$70 Games Too Expensive? Let Me Tell You About the 90s

DS: “How would you feel about paying $150 for Turok: Dinosaur Hunter for the N64?

Obviously, no one likes a price hike, but is this price hike really as drastic as some of us are making it out to be? Is this really such an expensive time to be a gamer? Well, as someone who was around during the glory days of cartridge-based consoles and physical-only distribution, let me tell you that the answer to both questions is a resounding ‘no,’ and I’ve done some inflation calculations to prove it.”

[anast]

The complete versions of most games are around $120, which is comparable to the prices in this article.

[EvertonFC]

"The complete versions of most games are around $120"
Lay off the drugs 😂🤣

[mandf]

Neo geo games were 129.99 back in the day

[dumahim]

@mandf
They were more than that. I remember them being $250. Wiki says $200 and up.

[anast]

With those emojis, I'm not sure if you are being ironic or purposely slow.

[mandf]

Dumahim
Gamepro magazine had used ones in the back for 130 I never seen them In stores internet wasn't around so you could be right.

[EvertonFC]

I wasn't on about Neo Geo games, I took the comment as $120 for complete games today whoops.

[Neonridr]

I mean deluxe editions can be that high easily.

[anast]

It's called VAT just encase you need to know. Complete versions of games are $99. In my country there is a %16 VAT charge which comes out to about 114.84. I am not even including the first round of DLCs (not expansions) that have been cut out of the game and resold to us. This would obviously drive the price even higher than $120. In other countries complete games, not the base games are even more.

[Ashunderfire86]

I remember when Mission Impossible for N64 cost $80 bucks!!! And it had the worst rating on IGN at the time! 6.0 out of 10 dang!!!! $80 bucks for that??? Both my brother and I gave it a rental at Blockbuster and beat it in a weekend! Save us from paying $80 bucks 😁

[mudakoshaka]

I bought it!

[Necr0philiac]

I thought Mission Impossible was a lot of fun for its time era

[mudakoshaka]

@CorpseF*cker It was a great experience! :D

[TallDarknWavy]

For those who don't understand economics, which is most of you, the reason the prices were higher back then when adjusted for inflation is the gaming market was a niche market. Nowhere near as many games and systems were sold, so with expected fewer sales you needed to charge more money.
Now that the market has expanded exponentially, you can charge less money for each game and still make more because your target market is so much greater.
This is what happens when niche markets become mainstream.
Today, gaming is 2.5 times bigger in cashflow than the entire music and movie industry combined. This has been in large part due to massive market expansion but also microtransactions that suck people's money away.

[potatoseal]

But how many people worked on and developed a game back then compared to how many work on them now? And how long did it take to develop back then compared to now? What were the total development budgets when compared properly? There are other variables at play to decide whether $70 now is too much when compared to back then. Don't you think?

[Imalwaysright]

potatoseal

Not really. For example Sony's gaming division was more profitable in 2018 alone than it was with the entirety of the PS2 generation when games were supposedly far less expensive to make and this before Sony raising the price of their games. Last year MTs alone generated more revenue for Activision than the company generated in 2013. Seeing publishers crying about development costs when they are breaking revenue and profit records is one of the funniest things I ever came across in regards to this industry and I don't understand why gamers believe in what these companies have to say because these are the same exact companies that keep on throwing underhanded crapola in our direction the most recent case being Redfall wich was just another broken mess of a game to add to the ever increasing pile of broken games at launch.

[Strange99]

You realize when you start a comment off with a middle finger statement, not many people are going to care at all what you have to say because you are clearly an a-hole, and we are all ok with that. DR

[Melankolis]

Game developments are longer now and more people involved, more money needed. They used to release Final Fantasy and Ratchet every year and Tekken every two year at most.

[nitus10]

Back in the 1980's through to the early 2000's cartridges were the go-to media for games and basically they were much more expensive to produce than CD's, DVD's and Blue-ray's (yes there were other DVD ish media as well - example "GameCube") which actually replaced them.

As we progress futher into the 2000's digital downloads are becoming more popular although disk (ie. DVD and Blu-ray) is still used (Yes I am aware of the "Switch"). We also have to take into account inflation (which you did) so that even though a game on a cartridge was say USD$150 and a modern game of similar genre today is also the say USD$150, overall games have actually got cheaper. Of course this is very subjective but a game produced back in the 1990's would not have the same quality (eg. graphics and possibly gameplay) as a modern game. Note: I did use the word "subjective".

I actually do agree that microtransactions do suck peoples money away but then again it is upto the buyer if they wish to purchase these. Unfortunately too many people get sucked in (I actually liken this to a form of gambling).

[EvertonFC]

PS1 and PS2 sold more than PS3 and PS4 so your section on consoles Not selling as many is void pmsl.
Also today's games cost 100m upwards with Dev teams 300 plus so YES £70 for a game is perfectly fine.
Back in the day a PS2 game took a year to make with 20 people ffs.
I'll let that sink in.

[Strange99]

Complete? Wtf are you talking about? The single player game is complete. What you mean is the complete game with all dlc and who gaf about dlc except those who have nothing else to play.

[nitus10]

Personally I don't really have an issue with DLC which "of course" depends on the game, but I definately don't like microtransactions.

[seanpitt23]

I can remember my mum was paying £50 for games back in 1989 to 1996 for Nintendo that was a lot of money back then..

[Gaming4Life1981]

I have never payed that much for any of these games and I owned them all. $70 is too expensive but I GameShare on Xbox and Playstation so it doesn't really affect me.

It was no reason to raise the price of games to $70 except for greed.

[EvertonFC]

Clearly never read the article, gaming never been so cheap imo.
£70 for games i spend lots of time in, what's a pi** take is taking the wife and kids to the cinema and spending £100 on tickets, popcorn, drinks etc for a 2hr film.

[andy85]

I always use this argument. Even as a single person, once you've got a drink, some food you're spending £25 for 2 hours. You can buy a game for £70 (under 60 physical day one) get 30+ hours out of it then sell it for most of what you paid afterwards.

[Gaming4Life1981]

The movie argument is irrelevant to what I said. If you spend 100 bucks at the movies that's on you and your choice.

Gaming was cheaper back in the day and that's a fact. I get that in your opinion it wasn't but that's not true.

[Nineball2112]

Bullbutter

[senorfartcushion]

Mate, it was 25 quid for a ps2 game, 35 quid for a 360 game and now that’s doubled over two generations. The 90s argument doesn’t work because the writer hasn’t factored in stagnant wages and the economic heft of things like The Pandemic, 2008’s financial crash and our lack of migrant workers.

I get the film argument, but games are also cheaper to make than the films you see once. Nothing will ever justify the cost of a family day out to the pictures, but gaming CAN be cheaper - and should be. It’s just greed. Too many nobs from the top taking the workers’ rightfully-earned wage.

[andy85]

...no it wasn't £25 for a PS2 game. Nowhere near.

[Tapani]

I'd rather invest in a home-theater, cook some good food and bake something sweet using a sour dough base, drink home-made juice made from berries with some sodastreamed bubble water in it, chill back at a big sofa with a lot of space and quiet environment, and look at an amazing 4K picture quality at 85" Mini-led/OLED, and enjoy extremely crisp and balanced high-end audio at more reasonable volume, and watch a superb movie or two while having the ability to take breaks!