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Darc Requiem on 17 June 2013
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Michael-5 said:
Miguel_Zorro said:
Michael-5 said:

How many of those have gone debunk recently? Do you know if statistically more companies are going bust now then before? I can tell you that a lot of the bankrupt game companies on that list went bankrupt in the 1980's. Remember the big gaming crash of 83?

Also where the heck did you pay $70 for SNES games? SNES games were $40/$50 brand new, N64 games were $50 for the most part too. Nowadays a brand new game day 1 costs $60, and can have anything from $30-$80 of DLC.

$50 in 1996 is about $75 in todays currency, so you're right games are cheaper now, but not as much as you make it seem and when you factor in DLC, they really aren't.

Maybe it was NES.  I thought it was SNES, or both.  This was in Canada.  I used 1990 as the reference date to calculate inflation.

It's possible that they used tiered pricing and charged more for AAA titles, but I definitely saw games for $70.

As for stats around how many have went out of business recently - I don't have that information.  However, I have reviewed the financial statements of many video games companies, and many of them have lost money in recent years, even the big shops have had money-losing quarters.

 The entire video game value chain is flawed right now.

I definatly did not see SNES games sell for $60, and I have most of the expensive ones. Chrono Trigger was $50, Earthbound was $50, Tetris was $40....No games on a Nintendo console sold for over $50 until the Wii U, it marked a first for $60 games. The only time a game cost above $50 prior to now on a Nintendo console was if it came with a peripheral like a Super Scope or Wii Fit Board.

The number of debunk studios now, is much less then that in the 80's. You know what happened in the 80's? Games were cheap to produce, so we saw a lot of companies make utter crap, and the consumer just stopped playing. Competition is what makes games better, and there a lot more studios now then ever before, so we need to weed some out. It's sad that major studios like THQ have gone bust, but just like 3DO we will forget about them.

Plus it's not the smaller studios which compain about the used game market, it's mostly EA and Microsoft, and they are on top. EA is just plain greedy with online passes and exclusive rights to NFL, Porsche, etc. If you don't put the pressure on them after they keep making crappy games, then they'll just build a monopoly, and that will drive more studios out of buisness.


Actually SNES and Genesis games with large cartridges often sold for more than $50. The SNES port of SF2 went for $69.99 or more, Phantasy Star IV for Genesis was even more expensive. I remember my brother and I having to rent PSIV because my mother would pay that much for a game. This brings up another point. 

While games have a higher budgets now, the physical production costs are far cheaper now. Cartridgers were $25 or more depending on their capacity. Discs are less than $1 each. Game launches were riskier proposition during the cartridge era. If a publisher ordered 500,000 cartridges and their game sold 100,000 copies, they'd be looking at a 10 million dollar loss. Game publishers are using used games to divert attention away from their mismanagement.