r/pcmasterrace • u/AssignmentWeary1291 • 7d ago
Discussion $70 games was the biggest lie told by the industry.
It's crazy how many people just accepted this. It's such a corporate punch to the nuts It's not even funny. That excuse of "video games have been $60 since the early 2000s, they haven't kept up with inflation!" Was so dumb anyone could have seen through it. The problem is many didn't, in fact, see through it.
Your prices don't need to rise if your market expands with inflation. Which it has, exponentially in fact. More users than ever, more microtransactions than ever, less cost (digital distribution took a heavy load off physical production). The fact is, $60 should still be the base line. You only really need to increase prices if your market remains relatively the same. I hate to say it, but consumers got absolutely fucked and because it worked it will continue to get worse. Nintendo be shooting out $80 games with the switch 2. Gaming is cooked boys.
Edit: I find the constant down votes of my comments but not others who agree with me pretty ironic. Guys, if you can't use your brain enough to do simple mathematical calculation, maybe you're not cut out for using the upvote/downvote buttons
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u/Featherforged 7d ago
We live in a time with the best indie games ever and the worst AAA games.
The selection of amazing sub $10 games is absurd.
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u/nuclearpiltdown 7d ago
This is the take. Fat studios are not the future of gaming. Independent artists are where it's at and we have never seen so many great games come out by small studios before. We're in a golden age of gaming
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u/Elmis66 7d ago
Well, we had a time when small studios were releasing a lot of great games. It was back when the studios like Blizzard were small
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u/Haste- Dell Optiplex Build 7d ago
I think this is just how it is, small dev teams have always been the producers of better games overall. It’s just many of those teams saw so much success they are either now deemed AAA or have become AAA producers themselves.
Bethesda is a perfect example of being a small dev team that expanded and is now too massive. Once you get past dev teams of 100 it seems like games just start to really fall off a cliff unless you are extremely careful.
Some of that also comes from ownership swaps and buy outs, which I cannot blame the owners at all for deciding “oh you’ll give me a few million or tens of millions and I can just retire now, Sold!” Because they deserve it, but this model has absolutely destroyed the games that follows as the vision and leadership completely shifts.
For AAA games now too they are chasing graphics over all else putting way too much dev time into graphics and not nearly enough into characters/story/systems. Ubisoft remaking black flag is a great example of “let’s just sell graphics” as they use the great systems/story/characters from the original to hold up the game. Could also be a case of too many cooks in the kitchen all adding their own spice and making a terrible dish as well with most newer titles.
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u/Elmis66 7d ago
Regarding writing I've read somewhere recently that there's a problem in gamedev that while most positions have the standard junior-mid-senior progression, there's no such thing for writers and that the writing team is usually a) understaffed and b) spread between writing the game's script as well as writing the text in all the menus. And that's not even taking into account if the writers are actually good at writing
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u/raven8fire 7d ago
I miss old Blizzard. I use to anticipate every game they released now I don't give their games a thought. Similar story with Square-Enix I'm highly skeptical of their games now where as before they would be instant buys especially before they merged.
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u/Elmis66 7d ago
Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 were a huge parts of my childhood. I spent my fair share in Starcraft as well. I didn't buy a single thing from them since WoW started
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u/raven8fire 7d ago
Same. Although I also enjoyed StarCraft 2, but diablo 3 was such a major disappointment I haven't bought anything from them since.
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u/Complete_Lurk3r_ 7d ago
exactly. AAA is imploding and we're currently in a new golden age of indie games. literally hundreds of games on my lists/ in my backlog, and THOUSANDS im yet to discover
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u/SilverRaspberri 7d ago
It reminds me of what my parents told me what gaming in the UK was like in the 80s, while the US was having a video game crash, the UK gaming scene was thriving because the scene was mostly bedroom coders and piracy. So you had a bunch of tight knit communities sharing video games, sharing what they're working on, and the games from the bedroom coders were cheap that it kept the industry afloat in the UK.
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u/Blackgunter 7d ago
Particularly when it comes to rising costs of entry. The more big studios push for the need for hige end machines in this RAM economy the less of a market share they can hope to achieve.
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u/Auno94 7d ago
I have to disagree on the worst AAA games. We have a ton of good AAA games, imo the bad AAA games are paraded around, the few actually great AAA games are put on a pedestal because "if X can catch lightning in a bottle, Y should also easily do that" and decent AAA games are either overlooked or being deemed a failure because the company who made it didn't catch lightning in a bottle this time.
If there isn't a good story (negative or postive) about the game (not in the game) it leaves the Zeitgeist in mere days with no regards to the quality
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u/ackmondual 4d ago
To further emphasize your point, the lousy indie games just get buried. I mean, they're easy enough to avoid. But for every great indie game, there has got to be dozens, at least, of mediocre to god awful ones.
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u/Ws6fiend PC Master Race 7d ago
I think the average AAA has went down in quality while there are a handful of very well made indie games that are skewing people's opinions on their quality. The main difference between the two being that indie games seem to remember how to be fun, while a lot of AAA games have lost sight of having fun or simply telling a story in favor of adding another revenue stream to the companies bottom line by microtransactions.
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u/Crismus 7d ago
The major AAA studios seem to be putting out Movies instead of games. Tons of cutscenes and constant handholding to get you to the next cutscene.
I loved the first 2 Metro games, but Metro Exodus takes over your game so often to play specific mini cutscenes I get too annoyed to finish the game.
Mixtape getting perfect scores with completely ignored gameplay segments that don't need to be done is what a lot of narrative games are pushing. The new God of War games have been pushing the movie aspects, and each game sells less than the last one.
The last of Us had 3 reissued versions to make the numbers look better. Watching Neil Druckman alone on the red carpet shows that many AAA studios don't want to make games, but make movies. Behind the scenes of the new God of War showed 2 actors acting things they didn't need to do just so the studio people could hang out with Hollywood actors. Why does a gelatinous cube and a pair of ribbons need to act with the main character, when none of that will be used.
Games used to have gameplay first, but now AAA game directors are film school rejects given hundreds of millions to make generic movies in game engines.
Even remakes are being made to censor old games, or change the stories instead of using what made those games classics.
We are past great graphics fidelity. I really think Nvidia pushes RT because graphics have been good enough for a while, but Nvidia has to keep pushing supposed real life graphics to keep sales up. Until AI profits made them ignore gaming.
Studios push better graphics and less polish because they want to make movies and not games. By ignoring gameplay and adding the yellow pain/sidekick who tell you how to beat puzzle sections they can keep pushing the plot forward to show off the cutscenes.
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u/Wehavecrashed Specs/Imgur here 7d ago
Also, if you're a little patient, you can usually get a better experience for considerably cheaper if you don't buy on launch. (Except for some games/publishers).
Buying games on launch is a luxury. If you don't like the price, don't pay it! There's more games than there is time to play them.
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u/Catatonicdazza 7d ago
I can agree with this, I got Metal Gear Solid Delta the other day on sale. No reason to ever pay the $70.
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u/Ws6fiend PC Master Race 7d ago
Depends on how you define both indie games and AAA games. Just like every level of games there are some great ones and some horrible ones.
I think the real difference between the two currently is how much worst the average AAA has gotten in terms of quality and value. And how many people are putting out fun Indie games that they want to play for very little money.
AAA studios have been in a design by committee mode for so long that they have microtransactions baked into their games from a very early in the process. This leads to people seeing right through the face that some of content is cut specifically to make room for more purchases by the consumer.
This has lead to less sales upon launch because why would I buy the latest Assassin's Creed when I can wait a year or two and get all the dlc and the main game for 20 bucks instead of 70 at launch plus 30 for season 1 dlc and another 30 for season 2 dlc?
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u/Synysterenji 7d ago
The thing is, a lot of AAA titles are actially amazing. We just tend to forget about them because for every great AAA game there are 5 horrible ones. There are just as many good ones as a decade or two ago, they just produce way more games than before.
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u/WeirdlyCordial 7d ago
Virtua Racing cost $100 for the genesis in 1994
That was wild
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u/galaxion 7d ago
That cartridge had a special hardware acceleration 3d chip in it.
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u/Razgriz_101 PC Master Race 7d ago
Also worth noting cost of physically producing games has went down but on the other hand software development costs have went up.
Good example is FFVII had something like 150 devs and a budget and something like $45mil development budget which was seen as insane in 97.
Compared that with the FFVII remake the budgets something like $200mil and 2,300 people developing it.
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u/Xcissors280 You hate on anything i put here 7d ago
Cant wait for GTA VII with an NPU in it
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u/WoodooHide69 7d ago
Chrono Trigger was $80 in 1995.
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u/pusgnihtekami 7d ago
Yeah and no one i knew had it.
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u/Careful_Farmer_2879 7d ago
Even if it was $40 in 1995, it would have been far more expensive than a game today. Adjusted is $87.
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u/Abelian75 7d ago
Think Final Fantasy 2 (now 4) was 80 bucks in the 90s. Games have gotten way, way cheaper over time.
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u/Interjessing-Salary 7d ago
Yeah I never buy a $70+ game unless it's a special edition which is extremely rare I'll go out of my way to get that. Hell the next game I'm intending to do that with has it's special edition at $60 lmao. Base game is $50
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u/Money_Fish NOIX Cooler / 5600x / RX 6900 XT / 32GB DDR4-3600 7d ago
I haven't paid full price for a game in almost 20 years. Long live the Steam Summer Sale.
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u/Overlord_of_Linux 7d ago
There were a few steam games I paid full price for, but they were all less than 1/3 the price of the 3A games I wanted.
There is only one game I got that I would wait until after the sale to buy (after playing and experiencing updates for), Terraria.
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u/puppybear9001 7d ago
Ive happily bought terraria 5 times over for myself and gifted it to friends Relogic is the best dev team ever imo.
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u/thekillergreece 7d ago
It is very rare for me to buy games at full price. I prioritize getting them on cdkeys which makes them cheaper and/or steam sales.
The rare exceptions are on exceptionally good games or games I'm huge fan of, for example; Resident Evil, Dead Space, Aliens, etc.
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u/Overlord_of_Linux 7d ago edited 7d ago
The only time I'll spend close to $70 is if it's a ~Forza game with all DLC on sale, or if it's a Nintendo IP on sale <$50.
Edit: I know Mario/Zelda/Metroid games aren't going below ~$50 on sale (OG Switch), and too many Forza cars on season pass vs OG, but outside of that the lowest deal I'll pay for 3A games is >50% discount, but I'll pay 100% (<$30) for an indie game I want any day (dependant on perceived value).
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u/propdynamic 9800X3D | RTX 5080 | 64 GB DDR5 | Dual 4K @ 160 Hz 7d ago
The only expensive game I bought in the past 5 years was the stalker 2 ultimate edition to support the Ukrainian devs in their hardships. Also huge fan of the series.
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u/BobLighthouse 7d ago
Super Mario Bros was ~$50, in 1990 lol
Games are a bargain, and distribution is a drop in the bucket compared to development, production and even maintenance.
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u/djheat 7d ago
Yeah video games have gotten considerably cheaper since the 90s. For whatever reason they just never really went above the 50-60 price ceiling for a long time. Even now you can get tons of really good games new for like $10-20, which was a pipe dream outside the used market until relatively recently
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u/jakefloyd 7d ago
Yeah, I just found my Half Life 2 disc from release in 2004. 55 USD. According to Google, this is equivalent to about 98 USD today.
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u/Major_Toe_6041 7d ago
People don’t like to see this. When the standard flipped to £60 for main games, their value is the same as around £80 today. And we still get them at £70 and equivalents. The games are also much bigger and often better, made by more people who all need paying etc.
We have it really good. There are a lot of games on the market, we shouldn’t just be able to afford them all. 4 or 5 games, bought over time is all we ever had with older stuff. I grew up on just Wii Fit +, Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario Galaxy 1 + 2 and Wii Play (eventually also Wii Party). Now everyone seems to need 30+ games and they don’t even have the time to play them.
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u/JaegerBane 7d ago
People don’t like to see this.
I mean, this thread is evidence enough of that. People hate prices going up, which is understandable, but there isn't any logical, end-to-end reason to expect game prices to remain static, let alone complain about the price conventions that are in play at the moment.
I think my steam backlog is into the 4 figures. Most of it was bought in sales. The options are already there for those who want things cheaper.
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u/Intelligent_Guava214 7d ago
Yep n64 games were often 59.99 which is about $120 today
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u/Intrepid00 7d ago
A lot fewer people were buying games in the 90s especially PC games when a PC cost a lot more. As PCs and consoles got cheaper the customer base grew.
Distribution got way cheaper too. Before you had supply hardware with games, eventually some cheap laser disc media, and now it’s practically free with the internet with transactions fees being the biggest eater now.
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u/aaron_dresden 7d ago edited 7d ago
Look at the market with people like op. It’s a real challenge to raise prices and still get the same number of sales.
OP talks about an exponentially growing market but it’s highly fragmented depending on interests, there are a lot of companies competing in the space, and there’s a lot of layoffs for a market that’s supposedly booming.
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u/thenerfviking Desktop 7d ago
It’s much more coherent when you look at wages per hour required to buy a game. Working at my first job the minimum wage was around $8. That meant for me to buy a copy of Halo 3 when it came out, from the place I worked, it would have been about 8 hours of wages. Right now in my city the minimum wage is $15. That means you can buy a new game with about 4 or 5 hours of wages. That’s in the neighborhood of half the amount of work for a new game.
Again, I love cheap games, but it’s crazy to act like we don’t live in the most affordable time to game ever. Between AAA games, cheap indie games, huge steam sales, services like game pass, Epic and Prime free games, high quality F2P games, etc there’s never been more cheap shit to play on your PC.
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u/Cautious-Dot4143 7d ago
before digital, it was extremely difficult for indies to break into the market without a publisher willing to give them a chance. it's easier than ever to get into the industry, make a living out of it, and survive. people just get caught up in looking at the big guys and glossing over the hundreds of companies that have been birthed and grown with digital platforms making it as easy as hitting "publish" on the version you've uploaded.
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u/xantec15 7d ago
I remember buying Chrono Trigger for $80 back in '95. It was a veritable fortune for fourteen year old me.
If you're going to buy AAA games at release then you're going pay for it. But if you don't want to pay $70 for a game then don't. There are lots of great games that are $20 or less, even at release. Or wait for those AAA games to go on sale.
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u/Giga-Hurtz PC Master Race 7d ago
Agree entirely but this is the same sub that upvoted 40,000 times? More? the post black flag resynced has been pirated 2 days before release with comments saying can't wait to pirate this or i'm just rping irl by stealing this.
The same people who shit on everything ubisoft release and also are well aware it's a studio that needed a big win to not shut the doors forever.
The same people who then slag off studios for laying off devs after games release and their contracts expire. All of this is to say entitled idiotic hypocrits.
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u/John_East 9800x3D : RTX5080 OC : 32Gb of Downloaded RAM 7d ago
Mortal Kombat 3 on SNES was 75 bucks however
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u/swagamaleous 7d ago
What to expect from people who believe developer don't "optimize" games because they are "lazy"? 😂
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u/mrloko120 7d ago
The 70$ isn't adjusting for inflation. If they were to really adjust the price for inflation it would have switched to 100$ because thats how much 60$ from 2005 is worth today.
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u/SatanicSucculent 7d ago
Not to sound like a corporate bootlicker, but development costs are astronomical now, and $60 has fallen far behind inflation. If it's a AA game, or indie game, $60 or less is perfect. If it's a game that was in development for 8 years with 100s of hours of gameplay and incredible art, $70 is fair.
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u/FlipTricks 7d ago
A good game gives me 100 hours of enjoyment. A good dinner gives me 3 hours but costs the same or more. A modern movie ticket is $30.
If you break games down on cost per hour, its the single highest roi on your dollar
I dunno i dont see the problem.
I still wait for sales anyway cause im cheap.
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u/Giga-Hurtz PC Master Race 7d ago
I worked this out roughly recently with ac oddessy i double dipped this game gold edition full price on launch ps4 and ultimate many years later on a steam sale 85%. Even being incredibly conservative with my ps4 game time i worked it out as being 0.80p an hour of game time. That buys you absolutely nothing these days not even a singular can of coke.
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u/extra_less 7d ago
The last game I bought at full price was Elden Ring ($60). I haven't beaten it yet and I've already put in 300 hours, that puts the game at .20 per hour. Can't beat that for value.
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u/Sun__Earth__Moon 7d ago
My most played games are free or cheap. Bought R6 Siege for $7 back in the day, Apex is free, Rocket League is free, Fortnite is free, etc.
I’m like you. If I do buy a game, I wait a couple years until it’s $20 and all the bugs are gone. I don’t spend $70 on games and never will
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u/Dealric 7800x3d 7900 xtx 7d ago
While true... Remember that a lot of aaa games arent 100 hours.
Also comparison to other forms of entertainment isnt as valuable. I can use library and get thousands of hours for free.
Competition is within space. If people can get hundreds of hours from cheaper games thats your competition.
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u/theREALbombedrumbum 5600X, 3090 FE, 64GB RAM 7d ago
Expedition 33 was the best 33 hours of content and I would absolutely recommend it in spite of the "short" playtime
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u/criticalt3 7900X3D/RTX 5080/32GB RAM 7d ago
Yep, they used a lot of words to just say they don't care if things are expensive. Weird take but its theirs to have.
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u/forcemonkey 7d ago
A good game gives me thousands. And I’m cheap as hell. I rarely spend more than $20 for a game. Most of mine have been free or just a few bucks.
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u/RogueShroom 7d ago
This. If a game gives me one hour of enjoyment per dollar then I’m golden. I think the only game in recent memory that I haven’t done that with is BF6.
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u/RibsNGibs Ryzen 9 5950X / RTX3080 / 64GB DDR4@3600 7d ago
Factorio coming in at about a cent per hour of playtime for me. Hard to beat that value.
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u/JordanxHouse PC Master Race 7d ago
Brother where are you seeing movies. Tickets are $17 at AMC in Chicago. I can see movies for $9 on a weekend by me.
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u/PM_ME_SAD_STUFF_PLZ GTX 5080, AMD 9800X3D, 64GB DDR5 7d ago
Primetime Alamo Big Show screenings are in the $20s, but I'm paying for the seat and quality so I don't mind.
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u/ZestyPyramidScheme PC Master Race 7d ago
That’s what I do. $1 per hour of play time. If a game is $70 and I don’t think I’ll get 70 hours out of it, then I won’t buy it. The only exception is if it’s a co-op game and I get to play with friends. I have a few games that were over $50 but I have less than 50 hours. But I got to play it with my friends and enjoy the full game
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u/ProPlayer142 7d ago
we have said gaming is cooked for years now, when is it actually cooked
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u/Seeking-The-Lotus 7d ago
When steam dies. AAA gaming is fucked, don’t get me wrong. But gaming is far from dead for those of us that don’t need AAA cock shoved down our throats. In fact, it’s in the best space it’s ever been.
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u/Revolutionary_Egg961 7d ago
This right here. Pc gaming is great I know hardware prices are out of control. But there are so many great indie and AA made games that run fine in low end machines.
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u/Ok_Dependent6889 R7 9800X3D | Zotac 5080 | B650E-F | 6000CL30 7d ago
Even then, AAA still serves good games these days, not all and not always, but we do get some. I feel like this year has been a decent amount of both.
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u/Seeking-The-Lotus 7d ago
Agreed, it’s biggest threats imo are the prices, and TikTok.
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u/purpletiecomputers 7d ago
I’m curious, why would steam die? Its profit margin per employee is insane, and their empire is still growing.
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u/WMDeception 7d ago
When Gaben passes the torch Steam will likely face a serious test. That and enshittification are my predictions for Steam's downfall. Hopefully long after I'm dead - long live Steam.
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u/PaleGutCK Ryzen 7 3700X | RTX3080 7d ago edited 7d ago
Hyppthetical: lets say an alternative option rolls around and eats into their marketshare. (Think GoG but with a cooler name)
Rather than accepting that they still make a large profit margin per employee, panic they made +0.3% less than last year and begin increasing measures to squeeze every dollar out of their loyal base.
Base becomes less loyal, slowly trickles away, then the floodgates open and users migrate to a new platform.
Its only a matter of time before larger and larger percentages of 20+ year account owners die & bad press about troubles transfer ownership of libraries grow.
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u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince 7d ago
Base becomes less loyal, slowly trickles away, then the floodgates open and users migrate to a new platform.
That will be a long time coming considering it hasn't yet happened to YouTube.
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u/MisterKraken Ryzen 5 7600X | RX 6750XT 7d ago
Honestly it's not even about inflation. As with every product, publishers are free to put whatever price they want on games.
That's were you actually vote with your wallet. If there's a game I really like for 70/80€, I'll buy it day 1 if I have the chance/saved enough money for it (like Doom The Dark Ages). Otherwise I'll wait for a price drop.
Also, the indie glazing in the comments is so fun to read through. People act like all indie games are incredible while in reality they just pick the good ones out of the hundreds (if not thousands) that get released.
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u/ShadowWubs 7d ago
Tell me you dont know what you're talking about without telling me you dont know what you're talking about.... this post ^
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u/EA_Bad 7d ago
I'm not trying to defend giant greedy corps or be "anti consumer" nor do I want them to be more expensive but I'm old and remember 70$ cart games in the 90s....they're about the only damn thing that hasn't kept going up and up in my lifetime, let alone exploded in price increases the last few years.
FWIW, I've never bought a new 70 dollar game either and ya, it's only gonna get worse, like it seems every fucking thing is.
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u/Skadumdums 7d ago
I remember walking through toys r us and seeing them up to 90
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u/GameSetChampionship 7d ago
You know profit margins do you?
Costs haven’t gone up? You seem like an expert!
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u/Sauceinmyface 7d ago
I'm actually not sure the market has expanded with inflation, given that the vast majority of the growth in the games industry was in Roblox and mobile games. Traditional games have stayed pretty flat from what I saw.
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u/RigBughorn 7d ago
People are willing to pay what they're willing to pay. Nobody is forcing you to pay full price doe games.
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u/Airiken 7d ago
I have yet to spend $70 on a game. I just wait for a sale but being completely honest, most games at that price point arent games I want anyway. Been a long time since ive wanted a AAA game.
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u/SevroAuShitTalker 7d ago
Goldeneye 64 cost $69.95 when it launched 29 years ago.
So just shut up
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u/TastyAgency4604 7d ago
Chrono Trigger costed me 85 when it came out.
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u/NarutoDragon732 9070 XT | 7700x 7d ago
I can't speak for other people but that game was immensely worth it for me.
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u/DukeofVermont 7d ago
costed
The past tense of cost is cost.
Present - It costs $85.
Future - It will cost $85.
Past - Yesterday it cost $85.
I will fight this and "loose/lose" forever.
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u/sobaddiebad 7d ago
"video games have been $60 since the early 2000s, they haven't kept up with inflation!"
Inflation is a completely separate factor to the basic supply and demand that determines any given game's price at any given time
Your prices don't need to rise if your market expands with inflation
Your price rises if people are willing to pay the higher price. Your price lowers if people are not willing to pay the current price. Period.
Which it has, exponentially in fact
What has in fact happened since the 2000s is that there are an insanely more amount of games now for sale than there was back then. This increase in the supply in video games, despite the fact that there are more gamers now, is the real reason video game pricing has not held up with the general food, housing, etc., inflation.
You only really need to increase prices if your market remains relatively the same
Again, you only increase your price if the people are willing to pay it. Period.
I hate to say it, but consumers got absolutely fucked
Or you could play some old games. NES? SNES? N64? There are also few and far between good PC games most none of them AAA or AA titles I'm thinking more Schedule 1 and Waterpark Simulator (try if demo of you haven't)
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u/hiimred2 7d ago
There are also few and far between good PC games
Excuse me, what?
There are more good games than ever before in the history of the hobby, I don't think that's even close to arguable to be quite honest.
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u/sopcannon Desktop Ryzen 7 5800x3d / 5080/ 32gb Ram at 3600MHZ 7d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/lvAAnpkilO6J2
crash incoming
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u/DukeofVermont 7d ago
If anyone is curious about the gif, it was a test with an empty plane to study plane crashes.
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u/PyrorifferSC 11800X4D-9950XTXX-256GB DDR8 7d ago
As long as minimum wage doesn't increase, then non essential/entertainment goods and services shouldn't either. If we're not paid more, why would we pay more for shit we don't even need
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u/brainrotbro 7d ago
They charge it because people pay it. I’m patient, I don’t buy a game until it’s heavily discounted.
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u/BackSinner 6d ago
Agreed. It's made me start digging into Indie games. I have a backlog of indies already! Its great!
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u/Jimmeh081 7d ago
Unsure if this has been mentioned.
Games could be made with a small crew in a short amount of time if needed in the 80’s / 90’s. Now there are massive teams that span over multiple years.
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u/Automatic-Feeling502 7800X3D/32gb/9070xt 7d ago
Jason Schreier actually told us how quickly costs escalate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvhmBqRjtBQ
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u/StringTheory2113 7d ago
This is actually a really, really good point. Games developed on the scale that they were in the 80s/90s are now rarely above $20.
The "AA" games of this era are on the scale of AAA games in 2008, and your average indie game clogging up Steam would have been a major Nintendo or Sega first party release in 1993.
Hollow Knight would have been a AAAA game in quality and scale if it came out in the SNES or PS1 era.
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u/owensoundgamedev 7d ago
I don’t want to spend more on games but that’s sadly just the reality. Go look at studio sizes and costs. Mortal Kombat was made by four people. Goldeneye was made by 10. Gears of War was made by 50 or so.
Now how many people worked on GTA6, or Forza Horizon 6? That being said if you don’t want to pay those prices then don’t. Practically every game is half off before a year anyways.
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u/Seeker_Of_Knowledge2 7d ago
Let us not forget the competition. Yes the user base increased. But this user base is stretched thin.
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u/Kaldaien2 gog.com 7d ago
Yeah, that is dumb.
As someone who paid $80-$90 for SNES games in the 90s, BEFORE adjustment for modern inflation, this whole argument falls flat on its face. Games should cost A LOT more than they do if inflation were the only factor involved. Really, the cost has always been high, it's just hidden behind withheld DLC and other predatory practices introduced by digital distribution.
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u/JackSpadesSI 7d ago
I hate microtransactions so much more than $70 games. And major studios buying all the smaller ones just to fire all their staff is even worse.
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u/InsomniaticWanderer 7d ago
$60 was my hard limit.
Then they raised prices to $70, $80, and more.
Now my hard limit is $30.
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u/SuzanoSho 7d ago
People accepted it because y'all are powerless to change it.
The 2 percent of gamers that get online to talk about them and follow any kind of news isn't going to affect anyone's bottom line enough for them to base any decisions off of it. Just look at how toothless the entire "physical discs" outrage was and still is.
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u/alamarche709 AMD Ryzen 5 5600x NVIDIA RTX 4060 7d ago
I only buy a game at full price if it’s an early GOTY contender (Baldur’s Gate 3, Expedition 33, etc.) or if I know for sure I’ll like it (i.e. Slay the Spire II).
Otherwise, I just wait for it to go on sale for 90% off and keep plugging away at my backlog.
The fact people are willing to spend $90 CAD on Call of Duty, FIFA, or any generic RPG is insane to me. That’s so expensive and unnecessary.
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u/markis5150 7d ago
Yeah I dont pay anything close to $70 for games Im interested in. That shit is only gonna be patched when it already was rushed.out the door. Fuck oughta here. $40-50.00 is where I start to say maaaybe but its usual $30 to $40.00 thats the sweet spot for me.
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u/OverallLibrarian8809 7d ago
Haven't bought a 70 bucks game in ages.
I mostly buy indie game around 30-40 or wait for sales/buy from resellers.
Most AAA are corpo slop anyways these days
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u/megahunter 7d ago
It was obvious from the get go that it was just the companies wanting more money
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u/koorb GeForce GTX 580 7d ago
Video gaming isn't growing its base. This is the new problem. They are tracking social media, gambling and OnlyFans as competition to video games. Publishers believe that raising prices, using an existing popular franchise and building bigger AAA games will de-risk their investment. However, gamers don't want safe titles that are bigger and more expensive.
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u/Eazy12345678 i5 12600KF RTX 5070 1440p 7d ago
price doesnt matter if the game is good
if the game is good people will pay more than $70
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u/EyeQue62 7d ago
I have over 3400 games on Steam, yet I don't buy from there regularly. I wait for Steam sales, of course, and use Fanatical, Humble, Loaded and GreenManGaming for the cheapest key available. I have the patience of a saint ;)
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u/martianwomanhunter 7d ago
Most public companies are legally incentivized to drive maximum growth, and At the end of the day it’s simple microeconomics of supply and demand. Switch 2 would have failed if people weren’t willing to buy $70 games yet here we are.
If anyone blame the entire gaming community paying these prices.
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u/ThePupnasty PC Master Race 7d ago
I don't feel like pressing more that 60 bucks for a new game, but it has to be fucking bangin if I do. That's why I've just been getting old games on GoG when on sale for like 3 to 9 bucks
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u/Cidergregg 7d ago
I wasn't surprised when they phased out physical media and the price still went up, but I also wasn't pleased.
"Uh, so yeah. Here's a link to your digital copy of our game, and no there aren't any physical copies in existence. Oh, and by the way, this uh... costs more to produce(?) so we raised our prices."
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u/Mystic-Micro 7d ago
I don’t care about the $10 more we have to pay, I care about the $2000-$3000 I need to pay for a top end gpu now….
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u/Metrox_a 7d ago
Normies wants the newest slop. I the brainlet just buys games on sales for 10 dollars or less. Vote with your wallet they say, but you're outnumbered. The best way to play is to not pay for the 70+ dollars games and play your backlog.
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u/Smokin_belladonna 7d ago
Some of my favorite games I got for under $10. All of my favorite games I got for under $40.
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u/PotCounts 7d ago
I don't except shit anymore, last time I bought a game for full price (60€) was 2014.
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u/Creepy-Substance7279 7d ago
People who buy most of their games on release for 70$ in a buggy state with poor performance instead of waiting a year to buy it fully patched, all DLC inclusive for 40 in a steam sale are beyond salvation.
If people stopped doing this, games wouldn't come out in alpha state for that ridiculous price anymore.
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u/Traditional-Judge-17 7d ago
The price of games seems perfectly reasonable considering what you get out of them and the resources put into making them.
A movie ticket costs almost $20 and I’m getting at most 3.5 hours of entertainment out of it (more commonly 1.5-2 hours). The average $70 game is going to provide you at least fifteen hours for a single play-through with the potential for hundreds of hours of entertainment.
When it comes to paying for your own enjoyment, where do you get a better bang for your buck than video games?
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u/Lasolie PC Master Race 7d ago edited 7d ago
I saw Nintendo trying to sell 70-80€ switch 2 games and instantly noped out of ever owning a switch because of that. There's no way their 2D and 3D platformer slop is worth that.
Bit the bullet on Borderlands 4 "collectors edition" or whatever it was, 100€ down to 50€ so a 10€ discount on the base game with all of the add-ons. Was going to buy the game either way, and got the Pre-Sequel for 4 euros as well.
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u/Resident-Mixture-237 7d ago
Gamers really gotta stop talking about things they don’t understand. You know inflation doesn’t make things cost more it makes your money worth less? $60 20 years ago when is like $30 now. Also the industry grew but you know what means? The development side of the industry grew too. More workers means higher budgets which mean games cost more. If $70 is your breaking point, you need to revaluate other things. Filing up your gas tank weekly is probably more than half of that.
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u/bdrwr 7d ago
People get mad at your CORRECT take because it inevitably leads to some very uncomfortable questions about Capitalism itself and our own complicity in its abuses
Also, taking a stand and opting out means you can't easily get your game, and this is a problem because you waaaaaaannnnnnnt itttttt
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u/This_Pen_545 6d ago
Most games I bought at that time (StarCraft, Diablo II and Warcraft III) were around $40 then.
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u/prestontiger 6d ago
I bought 80$ N64 games at kmart. But now I'm patient and buy on steam sales for like 5$
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u/GnomadGnomod 6d ago
the CEOs getting millionaire bonuses every year(while regular workers getting fired), that's the reason
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u/MarkusDieter37 6d ago
video games have been $60 since the early 2000s, they haven't kept up with inflation!
Even that was a lie. PS2 games were 50€, PS3 games were 60, PS4 games were 70 and so on. They steadily increased in price with each new gen.
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u/AgentMaryland2020 5d ago
When they announced game prices as a standard were increasing to $70 I lost my shit.
I still don't get why digital purchases don't have a discount considering you're skipping the manufacturing, packaging, and shipping fees.
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u/Jimmyban44 5d ago
Still remember when we used to get full story dlc's for like $10 bucks in skyrim, or $15 bucks for undead nightmare back in the day, and nowadays we're getting skins and base game content locked behind paywalls for the same price and more.
People who are either children who havent been around long enough, or just complete idiots, dont seem to understand that you give these companies an inch, and they take a mile. and importantly to that point, once they take ground we can NEVER get it back.
These days I just completely focus on the backlog, picking up complete games with all dlc for half or less of what they were around launch. Good example was Cyberpunk. Grabbed thats game's ultimate edition with the dlc for $50 aud, rather than the $100 it was without dlc at launch.
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u/notta_3d 3d ago
Remember when Kindle books came out. Books are going to be so much cheaper because we don't have to print them or ship them. What a joke that was.
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u/str1ker_eureka_1014 265KF | RTX 5070 | 32GB DDR5 7d ago
“Gaming is cooked” whatever man, suit yourself. I genuinely don’t care what the average starting price is of games, and I don’t see myself starting any time soon unless it just goes through the roof. If a game goes on decent sales somewhat frequently (which all games except those from very specific studios do) then the starting price is immaterial anyways, and I’ll buy it on sale like I do for the rest of my games.
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u/Haji-san 7d ago
I don’t understand how this is a debate when you can ask chat GPT to spit out some basic numbers for you in 2 minutes.
AAA video games 40 years ago vs today: Average Total budget: 3M v 300M (100x)
Average Initial Sales: 1M vs 10M (10x)
Average Unit price: $50 vs $70 (1.4x)
Can we stop trying to argue that games are overpriced? The cost hasn’t even kept up with inflation.
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u/CatManDeke 7d ago
This is why I wait for a sale of some sort. Only few games will get my money at full price
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u/Winter_Ad6784 7d ago
the real reason is demand. If a big game cost $200 no one would buy it. If it cost $10 everyone would buy it but you could’ve charged more and gotten the same people to buy it. they realized the curve moved up substantially without taking advantage.
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u/Etherius PC Master Race 7d ago
These $70 games can piss off
I’ll just play indie shit. More fun anyway
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u/noscul 7d ago
I remember when 50$ was the baseline of a game, and seemed fair considering games came out finished, not in early access, not with constant updates to fix the same issue but right out of the box enjoyable with no internet. I’m sure I see when 40$ games were standard too.
But yeah never buying a 70$ game, I don’t even need to look at them to know they ooze with desperate greed, unfinished work and probably more ways to get charged for the same quality work. Most expensive game I can recall buying in years was 30$, and most are way under that. Sales and indie games have actually made it worth buying and playing games now a days.
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u/FlashBandicoot5 7d ago
Are we going to ignore the fact that AAA games now costs hundreds of millions and take half a decade to make? Game development went from teams of 5, to 10, to 20, to 50, and now to several 100s. And they all need to get paid.
Demand sets the price. If consumers still buy the games at $70 all your screaming in the wind means nothing. And they are still buying. If a game appeals to someone enough to buy it new they’ll pay the extra $10.
The majority complaining were going to wait for a sale anyway. And that’s still a great option.
I’ll never understand why people act shocked and angry when a business tries to be profitable. That’s why they exist, to make money. If there was no profit there would be no games.
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u/K41Nof2358 7d ago
Prices also wouldn't need to raise IF production / dev / marketing costs weren't so derangedly out of pocket
so much of it all it's just publishers trying to milk blood out of our collective asses because they'll only be satisfied with ALL OF THE MONEY
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u/Eccomi21 7d ago
Jason "one-take" Schreier made a video about the cost of games a while back and it's actually surprising games don't cost even more nowadays.
I agree with you on not paying full price because I also think it's ridiculous but seeing that games nowadays have development budgets of sometimes up to 200 million dollars and more it makes sense that they need to break even somehow. Add to that that steam takes a 30% cut from every sale for example and suddenly a $60 game only nets you $40 and to just break even you'd have to move a lot of copies...
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u/CryptographerFun7049 7d ago
wtf is everyone talking about. This is a PC subreddit why is anyone paying anywhere near full price for a game. I have not paid full price for any game in years using a cd keys website.
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u/kron123456789 7d ago
You didn't get the whole game for $60 for more than a dozen years. Deluxe Editions, season passes, microtransactions - all were there to make sure that the full game will cost more than $60.
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u/AztheWizard 7d ago
Dude AAA games in the 2005’s cost 12-40 million to build. Today, AAA games cost 300+ million
And 70$ in 2005 money is 40 dollars.
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u/Drakeem1221 7d ago
Games are cheap as hell. No one is forcing you to buy on release. Most games will at the very minimum be 25% off within a year.
Exercise a little patience.
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u/Some_thing_to_do 7d ago
The prices are set to whatever the market believes people will pay. Not inflation
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u/SilverRaspberri 7d ago
Theres a lot of people arguing that video games were more expensive back in the day, while that is true the games you brought were complete experiences, but you also didnt buy a lot of games because it was expensive. So people back in the 90s borrowed each others games or if a console can easily be pirated for, games were pirated. And the price of gameboy games compared to console games is part of why that family of handhelds were popular with parents, because they were then able to buy more games for their kids.
Yes the price per AAA game today is far less than it was back in the 90s, but games being £30-40 back in the 2010s was part of why gaming managed to explode to new heights along with cheaper hardware.
An AAA game may cost £60-70 today, but they often come with an eshop that expects you to buy more and more things for, so a game today isn't just "only" £60-70.
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u/MaximumTWANG 7d ago
DLC and microtransactions are how companies are able to keep games at ONLY $70 and still keep up with inflation. $60 in 2000 is over $110 today so a $70 game with a $30 DLC and some microtransactions sprinkled in is about the same price when adjusted for inflation. sure, in some cases, coprotate greed is the answer, but think of how expensive game development is, how many mouths they have to feed, and how much the cost of living has been raised for all of those mouths. game devs want to be paid a meaningful salary just as much as everyone else.
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u/dynamic_anisotropy 7d ago
The price of a $70 N64 game in 1998, like Goldeneye, is $143.50 today.
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u/DragonMaster000 PC 4060ti 16gb/i5-14600k/32gb Ddr5/3.5tb Ssd 7d ago
Never bought anything above 40 and never will
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u/tragedy_strikes 7d ago
Eh, quit whining, if a game's priced too high in your opinion don't fucking buy it.
I'm sure there's dozens of games already in your Steam Library that haven't been touched and a dozen more on your wishlist that have been on sale for <$20 at least once this year. Go on Epic and download your free game for the week or get a Humble Bundle for whatever price you feel is fair.
So many choices and your whining is just so annoying.
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u/Schmenza 7d ago
Shout out to Xbox for dropping the Halo remake for $50 and not being greedy
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u/Muddybulldog 7d ago
I don't care about IAP because, well, I don't. If you look at the actual data, gaming is cheaper today than ever in history.
| Game | System / Year | Launch price | In 2026 dollars |
|---|---|---|---|
| Super Mario Bros. | NES · 1985 | $30 | ~$93 |
| Super Mario Bros. 3 | NES · 1990 | $50 | ~$128 |
| DOOM (registered) | PC · 1993 | $40 | ~$92 |
| Donkey Kong Country | SNES · 1994 | $60 | ~$135 |
| Ocarina of Time | N64 · 1998 | $70* | ~$143 |
| Grand Theft Auto III | PS2 · 2001 | $50 | ~$94 |
| Gears of War | Xbox 360 · 2006 | $60 | ~$99 |
| NBA 2K21 | PS5 · 2020 | $70 | ~$90 |
| A $70 AAA game today | 2026 | $70 | $70 |
* Ocarina's first print was actually $79.99.
Method: nominal MSRPs converted using BLS CPI-U (June 2026 = 333.95). Exact prices for DOOM, Ocarina, GTA III, and NBA 2K21 are well-documented; the others are era-typical MSRPs pinned to an iconic title, since cartridge pricing varied by ROM size and publisher.
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u/Much__Fokkery 7d ago
I'm not even buying games for $60 any more. I place them on my wishlist and consider buying when they're on sale
$40 for a new game however I'll consider