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Comment by hombre_fatal | Hacker News Reader

$80 today is still cheaper than paying $60 a couple decades ago.

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

Also games have only become more expensive to make since then and gamer expectations have only increased.

Games are more expensive, but the market of gamers is larger. We can do this back and forth all day! The clear fact is that when consumers are getting squeezed, there will be backlash against price raises like this. I have never missed a Nintendo console since the Wii. I won’t be buying a switch 2.

Super Mario Kart for the SNES cost $55 in 1992 ($128 in today's money). If it was worth it then, then surely a much bigger game for 60% of the price is an even better deal.

The complaints don't really seem based in reality.

The complaints are likely coming from heavy gamers who are more exposed to game prices because they buy more games and are also way more vocal online. Nintendo sold 151 million switches but only 1,391 million games [1], meaning on average a Nintendo switch user bought less than ten games. I doubt spending maybe an extra $20 a year would be considered unacceptable by the average Nintendo customer especially considering these games are never cheap to begin with.

[1] https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/hard_soft/index.htm...

>If it was worth it then, then surely a much bigger game for 60% of the price is an even better deal.

Whether a game is worth it is different for different people. When you expand your audience beyond enthusiasts then people will not be willing to pay as much money for a game. Saying that enthusiasts will see it as a good deal when most of the audience are notenthusiasts. does not mean too much.

The pricing of games aren’t based in reality. The marginal cost of producing additional copies is almost nothing, especially for digital distribution. Looking at pricing changes due to inflation doesn’t make sense for digital goods.

> Games are more expensive, but the market of gamers is larger.

Actually there's been studio bankruptcy after studio bankruptcy, due to a massive contraction post-COVID, and the rise of mobile gaming eating away at casual gamers. Even Ubisoft earlier this year was having some people giving 30% odds of bankruptcy.

As stated elsewhere, games have literally never been cheaper. Even at the launch of the Nintendo Switch, a $60 game in 2017 is the equivalent of $77 today. The launch price of Mario Kart World, in real purchasing power, is completely identical to what Mario Kart 8 launched at. The complaints, therefore, scream entitlement over logic - games must always be bigger, larger, better, and unaffected by 3 decades of inflation. Or it's anti-consumer, as though Nintendo put a gun to their head forcing a purchase alongside toilet paper. (In my opinion, a luxury good not in any way necessary for a good life by definition cannot be anti-consumer, or otherwise Gucci would be the king of anti-consumer practices.)

>backlash against price raises like this

There's really not much backlash. At the most, just some impotent complaints online toward random companies, and nothing at all toward the federal reserve. If people really cared, we would have seen a lot more politicians like Ron Paul.

This is just a story, but when the switch two pricing was released weeks (months?) ago it was a topic of conversation at my local cafe. None of the people there are gamers, but some of them do own switches. Everyone agreed they would not be paying inflated prices, and were fine sitting this out. It seemed like $65 was the maximum they’d expect to pay for a game.

Make the price of houses $250K instead of $500K and I will gladly buy an $80 game.

*sigh*

Could we please stop pretending that corporations do not wish to extract as much money as they can from our pockets?

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