this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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Gaming
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Honestly, he's right. Game prices are the same 60-70 dollars they've been for 30 years, but nothing else has stayed the same price that long. With inflation, a game should be around 200 dollars.
Super Mario Bros 3 came out in the last half of 1988 and costed $50 dollars, or around 127 dollars. It also costed about $800,000 to develop, which is about $2 million today.
Nowadays, it costs around $80 million (about 40x) on average to make a AAA title that costs $60 (about half). This is why all these games have cash shops and battle passes and paid dlc and whatnot: they need to make up that extra cost somewhere.
Super Mario Bros also only sold about 2.5 million units in the first several month after release. Baldur's Gate, for example, sold almost 6 million in 2 weeks. The NES sold 2.5 million units in its first year. The Switch sold 13 million. Even the worst selling modern console, the Xbox Series X sold 8 million in the first year. While individual game prices have not risen, the total number of sales has dramatically increased. So pardon me if I don't think the cost of games not rising has been a problem for publishers and developers of AAA titles. Their real problem has been putting out good content that enough gamers want.