Not defending Dementia Donny and either way I’m not shelling out $80 for a game ever, just wondering if this is really a result of the tariffs. I understand the console price being high due to them but I don’t see how it would affect the price of games that are essentially going to be 100% digital
Ocarina of Time cost $116.91 at launch, accounting for inflation.
Edit: the original Legend of Zelda cost $144.89 at launch, also after inflation.
Yes, but only accounting for inflation really doesn’t tell the whole story compared to modern games. Games are primarily sold digitally now, meanwhile when OOT released all copies were physical cartridges - and that meant significantly higher cost of manufacturing and shipping. Also, games simply didn’t sell nearly as many copies back then as they do now. Being totally real, games don’t need to be more than $60 to turn a very very good profit.
Games are also a billion dollars to produce and market nowadays. Back on SNES they were like 500k.
Cartridges cost a shitton more to make than discs, too.
I’d like to know more specifics on those numbers. Because I Found that, for example, GTAV had a marketing budget of 70-110 million, so nowhere near the billion range even for large games. With a lot of popular games like BOTW selling over 35 million copies… I don’t think the marketing cost is an issue.
https://en.gamegpu.com/game/gta-6-topped-the-list-of-the-most-expensive-games-in-history-that-have-cost-over-2-billion-in-development
Here’s one source. Just Google game development costs. This source is backed by others, it’s just the first in my search that I saw and clicked on. Games are fucking expensive to build and market. GTAV is 250m according to this article.
Edit: does this work? I saw Genshin, which I’ve never played, is actually almost a billion rn which is insane for a F2P anime game. Wild.
Skill issue
Games don’t cost 90$ today for other platforms tho… even Nintendo that are a few years old still cost basically the same as at launch
They do. There are games on the PS5 store (digital ones) for more than 90 dollars. There are a few games I’ve seen upwards of 100 quid, which is about 130 dollars.
I can’t remember how many thousand dollars the latest sims costs for all the dlc.
True, sure. I’m just saying the overall price of games has gone down significantly over time. An upward correction makes some sense. I’m not cheering it on, just trying to help frame the circumstances.
Competition for entertainment is higher than ever. You even have extremely good free games
An upward increase makes sense only because corporations will try to squeeze every possible cent from consumer. That’s the only justification that they need
They will only change if they start losing a lot of money. With any luck we are starting to see that a bit from some of the big publishers.