$100 per game isn't going to be something a lot of gamers and parents of kid gamers are going to be able to afford. Yes inflation is real, but they are going to need to find ways to lower the costs of development, the first to go should be expensive ray tracing. Is it neat?, sure but when it results in 30fps or less I'm not playing a game with ray tracing.

I mean its all fair enough. Its your money. I just think GP kinda makes people value the work that goes into creating a video game less. I think thats why MS is struggeling a bit right now.

I can only speak for myself, but I definitely value their work. I almost went into game design myself, I know they are being overworked and get underpaid all just to line the pockets of executives. Most game design studios are in some of highest cost of living cities in the world, and yet the devs who make these games are only getting paid like $80-90k a year in some cases, far less than many other 4 year college degree jobs pay in those same cities.

But while I'm conscious of the above, I also have to look out for my own finances. The fact is gaming is becoming more and more expensive of a hobby, and that sucks. 

I really think that these publishers need to reign AAA budgets back in. We shouldn't be so regularly seeing games that cost $150m+ to make. Alan Wake 2 last year was made for a combined development + marketing budget of just 70m euros, and it's not only 3rd place in Game of the Year 2023 rankings behind Baldur's Gate 3 and Zelda, but also had the best graphics of any game released last year. If they can pull that off for 80m euros, it seems like much of the rest of the AAA industry is doing something wrong. Time to stop the ballooning budgets and the ballooning development cycles before that bubble pops. 

I agree with you, but 80M euros is still alot of money and they need alot of people to buy the game at full price regardless. Im not sure if Alan Wake 2 has made much money.

Well you need to experience something to value it,  that's why we rented games in the old days, or played the demo's (uhm also in the old days), if it is worth it people will invest in it, I myself have bought all the Yakuza games/SE games/PErsona Golden etc even when they are on gamepass because they were worth it.

Games like Fortnite are the value killers and I can't blame them, they offer so much without asking a 1$ from the user but some of those users spend more money on Fortnite than the price of a console...

Well you have so much more information available today before purchasing a game than ever before. You cant be 100% it will be great, but thats true with demos as well. Some demos are awful, but the full game ends up being great or vice versa. 

Something important to remember when it comes to game development.. not every game will be a success. Which means a studio making a small profit on a $100m game (say $30m), is actually skating on very thin ice/heading for bankruptcy if every second such game they develop only returns $50m in revenue. So when looked at like that, games like Alan Wake 2 *really* need to *double* their budget, so the studio can afford a few flops &/or dead ends before it finds its next hit.

It is not inconceivable that studios may plow multiple millions into potential new works before canning them and opting to go in a different direction as well. So there would be significant dollars that go into games that never even get released. And the successful games have to cover all that as well as their own costs for studios to survive.

A lot of gamers rented PS1 games from blockbuster video and then burned them onto a cd. For about $6 you had the game forever, $5 rental and less than $1 blank cd cost.

Tomb Raider Remaster is strange, I feel the framerate of the old version is horrible while playing so fluent in the modern version.