2024 the year game prices increase $20.

[wbino]

A game like Sins of A Solar Empire 2 are priced at $99. for the deluxe version, meaning that even when games go on sale they are the same price or more than they should have been.
Game companies are making a ton of money then fire their workers as soon as the product is released.

[Amaterasu]

Publicado originalmente por Chompman:

Publicado originalmente por Amaterasu:

I love how this argument doesn't factor in the increased cost of living and food since then. An increase that has not only outstripped gaming, but also outpaced wages. At 1400 British Pounds, you would be able to pay for rent where I live. And if you're lucky, power and water. After that? You have zero dollars and zero cents.You'd think that I live in somewhere like New York City or Los Angeles. Nope, I live in what can be generously called a suburb... in the south.

Over half the jobs in the state fall under the $50,000 yearly poverty line. And you'd probably think, "Oh, they're burger flippers." Let's see, shall we.

Biological Technicians: $49,730 a year.
Jewelers and Precious Stone and Metal Workers: $49,700 a year.
Dental Laboratory Technicians: $47,490
Psychiatric Technicians: $45,220
Firefighters: $44,180
Veterinary Technologists and Technicians: $40,390
Hazardous Materials Removal Workers: $39,690
Emergency Medical Technicians: $39,160
Childcare Workers get paid less than Janitors at $27,940 as compared to a Janitor's $31,310.

None of them are fast food burger flippers

Where are you looking that $50,000 is the poverty line?

It can vary based on where you live of course but the national average is closer to $15,000.

$15,000 where I live wouldn't be poverty, it'd be homelessness. Maybe if you're lucky, you could find a motel to live at But even a basic studio apartment would be impossible to rent.

[Chompman]

Publicado originalmente por Amaterasu:

Publicado originalmente por Chompman:

Where are you looking that $50,000 is the poverty line?

It can vary based on where you live of course but the national average is closer to $15,000.

$15,000 where I live wouldn't be poverty, it'd be homelessness. Maybe if you're lucky, you could find a motel to live at But even a basic studio apartment would be impossible to rent.

That's standard of living and usually where it's high such as in major popular cities the jobs pay more so you have to take that into factor also.

[Amaterasu]

Publicado originalmente por Chompman:

Publicado originalmente por Amaterasu:

$15,000 where I live wouldn't be poverty, it'd be homelessness. Maybe if you're lucky, you could find a motel to live at But even a basic studio apartment would be impossible to rent.

That's standard of living and usually where it's high such as in major popular cities the jobs pay more so you have to take that into factor also.

Let me put it this way. $1650 a month here gets you a two bedroom apartment that is constantly falling apart, is full of mold and bugs and if any residential code inspector were to walk into any... just any of the units in the apartment complex, the entire thing would be condemned.

Nothing ever works, there are fire hazards in the outlets everywhere, it's faster to learn how to fix your problems and fix them yourself than way for maintenance to come around to fix anything(It takes a year for anything to get fixed). There's crime everywhere, gunfire goes off every night. Land value around here should be plummeting, but yet without any sort of cleaning up of crime or beautification or fixing anything up, or really anything... rent prices have been rising faster than inflation. To the point where this apartment complex makes 2 million in rent... every month.

And none of that is used to pay their maintenance staff or repair anything. It's sent directly into the pockets of their executives.

[Taebrythn]

i wonder how many people understand games have had the price of 60 for many years just normally. As someone mentioned earlier even some older system had games worth 60 in 90s

[MonkehMaster]

digital vs physical media, many differences on why pricing was were it was for physical media, the plastic (cartridge and circuit boards), circuit board parts, assembly/soldering (cartridge based), batteries, factory workers, storefronts pricing to make money, stocking fees and shelf space, etc..etc...

cd production aside, when it comes to cartridges.

now look at digital, show me where cost goes up, without all that extra aboveentioned production costs?

in the end, the gaming industry has grown an ego and greedy, but with that said we can blame customers who defend and enable the industry, for being greedy.

[ KARR™]

Publicado originalmente por MonkehMaster:

digital vs physical media, many differences on why pricing was were it was for physical media, the plastic (cartridge and circuit boards), circuit board parts, assembly/soldering (cartridge based), batteries, factory workers, storefronts pricing to make money, stocking fees and shelf space, etc..etc...

cd production aside, when it comes to cartridges.

now look at digital, show me where cost goes up, without all that extra aboveentioned production costs?

in the end, the gaming industry has grown an ego and greedy, but with that said we can blame customers who defend and enable the industry, for being greedy.

Back in the day, Zelda on the NES was £69.99
Most games today are less than that.

Back in the day - yes you had to print paperwork, boxes and create boards etc. But you also only had a couple of people creating very cruse assets. It all fitted in less than half a megabyte.
These days you have to have orchestras creating music, HD artists creating GB worth of art, voice actors, television and film voice actors, studios for motion capture, hundreds of GB worth of art, music, voices, etc.

[MonkehMaster]

Publicado originalmente por  KARR™:

Publicado originalmente por MonkehMaster:

digital vs physical media, many differences on why pricing was were it was for physical media, the plastic (cartridge and circuit boards), circuit board parts, assembly/soldering (cartridge based), batteries, factory workers, storefronts pricing to make money, stocking fees and shelf space, etc..etc...

cd production aside, when it comes to cartridges.

now look at digital, show me where cost goes up, without all that extra aboveentioned production costs?

in the end, the gaming industry has grown an ego and greedy, but with that said we can blame customers who defend and enable the industry, for being greedy.

Back in the day, Zelda on the NES was £69.99
Most games today are less than that.

Back in the day - yes you had to print paperwork, boxes and create boards etc. But you also only had a couple of people creating very cruse assets. It all fitted in less than half a megabyte.
These days you have to have orchestras creating music, HD artists creating GB worth of art, voice actors, television and film voice actors, studios for motion capture, hundreds of GB worth of art, music, voices, etc.

Zelda was top tier, but with that said I never paid those prices anyway, I only bought on sale, or used.

"you have to have"?

no, they don't need all that extra bs, they cram into games now a days, most of the graphics are butt ugly, music is overrated, the voice acting is horrible in most cases, etc.. .

[Amaterasu]

Publicado originalmente por  KARR™:

Publicado originalmente por MonkehMaster:

digital vs physical media, many differences on why pricing was were it was for physical media, the plastic (cartridge and circuit boards), circuit board parts, assembly/soldering (cartridge based), batteries, factory workers, storefronts pricing to make money, stocking fees and shelf space, etc..etc...

cd production aside, when it comes to cartridges.

now look at digital, show me where cost goes up, without all that extra aboveentioned production costs?

in the end, the gaming industry has grown an ego and greedy, but with that said we can blame customers who defend and enable the industry, for being greedy.

Back in the day, Zelda on the NES was £69.99
Most games today are less than that.

Back in the day - yes you had to print paperwork, boxes and create boards etc. But you also only had a couple of people creating very cruse assets. It all fitted in less than half a megabyte.
These days you have to have orchestras creating music, HD artists creating GB worth of art, voice actors, television and film voice actors, studios for motion capture, hundreds of GB worth of art, music, voices, etc.

Back in the day, there were less than a million gamers. These days, you have 32 million on Steam alone.

Quick, what's 59.99 x 32 million. You can round it up to 60.

[MonkehMaster]

I can imagine the production costs back then, with current gamer customer base, compared to back then.

would have been huge and the prices would have been outrageous, not counting ego inflation of companies these days.

[crunchyfrog]

Publicado originalmente por  KARR™:

Publicado originalmente por MonkehMaster:

digital vs physical media, many differences on why pricing was were it was for physical media, the plastic (cartridge and circuit boards), circuit board parts, assembly/soldering (cartridge based), batteries, factory workers, storefronts pricing to make money, stocking fees and shelf space, etc..etc...

cd production aside, when it comes to cartridges.

now look at digital, show me where cost goes up, without all that extra aboveentioned production costs?

in the end, the gaming industry has grown an ego and greedy, but with that said we can blame customers who defend and enable the industry, for being greedy.

Back in the day, Zelda on the NES was £69.99
Most games today are less than that.

Back in the day - yes you had to print paperwork, boxes and create boards etc. But you also only had a couple of people creating very cruse assets. It all fitted in less than half a megabyte.
These days you have to have orchestras creating music, HD artists creating GB worth of art, voice actors, television and film voice actors, studios for motion capture, hundreds of GB worth of art, music, voices, etc.

Yes but the thing you need to remember is that while it's true costs and resources have grown, it's demonstrated that isn't in the cost that's increased.

These increases are "just because they can".

That's the point. More than this though a lot of the extra resources are unnecessary bloat.
For example, on most tripel A games, HALF the budget goes on advertising and promotion alone. That always has been ridiculous.

[Dagnabbit]

Refusing to acknowledge the ACTUAL base price of base game w/o DLC is disingenuous and posting in bad faith to stir up drama. Be honest, don't be like the OP. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1575940/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire_II/

[wesnef]

Publicado originalmente por MonkehMaster:

digital vs physical media, many differences on why pricing was were it was for physical media, the plastic (cartridge and circuit boards), circuit board parts, assembly/soldering (cartridge based), batteries, factory workers, storefronts pricing to make money, stocking fees and shelf space, etc..etc...

cd production aside, when it comes to cartridges.

now look at digital, show me where cost goes up, without all that extra aboveentioned production costs?

And if they still had all those things, it would be twice as expensive. Plastic & paper have gone up a great deal, too.
I was looking at novels for my sister's birthday this past June. Paperback novels are $10-20 now. They were $3.99 in the 80's.


And then there's the part where 1) everything that is used in development (computers, office supplies, workers, overhead, office space, etc) has gotten more expensive as well; and 2) games are 100s-1000s of times larger than those goode-olde-days games. Sure, the games on my Apple II cost less (actually, I don't think they did), but they also fit several games on a 140k disc. And console games were small, too - SNES games were ~2mb, Gameboy games are 8-32mb, etc.

Saw an article in the beginning of the year (I think) about how game development costs have skyrocketed - recent "big" games have cost hundreds of millions to make, with a similar amount spent on marketing.

[Amaterasu]

Publicado originalmente por wesnef:

Publicado originalmente por MonkehMaster:

digital vs physical media, many differences on why pricing was were it was for physical media, the plastic (cartridge and circuit boards), circuit board parts, assembly/soldering (cartridge based), batteries, factory workers, storefronts pricing to make money, stocking fees and shelf space, etc..etc...

cd production aside, when it comes to cartridges.

now look at digital, show me where cost goes up, without all that extra aboveentioned production costs?

And if they still had all those things, it would be twice as expensive. Plastic & paper have gone up a great deal, too.
I was looking at novels for my sister's birthday this past June. Paperback novels are $10-20 now. They were $3.99 in the 80's.


And then there's the part where 1) everything that is used in development (computers, office supplies, workers, overhead, office space, etc) has gotten more expensive as well; and 2) games are 100s-1000s of times larger than those goode-olde-days games. Sure, the games on my Apple II cost less (actually, I don't think they did), but they also fit several games on a 140k disc. And console games were small, too - SNES games were ~2mb, Gameboy games are 8-32mb, etc.

Saw an article in the beginning of the year (I think) about how game development costs have skyrocketed - recent "big" games have cost hundreds of millions to make, with a similar amount spent on marketing.

Thing is, profits have been out pacing the costs.

[wbino]

Publicado originalmente por Dagnabbit:

Refusing to acknowledge the ACTUAL base price of base game w/o DLC is disingenuous and posting in bad faith to stir up drama. Be honest, don't be like the OP. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1575940/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire_II/

$49 dollars should be the price for AAA games.
You need to buy the deluxe version of this game to get future ships, so it would be like a if BG3 held characters behind a paywall.
Did you see they did not release the game price until release day?
That was shady.
But the point being that there s not enough transparencies in either Steam or developers business practices.

[wesnef]

Publicado originalmente por wbino:

$49 dollars should be the price for AAA games.

$50 hasn't been the AAA price since the PS2 era.


edit: regardless, the price of games did not go up $20 in 2024. It went up $10 in 2023.