Shadow1980 said:
Yeah, I know:
Haven't updated it to take into account Switch 2 games, but that $80 line should suffice to put the price of an $80 game today into context. I've been buying my own video games for 27 years, and this whole idea that $80 is highway robbery or something falls upon deaf ears. Video games have always been an expensive hobby, and it used to be even worse in that regard. Even if we ignore the expensive cartridges of old systems, disc-based games from Gens 5 to 7 were on average more expensive than today's games. Honestly, I do kinda blame the industry for one thing: letting the $60 standard persist for so long (two generations spanning 15 years). They let people get used to the idea that games were going to stay $60 forever. The maximum price for a new game should have been bumped up by $10 each generation to keep software prices at least somewhat in pace with inflation. |
The most insidious part people leave out in this discussion, is that not lowering the retail price is used by companies as an excuse to drive truly anti-consumer practices like microtransaction hell, on-disc DLC, early access periods which will only get longer and more expensive, releasing games broken and having to patch it several times over years (basically another form of early access)...
Production budgets have skyrocketed in the last few generations. They have to recoup that money somehow. If they're not making it back up front how do you think they're gonna try and get it.
Nintendo have kept themselves somewhat immune to more extreme issues, but even their production budgets will be pushing it by now. Breath of the Wild with the time it took to develop and the scale of it's world, was not cheap to make just because it was made for toasters.
Being the first to increase base prices to a new level means Nintendo doesn't want to follow those shady tactics, but people want to paint them the villain of all things.
