ALSO you don’t raise prices to “adjust to inflation,” that’s not how inflation works. Raising prices IS the inflation.

Ok now adjust my salary by inflation

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It is absolutely true that, adjusted for inflation, video games were more expensive in ye olden days; an NES at launch costed more, inflation adjusted, than a PS5 costs today.

The fatal flaw they’ve committed here is that they’re applying macroeconomic shifts to a microeconomic product. Inflation is a measure of total prices, prices can go down or stay neutral in one sector while drastically increasing in others and hence net inflation. Tech is notorious as a sector where real prices have dropped, as there’s way more factors in prices than “muh polygon count.” The PS2 era was much less competitive than the current era, for example.

the market for games has also exploded though

very popular game in the late nineties would be lucky to break a million sales in it’s opening week
now that’s completely expected for any aaa game no matter how shit

if you can’t afford to price your game at $60, then you should just make a smaller game. AAA game devs should stop pumping out bloated garbage

There’s like a billion gamers now, anything above 15 money is theft and should be pirated

I’m not just going to say no, but I’m going to say hell no. For instance, my pet peeve this season is having loved Mortal Kombat for over two decades, only to find that they’re implementing a wi-fi filter to essentially tell players like me, who live in a place where we can’t just run 50 to 100ft of ethernet line to suit some pissy settler on the other side of the state, that we’re not welcome. What the actual black-and-blue fuck makes publishers think I’m paying 70 bucks for some fuckshit that can filter me out of the reason I came to it, which is for competition?

No cap I fuckin hate gamers nowadays. Seems like they’re all spineless corporatized wretches who’re just LOOKING for reasons to split the wallet open for their overlords.

This motherfucker pays for game. What a loser.

Now a days you don’t need to absorb physical media costs and are open to the Chinese market. Almost half of all steam users now are from China.

The audience size when this person was little was a tiny fraction of the size of the audience today.

Video games have gone from niche to mainstream meaning they sell more copies than they used to. If we wanted to keep profits in line with where they were in the past, we would need to decrease the cost of games to compensate for the increase in sales.

I’ll go enjoy my fifth playthrough of a $20 indie game instead thanks

In 2001, the AAA game FF10, for the Playstation 2 cost me 60€.

However, in 2021, I could purchase that same game for a pittance - merely 5€.

Inconceivably, this game had better game play, a more complete and compelling story line, more hours of game time, and in several instances better graphics than the 60€ equivalent FF15, released a full 15 years later.

This would suggest that games are actually deflating in price year-over-year, despite suffering from increased DLC and native advertising bloat.

This is due to a little thing called SUPPLY and DEMAND. You see, the SUPPLY of video games is always increasing. Every year, dozens of new games are published and they all have to compete not only amongst themselves but with ALL PRIOR GAMES. However, the DEMAND for these games is predicated on the number of people who want to pay microtransaction freemium crap, and this pool of buyers is falling as appreciation for vintage classics is on the rise.

If you simply took a little time to brush up on your ECONOMICS 101, you would realize that this should bring the PRICE of VIDEO GAMES back DOWN. Your claim that games should be increasing in price is both ILLOGICAL and AHISTORICAL, as the market rate for games has been falling consistently over time IN THE FACE OF INFLATION.

So maybe put that in your PIPE and SMOKE IT.