I didn’t even buy them at 60. This would change nothing for me except further cement my patient gaming lifestyle.
Have you tried spending less on making them?
Back in 1996 AAA games sold for $60 to $75. If we take the lowest price of $60 and adjust it for inflation, that would be $119 today. Computer games today are unrealistically cheap. And if you look at how much more effort goes into development, they’re pretty much free.
I think there is a bigger market for them now though. What was the most popular video game in the 90s and how many copies sold vs the biggest games now? And now with steam and other sevices you don’t even have to manufacture as many discs. Even freemium mobile games are making billions in revenue.
Back in 1996, the average computer cost $2-6k adjusted for inflation. Now they are also much more difficult and complex to make, are much more powerful, and cost less.
Yes, a bunch of effort has gone into development, but that development doesn’t disappear after the game is done. And now we have free, open source game engines that can be filled with assets made in free, open source 3d modeling software, using free, open source high level programming languages. A little bit of learning and the average person could make an early 2000s video game solo in a couple of weeks.
They can make them more than $70USD and I’ll just keep waiting for a sale. I haven’t bought one at $70 yet, I’m certainly not going to pay even more.
I haven’t bought a game for more than $30 in over a decade.
And that was a nostalgia purchase.
Increasing the price just makes me want to go sailing.
Satisfactory £28, Farming simulator £24, House flipper £21, the good games are all less than £30
Hell I’ve got THREE versions of farming simulator I got free from steam, epic, or somewhere else (legitimately)
I could start on my backlog of sub $15 games and be fine until current releases are sub $15.
Wait. Wasn’t the whole point of competition to bring prices down?
Plus you’d think that with distribution costs, shelving costs, CD stamping costs and printing manuals, they’d already be cutting our costs… but it’s not about us.
They can do that, but I’m not paying.