Development costs are not the same. Manufacturing costs may have gone down, but games in the mid 90s cost had far smaller, cheaper teams. Games today are like Hollywood movies.
GTA6 has what, a two billion budget? Game expectations are high. Even by inflation standards, they should be priced at around 130. Games used to be 70 when I was a kid. All this is is people who don't understand economics or the industry having a meltdown and then when you try correct them or explain some logic behind it they start foaming at the mouth about shills and bootlickers. You can't have a normal conversation any more. Everything is either you're with me or against me. Gamers are exhausting.
Wow that's crazy. If Wikipedia's page on the most expensive games to develop is anything near accurate, that puts GTA6 at twice as expensive as the next most expensive ever developed. Wonder how that cost compares to the cost of, say, porting Tropical Freeze to another system?
It's not people who don't understand economics. It's people who understand economics, and understand that gaming is the most profitable industry in the world, and understand that Nintendo stands at the top of that industry and does not actually need to raise prices.
What is this disingenuous take I keep seeing that people don't understand that inflation exists? That's such a ridiculous take. That's exactly why this is an issue. Everything is more expensive, and the companies that can handle it, like Nintendo, are also making their products more expensive. People simply don't want to spend money on only foodāthey like playing video games, so they're allowed to be upset that the greed of a corporation is making that harder.
Nintendo can handle the inflation. If this was some small indie dev, it would actually be fine, but that's not who it is. It's Nintendo.
It's not people who don't understand economics. It's people who understand economics, and understand that gaming is the most profitable industry in the world, and understand that Nintendo stands at the top of that industry and does not actually need to raise prices.
Aka you don't understand economics. "Need" has nothing to do with it. This is profit optimization.
Aka you're completely missing the point. Need does have to do with it. Either Nintendo does or does not need to raise the prices. If they do not, then it is a greedy act. It's as simple as that.
Use your own logic for a second, Mario Kart did not cost 2b dollars yet it is still gonna be the most costly game of the generation so far ? Shy is the Company that has the lowest budget per AAA games gonna have the priciest games ? Why does Nintendo makes you pay for your own Internet via pair-pair connection ?
Itās so easy to brush over those question by saying āmuh economicsā and acting exactly like the people you describe.
And? How much did it take to make? GTA6 might be $110 dollars, we don't know, it's not been released. The other shitty practices that Nintendo undertake are completely irrelevant to whether games have stagnated in price to buy whilst costs have risen, expectations have risen, teams sizes have risen, post launch expectations have risen.
But pop off. You seem to be replying to lots of my comments so whatever helps you get your anger out š as I said at the start of all this. It's the most boring nothing burger to ever happen. Exact same story with Diablo 4 and then the rage died down. It's exhausting.
Don't buy the game. There. You've done literally everything you can do to protest the game price increase. I'm not gonna buy it either! Boom. Well done
All of those things are within the control of the dev company, the scope and size of the game is on them, they chose to make the process more expensive.
It's stagnating since 2019, but before that it made a pretty high jump from 2014. Meanwhile, video games already cost $60 in 2014, so for someone with a median income, a $80 game is still as cheap today as a $60 game in 2014.
Now, for a truly rigorous comparison you would have to factor in all other expenses as well, because video games are a luxury item, while rent and food are not. Maybe someone else can look into those statistics?
I don't really think anyone is saying it doesn't suck for the consumer. It's not really Nintendo's fault that wages are stagnant. I personally would like for the price of games to be relative to how much time and effort goes into them. I'm fine with paying more for games that they take a few more years to make and polish.
And BG3 cost 60 dollars with the amount of time and care to create the game. I'll assure you, you will spend more time in bg3 than any other Nintendo game
If people keep buying it and going back for more then they aren't deeply upsetting their audience - big caveat we haven't seen the new price increase in action so that definitely could change things, but at least previously Nintendo not lowering their prices certainly hadn't upset the majority of their audience enough to stop buying.
My little soapbox is that this isn't a big deal though. It sucks, but the best games were already indie and small studio games that sell for far far cheaper. There is very little passion that makes it to the end game on large studios and it's getting more and more obvious.
Their games still sell like hot cakes even with them not lowering prices. Pokemon games still sell like crazy despite them being messes.
Yes people are complaining about the price increases on social media, but we don't know how that's actually going to translate to the real world when the people online are the minority. Until their actual sales are affected clearly Nintendo isn't upsetting their audience all that much
Nintendo used to have two major price points. One for handheld, one for home console. When they consolidated lines, I really wish they had kept the two level pricing system so smaller games like Link's Awakening, FDC wouldn't be priced similarly to big hitters like Odyssey and MK.
Anything like that would be great. At this point it just feels like an arbitrary price point that incentivizes companies into churching out low effort trash.
Yes, if they charge 80 for the next pokemon game and it's in the state of violet/scarlet, they can't really justify the price.
They should let Monolith Soft collaborate on their next game, they know how to make most of Nintendo hardware.
two of those games have microtransactions and none of nintendoās games do. the third released in early access, which recoups development costs before the game is even done ā something nintendo would get terrible press for if they attempted. they are literally scamming less than your āgoodā examples
They're saying that Nintendo doesn't need to raise their prices for any reason but greed. Can Nintendo, the multi-billion dollar corporation, pay their employees fairly and their ceos handsomely? Almost certainly yes. So the price increase can be justified only by greed.
Meanwhile the people that buy their games have to pay the price of their console every four or five games, which is to say, just can't buy them because everything else is expensive.
Nobody is blaming Nintendo for the economic situation, they're blaming Nintendo for using it as a poor excuse to price out a bunch of people from one of the things they can actually still barely afford that isn't just food or rent.
People aren't surprised companies want to make money.
Are you new to humanity? People like not paying more for something, and will be upset when they have to, especially when the only justification is greed.
But at the same time people are ignorant. With inflation realistically we are paying the same amount that people were paying 50 bucks for a 64 game in the 90s but people like to ignore that.
People also like to ignore that gaming is a luxury not a need. If your money is that tight that it's a huge deal, gaming shouldn't be your focus
Yes inflation exists, but that doesn't mean Nintendo is required to raise prices. Nintendo is a multi billion dollar corporation. They can pay their employees, they can pay their staff. They're not going bankrupt. They don't need to raise their prices, which means raising them is greedy, which is generally not popular among most people.
And people know gaming is a luxury, but even poor people deserve luxuries. If they can't afford it, they should cut it out, but they shouldn't have to.
I think you're misunderstanding. It's not people who don't understand the reality. It's people who are justifiably upset about the reality, and the company is contributing to their unhappiness when it begins to price them out of one of the few things that is still somewhat affordable.
Do you want to just spend your money on dinner and a home, or do you want to play Mario sometimes?
This isn't the old days where Nintendo was selling you not only physical media, but a small computer that contained your game. Now you can buy online and download. Hell, Nintendo no longer even advertises as aggressively as it did during the late 1900s.
Developer wages constitute the bulk of the cost when you're talking about what it takes to actually put a game on the market.
So wages being flat means costs are much flatter than inflation... which SHOULD mean game prices are largely flat, but of course the industry has been taken over by corporate interests who only care about how much money they can extract.
There is no sugarcoating this: You are objectively wrong. It is not a matter of opinion that nominal wages are up pretty much in line with inflation.
In 1990, the median household income was 35k, vs 45k in 2000, vs almost 70k now. It is not up for debate that nominal wages are higher, and the fact that you're claiming that pretty much disqualifies you from this conversation. What matters is if those wages have been keeping pace with inflation vs growing in real terms.Ā
Nope. It went up and down more than 10% during that period.
It's flat.
Or else your argument in the other thread about the S&P 500 not taking a nosedive because it was at this level in november stops making sense.
They replied then blocked me.
Nah. I got blocked or something and could no longer respond either.
I was responding to someone who said their 401k was "in the SHITTER" which is insane to say unless their 401k was in the SHITTER in November.
If they listened to bootlickers like yourself, they may have moved over to a stock-heavy portfolio since November. In that case, they've simply lost a chunk of their value. A loss of 15% or 20% is plenty to warrant that reaction IMO.
Donāt bother getting into this discussion with Redditors. Ā The people who will engage with you are either NEETs living with their parents or single guys earning in the top 10% at their IT job. Ā Either way, you wonāt be talking to someone who engages with the economic realities of the world like an average person, and whatever position they are espousing will be 100% dictated by whatever particular brain-rotted polarized filter bubble theyāve been sorted into.Ā
27
u/DrScience01 1d ago
The whole "inflation exist" is moot when the wages are still the exact same