4K 60FPS Glory.

Posted in another thread.

Game prices in the 1980s adjusted for inflation would be $140+ today. Considering games take more time to develop for today, games are extremely underpriced.

Is Microsoft going to wait until June showcase to announce FF7R for Xbox? Or does Nintendo have some temporary marketing and it will be announced this week? When will Oblivion be announced? Maybe at the ESO Direct on April 10th? Probably nothing this week, it's Nintendo week and South of Midnight but this release schedule will be weird if it's close to Indiana Jones.

depends if you want gaming as mainstream thing for the whole planet or like in the 80s for some rich white kids. 

We could obviously go back to only 1/5 or even worse number of gamers like in the 80s. Or people buy even less different games even though the industry complains already about people only playing the same damn games over years. Not sure if that will make the industry happy to have even less million sellers. 

Another great thing in light of all these price increases - Play Anywhere. Buying once, having your games available on multiple devices, lovely.

I grew up in the 80's.

I am brown.

I mowed lawns, washed cars, hoed in cotton fields, collected and sold aluminum cans all at the ages 7-14 for my video games, game consoles, school supplies, and school clothing.  

Gaming did very well in the 80s.  

Generally speaking I would say that the increase in game prices from $60 to $70 back in 2020 was justified. Before that point, new games had spent about 15 years at $60, and $60 to $70 was only a 16% increase, during the same time frame from 2005-2020 the average price for other forms of entertainment increased substantially more, average movie ticket prices in the US increased from $6.41 to $9.18 (43% increase), MP3's increased from $0.99 to $1.29 (30% increase), Netflix pricing increased from $8 a month to $13 (a 62% increase), so really a 16% increase after 15 years for games wasn't that bad.

However, it hasn't even been 5 full years since game prices started to increase to $70, feels too soon to jump to $80 or more imo. Consumers are really hurting as pay hasn't really increased enough to match the rising inflation since Covid in many places around the world, and gaming is ultimately a luxury, consumers are more likely to cut buying full priced games from their budget than other items. This is not the right time for publishers to worry quite so much about their bottom line as to rise game prices, they'd be much better off if they stopped chasing cutting edge graphics for awhile, moved studios to lower cost of living areas so that developer pay won't keep sky-rocketing and bringing up game budgets alongside it, cut some of the AAA bloat such as the oversized middle-management that many studios have, etc.

Don't know. I mean, we saw during the shit show with the FTC that Sony is making game developers sign something to prevent them  for publishing specifically on Xbox/GamePass. At this point, and until SE actually publish it on Xbox, nothing is confirming that Sony did not do that for FF7 Remake. No matter how SE is pretending to support Xbox now... :D

So you had to do a lot to have money for an expensive hobby in the 80s. How does this counter anything I've said? I've mentioned rich white kids because they didn't have to wash cars as much. I never had to wash cars to get a game as kid. I just asked my father. That was my point (not that my family was rich but definitely above German average)

I'm also not saying that the industry didn't have a nice revenue in the 80s. But they reached that with higher prices. Now we have lower prices but more players. We can go back to less players but higher prices. That's what this argument was about after all. 

It's like comparing Nike with Luis Vuitton (exaggerated). Both have nice revenue numbers but more people can enjoy Nike lol. Doesn't mean that only one way works to sell your products. Just the amount of people who can enjoy it will be different. 

I'm just having trouble finding where you found the information that gaming in the 80s was just for rich white kids. I don't remember it being like that. Most of my friends and relatives I grew up with, gamed (some were more well off than others).  I don't remember skin color even being a thing between us, or it being the determining factor if they had money or not.  I would borrow games from them, and they from me.  I never asked them how they got their games.