After the SNES era, we saw how Playstation games were quite a bit cheaper than N64 games, but it had nothing to do with Nintendo wanting to make more money per copy: It had to do with the fact that pressing CDs was cheap as dirt, so the game developer would get as much money, per copy, despite a cheaper price.
With the switch to downloadable, we can save even more than that: The cut from the retailer, the distributor, the box manufacturing... You could cut at least $20 from a game, easily, and still get the publisher the same cut.
If you want to talk about game pricing without dealing with fixed non-development costs, you are comparing apples and oranges, on purpose.
So a company selling such games will have a higher price floor than games without those costs, and due to that floor may not be able to achieve a profit maximizing profit maximizing point that a game without those costs may be able to achieve (such as selling 100 million games at $1 each). Their entire set of optimal production possibilities would probably be shifted inward.
Not saying a consumer should factor this in, just the game maker has a restriction on the consumers they can target that they would not have without those costs.
(On PC at least) it's quite common for a AAA game to launch riddled with bugs. Recently it was Watch_Dogs which costs 60€ on Steam, yet it has a lot of performance issues, the publishers client has connectivity problems etc.
$60 is too much for a game.
The only AAA title so far this year that game me good value for money was Reaper of Souls, mostly because devs listened to the public and for a change made the right decisions.
The majority of games have always been crap. Nothing is new. Rose tinted glasses mean we only remember the good games.
I think it's more that when releasing any given game, you aren't just trying to sell people on "Our game is worth $60." you also have to sell "You are better off spending $60 on our game than on all the other games you can currently buy for $60 or less."
Plus, if games these days are crap, I don't even think there are words to describe the relative awfulness of the games I played in my childhood on the NES.
Today, that could be handled with a patch and the lovely multiplayer could be enjoyed online.
I don't doubt that the release of unfinished products is a real issue, but there are trade-offs in most things.
Bugs certainly aren't new
In beta/pre-order now. Steam Greenlight. Small + very dedicated team.
If you apply your logic to the automotive world we should just stick with the single barrel carburetor V8 Chevrolets because, otherwise we just end up with BMW's iDrive issues and Prius throttle problems.
While that is certainly true, all of those amount to nothing if you cannot download the game at all or if the game is constantly stuttering.
So I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to draw here.
In 1990 you had a game that was 1-2 players, 16 bit, no upgrades/updates in content or playability, no versatility in mediums, limited scope of possible actions within the game itself. In 2014 you can play with a number of players greater than 2, a few more colors, constant updates in content and playability, easy played on any number of platforms and a drastically increased set of possible actions within the game.
You are frustratingly trying to explain that a narrow capability system with great stability is greater than a wide capability system with a decrease in stability.
I will be driving a car that breaks down every couple months and you can continue to ride your skateboard everywhere.
The ability to update a game later means that QA can be less thorough, this makes things cheaper.
Versatility in mediums? Having the choice between download and DVD is much cheaper than any cartridge. Or wait you're talking about platforms? There have always been multiplatform games. And being multiplatform means you expand your audience perhaps 50% while using the same art assets and a lot of the same code; that doesn't make a game's price higher at all. The amount of code you can share keeps rising, too.
So while games are prettier and more complicated, with art and animation getting crazily expensive, talking about convenience features like translations and downloads and patches is a red herring.
Games also often came on multiple CDs , scratch one CD and that's the end of the game.
HA!
I have some N64 games that still have the price tag on them from Toys R Us, Sears, or Target. One or two say $89.99 on them. I distinctly remember Street Fighter II: The World Warrior being $75 at Target when it was first released. I had to beg mom like I never begged before to get it.
I'd still pay these prices too, if, and only if, we didn't have the digital DRM, online requirements, bugs, patches, etc. that plague today's games. I realize though that today's games are far more complex probably and that's part of the problem.