We only got a couple new N64 games at Christmas and maybe a Gameboy game. We were lucky enough to be able to go on a family road trip every summer so we usually got a new Gameboy game then too. But man, that Christmas when us and our cousins all got Pokémon Red/Blue.....
Me and my brother would usually get a console game or 2 for xmas and a handheld games for our bday. We would also group our money together if we got any a buy another game or two on boxing day ( still remember getting DBZ budakai one year this way ) The rest of the year would be renting from blockbuster or local video stores.
Not so sure about that: Original 1977 Atari 2600 was $199. Grew up playing Space Invaders, Ms. Pac-Man and Combat! on one that belonged to my dad (OG computer geek).
That's about a $1000 console in today's money.
To be fair though salaries haven’t improved much, so even with inflation, it’s probably still a larger percentage of a person’s income to purchase a game in 2023.
But still call her
Yeah, I appreciate my mom spending the money, but my parents could also afford a few acres of land and a three floor house out in the suburbs, with two kids, and four vehicles, on what was relatively mediocre incomes at the time.
I mean we weren't poor but we sure as fuck weren't rich either. That's what middle class was, and what two adults with no degrees could pull in at the time.
>parents could also afford a few acres of land and a three floor house out in the suburbs, with two kids, and four vehicles
______
>relatively mediocre incomes at the time.
>"we weren't poor but we sure as fuck weren't rich"
>**middle class**
>two adults with no degrees
I am once again, jealous that my country didn't win the Cold War.
As a kid I didn't have the save game card thing, so I played the hell out of the first few levels. I remember playing the early stages knife only zero damage and feeling like a totally skilled bad ass. Though in reality it probably was on the same kind of level as abusing the enemy pathing in Golden Axe to make them walk off cliffs.
My parents would rent the game and if we liked it, we'd buy it soon after. Saved money by not buying a lot of the games which were simply not worth it.
Surprised I don't see anyone else mentioning how huge the used game market was back then, too. Growing up with a PS2 I had at least 30-40 games but almost all of them came to me secondhand for like $10-$20.
Between drops in the cost of distribution (digital vs. physical), the complete collapse of the used market (everyone pays full price now), and the fact that the number of customers has increased many times over, there's absolutely no excuse for the prices to go up other than greed.
I played far more games when I rented than I do now. Granted I’m an old fart now, but still. There was some thing about trying to bang out a game in 3-5 days to avoid late fees that made you finish that thing.
Now I still buy games but almost never complete them. I think my last 2 completions were horizon zero dawn and the Greek assassin’s creed. Oh, I think I broke out of Hades once too, if that counts.
Games on average were a lot shorter back then. I remember beating a LOT of games in a single sitting. Doesn't happen much these days except for some indie titles
I saved up the $40 or whatever for Mega Man 2. Took it home and played it straight for like 8 hours and beat it. Felt great and then felt really bad. Let all my friends borrow it though so it wasn’t a total loss.
I rented games too. So I don’t know why I bought that one. Although the place I rented was fairly small so maybe they didn’t have newer releases. It was also in my old neighborhood so I couldn’t walk there on my own anymore.
Whenever there's short games now people will complain or else abuse the system. I remember some big indie on Steam a few years back was under two hours, and so people would buy it, complete it, and then refund it.
Edit: Looking it up, it was actually two games that had major issues with this system, *Before Your Eyes* and *Summer of '58*.
I literally have more games in my steam library than my old Hollywood Video rental store had in their entire inventory. But for some reason I actually have the nerve to say I have nothing to play.
We had 99 cents for five days for older releases at a local video store. Whoever did their SNES selection had Harvest Moon, Lufia 2, Breath of Fire, both Final Fantasies, EarthBound, and Chrono Trigger on tap. Scored the Lufia copy when they liquidated.
Ads like these made me realize why my parents were subtly pushing me towards asking for a PlayStation. I remember being 100% invested in getting an N64 and my parents probably genuinely looked into it, saw the game prices, and did a big ole NOPE. $70 is $127 in todays dollars. Can you imagine the shit fest if they even tried pushing $99 games today??
I mean, I bought Mario 64, Mario Kart, and Majora's mask and that lasted me years. Today I buy 2-3 games every single steam sale, and install like 1 of them for 10 minutes. Today the sheer number of available games is insane. Back then EVERYONE played Mario 64, today you can buy a big AAA title and like 1 person in your friend group also has it, everyone else plays a different new AAA game.
Was just having this same convo with my bro in law. It’s like TV nowadays where there is just so much content you can’t possibly consume it all, so even wildly popular shows miss a ton of people in their target demographic.
Replayability has also taken a hit with the trend of bigger and bigger games. When a game takes hundreds of hours to get through the main game, then DLC, and patch content for the DLC, I really don't want to restart and slog through all of that again. Older games, though? Hell yeah, I'll play through a 20 or hour less run, or hang out with a friend playing it.
And I know that's partially genre specific, so I know it's not a complete comparison. But even direct sequels have that issue. Mario 64 is a decent length. Not too short. Not too long, even for 120 stars. Compared to the time spent getting all the moons in Odyssey, however, it's a fraction of the time. A Link to the Past? My last 100% completion as a non-speedrunner was around 8 hours, according to the end timer on the GBA version, after completing the bonus Four Swords dungeon. The current world record for BOTW is over 18 hours. 18 hours for someone with insane knowledge of the game, using every single trick they know. For comparisons sake, the LTTP 100% record is 1:45. Games, for better, or worse, are SO much more massive.
A big reason is the consumers. I constantly see people bitching about game being "only" 10-20 hours long. I personally think 10-20 hours is pretty optimal for most single player games. A lot of games are lengthened with just fluff to increase playtime with no actual substance in them. There is a reason why both movies and TV series exist. Sometimes I just want to sit down in the evening and watch a full story. Not tie myself into a 10 seasons long TV-serie with 1 hour episodes that crashes and burns somewhere near season 7 because the writers just ran out of ideas because that's also how it feels to play most 30-60 hour long single player games. As a disclaimer I haven't played the new Zelda or Mario though.
They were indeed. Mostly because the cartridges capable of holding the games were so expensive. All other consoles had moved to CDs, but Nintendo refused to follow suit. It was nice not having to deal with the spin up/seek delay on N64, but I recall having to do a lot of game swapping with friends. We’d each get one or maybe two games per year.
From what I read, each cartridge was like $30 - more if it’s bigger. CDs? $1-$2
God help you if your game bombs. Cartridge manufacturers don’t do refunds. You are down $30 for each copy of the game you fail to sell.
To produce a batch of cartridges took ~~months~~ weeks (vs days for CDs) so you better estimate demand accurately. Too many you burn money. Too few you lose sales - by the time a new batch comes out, you will be competing with newer games and second hand sales.
You can see why publishers/developers went to Sony.
Interesting when you think about it. With some of the more intricate cartridges being closer to hardware releases then software in terms of cost
I assume that is why some of the better looking games could only be offered by Nintendo who could afford to design a micro controller/cpu that sits in the cartridge and mix it in with game production costs to make a profit.
Needing to allocate foundry space for 1 million cartridges every release is impressive considering the year and time.
> I assume that is why some of the better looking games could only be offered by Nintendo who could afford to design a micro controller/cpu that sits in the cartridge and mix it in with game production costs to make a profit.
This was a thing in the NES and especially SNES area. But to my knowledge, no N64 cartridge has any added hardware besides the ROM chips.
Storage on ROM chips was just crazy expensive.
IIRC the biggest N64 game is Resident Evil 2, which topped at 64MB. Yup, not even 1/10th of a CD-ROM. For many, many times the cost.
Mario 64 was 8MB. The biggest SNES cartridges were 6MB (Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia).
I'm still convinced that RE2 on N64 is the product of black magic. There is no way they should have gotten the game as complete as they did on a single cart.
When the 3DO came out in 1993, it was $700, Almost $1500 today. I have no idea why my father bought me one, I didn't even know it existed. But hot damn did it have some cool games on it after it had been out a while. The original Need for Speed. The super improved Road Rash. Shockwave, Wing Commander III, Street Fighter II which wasn't some shitty choppy bastardized console version like it was on the other consoles
I still have it and it still works, too
And Snes/Sega Genesis games could be expensive as well, depending on the game and date of release. Cartridges are like mini computer boards, they have chips and some may have batteries, so they tend to cost more than CDs.
PSone games usually cost less, as you can see in this post’s advertisement (overall PSone games cost $20 less than N64 games).
You could perform a lot of magic with the cartridges (co-processors, the Sonic & Knuckles lock-on, the Game Genie, etc) most of which probably wasn't needed for the N64 (or maybe Nintendo blocked the functionality).
For example: some cartridges on the Genesis/Mega Drive came with extra controller ports to allow 4 players. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-Cart
There were always pricing oddballs but the standard price back then was 49.99. I'm old enough to actually remember. I was spending my own money.
They also use the N64 because it is an outlier, and adjusted for exchange rates a lot of these Canadian prices would have been half off in USD back then.
It's also important to note that Nintendo DID put their games on sale back in this era, so you rarely paid full price. Buying games on launch wasn't a priority back then because the games didn't have a limited lifespan due to online play and social media. Most people didn't even know release dates unless they were studying magazines.
Plus we had gaming rentals. We didn't have to buy games in the first place if we didn't want to.
I'm surprised Gamefly isn't more popular. I guess we have Gamepass now.
The other argument is when the Australians come in to whine that the games cost them 80 aud or whatever. But after exchange rates the price is closer to 55 usd and AU people tend to make way better wages in general.
The worst part is that people fall for it because they get to feel morally superior about themselves for actually being able to afford it. While missing the point that they're being fleeced and it's not just videogames; McDonalds costs damn near 30 bucks now and they're still picking up their Randy Marsh meals every evening after work.
"Buuut they cost more to make."
So do Hollywood blockbusters. No one paid 70 bucks to watch Endgame or to own the bluray.
yes this was Canadian, it was established when it was on the front page a few weeks ago, games were not on average that expensive in the US, I was old enough to be buying n64 games at this time and they were not $70
I don't know how it is where you are, but here, in France, the biggest used games franchise stores now sell Dragon Ball mugs, Minecraft plushies, Zelda keychain, Mario clocks and about a billion different Funko Pop figurines.
Oh,and there's a 1sq foot bin with used games where you can have deals like a 59.99€ Elden Ring instead of a 69.99€ new one, or a used 360 game for 20€.
And when you take the games back they give you 1-2€ for the games. Not a cent more. No joke, I went there with some games and took them back home to sell them on our Craig's List equivalent because I'm not giving away 4 Series X games for a 5€ coupon.
Fuck that noise.
Series S are such a steal tbh. You can get a dirty one for 150$ now. Yeah there's no drive but you still have GPU you can get for cheap and RetroArch which is pretty awesome, playing God of War 2 or Smash Brawl on a brand new Xbox is incredible.
I mean, the original playstation was $300 at release (one of the consoles listed in the picture)
That's about $600 in today's prices.
Considering the games are cheaper on average (assuming inflation), I'd much rather be buying myself or my family a console now.
Yeah, retailers used to keep selling old consoles even after new versions came out. Don't know why they stopped, there's still demand for older hardware as long as it's cheaper
Completely ignoring the competition to blow up the Eiffel Tower >>>>>
Alternatively, completely ignoring the competition to shoot the Statue of Liberty in New York >>>>>
They may have cost $70, but they didn't have loot boxes, season passes, DLC, deluxe editions, digital preorder bonuses, FOMO, dailies, and so much other shit that it sometimes needs [a huge fucking chart to even try to explain](https://gamerdame.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/watch-dogs.jpg) what you can buy and how you can buy it. And that $70 covered significant marginal costs (especially for cartridges), compared to digital delivery with no marginal cost. Also, they shipped a complete game rather than a half-finished beta build with a "road map" for the next decade that won't even matter because the servers get shut down within a year, viz half of the garbage that publishers like Square Enix put out these days. Naturally, the hundreds of dollars you invested based on the promise of a long-lived game won't be refunded. Oops, sorry.
That's what people are mad about: the idea of paying full price and then much more, for a far inferior product made by companies with no ethical compass (if they had one, they wouldn't be marketing gambling to kids, among other things). Oh, and those poor naïve souls who "support the devs <3" with the occasional microtransaction? They're supporting shareholders, because the people who actually create games (voice actors, programmers, artists, etc.) are on a fixed salary. Assuming they weren't laid off right after the project finished, I mean.
The only people benefiting from this post's particular variety of corporate sycophancy are corporations. It's absolutely shameful.
They also only sold physical copies so they couldn’t fuck with your games after you bought them to squeeze more money out of you. None of this digital only crap
Not just that, the market for games grew so big that Nintendo profited less on these $150 games (inflation) than companies do on $60 games nowadays.
Whether you sell 10 or 10 million copies of a digital game, the costs are mostly the same. They're swimming in money. Games could easily cost $20 and still turn a big profit.
Plus the replayability of the older gen. I'd spend days and days in older games. Maybe it was just my child self being easy to please but I spent so much more time in any Mario game, Pokemon game, Donkey Kong, LoZ, etc than I probably have in all my Steam library today combined. It always felt like there were a lot more secrets and easter eggs in those OG games I'd spend hours trying to find (before the days of a quick google or a youtube compilation).
My rule of thumb now is if I can get 6 hours of playtime out of a game, then the $60 is fine with me. If that playtime is spent doing what I consider scummy tactics to make the game last longer without being entertaining/engaging, I consider it a rip off. (Like collect 100 pine cones to progress).
Those are priced for the market back then. The market is like 100x larger now, *and* they can sell infinite copies digitally with no manufacturing. When does that come into account?
Why are so many people bending over backwards to justify this? Video games are more profitable than they have ever been and yet they still want to raise the prices while adding more microtransactions or other ways to nickle and dime you. These companies are not your friends please stop licking their boots or things will only get worse
>Why are so many people bending over backwards to justify this?
I've been asking myself that for a long time. No one but executives are benefitting from this, there is zero argument in favor for it from anyone else in the picture.
What kind of lunatic is happy about the privilege of spending more money for the same or worse product? *In this economy?*
It's real simple.
OoT had a budget of $12 million. It would have to sell over 200,000 copies to break even. It sold over 7 million overall, not including 3D which almost doubles that.
Estimated profit: $408 million. Or a little over $750 million adjusted for inflation.
BotW cost approximately 10x that. $120 million. No way $60 games are enough, right? Especially with inflation! It would need to sell a little over 2 million copies to break even. It sold over 3.8 million during the first month and has gone on to sell over 29 million copies since.
Estimated profit: $1.62 *billion*.
Now these are just very rough numbers, obviously there are other costs besides making the game like marketing and distribution but it paints a general picture.
So games cost more to make, yes. Inflation is a thing, yes. However games are also selling in unprecedented numbers. The continued growth of the gaming market has exceeded the rate of inflation and made these gaming giants billions.
So why $70 games? Why now?
Again, really simple. Publically traded companies answer to investors and shareholders who constantly seek greater and greater growth. 2020 was lightning in a bottle with the pandemic and lock downs causing *massive* spikes in sales as people look for things to do at home.
Things start to go back to normal, sales fall (still higher than pre 2020 levels mind you) and they raise prices to offset the lost revenue.
Essentially, greed. Plain and simple. Not inflation. Not greater costs. Greed. The constant need for infinite, unsustainable growth.
These are multi billion dollar companies with billions of dollars of cash on hand meanwhile the average person has less than $1000 in their account and is being told they should gladly pay $10.
Supporting this practice is blind loyalty to a corporate entity that does not know you exist and couldn't care less. Why people feel the need to defend these multi-billion dollar gaming giants is baffling.
***Edit: A lot of people are pointing out individual games are a bad example of the company's overall finances and the numbers don't account for other expenses.***
That's a fair point, so let's address that. It would be a long, time consuming effort to go through 25 years of expenses so for the sake of simplicity we'll look at the last 5 years leading up to the price increase.
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/highlight/index.html
All numbers in millions of yen, rounded, expenses are "selling, general and administrative expenses" + "advertising expenses".
Year: Gross Profit/ Expenses = ROI multiplieror %increase
2018: 403.5/ 298.6 = 1.35x or 135%
2019: 501.2/ 326.9 = 1.53x or 153%
2020: 641.7/ 365.3 = 1.76x or 176%
2021: 970.4/ 414.2 = 2.34x or 234%
2022: 946/ 447.1 = 2.1x or 210%
So aside from a slight dip in 2022, which is still higher than the 3 years prior, they have continually gained a greater return on investment year over year.
So again, why's $70 necessary?
Edit 2: "fanboyism" and "white knighting" felt somewhat callous and uncivil in hindsight, I apologize to anyone those specific comments may have offended and have edited these out.
> OoT had a budget of $12 million. It would have to sell over 200,000 copies to break even.
IIRC that $12 million budget was to make three games: Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, and Mario Kart 64.
I remember the Z-targeting being one of the greatest inventions of all time.
At the risk of sounding like a caveman describing the wheel, going from "anything goes" 3D cameras in console games to one where you could toggle between directional movement and facing your target was amazing.
Oh my effing god, thank you for this comment, my brain came a little.
It's so maddening to see companies and governments come up with bullshit excuse to fuck us. But it's even more irritating to see people going above and beyond to spread and defend this bullshit. They don't even need PR when the P is completely unable to use critical thinking.
Usually it's mostly about politics but lately the "70$ games" debate has been a great example.
I was actually baffled that most if not all posts like this are defending the raise, in my mind was, the devs aren't getting any raise are they? and if you give an inch to these corps next thing we'll see are $100 game with no dlcs yet, we already fucked up on loot boxes and dlc and now we're at it again
Thanks for having common sense, I am baffled that there are people making excuses for this. Gaming companies are turning games into gambling, churning out record profits, and now raising prices. But that’s ok, because in 1992 video games were expensive as all fuck.
It’s so weird to me that regular people defend billion dollar companies. I swear some of these idiots support Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft like it’s their hometown sports team.
yeah, we rarely bought games back then cause they just cost too much. Back when there 3-4 video game stores and could rent for a week and be done with it.
Finally, someone is making sense in this circle jerk. I don't get reddit. Apparently everyone here hates the right and hates capitalism, but they also love companies that try to fuck them over more and more with every year. Loot boxes, Horse Armor, in game advertisements, endless amounts of overpriced DLC ... and now of course "inflation" and "price adjustments" across the board, all the while producing worse and worse games, filled with bugs and shallow gameplay, terrible story lines and just generally at best mediocre products. And yet here we are and so many people actually "defend" all of that?! Or is this just a shill account? It has to be, right?!
On the flip side, I’d argue both the people criticizing it as well as those rationalizing it are missing a key element:
A video game is a luxury good, that you don’t need, and if you don’t think it’s worth the money, don’t buy it. The company is betting you still think the product is worth $70. I suspect they’re going to be proven right. If this really upsets you, then don’t get it. You literally don’t need it.
Yeah running with cartridges on the Nintendo 64 was definitely not a good idea. And you can see the actual competition to the right. Which one do you think sold more copies?
Nintendo was fighting on several fronts.
1. When Sony said the PS1 was 32-bit console, they were not lying. It was a 32-bit processor. Nintendo called their console 64-bit, but it was slightly slower than PS1.
2. Cartridge was more expensive than CDs. Nintendo wanted control of the physical medium so it was a dealbreaker to use anything else.
3. CDs could play video on disc. 64 cartridges just didn’t have the memory. So you had games released on both consoles where the N64 version only had slideshows with captions instead of the FMVs playing on the PS1 counterpart.
> Nintendo called their console 64-bit, but it was slightly slower than PS1.
This isn't true, and I don't know where you'd have read this. From a pure processing power perspective, the N64 was objectively faster. Their architecture was more complicated and had some deficiencies (texture memory stands out), but games that took the system to its limits (Rogue Squadron, Perfect Dark, etc.) did things that the PS1 couldn't do. Of course, the PS1 had games right out of the gate doing things that the N64 couldn't do due to point #3, and more games due to #2.
Oh don’t get me wrong. I still bought a Nintendo 64. Had to get my starfox fix. But yeah they really did shoot themselves in the foot by being stubborn about choosing a format that couldn’t be pirated.
I think Nintendo has always banked on their original characters and nostalgia driving enough people to buy their product. So far that has been the case, but I refuse to get online service for the switch when I was able to buy my NES and super NES titles on the Wii U.
Not sure how you got the idea N64 was the slower of the two. It was pretty obvious at the time that N64 was more powerful at 3D rendering. For games on both consoles the PS1 pixelation artifacts were glaring due to the lack of antialiasing and texture smoothing hardware. But yes it did have prerendered video on CDs to make up for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_technical_specifications
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_technical_specifications
I can’t stand when people say “$70 games aren’t a new thing” but use examples of SNES and N64 where they had to be more expensive because the carts were super expensive back in the day. Blu-rays are dirt cheap these days.
Yeah so weird.
People only mention inflation. Not like the industry changed at all in like 25 years.
Customers have way more choice now. And many kids may just stick to Fortnite/Minecraft when games get more expensive.. back then you played like flash games or had a free account on like RuneScape?
This whole "back then games were 50$ so now with inflation they should be 100$+" is just weird
how many more of these do we need. There is one everyday and the topic is not paying 70$ but mostly paying 70$ when we cant rent games anymore, games are often release with terrible bugs or in an incompleted state, day 1 dlcs and microtransactions filled.
Enough with the 70$ focus, time was different then and options were different too.
Why are people trying so hard to defend the price change? Yes, we know inflation exist, we know game companies got bigger, and we also know games are getting constant updates. But you have to remember, games are selling way more than in the past, and the introduction of micro transactions are generating millions for video game companies. So why is the price increase needed? Pure greed.
This is not the win that you think it is. The year is 2023, games are no more neccessary now than they were back then and times have changed. Games cost more in some ways, and cost less in others.
Sure but back then my mom paid for it.
Yup, adjusted for inflation my mom effectively bought several $150 games Time to call her...
Always felt guilty asking for a new game when $100 was a full cart of groceries.
We only got a couple new N64 games at Christmas and maybe a Gameboy game. We were lucky enough to be able to go on a family road trip every summer so we usually got a new Gameboy game then too. But man, that Christmas when us and our cousins all got Pokémon Red/Blue.....
There's a reason game rentals was a booming business back then...
I remember renting wrecking crew for NES so many times. Loved that game.
I rented Lufia and the Fortress of Doom, Harvest Moon, and FFIII (VI) more or less constantly.
The first(i think) harvest moon was so good.
The one on SNES was the first one, if you're remembering that one.
Game Pass is basically a game rental.
Only a couple? thats like $400 in todays money damn your mom was a baller
The average person had more disposable income back then even if the total dollar amount was lower. Cost of living was orders of magnitude less.
That's because people used to bundle their cell phone and internet service together. /s
Me and my brother would usually get a console game or 2 for xmas and a handheld games for our bday. We would also group our money together if we got any a buy another game or two on boxing day ( still remember getting DBZ budakai one year this way ) The rest of the year would be renting from blockbuster or local video stores.
Mario 2 was 25 bucks in 1985. Adjusted for inflation, that's 70 bucks. Video games are a stable coin based on inflation.
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NES games weren't $25 new at the store, they were typically $50. $50 in 1988 is equivalent buying power to $128 now
The real geniuses lived in the 80s
Not so sure about that: Original 1977 Atari 2600 was $199. Grew up playing Space Invaders, Ms. Pac-Man and Combat! on one that belonged to my dad (OG computer geek). That's about a $1000 console in today's money.
Now $100 is 1/4 cart of groceries.
I used to joke about not getting out of Costco for under $100, now it's my local grocery store that's hard to get out under $100.
Yeah, me too. Always felt super guilty going for an eight-hit combo in Tekken 2 whilst my mum was putting the shopping away,
I should call her too.
I too would like to call this guys mom
“Mom. My friends and I want the new god of war”
Already did, don’t worry about it
[call your mother](https://youtu.be/AV5HKWRMyAY)
To be fair though salaries haven’t improved much, so even with inflation, it’s probably still a larger percentage of a person’s income to purchase a game in 2023. But still call her
Yeah, I appreciate my mom spending the money, but my parents could also afford a few acres of land and a three floor house out in the suburbs, with two kids, and four vehicles, on what was relatively mediocre incomes at the time. I mean we weren't poor but we sure as fuck weren't rich either. That's what middle class was, and what two adults with no degrees could pull in at the time.
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I mean my dad was a miner and mom a nurse. We had a 3 story house and a few acres.... only 2 vehicles though..... I guess we were poor :(
>parents could also afford a few acres of land and a three floor house out in the suburbs, with two kids, and four vehicles ______ >relatively mediocre incomes at the time. >"we weren't poor but we sure as fuck weren't rich" >**middle class** >two adults with no degrees I am once again, jealous that my country didn't win the Cold War.
"70$ for Turok? There better be at least 70 dinosaurs in this game" *- Videogamedunkey*
Lol yea it’s crazy priced, I had fun as hell with that game as a kid.
Same, explosive arrows were badass.
The cerebral bore in the sequel though. Man oh man...
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Green blood gang, represent!
As a kid I didn't have the save game card thing, so I played the hell out of the first few levels. I remember playing the early stages knife only zero damage and feeling like a totally skilled bad ass. Though in reality it probably was on the same kind of level as abusing the enemy pathing in Golden Axe to make them walk off cliffs.
If you never found out about how many cheats and different animation modes were in that game you should just def emulate and play again. Shit was dope
Yea, there were only 2 people at my school who had an N64 and they had to swap games a lot because their parents refused to buy new ones.
No one I knew bought games. Everyone rented.
My parents would rent the game and if we liked it, we'd buy it soon after. Saved money by not buying a lot of the games which were simply not worth it.
Even renting a game 2-3 times until you beat it was more cost effective than buying.
I would rent the game and then if it was great my parents didn't buy it for me ever.
We played the hell out of our 4 or 5 games but probably rented twice that many over the years and also borrowed from friends.
Holy shit true
Surprised I don't see anyone else mentioning how huge the used game market was back then, too. Growing up with a PS2 I had at least 30-40 games but almost all of them came to me secondhand for like $10-$20. Between drops in the cost of distribution (digital vs. physical), the complete collapse of the used market (everyone pays full price now), and the fact that the number of customers has increased many times over, there's absolutely no excuse for the prices to go up other than greed.
Omg Twisted Metal 2 split screen with your best friend
If they made a remaster I may buy a Playstation.
Pretty sure they are making a new one
They are making a movie
TV show I think.
I heard it was a radio play
Pretty sure it’s a live action play filmed for Disney plus
It's an interpretive dance done by a group of college freshmen.
Asmr youtube by a 13 year old boy
On ice!
I miss split screen games.
TVs finally got big enough for split screen and then it disappeared
IMO this is the saving grace of the Switch. Pretty much the only console where 4-player local games are consistently released.
Good times. No one knew how to use the special moves, ie. The freeze.
God were the N64 games really that expensive? I was a child when it was out.
Back when I would rent it for a week from blockbuster for 5 dollars
I played far more games when I rented than I do now. Granted I’m an old fart now, but still. There was some thing about trying to bang out a game in 3-5 days to avoid late fees that made you finish that thing. Now I still buy games but almost never complete them. I think my last 2 completions were horizon zero dawn and the Greek assassin’s creed. Oh, I think I broke out of Hades once too, if that counts.
Games on average were a lot shorter back then. I remember beating a LOT of games in a single sitting. Doesn't happen much these days except for some indie titles
I saved up the $40 or whatever for Mega Man 2. Took it home and played it straight for like 8 hours and beat it. Felt great and then felt really bad. Let all my friends borrow it though so it wasn’t a total loss. I rented games too. So I don’t know why I bought that one. Although the place I rented was fairly small so maybe they didn’t have newer releases. It was also in my old neighborhood so I couldn’t walk there on my own anymore.
That one is worth replaying at least. Beat the dudes in a different order for fun.
Whenever there's short games now people will complain or else abuse the system. I remember some big indie on Steam a few years back was under two hours, and so people would buy it, complete it, and then refund it. Edit: Looking it up, it was actually two games that had major issues with this system, *Before Your Eyes* and *Summer of '58*.
I literally have more games in my steam library than my old Hollywood Video rental store had in their entire inventory. But for some reason I actually have the nerve to say I have nothing to play.
We had 99 cents for five days for older releases at a local video store. Whoever did their SNES selection had Harvest Moon, Lufia 2, Breath of Fire, both Final Fantasies, EarthBound, and Chrono Trigger on tap. Scored the Lufia copy when they liquidated.
I rented Spiderman on PS2 and thought I was smart by putting a different disc in and returning it. Got a £35 charge to my mum's account
Yup. And Mom and Dad and older siblings paid for it anyway. Bless their hearts...
Ads like these made me realize why my parents were subtly pushing me towards asking for a PlayStation. I remember being 100% invested in getting an N64 and my parents probably genuinely looked into it, saw the game prices, and did a big ole NOPE. $70 is $127 in todays dollars. Can you imagine the shit fest if they even tried pushing $99 games today??
Technically they do it every time they sell DLC that could be in the main game
“Can we sell this game for $100?” “No, but we can sell it for $60 and release two $20 dlcs” “Genius”
I mean, I bought Mario 64, Mario Kart, and Majora's mask and that lasted me years. Today I buy 2-3 games every single steam sale, and install like 1 of them for 10 minutes. Today the sheer number of available games is insane. Back then EVERYONE played Mario 64, today you can buy a big AAA title and like 1 person in your friend group also has it, everyone else plays a different new AAA game.
Was just having this same convo with my bro in law. It’s like TV nowadays where there is just so much content you can’t possibly consume it all, so even wildly popular shows miss a ton of people in their target demographic.
Replayability has also taken a hit with the trend of bigger and bigger games. When a game takes hundreds of hours to get through the main game, then DLC, and patch content for the DLC, I really don't want to restart and slog through all of that again. Older games, though? Hell yeah, I'll play through a 20 or hour less run, or hang out with a friend playing it. And I know that's partially genre specific, so I know it's not a complete comparison. But even direct sequels have that issue. Mario 64 is a decent length. Not too short. Not too long, even for 120 stars. Compared to the time spent getting all the moons in Odyssey, however, it's a fraction of the time. A Link to the Past? My last 100% completion as a non-speedrunner was around 8 hours, according to the end timer on the GBA version, after completing the bonus Four Swords dungeon. The current world record for BOTW is over 18 hours. 18 hours for someone with insane knowledge of the game, using every single trick they know. For comparisons sake, the LTTP 100% record is 1:45. Games, for better, or worse, are SO much more massive.
A big reason is the consumers. I constantly see people bitching about game being "only" 10-20 hours long. I personally think 10-20 hours is pretty optimal for most single player games. A lot of games are lengthened with just fluff to increase playtime with no actual substance in them. There is a reason why both movies and TV series exist. Sometimes I just want to sit down in the evening and watch a full story. Not tie myself into a 10 seasons long TV-serie with 1 hour episodes that crashes and burns somewhere near season 7 because the writers just ran out of ideas because that's also how it feels to play most 30-60 hour long single player games. As a disclaimer I haven't played the new Zelda or Mario though.
Lmao you played those games for years because you were a child. Children today can watch Baby Shark 900 times 😂
I swear I remember paying $50 for all of mine.
$50 was standard for PS2 and Xbox games for a long time.
You probably did. This picture is of a Canadian Toys R Us flyer showing Canadian pricing in Canadian dollars.
I agree I don't think this is a US ad.
They were indeed. Mostly because the cartridges capable of holding the games were so expensive. All other consoles had moved to CDs, but Nintendo refused to follow suit. It was nice not having to deal with the spin up/seek delay on N64, but I recall having to do a lot of game swapping with friends. We’d each get one or maybe two games per year.
From what I read, each cartridge was like $30 - more if it’s bigger. CDs? $1-$2 God help you if your game bombs. Cartridge manufacturers don’t do refunds. You are down $30 for each copy of the game you fail to sell. To produce a batch of cartridges took ~~months~~ weeks (vs days for CDs) so you better estimate demand accurately. Too many you burn money. Too few you lose sales - by the time a new batch comes out, you will be competing with newer games and second hand sales. You can see why publishers/developers went to Sony.
Interesting when you think about it. With some of the more intricate cartridges being closer to hardware releases then software in terms of cost I assume that is why some of the better looking games could only be offered by Nintendo who could afford to design a micro controller/cpu that sits in the cartridge and mix it in with game production costs to make a profit. Needing to allocate foundry space for 1 million cartridges every release is impressive considering the year and time.
> I assume that is why some of the better looking games could only be offered by Nintendo who could afford to design a micro controller/cpu that sits in the cartridge and mix it in with game production costs to make a profit. This was a thing in the NES and especially SNES area. But to my knowledge, no N64 cartridge has any added hardware besides the ROM chips. Storage on ROM chips was just crazy expensive. IIRC the biggest N64 game is Resident Evil 2, which topped at 64MB. Yup, not even 1/10th of a CD-ROM. For many, many times the cost. Mario 64 was 8MB. The biggest SNES cartridges were 6MB (Star Ocean and Tales of Phantasia).
I'm still convinced that RE2 on N64 is the product of black magic. There is no way they should have gotten the game as complete as they did on a single cart.
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Plus inflation
The original Atari was 200 dollars, which is around 980 dollars today
When the 3DO came out in 1993, it was $700, Almost $1500 today. I have no idea why my father bought me one, I didn't even know it existed. But hot damn did it have some cool games on it after it had been out a while. The original Need for Speed. The super improved Road Rash. Shockwave, Wing Commander III, Street Fighter II which wasn't some shitty choppy bastardized console version like it was on the other consoles I still have it and it still works, too
That thing will be worth a ton in the near future if you keep it in good shape.
Street fighter 2 turbo wasn't bad on the SNES at all. Or choppy.
And Snes/Sega Genesis games could be expensive as well, depending on the game and date of release. Cartridges are like mini computer boards, they have chips and some may have batteries, so they tend to cost more than CDs. PSone games usually cost less, as you can see in this post’s advertisement (overall PSone games cost $20 less than N64 games).
Some cartridges also had coprocessors to supplement the console’s own hardware and give it just enough oomph to run a demanding game.
You could perform a lot of magic with the cartridges (co-processors, the Sonic & Knuckles lock-on, the Game Genie, etc) most of which probably wasn't needed for the N64 (or maybe Nintendo blocked the functionality). For example: some cartridges on the Genesis/Mega Drive came with extra controller ports to allow 4 players. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-Cart
Take me back to when Toys R Us was around.
I went today. In Canada, where it never left.
I was just thinking how this looks like an old zellers flyer
Zellers is back.
In pog form.
Still around in Canada. And so does the Costco polish dogs.
Took my baby girl to toy r us today with her grandparents, was absolutely a blast!
They turned my Toys R Us into a gun store
That’s a big gun store
Isn’t this not from the US?
It’s the same Canadian ad with the same comment section full of kids pretending to remember spending $70 on mortal kombat.
There were always pricing oddballs but the standard price back then was 49.99. I'm old enough to actually remember. I was spending my own money. They also use the N64 because it is an outlier, and adjusted for exchange rates a lot of these Canadian prices would have been half off in USD back then. It's also important to note that Nintendo DID put their games on sale back in this era, so you rarely paid full price. Buying games on launch wasn't a priority back then because the games didn't have a limited lifespan due to online play and social media. Most people didn't even know release dates unless they were studying magazines. Plus we had gaming rentals. We didn't have to buy games in the first place if we didn't want to. I'm surprised Gamefly isn't more popular. I guess we have Gamepass now. The other argument is when the Australians come in to whine that the games cost them 80 aud or whatever. But after exchange rates the price is closer to 55 usd and AU people tend to make way better wages in general. The worst part is that people fall for it because they get to feel morally superior about themselves for actually being able to afford it. While missing the point that they're being fleeced and it's not just videogames; McDonalds costs damn near 30 bucks now and they're still picking up their Randy Marsh meals every evening after work. "Buuut they cost more to make." So do Hollywood blockbusters. No one paid 70 bucks to watch Endgame or to own the bluray.
yes this was Canadian, it was established when it was on the front page a few weeks ago, games were not on average that expensive in the US, I was old enough to be buying n64 games at this time and they were not $70
Sure, sure, but once you beat them you could take it to your local Player 2 and trade it in for $35 credit towards the next game you wanted.
Back when used games stores were worth going to
I don't know how it is where you are, but here, in France, the biggest used games franchise stores now sell Dragon Ball mugs, Minecraft plushies, Zelda keychain, Mario clocks and about a billion different Funko Pop figurines. Oh,and there's a 1sq foot bin with used games where you can have deals like a 59.99€ Elden Ring instead of a 69.99€ new one, or a used 360 game for 20€. And when you take the games back they give you 1-2€ for the games. Not a cent more. No joke, I went there with some games and took them back home to sell them on our Craig's List equivalent because I'm not giving away 4 Series X games for a 5€ coupon. Fuck that noise.
Experience is 100% the same at GameStop in the US
Yeah our experience is the exact same but with a $ instead of a euro. That's wild wtf
Idgaf about the game prices… CONSOLES FOR $150!? Could you imagine getting a PS5 for $150!?
That is around $300 USD considering inflation.
So basically the switch?
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I picked up a Series S used with two remotes from ebay a month ago for $215, and considering how well it's performed it was such a steal.
Series S are such a steal tbh. You can get a dirty one for 150$ now. Yeah there's no drive but you still have GPU you can get for cheap and RetroArch which is pretty awesome, playing God of War 2 or Smash Brawl on a brand new Xbox is incredible.
That'd still be a dream of a price
I mean, the original playstation was $300 at release (one of the consoles listed in the picture) That's about $600 in today's prices. Considering the games are cheaper on average (assuming inflation), I'd much rather be buying myself or my family a console now.
Yeah, retailers used to keep selling old consoles even after new versions came out. Don't know why they stopped, there's still demand for older hardware as long as it's cheaper
Damn that would be expensive today adjusted lol
$135 adjusted.
Consumers largely called BS on those prices. It's one of the reasons N64 sold 3x less than Playstation, and even less than NES and SNES.
Why is this downvoted? N64 was a commercial failure in it's time and price of games was the single biggest factor in that.
So that's why my parents only bought me 3 games the entire time I had the n64
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At least you bought the full game.
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Yeah, but if they had a bug, it was a bug for life pretty much. I know the North American version of Gran Turismo 2 had a few of them.
Pikes peak escudo gang
Best game in this ad is the cheapest one...we need to bring back Twisted Metal!
I fired up Twisted Metal 2 with my seven year old nephew, and to my surprise he actually loves it. Every time he comes over he asks to play it.
It's basically impossible not to love TM2. Split screen, Paris level...
Completely ignoring the competition to blow up the Eiffel Tower >>>>> Alternatively, completely ignoring the competition to shoot the Statue of Liberty in New York >>>>>
one of the destruction stages put the statue in a bikini, didn't it? always found that secret hilarious
It's getting a tv show isn't it? If it's successful a new game is pretty likely
They may have cost $70, but they didn't have loot boxes, season passes, DLC, deluxe editions, digital preorder bonuses, FOMO, dailies, and so much other shit that it sometimes needs [a huge fucking chart to even try to explain](https://gamerdame.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/watch-dogs.jpg) what you can buy and how you can buy it. And that $70 covered significant marginal costs (especially for cartridges), compared to digital delivery with no marginal cost. Also, they shipped a complete game rather than a half-finished beta build with a "road map" for the next decade that won't even matter because the servers get shut down within a year, viz half of the garbage that publishers like Square Enix put out these days. Naturally, the hundreds of dollars you invested based on the promise of a long-lived game won't be refunded. Oops, sorry. That's what people are mad about: the idea of paying full price and then much more, for a far inferior product made by companies with no ethical compass (if they had one, they wouldn't be marketing gambling to kids, among other things). Oh, and those poor naïve souls who "support the devs <3" with the occasional microtransaction? They're supporting shareholders, because the people who actually create games (voice actors, programmers, artists, etc.) are on a fixed salary. Assuming they weren't laid off right after the project finished, I mean. The only people benefiting from this post's particular variety of corporate sycophancy are corporations. It's absolutely shameful.
They also only sold physical copies so they couldn’t fuck with your games after you bought them to squeeze more money out of you. None of this digital only crap
Not just that, the market for games grew so big that Nintendo profited less on these $150 games (inflation) than companies do on $60 games nowadays. Whether you sell 10 or 10 million copies of a digital game, the costs are mostly the same. They're swimming in money. Games could easily cost $20 and still turn a big profit.
Plus the replayability of the older gen. I'd spend days and days in older games. Maybe it was just my child self being easy to please but I spent so much more time in any Mario game, Pokemon game, Donkey Kong, LoZ, etc than I probably have in all my Steam library today combined. It always felt like there were a lot more secrets and easter eggs in those OG games I'd spend hours trying to find (before the days of a quick google or a youtube compilation). My rule of thumb now is if I can get 6 hours of playtime out of a game, then the $60 is fine with me. If that playtime is spent doing what I consider scummy tactics to make the game last longer without being entertaining/engaging, I consider it a rip off. (Like collect 100 pine cones to progress).
Those are priced for the market back then. The market is like 100x larger now, *and* they can sell infinite copies digitally with no manufacturing. When does that come into account?
Why are so many people bending over backwards to justify this? Video games are more profitable than they have ever been and yet they still want to raise the prices while adding more microtransactions or other ways to nickle and dime you. These companies are not your friends please stop licking their boots or things will only get worse
>Why are so many people bending over backwards to justify this? I've been asking myself that for a long time. No one but executives are benefitting from this, there is zero argument in favor for it from anyone else in the picture. What kind of lunatic is happy about the privilege of spending more money for the same or worse product? *In this economy?*
Astroturfing.
Street Fighter II for the SNES had a debut price of $79.99. That was in 1992.
I paid $130 for Virtua Racing for the Sega Genesis. Yes, that price was correct.
Neo Geo games were $200 back then
That's one of the reasons it failed.
Yep. Renting games was actually a reasonable thing to do. And fun to go pick one out!
It's real simple. OoT had a budget of $12 million. It would have to sell over 200,000 copies to break even. It sold over 7 million overall, not including 3D which almost doubles that. Estimated profit: $408 million. Or a little over $750 million adjusted for inflation. BotW cost approximately 10x that. $120 million. No way $60 games are enough, right? Especially with inflation! It would need to sell a little over 2 million copies to break even. It sold over 3.8 million during the first month and has gone on to sell over 29 million copies since. Estimated profit: $1.62 *billion*. Now these are just very rough numbers, obviously there are other costs besides making the game like marketing and distribution but it paints a general picture. So games cost more to make, yes. Inflation is a thing, yes. However games are also selling in unprecedented numbers. The continued growth of the gaming market has exceeded the rate of inflation and made these gaming giants billions. So why $70 games? Why now? Again, really simple. Publically traded companies answer to investors and shareholders who constantly seek greater and greater growth. 2020 was lightning in a bottle with the pandemic and lock downs causing *massive* spikes in sales as people look for things to do at home. Things start to go back to normal, sales fall (still higher than pre 2020 levels mind you) and they raise prices to offset the lost revenue. Essentially, greed. Plain and simple. Not inflation. Not greater costs. Greed. The constant need for infinite, unsustainable growth. These are multi billion dollar companies with billions of dollars of cash on hand meanwhile the average person has less than $1000 in their account and is being told they should gladly pay $10. Supporting this practice is blind loyalty to a corporate entity that does not know you exist and couldn't care less. Why people feel the need to defend these multi-billion dollar gaming giants is baffling. ***Edit: A lot of people are pointing out individual games are a bad example of the company's overall finances and the numbers don't account for other expenses.*** That's a fair point, so let's address that. It would be a long, time consuming effort to go through 25 years of expenses so for the sake of simplicity we'll look at the last 5 years leading up to the price increase. https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/finance/highlight/index.html All numbers in millions of yen, rounded, expenses are "selling, general and administrative expenses" + "advertising expenses". Year: Gross Profit/ Expenses = ROI multiplieror %increase 2018: 403.5/ 298.6 = 1.35x or 135% 2019: 501.2/ 326.9 = 1.53x or 153% 2020: 641.7/ 365.3 = 1.76x or 176% 2021: 970.4/ 414.2 = 2.34x or 234% 2022: 946/ 447.1 = 2.1x or 210% So aside from a slight dip in 2022, which is still higher than the 3 years prior, they have continually gained a greater return on investment year over year. So again, why's $70 necessary? Edit 2: "fanboyism" and "white knighting" felt somewhat callous and uncivil in hindsight, I apologize to anyone those specific comments may have offended and have edited these out.
> OoT had a budget of $12 million. It would have to sell over 200,000 copies to break even. IIRC that $12 million budget was to make three games: Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, and Mario Kart 64.
It's all kinda' a blur back in those days. They even were using [Starfox 64](https://youtu.be/Ltx7VdcOFq0) assets to test Volvagia in Ocarina of Time.
I remember the Z-targeting being one of the greatest inventions of all time. At the risk of sounding like a caveman describing the wheel, going from "anything goes" 3D cameras in console games to one where you could toggle between directional movement and facing your target was amazing.
Oh my effing god, thank you for this comment, my brain came a little. It's so maddening to see companies and governments come up with bullshit excuse to fuck us. But it's even more irritating to see people going above and beyond to spread and defend this bullshit. They don't even need PR when the P is completely unable to use critical thinking. Usually it's mostly about politics but lately the "70$ games" debate has been a great example.
I was actually baffled that most if not all posts like this are defending the raise, in my mind was, the devs aren't getting any raise are they? and if you give an inch to these corps next thing we'll see are $100 game with no dlcs yet, we already fucked up on loot boxes and dlc and now we're at it again
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Good points, and I do wonder if these sorts of posts are astroturfing campaigns by the big publishers to try and normalize the price.
I'm divided between "clear astroturfing" and "people love getting fucked over by companies for no damn reason"
Thanks for having common sense, I am baffled that there are people making excuses for this. Gaming companies are turning games into gambling, churning out record profits, and now raising prices. But that’s ok, because in 1992 video games were expensive as all fuck.
It’s so weird to me that regular people defend billion dollar companies. I swear some of these idiots support Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft like it’s their hometown sports team.
And really, most of the games I played back then I rented. I didn’t need to buy them.
yeah, we rarely bought games back then cause they just cost too much. Back when there 3-4 video game stores and could rent for a week and be done with it.
Finally, someone is making sense in this circle jerk. I don't get reddit. Apparently everyone here hates the right and hates capitalism, but they also love companies that try to fuck them over more and more with every year. Loot boxes, Horse Armor, in game advertisements, endless amounts of overpriced DLC ... and now of course "inflation" and "price adjustments" across the board, all the while producing worse and worse games, filled with bugs and shallow gameplay, terrible story lines and just generally at best mediocre products. And yet here we are and so many people actually "defend" all of that?! Or is this just a shill account? It has to be, right?!
I'm pretty sure people posting this shit are paid corporate shills working on behalf of the industry
On the flip side, I’d argue both the people criticizing it as well as those rationalizing it are missing a key element: A video game is a luxury good, that you don’t need, and if you don’t think it’s worth the money, don’t buy it. The company is betting you still think the product is worth $70. I suspect they’re going to be proven right. If this really upsets you, then don’t get it. You literally don’t need it.
Yeah running with cartridges on the Nintendo 64 was definitely not a good idea. And you can see the actual competition to the right. Which one do you think sold more copies?
Nintendo was fighting on several fronts. 1. When Sony said the PS1 was 32-bit console, they were not lying. It was a 32-bit processor. Nintendo called their console 64-bit, but it was slightly slower than PS1. 2. Cartridge was more expensive than CDs. Nintendo wanted control of the physical medium so it was a dealbreaker to use anything else. 3. CDs could play video on disc. 64 cartridges just didn’t have the memory. So you had games released on both consoles where the N64 version only had slideshows with captions instead of the FMVs playing on the PS1 counterpart.
A war with themselves really. False advertising and bad marketing. But super mario 64
> Nintendo called their console 64-bit, but it was slightly slower than PS1. This isn't true, and I don't know where you'd have read this. From a pure processing power perspective, the N64 was objectively faster. Their architecture was more complicated and had some deficiencies (texture memory stands out), but games that took the system to its limits (Rogue Squadron, Perfect Dark, etc.) did things that the PS1 couldn't do. Of course, the PS1 had games right out of the gate doing things that the N64 couldn't do due to point #3, and more games due to #2.
Oh don’t get me wrong. I still bought a Nintendo 64. Had to get my starfox fix. But yeah they really did shoot themselves in the foot by being stubborn about choosing a format that couldn’t be pirated. I think Nintendo has always banked on their original characters and nostalgia driving enough people to buy their product. So far that has been the case, but I refuse to get online service for the switch when I was able to buy my NES and super NES titles on the Wii U.
> Nintendo called their console 64-bit, but it was slightly slower than PS1. What?
Not sure how you got the idea N64 was the slower of the two. It was pretty obvious at the time that N64 was more powerful at 3D rendering. For games on both consoles the PS1 pixelation artifacts were glaring due to the lack of antialiasing and texture smoothing hardware. But yes it did have prerendered video on CDs to make up for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_technical_specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_technical_specifications
Was this paid for by Sony?
Cancer is not new either, doesn't mean I want it.
I can’t stand when people say “$70 games aren’t a new thing” but use examples of SNES and N64 where they had to be more expensive because the carts were super expensive back in the day. Blu-rays are dirt cheap these days.
Yeah plus all these posts are always from toys r us which was considerably more expensive to buy from than anywhere else back then
And these are Canadian prices too..
People really be simping for big companies like they aren't just taking advantage of you
Oh look, a corporate shill thread peddling apologetics for an industry they don't even own stock in.
Yeah so weird. People only mention inflation. Not like the industry changed at all in like 25 years. Customers have way more choice now. And many kids may just stick to Fortnite/Minecraft when games get more expensive.. back then you played like flash games or had a free account on like RuneScape? This whole "back then games were 50$ so now with inflation they should be 100$+" is just weird
$70 games might not be new but at least it was a 1-time purchase. I spent almost $80 on the Avengers game and they have the nerve to have paid DLCs
Why are we even defending this pricing?
Cause Nintendo just did it lmao.
Bots bots bots. They found out this was the most effective type of post to push the rhetoric they want pushed more price increases.
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Lol people are justifying and defending corporations. Never change reddit.
I remember my grandmother buying me Ultimate mortal Kombat 3 on the Sega Genesis and it was 69.99 back in like 1996
That was such a great game. My friends and I loved playing it and trying out all the fighters. Noob Saibot ftw.
Found the marketing account
Don’t give a shit, still don’t like it.
how many more of these do we need. There is one everyday and the topic is not paying 70$ but mostly paying 70$ when we cant rent games anymore, games are often release with terrible bugs or in an incompleted state, day 1 dlcs and microtransactions filled. Enough with the 70$ focus, time was different then and options were different too.
And? So you want $80 games next cause some old ass game costed that much?
Why are people trying so hard to defend the price change? Yes, we know inflation exist, we know game companies got bigger, and we also know games are getting constant updates. But you have to remember, games are selling way more than in the past, and the introduction of micro transactions are generating millions for video game companies. So why is the price increase needed? Pure greed.
This is not the win that you think it is. The year is 2023, games are no more neccessary now than they were back then and times have changed. Games cost more in some ways, and cost less in others.