With the PS5 and Xse comes the excuse to increase the price of our beloved titles,
nevertheless I was surprised when they announced the RRP of 80eur.

Is 80eur a reasonable price? Is there a point for this when price devaluates months down the line? Do you have a value threshold?

What is your own perception?

Old related threads for Switch and WiiU

The excuses get ridiculous. Yes costs increase, but that is mostly on the publishers itself, chasing the best new shiniest tech. And also sales grow incredibly, that offsets rising costs. I mean in the 90s the top games often selled multiple 10Ks, sometimes even crazy number like more than 100K! Woohoo! Nowadays companies complain about "only" a million or so.

And worse of all: these 80€ are only the base price. There are Ultimate editions, Game passes, Microtransactions, subscriptions and whatnot. That massively increases the revenue of these companies. But they still don't get enough.

Interestingly enough, the ones most deserving a high price point are indie games, as these sell way fewer copies and don't have (usually) crazy monetization schemes on top of the game.

Edit: no paragraphs in quick reply.

It's not the excuses that are ridiculous, it's your comparison of apples and oranges.

How about you compare 90s games to modern games with equally low production values and content? 90s games were also expensive as fuck considering how little they offered content wise.

Also you must have forgotten about all those devs and publishers going bankrupt during gen 7 and with it the death of most A and AA games because they weren't profitable despite selling hundred of thousands to a million copies. And to spell it out for you, A and AA means that they didn't use the shiniest tech. Tech is not expensive, manpower is. Why is manpower expensive? Because costs of living increase. Absolutely ridiculous to blame the publishers for that, yet you did.

In gen 7 many devs went bankrupt because that's when they all started trying to be AAA merchants with inflated budgets rather than be efficient and have quality content they tried to push the newest tech and have well known actors doing their VAs. A and AA didn't die because they weren't profitable they just weren't made at all because everyone was trying to make AAA titles except only Nintendo who funny enough are the most profitable of all in this industry and they have numerous A and AA titles with the fastest selling title this gen being a AA level one not to mention many A and AA titles this gen has done well as the indie side of things have shown.

The is also one glaring problem with your man power argument here and firstly it's the fact that publishers are raking in millions for a select few while their workers are paid peanuts or not at all in some cases, Bobby Kotick for instance makes bonuses that are comparable to bankers it's not a case that costs have gone up forcing prices to go up no as costs sort themselves out in the short run it's a case of no matter how much money is made by Publishers them and their shareholders will never see it as enough and use any and all excuses to drain more out of people. Secondly how has the man power changed in such a way that the PS4 and X1 versions stay the same in price while the new gen versions get a bump of 30 quid?

Tell us what exactly has changed for them to bump the price up by what is equivalent of a DLC season pass as in the UK people are being billed £25 extra, main land Europe they're paying 30 Euros extra and mind you we already know from a news story on this very site that they wanted to increase it even more. How good is your memory because if it's decent you'll remember Nintendo in the 90s did what these developers are doing now and got hit with price fixing charges and a £300m fine that's were this fiasco is headed for publishers as like with loot boxes if they don't sort themselves out the Governments will step in and sort it out for them.

The game industry makes more revenue than ever before. It is their decision to opt for projects with ridiculous budgets. Yes, companies go bankrupt, but not the AAA-publishers, that cram their games full of Microtransactions AND ask for a higher price. It is the small companies. That is why I said, if any the indies need to ramp up prices. The AAA-publishers already did with ultimate versions and season passes.

And yes, old games had lower budget. Yet still many of them make every year my TOP 50 list of greatest games. The ridiculous budgets aren't making newer games better in itself, only more expensive.

But ask yourself: does the yearly update of FIFA and NBA2K really need a higher price point, if they make most of their revenue with microtransactions (which is reported). These are game with a free2play-economy, that ask for a base price on top of it. And remember: these were the first games to announce the price hike.

For people who want to game on the cheap, there are always the Sales. Especially on Sonys side everything goes in there rapidly enough, that you can get absolutely everything you want for half, a third or a quarter of the price, and it won't be any different this gen. The price increase will just hit the day one and pre order buyers. I was one of the day one buyers and pre ordered absolutely everything till about half way through last gen, then i realised i was still playing games when new stuff came out.

I started buying 90% of my games in the Sony sales, because they were never ending. With just a few, mainly Sony exclusives on day one a year.I expect to play every single Sony exclusive and not pay £70 for any of them, so it's not a huge problem to me. I do expect to see this gen mirror my views and instead of everything being front loaded, there will be longer legs on everything. I also expect them to trim that price slightly, and then people will perceive higher value at £60, because it used to be £70. If it came down to having to pay that price I would do it, but not if it was that price then none stop mtx. That would put me off for sure, but it seems it won't be the case for Sonys exclusives.

When the developer asks the customer for empathy about the increased costs of production, you know something is wrong. Because let's face it: is it my problem that developers don't know how to handle money? Do I need to jump to their aid? No, I do not. Don't push your problems onto me.

Yes, costs of living have increased, but not only for the developers themselves but for me and you as well, for all of us. And also there is the fact that the entire industry is still growing strong, so rising costs are easily offset by rising sales. The only excuse I may probably allow is inflation, everything else is hot air.

Also, many gamers nowadays are accustomed to the cliff-like decrease of game prices after the launch period and exploit that. Of course they do! It's logic. Developers could harvest much bigger revenues if they didn't drop their prices to mere fragments in such short times, but unless they still do then customers will take advantage of that.

I agree.
The main price increase I have seen discussed online is to 70usd, but the European hike has not been touched much since the prices were announced. 

People will come in and mention tax, that sales tax not included. But the price hike is not covered only by tax, maybe similar to the cartridge NS tax.
Let's call this new tax, the gen9 tax!

Enjoy the games, if you can afford them that is

Funny and also terrible that 5-6 games bought at full price, cost the same as a new next gen console. I will still do what i mostly did so far: No buy on launch. Ok i might have gotten a few games out of hype/urge to play them, but now? No way! Getting a game at half price only 4-5 months from launch and playing it at a better state (patches) is a win - win situation for me.

They aren't excuses, they are explanations, if you want to ignore them and pretend to live in a parallel reality its your choice. It sucks that price have increased, but was expected as everything increases in price number (not always in real inflation correct monetary way).I don't like the new price tag and that will mean even less launch games bought by me, so except the very few games I'll buy on launch I'll keep doing what I done the last 2 gens, wait for the game to hit 10-20 price point before I buy.