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Comment by sk2020 | Hacker News Reader

sk2020

If memory serves, the nominal price of most video games has not changed in about 30 years. US dollars are, at least officially, worth 2.5x less now than when Mario came with Duck Hunt. I’m not that shocked that alternative monetization strategies are employed (micropayments are a big one).

Seems like there could be a demand for an independent standards committee that certifies games as shenanigan-free. My children are starting to play games themselves, so I’d like a service like that. I would pay a premium to know my kids aren’t going to be prompted to put in my credit card information and won’t be assailed with toxic marketing ploys.

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A very old argument. The counter is: the audience for videogames has massively expanded. The secondary counter is: $70 is merely the entry point into games. Even before you look at microtransactions, you have battle passes, dozens of deluxe versions, and season passes.

If this was really an issue - game prices not keeping up with inflation - publishers wouldn't be posting profits (not revenue, profits) in the billions of dollars.

And on a more explicit point: God of War, a game with no microtransactions or any other BS, made their company over $500M in revenue in a year, for a game that cost them under $100M to make.

So while I'm not surprised these multi-billion-dollars-of-profit companies are so ready to squeeze as much money as they can out of us, I don't attribute it to Tiny Tim begging for enough money to live, but to Ebenezer Scrooge hording as much money as he possibly can, no matter the societal cost (or cost to himself).

> And on a more explicit point: God of War

You're taking the most succesful game on the most successful platform as an example, not sure it's very relevant for the thousands of games that get released every year...

And yet it's not the thousands of games that are released each year that include extra advertising, but the the largest and often most successful ones, because they know they can get away with it, and they're the ones with a built in audience to sell to advertisers.

Not every game is going to find success. We could do with a lot less of the major publishers ideas of "pay us $80 after the battle pass for the same shit you've been playing for 4 years with a new paint job".

If an independent company like New Blood can find success simply by making good games and being a good company then major publishers can follow suit or die off.

Another data point is inflation-adjusted minimum wage, which has mostly stayed steady over this time [2019 post though].

https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/business/us-minimum...

A lot of people who buy games aren't on 6-figures.

The user base has grown exponentially since then and it is far easier to impulse buy games than ever before (30 years ago I had to drive to a store to buy a boxed copy). There are far more gamers than before. Steam has also shown that by giving deep discounts even though per-unit profit goes down they are able to make tons more money.

The monetization schemes are mostly just a way to squeeze every drop out of the customer possible. They use them because they work, not because they aren't profitable already.

Exponentially is definitely the wrong word here

My real estate agent said home prices were increasing exponentially and I said I really hoped my house wasn’t going to be worth billions next year.

> If memory serves, the nominal price of most video games has not changed in about 30 years.

They have. Mario was $50, games generally run $60+.

The big difference? You don't need to manufacture a cartridge anymore.

The other big difference is that the typical AAA title isn't made on a budget of < $200,000 anymore.

And yet, somehow, they're still making billions in profits. That implies that sales are still sufficient to pay back the development and marketing process, and still make profits.

My example I've used elsewhere in this thread: God of War, a game without microtransactions, making $500M in the first year for under $100M in development costs.

No, Mario was $25 MSRP. See here[1] for some old copy showing prices, the majority at $25, a few at $30 and $35.

1: https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-the-game-Super-Mario-Bros...

I think the first Super Mario was unique in that sense (given it came included with most consoles). I specifically remember asking for video games and my dad responding with disbelief that they were fifty bucks. It was a super common price point for NES.

I recall specifically SMB3 retailing at $55 at Walmart.

If you look at the link, it's not the majority of locations selling SMB for $25, it's the majority of launch titles for NES games being $25, with a few slightly more expensive.

I see some reports online that the average price was $50 in 1990, and others that say $40-$50, and maybe slightly higher for select titles. I think it's fairly safe to say that Nintendo priced their launch titles low to attract people, and third party titles were likely averaging $40-$50 within a few years.

I also think it's safe to say that most people's memories about this are fairly faulty, given 30+ years. There's numerous reports online about people saying they paid $60 for all their NES games. In addition to that, there were probably some places that sold above MSRP, and some people bought from those locations.

You have to correct for inflation. 1986 Mario would be $120 today.

The generation-specific costs (cartridges) and margins (physical retailer cuts, boxes, licensing fees) would have also been corrected for inflation.

A bit of research shows an approximate $7 for developer cut of each sale at the 1988 figures. Given the approximate inflation adjustment, that becomes $18.20. Given that cartridge, physical retailers, and boxes are mostly gone, and even even with the deep licensing fees of the platforms today (30%), a $50 game will make the developer almost twice as much revenue as it did in 1988.

The 60$ price point as a solid, immovable object appeared during the PS2 era. Everyone was on cheap discs, and it sort of happened.

You're ignoring how much bigger the market is today.

Cars have increased in price while the market has increased...

Cars are waaaaaaay fucking better than they were in the past. My dad had a Mustang in the mid 90s, paid about $20k for it, it had 225hp, cloth seats, crappy stereo, got like 16mpg, handled like crap with skinny 16" tires, and was a completely unsafe tin can of a car.

I have a newer one that I paid $35k for, it has 460hp, leather interior, a banging sound system, dozens of airbags, computer-controlled wizbangery that makes the car a breeze to drive, massive tires, and somehow gets 20mpg.

Adjusted for inflation, these cars cost the same, but the newer one is such an incredibly massive improvement in every aspect.

Games are waaaaaaay fucking better than they were in the past. …

It makes sense that games would get so much cheaper over time, considering much more sophisticated manufactured goods have improved considerably while getting cheaper after inflation.

Cars have a higher development investment, as well as marginal costs per unit considerations. Adding a feature to a car, like a carbon fiber hood over a steel one, incurs an added unit cost, while adding a level or something to a game has almost no marginal cost increase.

> Lastly, the growth in the car market is roughly proportional with the increase in population, while the gaming industry has grown at double digits per year for decades now.

It's not like I'm getting five cheap 2008 Fiestas in a Humble Bundle any time soon :-P

EDIT: I stepped away for a moment and just noticed that you edited your answer. I'll keep my reply intact anyway.

> while adding a level or something to a game has almost no marginal cost increase

ha ha ha

I'd rather see prices on games get raised than this sort of shit. The problem is every time prices go up everyone brings out the pitchforks, so we get this shit instead. It's largely turned me off of video games, especially big budget multiplayer focused games.

It's not an either/or situation. If publishers can raise the price of video games, they will NOT stop with ads and battlepasses and microtransactions etc. Why would they ever do that when those things make them more money than people actually purchasing the games in the first place?

I'm not hugely opposed to price increases: these things happen. But the reality is you'll just get both. Now that it's determined that players will accept ads, microtransactions, gacha, etc., why not raise prices and also get those revenue streams. FIFA costing $70 will not stop the all-encompassing focus on Ultimate Team. (For perpective, just the Ultimate Team modes in their sports games supply about a third of EA's total revenue.)

It's like when people say "if you're not paying for a service, then you're the product" to describe when user data is sold, when in actuality many services you do pay for happily sell your data all over the place.

I can’t remember the internet exact year but I do remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth when they went from $50 standard to $60 standard sometime after 2000. Other than that one exception though, I believe you’re correct on prices.

They're up to $70 now on consoles.

The barriers to entry for developing, publishing, and distributing a game have also plummeted, meaning there is far more competition in the gaming industry. This should lead to lower priced games.

Is this really true? Blockbuster games back in the day were universally made by tiny teams.

I'm not one of your downvoters, but these devs still had entire manufacturing, marketing, distribution, and executive teams behind them. Sure, developing the game could take a person a few weeks, but no one person was going to get that onto the shelves of Walmart alone.

That's the big difference today. A person can develop a good game in a reasonable time frame, but they can also put that game on a virtual shelve in front of about a billion gamers world wide.

A price drop is expected with an audience expanding from millions to billions, even if the cost of the average game has shot up.

The best video games back then sold millions... just like today/

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