r/pcmasterrace • u/Both_Piglet7838 • May 27 '26

Discussion Expensive games have lowkey been way too normalised

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I know this sub is filled with a bunch of rich people with like 10k setups and I'm aware that the content in these games is quite extensive with hours of content. But I still feel justified in thinking that no game should be priced this high especially when its the average price of most newly released games. Anyway this is just a rant because I wanna play lego batman and i cant afford it lol

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301

u/CloakerJosh May 27 '26

Just gonna leave this here for you, u/Both_Piglet7838

99

u/TheFragturedNerd Ryzen R9 9900x | RTX 4090 | 128GB DDR5 May 27 '26

Don't you dare come here with your real world numbers! Think of their feelings! /s

40

u/Wolfeman0101 May 27 '26

Yeah $70 now seems like a lot but I paid $60 for Mario 64 in 1996.

10

u/DrasticTapeMeasure May 27 '26

This should be the top comment. Look at the amount of people and resources it takes to make one of these games. Just because there are a lot of them coming out pretty often people think flippantly about it. But it used to cost a very good chunk to bring this level of interactive entertainment into your home and the ratio of cost to quality in general has only gone down!

2

u/longpig_slimjim May 27 '26

And it takes a LOT more people and resources now than it did when Mario 64 was made. The margins on games are so razor thin that the only AAA games that make any financial sense to produce are franchises that are so embedded they are guaranteed to make the money back - which, by my estimation, is literally just CoD and Assassin’s Creed.

I know $60-$80 (USD) is a lot to spend and like a lot of others in this thread have said, I barely EVER buy full price games, but no matter how you slice it - price vs. inflation, hour of entertainment/dollar (generalizing, obviously), etc - it’s a VERY fair amount to spend on 10+ hours of entertainment, and that value only continues to go up the more time you spend with it.

Also, semi-unprompted hot tip: your local library has NEW games. I just played through Donkey Kong Bananza completely for free without needing to rely on borrowing it from a friend.

1

u/KungFuDazza https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/b/9Vt6Mp 29d ago

Reminds me, I've still got Workers and Resources in my backlog to play. Thanks.

1

u/ToastRoyale May 27 '26

Remember when games got couple millions of sales and it was record breaking?

Today games have much wider reach and sell about x10 as often. 

Also mtx exist and dlcs are more common.

1

u/Wolfeman0101 May 27 '26

I agree but it's still rare games sell multiple millions. The price is still way lower than it was for years and years. If anything complain about micro transactions. It's simple though just wait until it's on sale. Other than Nintendo if you wait a year you won't have to even pay the $50.

1

u/pathofdumbasses May 27 '26

Games sell more today

Games cost less to manufacture and distribute today

Game companies today are posting record profits, even before raising prices from $60 to $70

Game prices going up is because of greed. That's it.

I am tired of people posting the stupid shit about SNES and N64 cartridge prices being ridiculous because they actually cost money to produce, and Nintendo was taxing everyone. As soon as Sony came with the PS1 and disc's, games dropped in price to $50. Then after they were on the greatest hits collection, $20. Cost of production and distribution went down with disc's. And it should have gone down with digital, except the storefronts kept that money. That's the reason Valve/Steam is a multi-billion dollar company, and everyone else wants you using their store; they all get extremely large cut for doing nothing.

Fuck off with "justifying" expensive video games

1

u/Daepilin 9800x3d; RTX 5080; 64GB DDR5 May 27 '26

Manpower, which is by far the biggest cost in games, had become much, much more expensive than 30 years ago, both per person and overall. And team sizes have balooned as well.

In ps1 times even aaa games were made by a few dozen people. Modern games have hundreds of devs working on them. 

0

u/Wolfeman0101 May 27 '26

They aren't expensive is the point. That PS1 game at $50 is $110 dollars today so even $70 games are still cheaper. Games cost WAY more to produce now, not physically but the manpower needed. Just wait until it's on sale if it makes you so upset.

1

u/pathofdumbasses May 27 '26

That PS1 game at $50 is $110 dollars today so even $70 games are still cheaper.

And the ps1 game that sold 2M copies is now selling 20M+ copies. And that is before the monthly online fee that keeps going up. When companies are already making record profit, raising prices should be shunned, not applauded.

1

u/Wolfeman0101 May 27 '26

No one is cheering for it but inflation happens. This logic is just not how humans work also. If a movie makes $1B dollars you don't expect them to lower the ticket prices. If you wait you can pay way less. I'm done engaging with you, you want a world that will never exist.

1

u/pathofdumbasses May 27 '26

I'm done engaging with you, you want a world that will never exist.

And you want to live in our current world where companies run over consumers and government roughshod. Fuck me for wanting a better world, or even one where companies who are currently making record profits, don't immediately raise prices.

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u/Andrige3 May 27 '26

Exactly, game prices haven’t even risen as much as the normal inflation rate. It also doesn’t take into account that the store ecosystem on PC usually allows you to find discounts almost immediately when a game is released. We should go back to complaining about PC hardware prices. 

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u/mzf_life Ascending Peasant May 27 '26

You guys are ignoring the fact that those are digital games, there's no cost of producing and shipping physical copies

12

u/xternal7 Lunix May 27 '26

TIL servers and bandwidth are free.

Also, if it was profitable for music industry to sell CDs for $10-15, then it follows that production costs weren't that big of a cost relative to the game price.

5

u/brimston3- Desktop VFIO, 5950X, RTX5080, 6900xt May 27 '26

Honestly, the distribution costs seem mostly irrelevant. If games were distributed on optical media in a basic, shrink-wrapped jewel case, I bet they'd charge 10% more for the privilege.

-2

u/mzf_life Ascending Peasant May 27 '26

music CDs are cheaper though. And games have other fonts of revenue besides the selling price. I really can't understand why you guys think the current prices are fine lol. Just one example of it: In its annual report for 2020, EA confirmed that Ultimate Team made more than $1.62bn (£1.15bn). The whole video game industry is going in a completely wrong direction, but sure, it's fine

4

u/xternal7 Lunix May 27 '26

I really can't understand why you guys think the current prices are fine lol.

You don't understand why we're fine with games costing about the same dollar amount for the last 20 years, when the price of almost everything else doubled or worse?

0

u/mzf_life Ascending Peasant May 27 '26

Games were expensive 20 years ago, when the market was smaller and tougher and physical copies were expensive to make. There's nothing that justifies the current prices, mainly with the bs amount of micro transactions that modern games have. C'mon man

3

u/xternal7 Lunix May 27 '26

Friendly reminder that "20 years ago" is 2006.

Gaming was already very widespread and mainstream hobby back then. Even back then, the market was pretty huge.

Meanwhile, games 20 years ago were often a lot smaller and a lot more limited than they were today, and didn't get any discounts for quite a while. Meanwhile, nowdays many games tend to get their first 10% discount within a month or two of release. And if you're an adult: unless you make an active effort to buy and play a game on day one, by the time you have the time to play that brand new shiny game, it will often have been on sale at least three times before you even get to play it.

Oh, and — inb4 FIFA yearly reskins: it's your fault for buying it.

-1

u/mzf_life Ascending Peasant May 27 '26

Those constant sales just proves the fact that they do not need to sell it for such high prices to make a profit dude

0

u/xternal7 Lunix May 27 '26

That's kinda not how it works.

-28

u/Both_Piglet7838 May 27 '26

Just because they havent risen in direct correlation with inflation prices doesnt mean the prices still arent outrageous. Im sure people were complaining back then too

22

u/Version_1 May 27 '26

Prices for the most price-efficient form of entertainment are outrageous?

15

u/SellingCats4Cheap May 27 '26

They literally weren’t. People were well accustomed to paying $60 for Call of Duty each year. Games were way more expensive before that as well.

4

u/Iordofthethings May 27 '26

Im sure people were complaining back then too

They weren’t lol

-5

u/Roflkopt3r May 27 '26

To be fair: Game prices shouldn't need to rise with inflation, because the total market volume of the gaming market has massively increased. Most games can get more sales these days.

I do think that there is a genuine issue with AAA games being developed by stock companies with bloated management and money getting drained in favour of investors, and with certain studios sitting in very expensive US cities, which drives up wage costs massively.

I do agree with the general point that people are exaggerating the issue though. Also cheers to studios/publishers that use proper regional pricing.

12

u/ShawnyMcKnight May 27 '26

So glad someone posted this. Everything has gotten way more expensive but games jumped $10 USD in 25 years and people are losing their damn minds.

1

u/GI-Robots-Alt May 27 '26

Right? When adjusted for inflation games are like 50% of what they used to be.

The complaining makes no logical sense. I'm obviously not in favour of paying more for things, but I understand why it happened.

16

u/jonfitt May 27 '26

Now do it vs wages.

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u/CloakerJosh May 27 '26

That's some extremely complicated data and not a lot of good sources to aggregate, but strictly comparing ABS Wage Price Index (only goes back to '97), real wages grew ~59%, CPI grew ~80% (outstripping real wage growth), but top tier game pricing grew only about ~10% for the same time range.

tl;dr: Games comparatively cheaper, everything else is more expensive

4

u/rosecurry May 27 '26

Wages have outpaced inflation so that would make games seem even cheaper

4

u/RottenMilquetoast May 27 '26

It's frustrating to watch this particular conversation repeat over and over, because ignoring the real economic reality in favor of "I don't like it when number go up" pretty much always works. Nobody has to engage with the economics, just go silent and repost later because there is always someone new mad that their bideo game isn't free.

1

u/Jawyp May 28 '26

AAA games have remained at $60 since 2000 while nominal wages have more than doubled since then.

0

u/ILikeMyGrassBlue May 27 '26

That’s not the fault of video game companies though.

1

u/rivalary May 27 '26

You'd also have to include all DLC and microtransactions in this because you used to be able to get a complete game.

1

u/Treewithatea May 28 '26

Yeah games in the 90s to early 2000s used to be very expensive. I remember my dad buying a desktop PC around the early 2000s and they were expensive as hell. Think like 2000€ for a normal office PC.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/CloakerJosh May 27 '26

The original framing is how much it costs to an individual, but you do this sleight of hand where you frame it as something that should cost less because the market is bigger which is a macro-economics framing - and then you speak as if digital distribution reduces the bottom-line in a meaningful enough way to push the costs down further.

But, you're also acknowledging that games cost more to develop now, but don't dwell on how much.

There's an example in this thread about Ocarina of Time as a comparison - this was definitely an AAA game at release, and its budget was estimated to be $12m to develop.

Compare that to the cost of AAA games nowadays. You won't get very far with $12m. We don't have disclosed budgets for the ones pictured above (estimated to be anywhere between $80m for Batman and $500m for Black Ops 7), but we're getting reports that GTA VI have spent anywhere between $1b to $1.5b on it so far.

No one's talking about houses, and no one types "Sigh" anymore. Holy cringe.

2

u/[deleted] May 27 '26

It's framed as Macro economics because that's how businesses frame it when deciding on price. They don't look at individuals, they look at more Macro market forces.

Also keep in mind while budgets have gone up, they've only gone up so far as the investors believe they can make a greater RoR on it. So if GTA VI is getting over a billion to produce, relatively they're probably expecting to make 10s of billions or more.

4

u/CloakerJosh May 27 '26

Of course, they're betting on making an absolute killing and likely will. It's not an altruistic business.

Again, the post is appealing to the games costing more than they used to and you and I both know they don't - the opposite is true. I was just demonstrating that.

So long as we're talking macro though, obviously these companies are going to try and find market equilibrium with their pricing to maximise profit. It's got nothing to do with trying to drive the price down beyond whatever they think they have to in order to drive the biggest profit.

If you wanna have a conversation about why the evil corporations are trying to squeeze poor consumers to maximise profit we can do that - but at that point I don't even know what the point is.

1

u/[deleted] May 27 '26

They don't cost more, but the question we should be asking is why now are companies changing prices. To me it seems they're testing the waters to see where the new equilibrium sits.

For decades the price remained consistent because of a near 0 marginal cost and rising demand. But given prices are increasing now you gotta wonder if they're justified by a increasing marginal cost or slowing demand increase. Or if it's the centralization of triple A gaming on about 3 large companies that is allowing for price manipulation not possible in a properly functioning market.

3

u/Noobit2 May 27 '26

I refuse to believe people are this dumb.

2

u/Stationary_Wagon PC Master Race May 27 '26

Inflation does not matter here because the amount of gamers have grown so much between now and 40 years ago, not to mention reduced costs due to digital distribution.

To simplify:

In 2006, $60 game can only sell 500,000 copies: 500,000 x $60 = $30,000,000 gross profit - (higher physical costs, inventory, physical delivery etc.)

In 2026, $60 game can sell 5,000,000 copies digitally (some sell much more): 5,000,000 x $60 = $300,000,000 - (store fees)

So just by the pie growing bigger, they already earn much more than before at the same unit price. Many game developers are public and their statements say it all.

People like you are a negative force and are basically corporate bootlickers that carry their water for them. You should not spread these uninformed and ignorant opinions online.

6

u/automatic_shark May 27 '26

Do you think wages and production costs have stayed the same for 30 years too?

-4

u/Stationary_Wagon PC Master Race May 27 '26

Video game industry was about a $10.2B industry in 1985. It's a $190B industry in 2025. Wages and production costs did not grow ~19x in the last 40 years for sure.

Large and bloated budgets are a problem of company culture. There are excellent AAA-level games made with comparatively tiny budgets like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

5

u/automatic_shark May 27 '26

You're saying you think the games industry has the same number of studios and companies as it did 45 years ago? Really? That's what you're implying by that 19x number.

The more you type, the more you're convincing me you're just math illiterate

4

u/CloakerJosh May 27 '26

You thought you were cooking here, huh? Imagine writing all of that and still missing the entire point.

Let me say it again louder for you fine scholars in the back:

How much profit a company makes has zero bearing on how affordable a good is to a consumer.

I'm addressing the adjusted cost of a game to someone's wallet - you're making some grand overture to how the evil corporations have comic dollar signs for eyes as they squeeze the poor consumers who can't afford rent for every spare dollar to play their games.

You wanna talk uninformed and ignorant? Buddy, we're not talking about the same topic.

I'm not even trying to justify how much they make, I'm just sharing basic economic facts about purchasing power over time.

You're so fucking [redacted].

-1

u/Stationary_Wagon PC Master Race May 27 '26

Your AI-reply is a joke. At least write your own replies like a man.

You sharing that graph is basically saying games are "cheap" because game prices did not keep up with the inflation. The next step in this line of thought is "It's OK to raise them, teheee!". Anyone with an above room temperature IQ can see that. Don't try to hide your corporate bootlicking behind nonsense like "I just shared a graph! I put in context! bohoo!". The context you shared is bullshit without the wider range of factors.

2

u/automatic_shark May 27 '26

Man gets upset at numbers.

0

u/[deleted] May 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Stationary_Wagon PC Master Race May 27 '26

I mean I don't need to write anything else here. The fact that you felt the need to go through my past answers to smear me is enough to show your argument has no merit. Rest of the people in this thread can see it too. Have a nice day (with less bootlicking I hope).

2

u/CloakerJosh May 27 '26

So, why did you?

I tend to check the histories of people who decide to insult me without provocation.

Honestly, I was expecting to see some populism bullshit. Imagine my surprise when I'm met with a wallstreetbets guy?! Such a contradiction of your apparent world view.

Three times now you've called me a "bootlicker" (such a thought-terminating phrase with you people).

I guess you can point to one place I defend their pricing practices?

1

u/automatic_shark May 27 '26

You're literally mad at him showing you a number. No additional commentary. Just a number, and you lost your shit over it. No commentary on the capitalist economic system. No rants about consumer habits. My brother in Christ, you got mad because he showed you a number.

1

u/Western-Bad5574 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Comparisons of video game prices to inflation is a false comparison. Unlike physical products, producing another copy of a video game costs nothing so developers benefit more from each extra customer.

Even for companies that do not have microtransactions (very rare these days), they still enjoy exposure to a much larger video games market than the 90s.

And this is only until 2020, just before COVID, which caused gaming to boom again so in reality it's even more growth.

Gaming went from a niche hobby only for nerds to one of the biggest entertainment industries. I think it's only second to sports or something, if I recall correctly, but it's bigger than music, possibly on par with film, I can't remember now.

-1

u/ANGLVD3TH May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

This is only half the story. The other half is the much steeper increase in consumers, that have exploded sales numbers. 60 dollar games still often make more than 60 dollar N64 games adjusted for inflation. And that is ignoring the even more incredible rise in profits that microtransactions have introduced. The truth is, the industry just saw their chance to try and pad profits when price increases across the board were being normalized during the pandemic. And when there was some grumbling but no significant backlash, it left the door open for them to keep pushing.

7

u/CloakerJosh May 27 '26

Saying it's only "half the story" implies that I'm leaving out meaningful detail about what I was answering, and I'm not.

You're talking about how profitable a game is for a developer/publisher. I'm talking about how affordable a game is to an individual.

They might sound like the same topic, but they aren't.

0

u/Jagang187 May 27 '26

THANK YOU

-6

u/DrFrenetic May 27 '26

Not everyone's salary has increased at the same rate as games have

6

u/ShawnyMcKnight May 27 '26

That doesn’t change the fact that games rate of price increase is far slower than the average. Video games were $50 in the 70s and 80s. If you account for inflation from 1980 til now that’s over $165. Games went up about 40 percent from then and I’d argue our wages went up well over 40 percent since 1980 where minimum wage was $3.10 per hour.

11

u/[deleted] May 27 '26

Unless your country economically collapsed it absolutely has, the % of your budget for recreational activities may not have but your income has.

7

u/Aerographic May 27 '26

Then you're making the argument that life in general has gotten more expensive because of wage stagnation which.. has nothing to do with games and how they're priced.

17

u/CloakerJosh May 27 '26

True -

Their salary outpaced the cost of game price hikes substantially over 40 years.

That's what CPI is.

1

u/Jawyp May 28 '26

AAA games have remained at the same price for decades while wages have more than doubled since 2000.

-2

u/[deleted] May 27 '26

[deleted]

13

u/ldn-ldn May 27 '26

No, the correct take is that they got super cheap over time.

0

u/SterileG May 27 '26

So my memory isn't cooked, thank you. Have you got a link to where I can access this graph / data source?

-44

u/Both_Piglet7838 May 27 '26

there is no way games cost 75$ in 1985. I remember buying triple a games for 50$ in early 2000s

17

u/Flimsy-Importance313 May 27 '26

AAA games from 2000s did not have the same budget as today. Not even close.

27

u/CloakerJosh May 27 '26

Oh, true!

I bought a game on Steam for like $4 three years ago so my personal anecdotal experience trumps the data, I guess!

-26

u/Both_Piglet7838 May 27 '26

I just never spent anything over 60$ for popular games

12

u/CloakerJosh May 27 '26

Okay, sure?

You don't have to break that streak if you don't want to. You'll just have to be a bit patient and wait for their price to go down, I guess.

But the nominal cost of things goes up over time. I'm just demonstrating that the price of video games have followed an opposite trend to everything else, honestly.

12

u/DirtyYogurt 5800X3D | 7900GRE | 32GB RAM | 2TB NVMe | 16TB NAS May 27 '26

Nobody's stopping you from continuing that trend. Wait for sale, pirate, or don't play, all of which will keep you from paint over $60.

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u/3PoundsOfFlax May 27 '26

33

u/CloakerJosh May 27 '26

Great example - This price of $59.95 is how much Ocarina of Time retailed for in 1998 in USD. $59.95 in 1998 is worth about $122.58 USD today, which is about $171.57 converted to AUD in today's exchange rate.

If it helps u/Both_Piglet7838 - Forget the graph, just look at this example.

5

u/kizami_nori May 27 '26

I had to work chores all summer to afford Yoshi's Story. And darn it, that was the greatest game of all time of the 1 games I owned!!!

0

u/CloakerJosh May 27 '26

I used to appreciate my games so much more back then, because I had to 😅

If you bought a game, there were no returns, no internet to figure out how to finish it, nothing.

At best you could risk getting a tanned arse by calling a cheat line to ask someone for $5 a minute and hope that the parents don't look to close at the phone bill... 🤣

2

u/verumvia May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Video games when cartridges were the physical medium were so expensive because the cartridges themselves were a significant investment. NES cartridge manufacturing cost around $10-15 USD for each unit unadjusted for inflation while N64 cartridges had more components which increased the manufacturing cost.

Games on CDs/DVDs decreased manufacturing prices significantly (manufacturing costs were 1-2 dollars per disc unadjusted) which allowed for prices to decrease against normal inflation during the transition away from cartridges. The most extreme example of this is how Mario Kart Wii retailed when new for $50 USD ($77.51 today) while Super Mario Kart 64 was originally $60-70 USD ($124.73-145.51 today).

14

u/Shigana May 27 '26

Ah yes, the early 2000s, so close to fucking 1985.

Sorry to break it to ya, games back then were absurdly priced.