Hacker News Reader

Comment by ThatMedicIsASpy | Hacker News Reader

No video game will ever get 80+ bucks from me without a physical book/guide or statue/figure.

Need for Speed Underground changed to an open world with the second release and I hated everything about it.

Did you feel that way in 2005 when the Xbox 360 was released and $60 was the new standard? Because $60 in 2005 has the same buying power as $97.41 today. This game, in real terms, is cheaper than Xbox 360 games were.

I understand this, but the economics of software in general is that you have high upfront costs and then the marginal costs are minimal. Better tooling has helped keep these upfront costs from growing too much (developing a game in 2025 is MUCH easier than in 2005), the distribution costs have shrunk too and the size of the market has exploded. Given these is it really unreasonable for consumers to expect the prices to stay flat?

> developing a game in 2025 is MUCH easier than in 2005

Developing a game is also a lot more expensive in 2025.

Maybe the biggest ones.

The biggest ones are the ones that are going to cost $70-80, which is what we’re talking about.

The economics of video games is that they are enterprise software, at least major releases from large companies are. They have large teams made up of intercommunicating subteams, large budgets, even bigger marketing budgets, corporate mission criticality (failure of a game can break a company or studio), and significant server infrastructure that must be kept online and maintained. These days they're even usually written as customizations to existing frameworks (called Unity or Unreal rather than Java EE or Spring).

So there are significant upfront and ongoing costs to releasing a game like Mario Kart World. $60 per copy just isn't going to cover those costs. The only options are to charge more upfront or introduce purchasable cosmetics and the like to extract that value from the customer another way.

Nintendo pricing is unique because they barely do sales, if a $60 Xbox 360 game was too expensive then you could just be patient and let the price creep downwards all the way to be bargain bin if desired. OTOH the last Mario Kart game from 8 years ago (which was a re-release of a Wii U game from 11 years ago) still retails for $50 to this day, even as the sequel is about to drop.

Zelda OOT was $60 in 1998, that's about $118 today.

Starfox 64 was $80 in 1997, about $160 today.

Consider wage growth adjusted for inflation as well and we discover that disposable incomes have gone up 1% on average in that period.

What is a video game if not an outlet for disposable income?

The 1993 version of Doom was $40 plus shipping and handling. Let's ignore the shipping and handling.

That's $90 today.

I don't play very many video games anymore though I did play the hell out of Doom 30 years ago.

What I have noticed, as an outside observer looking in, about people who play video games today is that they seem to be among the most entitled people on the planet who love bitching about everything.

My theory on this is that gamers are no longer a niche demographic, but rather to some extent a large cross section of the population, having been raised with games and many still playing well into adulthood. Since the Internet is an extremism machine that further amplifies the loudest voices, it’s allowed the actions of the most obnoxious members of the group to become the representative voices in social media.

I think like most groups there is a silent majority getting on with it, and a loud minority picking fights online. That said, every time I have tried to take up a competitive online game with voice chat, I have regretted it.

There are some people who make gaming their whole identity, and when something happens that they don’t like, they act like gaming is a fundamental right instead of a luxury.

Apparently the 1992 Super Nintendo version of Super Street Fighter 2 was $80 then. Close to $200 in today's currency.

So you are welcome to your opinion, but it's not like this is unprecedented, or even unreasonable.

I think maybe the best $70 I ever spent was on Secret of Mana in 1993, or about $150 in today's dollars, after saving up the most money I'd ever saved up in my entire life for it.

My all time favourite game.

Same here, so expensive but it came in a larger than other games box and the book iirc.

Nintendo is going to be getting 80$ from me, that's for sure. Mario games are most of the funnest games I've played. I've been playing Mario Kart since the n64, and I've liked every version since. I have high hopes.

As Peter Thiel said: if you double your price and don't lose half your customers, you're making profit.

As a counterpoint: I'd be irritated if I had to pay for anything physical with a game I'm buying. I'd perceive it as a waste of money and want a cheaper digital only version.

Also: until you play the game, you won’t know if you’re a big enough fan to want to display some merch for it

I see this statement a lot, but who is paying $80 for it?

You need a switch 2 to play it, and there's a bundle that includes it for $50 more.

If you can afford a switch 2, but can't afford the bundle, I kinda think you realistically can't afford the switch2. Of course there are going to be niche cases, but they're niche.

The early adopters. Even for consoles you can wait and get them second hand years later. There is no reason to chase the latest releases other than having a fetish for experiencing all the bugs/crashes/join queue/server overload on release days. PC gaming can be expensive (hardware/games) and cheap (hardware/games). Used Steam Decks and Rog Ally starts at around 300€ - a controller, screen and enough power to play with options for more (game pass/xbox & geforce now streaming). It always depends on what kind of gamer you are, what you want to play and how much you are willing to invest into the hobby.

Underground 2 already did open world back in 2004 and it's pretty much the norm today for AAA titles. Maybe it's the Nintendo effect here, since they have history of innovation, but MK being open world it doesn't seem that impressive at all.

As a consumer i don’t like price increases. As an indie game developer, i hope this raises the floor (it prob won’t) because id like to hire people locally (ie in person). Steam takes 30% and the talent are in expensive cities. It’s a tough industry :D

I rarely buy full priced games, full stop.

That said, I normally open an exception for Nintendo. Their games are fun, generally come out well polished (no day 1 huge patches to fix a broken release) and are void of microtransactions.

You can buy physical console/PC for 80$

When Battlefront (not the old one, the new one) came out, EA was charging 60 dollars for it. Okay. But the battlepass, which had a lot more maps, was 50. So it was 110 dollars total.

But don't worry, this first day DLC more than doubled the content of the game, so it was worth it! Of course... if it's a day one DLC maybe we could've just included in the base game we're releasing at the same time.

Anyway, Triple AAA has been doing this for a long time. It's just that nobody cares when EA is greedy, it's just expected from them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com