Back in the late 80s/early 90s the cost of a new game was only $40, if you were part of the glorious PCMR. Now we're just subsidizing the console plebs.
Do you mind elaborating on the "overcharging for games" part? Console games in the 80s were about $45, so games today are actually cheaper if inflation is taken into account.
I've been saying this for years. We used to pay $30-45 for NES games, $50 for SNES games, and I remember several PC games in the 80's being in the $45-50 range. NeoGeo games were in the hundreds. C64 systems launched at $595, which makes buying a Wii U, Xbox One and PS 4 together look cheap. Maniac Mansion for NES was $54.95 when it launched!!!
Also, the amount of content in most games these days is absolutely huge. Per hour, they are an incredibly cheap form of entertainment.
The whole NES era really was the last terrible period in video game history. No console after the NES had so many games that were so bad and so expensive.
New PS2 games cost around $50 USD back in the 2000s and most new PS4 games actually cost less now when you account for inflation.
You can put together a competent gaming PC for about $400 these days. Buy a refurb business desktop with a fourth-gen i5, add a GTX 1650 and you can run pretty much any game at 1080p on medium settings.
A lot of young people (or people in middle-income countries) can scrape together a few hundred bucks for an entry-level gaming PC, but would find a $60 game to be prohibitively expensive. IMO the move away from demo versions and physical media has substantially incentivised piracy - if you can't try before you buy and can't resell your game, you're less inclined to hand over your hard-earned cash for a game that you might hate.
I had a PS2, an Xbox 360 and now a PS4. Total hardware cost of playing the latest games with zero performance issues, hardware worries or upgrades in the last 20 years is around the price of a single gaming PC, which lasts what, 4-5 years tops?
The price of consoles is subsidized by the fact that the games are super expensive. On PC the prices of games is usually less while they are at full price and massively less while they are on sale which is a quite frequent event. When I look at console games I almost never see any significant sales. Its not uncommon to see AAA games at 90% off when they are a few years old. On console they just stop selling the game.
I really didn't understand that point at all. Were they talking about price? Because adjusted for inflation, computers consoles and games have never been cheaper.
Has it not been that way since the days of the PS1?
The cost of games is like printers and ink. The hardware is the loss leader more than made up for by the "subscription" to those over-priced consumables.
There was anger and upset, and many articles in dead-tree magazines at the change in the expected price of full games, and sheer greed of manufacturers, during the launch phase of those consoles.
Ads were another bait and switch for yet more greed.
A few major factors, in roughly decreasing order of subjective importance:
1. Console games are initially more expensive, but you can sell them used when you're done, which isn't possible on PC. I regularly buy games for $100 (Australian pricing) and sell them a month or two months later for $80. (I'd rent them, but rentals don't exist anymore. I keep the ones I really really loved, but sell on most.) On PC, the same game might launch for $10-20 less, but that doesn't make up for not being able to get $80 back from every purchase.
2. Many games are unfortunately exclusive to a particular console, including many of the most popular franchises, e.g. Mario, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, and The Legend of Zelda are only on Nintendo consoles. If those are your favorite games, then none of the other factors really matter. And it's much more common for games to be exclusive to a console than exclusive to PC; there's virtually nothing these days that doesn't end up on the consoles, there are usually a couple of major blockbusters every year that don't make it to PC.
3. PC graphics card prices have absolutely skyrocketed due to cryptocurrency mining. I paid $130 for my graphics card seven years ago; the same model regularly sells for $150 on eBay now and when I look at replacing it, I can't find anything that significantly beats it for under $300. I looked at spending my tax return on a multi-part PC upgrade, but to match the performance of the new PlayStation I'd have to spend nearly double its price, and most graphics cards would require me to join a waiting list. (As it is, I went with neither and I'm waiting to see what happens next year.)
4. Formerly, playing games together with friends in the same room. Sadly, this is less and less well-supported on consoles with every year that goes by, but it used to be practically exclusive to them, and not something PC games ever implemented. This was especially important for kids (who make up a huge portion of the market and often have siblings to share the console with) and students (who would hold multiplayer game nights in dorms etc). It matters even for online multiplayer, though. You want the system your best friends have so you can all play together. And that's more likely to be one of the major consoles, and you'll rarely get your whole friend group to switch, especially if it's to a more expensive (at least upfront) option.
You’re definitely right about the price, but I bought a PC anyways for the freedom it gives.
You can emulate older games, get games for 1/4th of the price on second hand market and choose your store.
Paying 60$ for 5 year old games on my switch changed my view on console gaming.
Even if there’s a lot of room for games in the price difference between console and PC, I’d rather pay the higher fixed cost up front and then have cheaper and more games.
Maybe it’s just an ideological thing though and doesn’t make complete economical sense.
> This is objectively a worse experience than I grew up with (and it costs a whole lot more too.)
This is objectively wrong. Inflation-adjusted Nintendo console launch prices have been trending downward since the 80s. Games are cheaper too. I remember saving up to spend $40-$50 for NES games in the early 90s, which would be in the $100 range in today's dollars. That's significantly more expensive than the $60 first-party Switch games today.
You're comparing full price console games to free PC games. There are numerous games on consoles that cost less than €50, and buying the latest AAA releases on PC will cost you more than €50 too
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