Bonus #262 - Video Games Weren't Cheaper in the 90s (Extra Dose)
Added 2025-01-28 17:00:09 +0000 UTCVIDEO LINK: https://youtu.be/X9eqycKUYqA
Hey everyone, it's Bonus Dose Day! I've had a few people asking me where this one was, since I think I've been promoting it since the beginning of January, well... it's finally here! You may notice my voice is a little off, I was sick when I recorded it, but decided to keep it this way because I thought it was kinda funnier/fit the subject matter better, my voice cracking while I talk about video game prices at a time when my voice was probably puberty cracking. Enjoy!
As everything gets more and more expensive, people like to reminisce about "the good old days" when things were cheaper. Like, for example, video games! BUT... were they actually? Buckley shares some old ads from the 90s and breaks out the inflation calculator to bust the myth that games were cheaper "back in the day".
Comments
yeah it certainty wasn't cheaper (with the except of the consoles) but at least most games put out back then were finished. games now days need day 1 patches to even function properly since they are shipped unfinished and buggy.
Janel Rambo
2025-04-02 06:39:40 +0000 UTCSomething kinda related but while I think games are for the most part reasonably priced, I have noticed of late that sales on Steam and other platforms have become a bit stingy and usually a game won't go below 25% off or maybe 30% but even a year ago, many games often went for 50% off from time to time. It could also be that i've bought all the games where that did happen and I am only left with games that don't go on sale for as much. That said, as an australian, I am not dropping over $100 on a triple A title (but then again I feel like Australia just always get screwed)
Matthew
2025-02-06 20:24:58 +0000 UTCI think peoples problems with the prices of modern games is spending that $70 or more on a game and things that used to come with a game like character customization or other small things are now being once again sold to us not as micro transactions but as macro transactions
Captain Bon Clay
2025-02-03 08:52:22 +0000 UTCYour point about distribution costs might be true for first-party games, but Steam and the Big 3 consoles all have fees of 30% for digital third-party games. And Petty Officer has very good points. AAA games are expected to have huge scopes and amazing graphics. So they need many more employees and a lot more money. But they also need more time, so they have longer release cycles now. For comparison: GTA 1 was released in 1997, and GTA 4 was released in 2002. 4 mainline games in 5 years. And GTA 5 has 44x as many people in the credits as GTA 1. Super Mario Bros was released in 1985, and Super Mario World was released in 1990. 5 mainline games in 5.5 years (Bros, Bros 2, Bros 3, Land, World). Odyssey has 49x as many credits as SMB. Final Fantasy 1 to 7 were all released within 10 years. FF 16 has 62x as many credits as FF 6 (800x as FF 1). So let's say a $100 game gets 1M sales and requires 10 people to work for 1 year, and a $60 game gets 10M sales and requires 500 people to work for 3 years. The $100 game has 25x the revenue/work-year. People mock re-releases, DLC, and spinoffs all the time, but this is one reason why they're so common. It's really not feasible to only release mainline games at $60 every few years.
YH
2025-02-02 20:52:39 +0000 UTCWheel of fortune, damn that's something new
Brian Andrew
2025-02-01 22:13:20 +0000 UTCIn Canada, MK3 was 100$ bucks when it first came out.
Daniel Brulotte
2025-01-31 09:16:48 +0000 UTCSo you got Wheel of Fortune for Christmas, eh? That sucks.
Mark Laurenzi
2025-01-29 22:28:31 +0000 UTCI remember my Mom buying an N64 game for my brother and I and it was around 65 bucks. It wasn’t cheap back then.
bulletgirl2005 .
2025-01-29 17:32:18 +0000 UTCThe NES I got as a hand-me-down from my grandma had that Wheel Of Fortune game
Bailey Curtiss
2025-01-29 01:30:32 +0000 UTCIt really sucks how everything is going digital these days. It used to be that you could buy software and programs at game stores in the PC section. Now I need to buy MS Word even though I got a new PC because it's not installed with it any more and every other PC I bought had it installed. $219. What a fucking joke. And the PS5 "PRO" is digital too, no disc drive in it, just like Klaus Schwab said, "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy" about it. And if housing prices are anything to go by it's pretty clear our generation won't own those and no I'M NOT FUCKING HAPPY ABOUT IT KLAUS you globalist dickhead.
A. Nonymouse
2025-01-29 00:02:36 +0000 UTCI listened to a podcast about the economics of games and we'll, not all games are getting cheaper. Like maybe our indie steam titles are getting cheaper on the consumer end but they do cost money to make and the market has not grown. It's worse for your triple As as cost and development have gone up and time between releases has gone up but base cost has stayed the same and a lot of folk will wait it out for it to be cheaper.
Petty Officer No Class
2025-01-28 21:53:22 +0000 UTC“Outpriced” the average gamer? As if people need games like they need food or housing… Jesus Christ 😂 The entitlement and delusion of these people complaining about the cost of something as expensive to make as video games…
Ash Archer
2025-01-28 20:23:20 +0000 UTCMy older brother tells the story of how he paid $120 for Mario Kart on Gamecube. That wasn't the asking price, but we lived in a small as fuck town in the east coast, so everything was way more expensive. If you grew up in a small town, I guarantee you were paying way more for games back then too
Emma Anderson
2025-01-28 19:41:31 +0000 UTCGames are cheaper now for the most part, but they probably should be. The thing is, distribution costs for video games (especially digital copies) is practically negligible. Every copy sold is basically all profit. And while the cost to develop games has certainly gone up, that is far exceeded by the sales figures. Video games are far more popular now than they were in the days of the Intellivision or SNES. Super Mario Bros reached ~20M sales in 4 years. GTA V reached over 40M sales in one year and ~100M sales in 5 years. Idk how representative these titles are, but it's hard to find solid sales figures across the industry and it's pretty easy to assume a typical blockbuster game today would sell many times more than a typical blockbuster game from the 20th century. Game devs/publishers are definitely not losing money by keeping games cheap. They are trying to stay attractive to a growing market. Better to sell 1M units at $60 each than 500k at $100 each. Maybe they're raising the price now because the market stopped growing. Or maybe they're just boiling the frog. Either way, looks like the shift to $70 worked out for them.
Branden Lange
2025-01-28 18:31:30 +0000 UTCThat’s because publishers don’t want some of the money, they want all of the money.
Pete Spicer
2025-01-28 17:38:36 +0000 UTCI knew video games were expensive back in the day as I had to buy all my own 😅 friends who had indulgent parents would invite me round to play the latest Tomb Raider or Assassin's Creed. Looking back as an adult now the fact they dropped what is now hundreds of pounds (although video games have always been cheaper here than in America or Canada) on games for my friends was probably a warning sign in their marriages 😔😳
Elizabeth Coates
2025-01-28 17:22:27 +0000 UTCHaven’t had a chance to watch the video yet, but my biggest beef with video games now are all of the micro transactions and expansion packs. At least when you bought a game in the 90s you got the full game 😅
Anthony Jenkins
2025-01-28 17:16:54 +0000 UTC
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