Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
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Baldur's Gate 3 by Larian Games
- Thread starter Lunis
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Rajaah
Honorable Member
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The only game I've ever paid an absurd amount for a collectors edition was Elden Ring and I'm pretty sure that one was only 200.
Game prices in general seem to be spiking. Paid $99 for FF16 Deluxe (aka with a steel book, I guess) and the Pixel Remaster Collection is like $85 wtf.
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Attog
Blackwing Lair Raider
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I read a lot of these "with inflation the 40 USD game from 1980 would cost 120 USD nowadays". This is incorrect. The game would cost around 50 USD because the purchasing power in america did not budge a lot over the past 40 years. Yes, your paychecks are bigger but so are all the costs. (Source: For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades)
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Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
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Uh, what? A $2.99 McDonald's value meal from 1980 is $9.99 now. The same value meal from 40 years ago. It's not only $3.99 because of some sort of weird logic, the sign literally says it's $9.99.
If the same $40 video game from 1980 were being sold today, it would absolutely be $120.
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Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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He's got like, parts of a couple things. It's true that real wages have barely risen since the 1970s but it isn't true that lagging wage growth slowed inflation. Housing, college and healthcare all rose substantially. The 1970s is still the era of 2.5x to 3x of median income was the median cost of a house. We're more in the 5x to 7x range with 9x+ not being uncommon. It's kind of brutal out there.
The reason video game prices haven't gone up is because tech is inherently deflationary. Your phone and your rig today would have been priceless Star Trek technology back in 1995 when you were blowing 60 or 70 dollars on a copy of Chrono Trigger. The medium growing in popularity helps economy of scale with advancements in distribution as well.
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Cybsled
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People have short memories. Atari games in the early 80s weren’t cheap. NES lowered the price point a bit, but consider how much that shit cost vs what people made at the time.
The 49.99 magic price point for a new release game never really became standard until the late 90s/early 2000s. It was partially driven by expensive consoles like Saturn and 3DO going tits up and PlayStation 1 eating their lunch. Console and game prices sort of soft capped around that time to drive market growth. Prior to then, pc and console game prices were relatively high vs purchasing power. The fact that price point is only changing about 20 years later is more of a sign that game producers are more confident that people will buy AAA games at a higher price point and even consoles
The 49.99 magic price point for a new release game never really became standard until the late 90s/early 2000s. It was partially driven by expensive consoles like Saturn and 3DO going tits up and PlayStation 1 eating their lunch. Console and game prices sort of soft capped around that time to drive market growth. Prior to then, pc and console game prices were relatively high vs purchasing power. The fact that price point is only changing about 20 years later is more of a sign that game producers are more confident that people will buy AAA games at a higher price point and even consoles
Grabbit Allworth
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One of the primary reasons we haven't seen games keep pace with the cost of everything around them is the fact that digital distribution is how most games have been purchased for the last decade. It's a lot more expensive to physically produce and ship games than have customers download them.
A couple of other factors are scale and microtransactions. A lot more people are buying games than just 10 years ago and the vast majority of games have some kind of revenue generator beyond the initial box price.
*edit* Just realized I'm basically reiterating some of the points already made. I guess I should read the entire thread before replying.
A couple of other factors are scale and microtransactions. A lot more people are buying games than just 10 years ago and the vast majority of games have some kind of revenue generator beyond the initial box price.
*edit* Just realized I'm basically reiterating some of the points already made. I guess I should read the entire thread before replying.
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Del
Vyemm Raider
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The $40-50 price point happened entirely because of the media switch to cd's, which were far, far cheaper to mass produce than cartridges were. N64 games at the time were still $70-80.
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Yea either we got kids in here or folks with bad memories. Shit Phantasy Star 3 came out with retail price of like $79.99 33 years ago. No collectors edition bullshit, just the game. Video games were priced the same back then as they are now. The only bullshit we see today are these upsell shinanigins where they hold back things that should be in the default game, and tag it on as extra to raise the price above what the thing is worth. A video games vlaue has not changed. People will still buy food if it costs 3 times what it did 30 years ago. No one is going to buy a video game if it costs 3x as much.
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Rajaah
Honorable Member
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Oh yeah, I forgot about how expensive N64 games were at launch. I couldn't afford the system + Mario 64. The N64 cartridges were also noticeably heavier than SNES which was kind of interesting.
Ended up getting a PS1 instead a year later + FF7, and a used N64 some time in 1999 for like $50 from a pawn shop along with a few of the top games (Goldeneye, Mario, OoT) for $20 each. I guess the system wasn't doing that great by then, or maybe I just got a good deal.
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Picked this up, Haven't played a game full mast since Elden Ring. Really looking forward to release.
Burns
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You only needed to own one N64 game anyway, every other one could be rented at Blockbuster, beaten, then returned!
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Seananigans
Honorary Shit-PhD
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Burns
Avatar of War Slayer
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