I get it, prices of games going up sucks but games rose to about $60 (cad) during the wii era. Put that into an inflation calculator and you end up with about $90 nowadays, it’s not really a price hike out of line with general inflation. The switch 2 pricing isn’t out of line with AAA PS5 games either ($80 for a digital copy has already been the case for a while there).

Games are not free to make and modern games have longer dev cycles and therefore cost more to make as well.

Consoles are also typically sold at a loss with the idea that software sales will make up for the loss. Were games to remain the same price the console would likely be significantly more expensive.

I get that consumer purchasing power is down due to wages not keeping up with inflation but sadly the reality is that if making a console and games for it are unprofitable then they’ll stop making them.

  • Itsamelemmy@lemmy.zipEnglish
    7·
    1 day ago

    1. Nintendo doesn’t sell at a loss.

    2. This argument only takes inflation into account and the cost of making the games, while ignoring that games sell many more copies than in the past. Gaming is much more popular than in the N64 era.

    Say you need to make $100 to break even. If you can assume a third of console owners will buy. Say 300 people own the console, you can sell for $1 and make the hundred.

    Now say games are more expensive to make, you need $300 to break even. But now there’s 1000 people that own the console. With the same third buying your game at $1 you’re now making $333.

    1. Most games already cost more than $70 if you want the complete game. Ubisoft is typically $140 I think for the base game and expansions plus tons of micro transactions. Increasing the base price to $90 would be more accepted if we weren’t already being fucked over with the current pricing model which is just going to get worse.

    Edit: why is my 3 showing as a 1? Is this a sync formatting issue or something with lists in lemmy?