Why do people think $70 for a game is a premium price?

PC General Discussion
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If you live in the USA, the average game cost is $69.99.

If you live in Canada, it’s $79.99.

According to techraptor website, the average cost of an NES game in 1985 was $45.00.

The average cost of an SNES game in 1990 was $59.99

The average cost of an Xbox 360 game in 2005 was $59.99 and the average cost of a PS3 game in 2006 was also $59.99

The average cost of a PS4 game in 2013 was $59.99 - the same cost as a PS3 game.

Now, for current console and PC, the average price in 2023 is $69.99.

We can see that over a an almost 40 year span from NES to PS5, the cost of a game has increased by approximate 25 dollars, from $45 to $70.

If we take inflation into account and compare it to the cost increase of everything else, video games should have been triple or even quadruple the cost today, but this is not the case.

NES and SNES games would give you approximately 5-40 hours of gameplay, with the 40 hours being RPG games such as final fantasy IV. “‘Normal” games would give you around 5-10 hours.

Today, we buy video games that can give us thousands of hours of gameplay for only a $25 dollar increase over 40
Years compared to NES games. Not only are these games filled with content, but they update regularly to give additional content. The cost of creating a triple A video game can be anywhere from
60-80 million dollars and up, and these studios also have to pay employees and several other majors costs as well as make a decent profit - they don’t do this for free, it’s a business like anything else.

When you pay $70 for a game and get hundreds or thousands or hours out of it, it works out to be Pennies spent per hour.

Why do people still think games are so expensive and often in these forums, say they are being ripped off?

It costs more money to order a pizza and go out to see a movie and get popcorn and soda and this is a one time thing, after your done there is no more pizza or movie. Video games give you exponentially more value for your money and even at $70 a game, it’s a tremendous value.

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Do you really compare the price of console games vs pc games?
You pay so much for Nintendo, XBox, PS games because otherwise you would have to pay at least 1000 Dollars/Euros for a modern console with its built in up to date gaming hardware like a good computer would cost.

Diablo 3 took a decade to develop and the developing cost was still just a fraction of what this company won within the first week of release.

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None of it is a “tremendous value.”

I don’t mind the price of games so much as I mind the culture of gaming and the business of gaming. Gaming culture is loaded with bigotry and entitlement and immaturity.
The gaming industry is capitalism at its worst. No one is allowed to unionize, all the money goes to the executive/investor class (who do none of the actual work), employees (especially artists and coders, the people who do the actual work) are treated like garbage…

It’s a mess. Even worse than Hollywood. Those people can at least STRIKE.

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Why - because minimum wage in my state is just over $7 an hour and it hasn’t gone up forever. Some places understand the situation and started paying double that but a lot of others just want to act like inflation isn’t a thing.

For some people $70 is nothing, for others it’s one of the few decisions they’ll get to make with disposable income.

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I think a lot of people that bought the Deluxe and Ultimate editions realized they paid extra for virtually no reason. I also think many people’s disappointment comes from a delusion. The delusion that Blizz in 2023 is anything like Blizz of say 2003.

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I personally think that video games are very affordable nowadays.
One of the problem is how fast they are de-valued.
A few months after launch you can find them at half the price. That can be a reason why the initial $70 price tag seems high…

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well as a Canadian it was almost $100. most games with a 16-20 hour campaign is $50.

now that being said with a few changes to end game, if I last til the end of season 1 it will be worth it but currently it is not looking good.

Edit: $200 for me because I bought it for my son so we could play together and after the campaign was over he quit because it was too repetitive with no goal

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I don’t think it’s just the standard price. It’s the cost of the premium editions on top of the high cost of cosmetics. If everything was just included in the $70 edition I doubt you’d be seeing as many complaints.

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Some companies, like Nintendo, FromSoft, and Blizzard rarely do sales, though.
That’s mostly something you see on Steam/GOG and with non-AAA games.

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Because some of the ppl who complain never finished school and are now angry because they dont have a job and cant afford to buy games. It was different back then since their parents paid for it.

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While it is true that on the whole inflation for the cost of a AAA game is very low. The inflation for wages and cost of living are not so people are a lot more concerned whether their money is being wasted despite the purchase being a good value based on historical data.

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I’ve better question, why are you arguing against points which should be in your interest? Do you go into a store and complain how tomato should be at least 2 times more expensive and people would still buy? Just ridiculous

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Well, once you make the game, you have infinite copies available at no additional cost. Nothing you have to store, ship or source materials for etc., minimal bandwidth costs, w/e. The customer base for gaming has grown immensely, which is why, despite games costing many times more to develop in 2023 than they did in 1980 and the price of the game not increasing (much), profits are at an all time high.

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Not sure where you saw it for $79.99 in Canada, but I’ve never seen it that cheep.

In Canada, before tax it cost $89.99 CAD for me for to get Standard edition. After tax, it was over $100 CAD.

Digital Deluxe is $119.99 CAD before tax, almost $135 CAD after tax.

And Ultimate is $129.99 CAD before tax, and more than $145 CAD after tax.

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Console manufacturers make their money back from things like PS Plus and accessory sales.

Console games can be dirt cheap and the PSN store regularly has sales, even on AAA games that you can get for like $10-$15.

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Economics is more complicated than what you’re suggesting. You’re using very simple models of scale while framing perspectives around the conclusion you want to reach while ignoring alternative explanations and the complexities involved in consumer behavior.

Value is relative to peoples circumstances and expectations. We also have to consider the quality of the product being delivered and if it meets those expectations. YOU may play a video game for a few hundred hours and only pay 5 dollars for it, but maybe it didn’t match what the developers told you it would be like. Sure, you got value for your money, but the developers didn’t deliver what they promised. Of course you’d be upset.

If you order a pizza and you ask for mushrooms and sausage but they don’t put the mushrooms and sausage on the pizza, you’re going to be disappointed and upset. You’d ask for a refund, or ask the pizza place to correct the mistake. You’d even consider never going to that pizza place again in the future.

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I can gladly pay 70$ for a finished product, but that’s not the case with D4. They released a crippled product on purpose in order to milk it using seasons. “Live service” is a scam to sell unfinished game at full price.

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Times have changed. True games have not been updating their costs with inflation, also true the business model has nothing to do with before.

70-90-100 bucks is still a lot of money for a single game product.

I don’t feel scammed, the base product is fairly complete, and aside the authentication issue day, the launch and everything was quite good.

Still is a lot of money to blow in one shot, in today’s day and age, you have plenty of great games under 40-50 bucks. Rarely you will get a premium experience with these costs.

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If we take inflation into account and compare it to the cost increase of everything else, video games should have been triple or even quadruple the cost today, but this is not the case.

You forgot to take into account things like distribution of PHYSICAL copies were needed back in the day.

IE: New SNES game, ship from Japan > on to a truck > on to a boat (to NA) > possibly onto a different boat/onto another truck > shipped to store. Store puts on shelf and hopes you walk in to buy (rental costs and a store also needed for you to buy as its part of the distribution chain thus driving up costs)

Now they just slap it on a website and you click download. Yes servers do cost money to maintain but nowhere near the gasoline and wages of drivers, shippers, boats, trucks etc of moving millions of copies of a game.

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Because most people here apparently exists on under 100 USD allowance