neatchee , 11 months ago

The price of games hasn’t gone up in decades. We’re only just starting to see games that cost $70 instead of $60.

The cost to develop games, on the other hand, has gone way, way, way up.

Think about it in “cost per megabyte”. Players have been getting more and more content - not playable hours, but content that needs to be created by a human - for the same amount of money. While developers have larger and larger staff, with more and more demands… For the same amount of money.

There’s a reason live-service and freemium games are becoming the monetization scheme of choice.

Cost of games needs to go up or we’ll just see more and more exploitative monetization.

Let me also add that $60 for 20 hours of entertainment is one of the best deals there is. And the best games give a lot more than 20 hours of gameplay. Books are about the only thing that comes close