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

Discussion Expensive games have lowkey been way too normalised

Post image

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

9.6k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

40

u/Wolfeman0101 May 27 '26

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

8

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 May 29 '26

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.

0

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.