution, and for decades the gaming industry continued to charge $59.99 for digitally distributed games as if they were being shipped through a physical distribution.

I would rather be in 1993 economy and pay my games 150$ than be in todays economy and pay my games 70$ In 1993 I would own a house, today I can't even rent an appartment

69,95€ for a cartridge game that was "FINISHED" and not buggy, that took extremely hard effort. now some greedy companies ask the same shit for a digital game, weirdly enough its not cheaper than the retail version of it.

$70 games are either $40s worth of content with $60 worth of DLC or a year of updates away from it becoming actually a $70 experience, and this is the best case scenario. What we see more and more now is a $70 price tag for what is effectively a free2play monetization ~trap~ model game with fancier graphics.

16:01 the irony in a free product being a bad sign

Well, who's paying 160$ every year for a wow sub?

I will gladly spend $100 on Chrono Trigger I will NEVER spend $100 on Call of Duty: Whatever

Something no one ever seems to bring up in these discussions is the wage stagnation that has occurred since the late 70's/early 80's. If games were as expensive now as they were back then, people just wouldn't pay for them. With so many people struggling to make ends meet, they wouldn't be able to justify the cost.

Frankly a 100 dollar triple a title isnt that bad. So much money is poured into it. The problem is that the companies that place 100 dollar pric3s also add priced cosmetics and priced day one dlcs.

I would argue that people who are on the internet are over-informed to the point were a lot of stuff that is unknown to the majority of the world we consider basic knowledge. The average person who says "am a gamer" has no interaction with anything other than a controller and their console , if prices increase they think its the retailer , if controversy happens and something changes they had no hand in it and they wont know after. The AAA game industry relies on uninformed people who see a familiar title and a cool cover art because they are the majority and funny thing is that because of their lack of knowledge they consider even the most dogshit game to be fun because they have no point of contrast , they see a cool cinematic and realistic grass and thats enough for them.

It's like nobody realizes that you can just stop buying games. Just stop buying them and the prices will come down. You don't have to play everything that comes out.

You're wrong, it absolutely is about the money. The people who have spent over 130 USD on WoW have done so over multiple years of playing the game and in small increments after they were CERTAIN they enjoyed the game. New games costing 130 USD up front without the player having any idea of whether they will actually like the game or not is a straight up fucking scam. What if you've played the game for 3-4 hours to try and give it a chance but you realize you cannot get into it? Can't refund it now, you're out of 130 USD for good and there is nothing you can do.

5:45 ironically people would rather have a free to play a game with predatory micro-transactions rather than spend $1

The fact expensive versions outsell normal versions is misleading because the presentation itself skews the market. It's a psychological trick. If you're going to buy assassins creed, you probably like the franchise, you're committed to spending time on it, and you want the most out of your experience. The real question is how many potential buyers did you lose trying to get $30 extra?

Gaming from a AAA perspective is dead. Nothing has come out lately that has been remotely close to as good as some of the b list games that have been popping up left and right. I love that the internet is supporting indie gaming now more than ever because AAA studios keep fucking up their main titles. Maybe we'll see a trend in game prices lowering in the next 5 years. Or maybe not...

what do you mean overpriced? all games cost 0, if you know where to look.

The main people ruining games are Dumb CoD Fanboys and Sports gamers. They buy and don't think about anything even though they are essentially buying the same game each year.

Year over year games provide less value to the player and ask for money money. Phil Spencer forecasted "less players in the future", and I think its because the silent majority is starting to wake up to these issues. Not from watching videos, but because they've noticed their games are starting to suck.

Remember guys, Thor isnt suicidal.

Mega Publishers are THE problem. All the money saved from lack of physical production is now siphoned off by executives that NEVER touch the actual game.

that is a big thing for paradox games, don't believe me? for the base game of Europa Universalis 4 on steam and all of the dlcs the price comes to 345.06$ without taxes and the worst part about it? the base game is 70% off right now and all the dlc are mostly 50% off with one or two being 20 and 30% and one being 70% off so that price is more like 700$+ or you can get the base game off sale and sub for access to all the DLC for 10.99$ a month and considering every hardcore player who loves the game has well over 2,000-4,000 hours it means that if that option was available from the start they would've probably spent well over 800$+ on the monthly fee to access the dlcs, its bullshit and they do this practically every game

Not selling a game in a certain region IS setting the price to $0.. because the only way to get it is to pirate it. It means that every player in that region paid $0 for it. And the devs got 0$ from those players.

I grew up in the 80s, you'd buy a game then for £10 (so say ~£30 in today's money) and play it for 3-4 months and again 6months later and again 20 years later and you'd lend it to a friend to play too... there would be no adverts, no add-ons, no expansions, no monthly server fees, no skins, etc. etc. You'd have a physical copy of the complete game with no dependence on external servers etc so provided you still have a working computer that can run it - you can play it. You also had a lot of 'freeware' and 'shareware' - a time when people made games for others to play without them just being loss-leaders fleecing you for optional add-ons that make the games playable! There are still plenty of people out there that do this... but you can't find them due to how "play store" etc are designed: you can't search for games that don't have adverts and don't have in-app purchases - even though those are two fundamental flags used by those stores! I stopped buying/playing 'latest games' when they started relying on remote servers and stopped buying consoles when they switched to non-physical media.

I work for a huge gaming company. One thing to consider is that almost all games that are 70+ are games you play over a multiple months. There are very expensive server costs for each player each month. If you play 8 months, that initial $70 is being heavily cut into if you're not buying anything past that $70. The $70+ is to hedge against that and why so many companies now do live services and seasonal passes. It's to keep paying for server costs and to subsidize free players. After that, it's all greed, lots and lots of greed, but it's not entirely just to make money. There's costs that didn't exist back in the 70s.

They still can't justify the cost of games, in Canada it's $102 after tax for every single AAA. Sales are going to tank for those games because we're in an economic time that people can't actually afford to buy a new game every week or every other week now.

Another reason why expensive games 50 years ago dont compare to to day is that todays gaming market is multitudes larger and economy of scale comes to play negating inflation several times over.

These companies keep posting record profits and next quarter they need to beat that number. That is why everything keeps getting more expensive

what i like is all these singleplayer games that need servers just to host an online skin store, you know you're paying for them to run those servers and now the game requires an internet connection JUST FOR A CASH SHOP

The reason why the $70 versions of the games aren't selling as much anymore, is because the collective of informed gamers who have said "We're not buying into this crap anymore" and have stopped buying these games, are in that $70 bracket. They were never the ones buying the higher-priced copies anyway. The masses, the ones who 'just don't care' are the ones buying the higher tier bundles, and they continue to buy them. Meanwhile, those of us who have opted out of it were only ever base-game purchasers anyway, because we already knew we weren't going to perpetuate that kind of BS. Sadly, we aren't the ones that hold all the buying power. It's the ones paying for $100+ copies.

For Elder Scrolls: Online, every yearly chapter expansion costs about $40 base at launch, but after a year when the next chapter comes out, ZOS bundles all of the older content together with the base game, for free, so new players get everything current players get without paying a shit ton.

Games have come down in price. NES/SNES era games were £69.99 here in the UK. There were outliers with some around £59.99 and of course second hand or during sales. PS1/N64 era games were £59.99 again with some coming in around £49.99. This is a £10-£20 drop from previous generation. PS2/GC/XB era games were £39.99 with A LOT coming in at £29.99. This is a £20-£30 drop from previous generation. 360/PS3/Wii era games went back up to £49.99 for triple A exclusives with a lot (AA) coming in at £39.99. This era lasted a LONG time, nearly 10 years. During this time, about half way through, we started getting DLC and most of them were around £10 and games had around 1-2 DLC's and sold a lot. This right here gave publishers the idea that everyone was fine spending more. So you take the £49.99 for the game at launch and add £20 (2xDLC) you are right back at that £69.99 price point and back to the £70 game. But instead of giving us more for our money they still wanted us to buy DLC on top of that £70 price point and games end up costing £90-£100+ overall. Sure inflation is always an issue but its not the sole issue games are more expensive. Its costs of production, adding new tech, building new engines, hiring more staff, increased staff wages/compensation, but ultimately its GREED!

the other scam is that insurance companies rarely change how much they give to hospitals and dentists so they make roughly the same amount and only lose money over time with the same workload each day. Life has its quirks. Doctors don't set prices, insurance companies do.

WoW has a $70 expansion cost, a $15 sub fee, a game store, character service fees, on time access premium, collector editions, etc,...and IIRC they are trying for the yearly expansion release thing again. Very few other games have THAT much monetization. The fact they can still get away with a sub fee is laughable. They are like the pioneers of monetization, all the while having a completely mediocre at best product. I haven't played in years now, but it is so surreal seeing people, including a friend of mine, actually get excited for that game. In what world would anyone believe Blizzard is going to back any of that up with content, let alone quality? It's going to be watered down and people are going to be paying twice as much for nothing. In a perfect world, I'd pay ~$100+ (even yearly for QUALITY live service games) for games that EARNED that, as long as that's exactly where the monetization stopped. No stores, MTX, season passes, or service fees of any kind, etc. Nothing else. Probably the most bullshit thing in gaming now is the fact that people are buying the "promise" of content that they haven't even seen yet and has not even been made. Just imagine if the content had to sell itself...LOL.

then you have to spend an extra $60 on top of the base game since every company nowadays use dlc as an excuse not to release a full game

The problem i have is the quality of AAA games being sold for 60+ dollars. We have essentially been buying beta games for that price.

I have some old games in their original box, sometimes with the pricetag still in them. For example: Nintendo 64 F-1 World Grand PRIX 99,99 DM SNES AI Unser Jr.'s Road to the Top 149,95 DM SNES PGA Tour Golf 139,95 DM

$100 is too much. END OF STORY. Espeically for the quality of games we are getting lately... NO FUCKING WAY.

No game should cost more than $60.00 anymore, no game deserve that price anymore, specially digital versions of a live service one.

TL:DW 1) Business Model ruining game industry 2) Price doesnt match Game Value 3) Boomer Church Groups bus down and cause us problems 4) Games should be looked at like an ecosystem, not a house to sell 5) DLCs $$ ruin future player interest (Me and Destiney 2😢)

Games weren't more expensive, this guy misses the point that cost of living was lower, eating out was cheaper, petrol was cheaper, rent was cheaper. 70% of 35 year old males owned a home. So paying that for a game didn't matter. He's completely lost on context and has no idea what he's talking about.

Are expensive games ok? Short answer: No. Long answer: Noooooooooooooooo.

$100+ deluxe edition games that dont come with any type of physical merch or media like it use to is just crazy. Paying $30 more for a early in-game weapon, horse skin, side quest, digital sound track, and wallpaper is wild. Shit could have been in the game as unlockable content for completing challenges like it use to be. The deluxe edition stuff used to be physical merch like a metal hard case, a poster, a cd soundtrack, playing cards, a physical game guide, etc. Even that was garbage but it was truly optional It didn't affect the main game.

destiny 2 is even worse when you realize they sell expansions with vaulted content you cant play, new players only find that out after making the non refundable purchase.

Jim the 60 year old Calculus Professor has no problem paying 150$ for assassins creed, he has like 5 hours a week of spare time to play it. Ryan the fastfood worker who can barely afford rent or living in his parents basement ain't gonna spend 70$ on no crappy ubisoft game. Ryan also spends more time on the internet to see the discourse around crappy videogames. Jim's time on the internet is looking up research on how certain cancer cells react to specific drugs and calculating their vibrations. Long story short Jim don't care that he is getting fisted by a company because Jim got bigger problems to deal with. Edit: I will never forget how mad I was when game companies introduced the concept and phase 2 season pass's. I used to by deluxe editions for games that came with the season pass that guaranteed me access to DLC's (Cod/borderlands 1&2) and now the season pass only gives you access up to the 2nd released DLC and then a new season pass ticket comes out.

I love how this guy made the same point many others have made, "video games were actually more expensive back then when adjusting for inflation", but he followed it up with the point everyone else conveniently leaves out (almost like they're lapdogs of the publishers), that the technology was different. A basic calculator in the 80s might have cost you more than $200 back then, but that doesn't mean selling the same thing today for half that price would be considered a good deal.

One day Thor just showed up and started ruffling feathers and helping people. Bless him

The biggest differences between a digital and a physical product is: 1. You don't truly "own" a digital copy. 2. In most cases, digital copies have no re-sale value and in rare cases, the ones that do are very difficult to sell. Some physical copies can re-sell for the same value, or even more, after a few years from release. A lot of the copies can also sell for at least half the retail price.

As Canadians we have to pay $105 for the standard edition of games now, it’s outrageous and should be illegal.

Hey Asmongold, you don't talk about the way IT SHOULD impact the price of a game. When you work in IT, you have to mutualize your work in libraries, softwares, SDK, ... . So if you don't add new heavy IT work to a new game, it should cost drastically less to create than the previous one (because you reuse your previous work, at least for the IT part). Because peoples don't know that, IT company can inflate prices when they should normally get lower. To bring it back to something related to youtube, imagine how much it will cost to create a video without video editing software compared to how much it cost today. Those software devided the price to create video by a fuc*** amount.

Video games are an art with static prices. That is the issue. How do you sell art as a product? Movies are made and then hope for good sales, this catering to the consumer. However, movie tickets are the same price vs how art auctions have varying prices. How much is 2-3 hours worth in the theater? 20 bucks? 15 bucks? Video games are usually 40-80 hours, but some games that have 40 hours are 15 bucks. Some games that are only 20 hours are 100 bucks (*cough cough* Destiny 2), but the price itself is not the issue, but how many "box office sales" they make. If you have an episodic game, then maybe make it free? Episodic media were shown on tv and tv payed for cable, but those tv shows maybe made some merchandise which is similar to games that have microtransactions. So the free game with microtransactions, but seasonal makes sense. That is why fortnite worked so well. It was very popular, gave people what they wanted, and was free with mircotransactions. However, if your game is costs money, has a battle pass, has seasons, and has dlc's (*cough cough* Destiny 2) then that is a 100% scam. I don't care if the president from rick and morty voices commander zavala, nobody would pay a ticket to see a movie, then pay again to continue every 30 seconds of the movie, then do the same thing when tho go watch the sequel, the 3rd, the prequels, and the spinoffs. Nobody would watch that movie franchise so why subscribe to a game that does that? Then we have issues of pay to win or catch up mechanics. Straight up just don't have em. If you don't have time to play the game, then don't play it. If you don't have the time to learn an instrument, a sport, or read a story, then you don't get to consume the skill or joy from it. Straight up don't add those. Elden Ring should be industry standard. Game is 60 dollars. Expansion is 40 dollars. Game is has 100 hours of play time. DLC is better and makes more improvements than the base game. Need more money? Game flopped? Make new game. New story. New movie. New brand. It is much cheaper than trying to revive a dead horse (*cough cough* Destiny 2). Elden Ring, Hollow Knight, Risk Of Rain 2 = what people want industry standard to be. Destiny 2, Any EA game, (maybe) WoW, and (maybe) Warframe, and any Gacha game = a gross and untamed industry standard. Most of the time something good that is cheap will make more money than something that is good that is expensive. The internet sucks because it promotes mediocracy and enriches the unworthy.

Short answer: No. Long answer: Fuck no.

When the industry was moving away from physical game copies and collectibles, they began adding "premium versions" of the same games with artwork and soundtrack that inflates the price anywhere from $10-$50 dollars in some cases. Just buy the base game, you can always find online the OST or artwork that is digital anyway and shared, print it off anywhere if you really need the artwork. It's nothing tangible that you don't already get with the base game. Half the time it's difficult to access your "bonus" cosmetics as it's locked behind your game progress or simply the UI is terrible to redeem them. It's always an afterthought. Stop buying the afterthought. It's an illusion that if you don't buy the top tier version you'll miss out on stuff. No, you're not a bigger "fan" of a game either for shelling out over $100 to access crap they could've just added in. Dumb decisions folks.

Many people forget but Raegan put a 100% tariff on Japanese electronics in 1987 that applies to SNES cartridge prices. I remember Toys-R-Us Games aisle with $70 games and it was largely because of Raegan kekw

The difference is that before the games were physical, the production and distribution of these were much more expensive, only a small part was considered "profit", in addition to the distribution/manufacturing/production. Nowadays everything is digital, the cost of that is reduced enormously, although of course inflation has an influence, but.... The production costs are not even close, it is becoming less and less expensive, so much so that an individual can produce many of them.