First off, welcome back. Extra credit for pointing out what the lootboxes in Mario Kart World are about.
The past few years have changed my perception of value a bit because of the significant inflation due to Russia's war. I asked myself why I should hold back on purchasing certain video games when the alternative is that my money loses its purchasing power due to my investment portfolio possibly not being able to outpace inflation. That's when I started to add more remasters of Wii U games to my Switch collection with not much care for their prices at the time. Mario Kart 8, Captain Toad, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, Hyrule Warriors, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Tropical Freeze and Xenoblade Chronicles X; possiby more that I can't remember right now. That way I got something for my money that is definitely worth it, because I knew that I would spend many, many hours on these games.
At the end of the day value is about how many hours of true enjoyment you get out of games and whether or not a game is so good that you are going to replay it. If the answer is "a lot" for the former and "yes" for the latter, then the price becomes pretty insignificant for anyone who isn't in the situation that they have to live from paycheck to paycheck. I had to rebuy Mario Kart 8 in order to get to the expansion pass with 48 tracks, which itself costed money. But so what? More than 100 hours of blissful entertainment were always guaranteed.
Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.
