It’s a bad time for an increase economically. But when you realize that we have been paying $60 USD for games since at least the 90’s and $60 in 90’s money is something like $150 in 2025 money, you realize just how good we’ve had it for a long time. And then take into account that games have become more and more expensive to make (yeah yeah I understand that a lot of the cost is down to a lot of non-game development relevant jobs), you don’t start to wonder why they didn’t increase prices before?
I’m not saying we like it. I’m saying that anyone who’s given it some thought can see why they might want to increase prices.
No one with sense is saying that they wouldn’t want to increase prices. The debate is whether or not the publishers who are pushing for higher cost of games realize that the higher it goes the less sales they’re actually going to make. Because again it doesn’t matter if the consumer knows why the cost has gone up or not. It’s a matter of whether or not the cost is going to seem justifiable for the customer. And that’s the rub everyone keeps saying that oh games should cost more game should cost more. The problem with that statement is after a certain price point games are no longer going to be a hobby purchase. They’re no longer going to be that impulse buy that they’ve survived on. They’re going to be that thing where you end up waiting for it to go below $25 or for it to be a runaway smash hit that everyone is telling you is a great game. And that isn’t even to say that good games are always going to cost more money look at Balatro, look at schedule 1, look at Repo. These are games that were made on shoestring budgets that players enjoyed. The problem with ballooning costs isn’t that games are getting bank breakingly expensive to make. It’s that risk averse publishers and investors are chasing trends that players have moved on from and they no longer are made up of people who actually play games.
It’s a bad time for an increase economically. But when you realize that we have been paying $60 USD for games since at least the 90’s and $60 in 90’s money is something like $150 in 2025 money, you realize just how good we’ve had it for a long time. And then take into account that games have become more and more expensive to make (yeah yeah I understand that a lot of the cost is down to a lot of non-game development relevant jobs), you don’t start to wonder why they didn’t increase prices before?
I’m not saying we like it. I’m saying that anyone who’s given it some thought can see why they might want to increase prices.
No one with sense is saying that they wouldn’t want to increase prices. The debate is whether or not the publishers who are pushing for higher cost of games realize that the higher it goes the less sales they’re actually going to make. Because again it doesn’t matter if the consumer knows why the cost has gone up or not. It’s a matter of whether or not the cost is going to seem justifiable for the customer. And that’s the rub everyone keeps saying that oh games should cost more game should cost more. The problem with that statement is after a certain price point games are no longer going to be a hobby purchase. They’re no longer going to be that impulse buy that they’ve survived on. They’re going to be that thing where you end up waiting for it to go below $25 or for it to be a runaway smash hit that everyone is telling you is a great game. And that isn’t even to say that good games are always going to cost more money look at Balatro, look at schedule 1, look at Repo. These are games that were made on shoestring budgets that players enjoyed. The problem with ballooning costs isn’t that games are getting bank breakingly expensive to make. It’s that risk averse publishers and investors are chasing trends that players have moved on from and they no longer are made up of people who actually play games.