Game Prices — a Historical Perspective 225
The Opposable Thumbs blog scrutinizes the common wisdom that video games are too expensive, or that they're more expensive than they were in the past. They found that while in some cases the sticker price has increased, it generally hasn't outpaced inflation, making 2010 a cheaper time to be a gamer than the '80s and '90s. Quoting:
"... we tracked down a press release putting the suggested retail price of both Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 at $69.99. [Hal Halpin, president of the Entertainment Consumer's Association] says that the N64 launch game pricing only tells you part of the story. 'Yes, some N64 games retailed for as high as $80, but it was also the high end of a 60 to 80 dollar range,' he told Ars. 'Retailers had more flexibility with pricing back then — though they've consistently maintained that the Suggested Retail Price was/is just a guide. Adjusted for inflation, we're generally paying less now than we have historically. But to be fair, DLC isn't factored in.' He also points out all the different ways that we can now access games: you can buy a game used, rent a game, or play certain online games for free. There are multiple ways to sell your old console games, and the competition in the market causes prices to fall quickly."
N64? (Score:2, Insightful)
Give me a break.
Genesis. Phantasy Star IV. $99. Pfft.
Love the modern baaaawing about game prices. You kids have *no* idea.
What about C64? (Score:2)
Yeah, the N64 have been expensive, but C64 games were cheap in their time. I remember saving up my pocket money for 2.99 (pounds that is) tapes. There were premium titles, but they still never realyl cost more than 10 quid. About 22 pounds in today's money.
So really, about double that isn't much of a problem, given how much more effort goes in and how much more enjoyment I get out.
Re: (Score:2)
I had an Amstrad CPC 664 in the 8 bit era, and it because fairly obvious even to a 9 year old that games were a fair bit cheaper on tape than they were on disk (possibly because Amstrad had made an unfortunate choice of 3.25" disks which quickly became very expensive, but more likely it was just a 'whatever the market can bear' thing). So i'd buy them on tape and copy them to disk - a single disk could normally hold anywhere from 10-20 tape games per side. At the start the games were trivially protected wit
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. A special 3-inch disk (which were much better made then the 3.5" PC ones)
Re: (Score:2)
We used to live by a dirt road often frequented by trucks (so dust everywhere), and had a few hundred 3" disks and at the time myself and my siblings were all under 15 years of age, so not necessarily the most careful of people, and I only remember having one failed disk ever.
This contrasts sharply with the 3.5" disks these days which can't be trusted to successfully carry your data from one side of the room to another (admittedly, any disk drive these days is likely covered in dust, and old, and the data d
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't the Amstrad use a 3inch disk? I remember seeing a machine that did data conversion across disks/tapes and when I asked about anyone ever wanting data from Amstrads he said "Oh, the 3inch drive? It's cheaper than a blanking plate so we just stick one in but not bother wiring it up."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_cpc#Floppy_disk_drive [wikipedia.org]
I always thought of it as a 3+1/4" disk but most of the literature these days calls it 3". The drive might have been cheap but in Australia we were paying $11/disk in the final days that we owned it.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, the N64 have been expensive, but C64 games were cheap in their time.
A little, but not even remotely that much: C64 prices [kultpower.de] (prices in DM, multiply by two to get EUR)
Prices there range from 20EUR-33EUR, not much of a difference compared to days PC prices today. A look at the Amazon.de best seller list shows me prices ranging from 15EUR-55EUR. With a game like Mass Effect 2, just nine month on the market, selling for just 16,40EUR. I find it a little hard to complain about that.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, you UK folk with your tapes. Admittedly the 1541 didn't have high penetration in the UK which explains why you lot were playing cheap ass platformers and arcade titles when in the US C64 RPG's and adventure games were a bit more popular. IIRC the average C64 RPG would sell for $49. Course, it probably came on 2 disks, with a big manual, and a cloth map.
More missing. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
First of all, EUR 30 in the mid-80s is equivalent to roughly EUR 55 today due to the effects of inflation
Newsflash, the Euro didn't even exist in the mid-80s.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
True. But what you may or may not know is that some Euro countries still display prices in their former currencies for reference and the conversion rate that was used for the transition still applies.
I offer this as an example. In Spain, where I live, you still find apartment and houses listed in both Euros and Pesetas. Some supermarkets and stores also display prices in both currencies.
The point is that even if the Euro didn't existe in the '80s it is still possible to do the math and figure out how much s
Re: (Score:2)
First of all, EUR 30 in the mid-80s is equivalent to roughly EUR 55 today
30 Euro in the when?
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, where OP is from (Netherlands), it's the norm to correct salaries for inflation. If your salary is never corrected for inflation, your employer is reaping the benefits and leaving you out cold. I know US employment rules are very different, but not correcting for inflation means you're earning less money every month. Maybe you should make it part of your contract negotiations to have periodical indexation of your salary. You would only be asking for what's fair.
dutch guy here.. I never got any inflation correction, it just happens that this year my annual raise was higher then the inflation (still at the start of my cariere, so now i still have some growth there), but many of my coworkers got a 0% raise this year (and previous years). The same thing at my previous jobs, i did get raises (due to personal growth/promotion), but never inflation correction
Yeah (Score:4, Informative)
Not a popular fact here on Slashdot, but true. I've mentioned this many times when people were complaining about game prices.
When I was younger the standard price for an SNES game was 129 guilders, which equals 59 euros. Nowadays new console games also cost 59 euros, except Wii games which are normally 49 euros. Accounting for inflation, games have gotten much cheaper. Also, I'm not sure about this, but I get the impression games hit the bargain bin much faster these days (except big sellers like Mario Kart and Modern Warfare).
My problem with game prices is the difference between US and EU prices. We usually pay in euros what you guys pay in dollars, so we pay much more (even if you take into account that the EU price does include sales tax).
Re: (Score:2)
I can't speak for Euro-based comparisons, but I do know that the US/UK games price comparison is more complicated than it seems. The UK does, at first glance, seem to get a bad deal on high-street games sales. While highly dependant upon the exchange rate, UK RRPs do tend to look around 25% higher, in my experience.
However...
I go to the US several times a year and always tend to pick up a few games while I'm out there, particularly if the exchange rate is good. What I always notice is how much slower US hig
Re: (Score:2)
(except big sellers like Mario Kart and Modern Warfare).
Mario kart has nothing to do with sales, nintendo just NEVER drop prices or anything, i'll bet you that if you can find an original GBA game from nintendo in shops, it'll still cost at least 90% of what it did at introduction
A couple of points missed by the article... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Console game prices have always been higher than PC (and, earlier, home computer) game prices. When most of us complain about game prices, it's the PC games we're complaining about.
2. The real-terms cost of other forms of entertainment have dropped over the same period. At least where I am, a chart CD used to cost £15 and is now more like £10; according to the Bank of England inflation calculator [bankofengland.co.uk] [horrible flash thing] that's £25-£10 reduction, or a drop of more than half in real terms cost. Other forms of entertainment have reduced similarly. So, by comparison to the competition, games *are* more expensive.
Re:A couple of points missed by the article... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A couple of points missed by the article... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Console games are licensed, PC games are not. I don't know how much it costs to publish a game for the Xbox360/PS3/Wii, but it's more than zero. Publishing a game for the PC costs nothing in licensing fees.
If you are willing to write a game engine from scratch, sure there are no licensing fees. Most game developers license the engines from the likes of Id Software and Epic.
Yes there are. All console manufacturers demand licensing fees for developing and publishing software for their consoles.
Re: (Score:2)
And to make that identical game for the 360 you'd have to pay microsoft to run your game through certification and pay for licensing ON TOP of your game engine license.
Re: (Score:2)
Console game prices were initially higher because you had to account for the cost of manufacturing the cartridges. However today all consoles use DVDs or built-in storage of some sort so that cost is no longer justified.
Meanwhile production costs for games have sky-rocketed, also the market has increased and a hell of a lot of other variables have changed, to many to really account. What matters is how much you as a gamer pay for a game and that price has pretty much stayed the same for 20 years or even go down (even ignoring inflation).
The only thing that really has increased is the price for the hardware. I bought a NES for 144DM (~75EUR) and a SNES for 266DM (~130EUR), those prices weren't on launch day, but the SNES w
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
chart CDs used to have at least 20 tracks on them...
Really? When I think back to the stuff I bought in the 90s, I don't think many had more than 15. Also, until relatively recently, CDs were limited in run time to 74 minutes, and with the average length of a song in the late 80s/early 90s being about 4 minutes, fitting on 20 would have been unusual.
Re: (Score:2)
PC game prices used to be more expensive as well. I still have the original boxes for a few old PC games, with price stickers still intact. Their Finest Hour (1989 flight sim) cost £50. Ultima VII cost £40. The original X-Wing cost £45. So too did TIE Fighter. The B-Wing expansion pack for X-Wing cost £30. Gunship 2000 cost £50. Even before you adjust for inflation, it's clear that in the UK at least, PC games have gotten substantially cheaper. I can't remember the last time I
Re:A couple of points missed by the article... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not all forms of entertainment have dropped. Ticket prices for movies and concerts have increased by substantial amounts, even adjusting for inflation. Back in 1980, a console game would cost you about $30 ($77 adjusted in today's dollars). A movie ticket would cost about $2.50 (about $6.50 in today's dollars). Now, unless you're buying some sort of special edition, console games cost a lot less that $77 (and that's even more impressive considering what it costs to develop a game today vs. what it cost in 1980). But movie tickets cost a lot MORE than $6.50 (and god help you if it's in 3D, you'll need a loan for that).
And concert tickets...jesus, if you even have to ask. I can remember paying $25 for good concert tickets (for mainstream bands) just 20 years ago. Today it's crazy what you pay even for tickets to no-name bands' concerts.
Re: (Score:2)
me too, three years ago on holiday in the czech republic :)
PC games definitely cheaper (Score:4, Informative)
PC games have definitely become cheaper. I remember in the 90s paying £40 for some games (I paid £44.99 for Warcraft II as it was the cheapest I could find it at on release!), usually though they were around the £29.99 mark with the odd £34.99 game. At the start of this century they seemed to all pretty much go up to £34.99 as standard, but in recent years the trend has reversed, and £24.99 seems to be common for new releases, sometimes even lower - £22.99 or so.
I've never historically been much of a console gamer, although did own a few consoles I never bought more than a handful of games for them until this generation. I've noticed XBox 360 games used to be £39.99 or thereabouts as standard on release, but nowadays they seem to be closer to £34.99 a lot of the time, sometimes only £29.99. Major releases are still usually higher, and Call of Duty tries to sell at £44.99 because Activision are a bunch of profiteering twats, but then, supermarkets in the UK Sold MW2 at £28 on release night so it shows it pays to shop around so you can avoid the Call of Duty tax if you buy it. Certainly the general trend seems to be that in the 5 years since release, 360 games are, on average, a bit cheaper now.
Of course there are stores that'll get you games a little cheaper than these prices, but I'm referring to the usual advertised price from the typical non-discount mainstream stores for the most part because it's hard to compare to the discounted prices when they vary so wildly from title to title!
Re:PC games definitely cheaper (Score:4, Informative)
PC games have definitely become cheaper. I remember in the 90s paying £40 for some games (I paid £44.99 for Warcraft II as it was the cheapest I could find it at on release!), usually though they were around the £29.99 mark with the odd £34.99 game. At the start of this century they seemed to all pretty much go up to £34.99 as standard, but in recent years the trend has reversed, and £24.99 seems to be common for new releases, sometimes even lower - £22.99 or so.
For whatever reason the UK seems to be special in this case, computer game prices there are way lower than in the rest of Europe. So much so that some publishers ask Amazon.co.uk to not ship certain games to the continent (at least they did this in some cases last year). Anyway, when I buy new games I buy in the UK, it's way cheaper than in Germany e.g.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's awesome: I got Metro 2033 + Red Faction Guerilla for 15 euros.
Between AUK and Steam sales, I can't remember the last time I paid more than 20 euros for a game.
Anyone remember the Odyssey2? (Score:2)
I do, and there was a time where you could only find the carts at an actual Magnavox dealer (1978/9ish). I've always brought up the fact that games like Thunderball sold for $49.99 back then - around $170 today! Incredibly expensive - but that didn't stop us from managing to obtain about 30 games or so by 1982.
So yes, I would say even console games have become quite cheap in comparison - especially since you can now get many of them second hand.
Re: (Score:2)
"(I paid £44.99 for Warcraft II as it was the cheapest I could find it at on release!)"
One word, Blizzard. Their games were always more expensive, everyone else was more or less around the £30 mark for a full game and £20 for an expansion.
The first Diablo was the same £45 when everyone else was at £30.
Price is not the only factor to consider (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that even if the real price of new games rise, that doesn't mean a gamer is in a worse situation than he would have been in the past. Quite the opposite in fact.
Today you can play thousands of older titles for very low prices. There are probably 10 times as many freeware games available today as there were 30 years ago. You can get on youtube and watch "Let's Play's" of virtually every popular NES and SNES title for free. Many of these games are only surpassed by current titles in the graphics department.
In other words, it's a great time to be a gamer even if you don't buy a single "new" game.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, there are hundreds of indie games which generally come in under £10, and can be excellent.
Looking through the new releases on Steam for Mac (where older an indie games make up a bigger slice of the pie I will admit), the prices are as follows £5.09, £2.99, £7.19, £6.99, £5.99, £15.99, £12.99, £8.99, £12.99, and £3.99. This doesn't seem expensive!
Re: (Score:2)
...You can get on youtube and watch "Let's Play's" of virtually every popular NES and SNES title for free.....
Explain to me the part where I want to get on youtube and watch videos of people playing video games. And please convince why this would be better then actually playing the video games myself?
War in Russia Atari 800 (Score:3, Interesting)
The real killer though were the carts for that console which took the same game carts as its equivelent in the arcades and they were GBP250 each.
Re: (Score:2)
The real killer though were the carts for that console which took the same game carts as its equivelent in the arcades and they were GBP250 each.
Say what? What arcade games were on cartridges that could be plugged into an atari 800?
Re: (Score:2)
No. There was a Japanese system that was used in arcades that had great big carts allowing you to use the same cabinet/hardware but changing the game every so often. They brought out a home version that took the same carts and they were veeery expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think he's talking about the Neo Geo - a programmable arcade machine for the home (with prices to match).
Comparison in terms of production vs gains (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I would suspect that over time, the costs have shifted towards marketing more than real innovation factors.
I'm not sure why you would suspect that. Have you seen the credits for a modern game? Massive amounts of talent there. Meanwhile, back in the day, the games were created by one or a handful of people - while the elaborate box art and marketing had little to do with the game.
Most famously, there is E.T on the Atari 2600, where they paid a massive amount of money for the marketing power of the E.T brand, but the game was a primitive piece of shit, even for its time, that was rushed to market. The 80s was full
$75 (Score:2)
As a teenager I paid $75 for The Ancient Art of War at Service Merchandise. I think MS Flight Simulator 1.0 was around that price too.
Re: (Score:2)
That game was worth every penny!
On a related note... (Score:2)
I remember how much people complained about the price of the Playstation 3 when it first came out... (I still don't have one, or an Xbox 360, or a Wii, in case anyone wants to call me a fanboy.) I guess they forgot about the NEO-GEO. Hey, $599 is a pretty big chunk of change, no denying that. But the NEO-GEO home console debuted for $649...in 1990. (Which would make it over $990 in 2006 money.)
On the subject of game prices, NEO-GEO home cartridges were $200 and up at release, and the arcade operators wer
So we are ignoring... (Score:2)
The significantly higher costs of game production and distribution, along with the drastically inflated dollar? Hell, incomes are not exactly higher, but prices sure are steady, despite decreasing costs. They make easily twice the profit per sale as they did back then.
I have no idea where they were shopping (Score:2, Informative)
From the article:
"Yes, some N64 games retailed for as high as $80, but it was also the high end of a 60 to 80 dollar range,"
I never recall paying more than $59.99US for an N64 game (maybe one of the games that came with something else in the box, but other than that), and have a number of receipts still sitting around to verify that (prices below from ebworld.com from a couple of purchases in 2000. I would have posted the full emails, but slashdot's filter kept being upset with it).
People now always seem to
Technology Bell Curve (Score:2)
I have been saying this to people for YEARS!!! (Score:2)
I paid $80 new at Toys R Us for Civilization for the SNES. It was worth every penny, but the reality is that it shows you after nearly 20 years prices have actually gone down and production costs gone up (remember that we didn't need all the artists and level designers like we do today). On top of that, you look
Depends on the platform (Score:2)
I can remember paying over $75 for Zelda back in the day, and remember my parents refusing to get Phantasy Star for me because it was insanely expensive. Some games were cheap, I can remember several Data East titles on the C=64 that I picked up new at Babbages for under $15. The biggest thing to remember is that those games do not come anything close in comparison as far as production quality and content goes, many aren't nearly as fun IMHO but they are still far more expensive to create. In comparing t
Common Wisdom? (Score:2, Interesting)
normalize price with playing time (Score:2)
Two words (Score:2)
Steam sales.
When Games were Novel (Score:2)
When games were new and novel (like my C64, Atari 5200), I expected very high prices. Call it early adoption, if you will.
Inflation occurs, but the price of video games should DECREASE relative to inflation over time as they become more efficiently developed and distributed.
Re: (Score:2)
oops...somehow I doubled the awesomeness of my Atari 2600 and made it a 5200...
I used to buy Atari 2600 games (Score:2)
Now, tell me where you can buy a game in a store for $2.00 nowadays.
Re: (Score:2)
A 6 hour, single-player, shitfest that's only around to serve as a DLC platform for $60, or Banjo Kazooie for $80.
There is an easy solution: Just do not buy the shitty games. If you buy the good ones instead you really won't have much issue, a Fallout 3, Oblivion, Mass Effect or Dragon Age will give you some 30+ hours of gameplay for cheap. Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 provide you tons of gameplay as well and you can probably buy both for less the $80. And even if neither of that isn't good enough, just play some old classics that you might have missed back then.
Not everything is perfect with todays games and some trends are q
Re: (Score:2)
A 6 hour, single-player, shitfest that's only around to serve as a DLC platform for $60, or Banjo Kazooie for $80. I know what I'd go for. "This is a fine time to be a gamer" my ass.
But today you can choose between the single player shitfest for $60, or Banjo Kazooie for $10. That's certainly better than being stuck with Banjo Kazooie for $80.
Re:This article makes me upset (Score:4, Funny)
Don't you mean watch Metal Gear Solid 4?
*ducks*
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Did you play Oblivion, ...
I did.
...it was leaps and bounds beyond Morrowind
no, it wasn't, not to my taste.
Which actually reveals the whole kit and caboodle of the issue: while you can hope to compare prices between now-and-then, the entertainment value of the games is something you can't measure (BTW: is still like better Joan Baez than Gaga.. lady or not. Guess what age I am? Don't try, you'd be wrong)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh hell yes. I couldn't believe how much game was packed into a single 88k floppy disk back then. I used to play this to death. When they later released a version (pretty sure it was Atari 800) with uprated graphics, I bought it all over again and it was awesome.
Thing was, back then, most of these games were like little movies in your head. The game couldn't really show what was happening in any real way so you had to imagine the various monsters, the creeping round corners and it oft
Re:I miss some of those old games (Score:5, Interesting)
As the summary points out more nicely, the article is half-assed at best.
Downloadable content can be very expensive. For example, Call Of Duty: World At War was something like $55 new, but immediately after buying it you had to spend another $25 on DLC if you wanted to play multiplayer without having to queue over and over.
Although I just got my PS3 yesterday, I suspect many games are like this now. This leads me to believe that we are, in fact, paying much more than we did in the past for video games.
Re:I miss some of those old games (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if you want to put it into perspective, I paid ~ $70 a pop for Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II Turbo Edition, and Super Street Fighter II on the SNES. I bought a ton of platforms back in the day as well...most of which were rehashes of the last in the series.
World at War is considered a joke because of it's multiplayer patch. Many companies do DLC the right way. For example, Boarderlands provided a compelling single and multiplayer game from the get go, then provided 4 different DLCs...three of them being excellent additions to the game. While I bought platformer after platformer in the 80s and 90s, now there are games such as Little Big Planet that have infinite available stages.
It's hard to do a direct correlation because the game industry has changed so much over the past 30 years. I definitely think we have it good compared to how things used to be. In retrospect, it's ridiculous how much I spent on gaming as a kid when you take into account inflation and what you get now vs. what you got then.
I like buying DLC because it gives me extra content with games I love and own. I don't like games with a thousand different sequels.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for the heads up. I loved the two Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games - but they had no DLC. Even if the price worked out to be the same in the end, I'm not paying for a game just to have to pay again to play it. Especially since I play multiplayer _some_, but not a lot. Enough that I'd want it, but not enough to justify $25 for it.
Re: (Score:2)
>>>half-assed at best.
The article also acts as if games never existed until Nintendo invented them. Prior to NES there was the Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision, Odyssey. Plus computer-based gaming on the Atari and Commodores.
The most popular of these, the Atari VCS/2600, sold games for $30 new, and $25 for older titles.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The most popular of these, the Atari VCS/2600, sold games for $30 new, and $25 for older titles.
What cost $30 in 1978 cost $97.60 in 2009. The Inflation Calculator [westegg.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They missed out on the old Amigas, Spectrum and Commodore era. I remember picking games up for under £3.
We're definitely not better off, price-wise, from that era. Graphically, and gameplay wise, yes, and I wouldn't want to go back to those days (except through an emulator)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Like you say, obviously most of them are nowhere near as good as the best games released today, but they were the cutting edge at the time, and were far cheaper than today's cutting edge games.
Re: (Score:2)
... today's cutting edge games.
Ah, an oxymoron from my today's reading of /.
Re:I miss some of those old games (Score:5, Insightful)
Production costs have gone way up since the 1980s. Many Speccy games were written by students or people working at home (I know, I was one of them) with maybe some help from a friend doing the graphics. You'd then go to a game company, they'd _maybe_ retouch the graphics and hire (eg.) Rob Hubbard for a couple of days to do the music. Total cost: $8,000
Even the 'pro' games were done by one programmer and a graphics guy who'd be shared shared between three projects.
These days a game needs about 20 people working full time for a couple of years, often hiring motion capture studios with gymnasts/actors, etc., along the way. Game development budgets are now in the tens of millions (low-end Hollywood range).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nintendo/SEGA prices were much higher because Nintendo/SEGA took a big cut of the profits for the privilege of writing games for their console.
On top of that, only they could manufacture the cartridges and they charged a lot for that as well.
Plus ... development was very risky because they only accepted a fixed quota of games per year to keep the market from saturating. If they didn't like yours it wouldn't get published (and you only got *one* shot at acceptance ... you showed them the game and if they did
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Also what idiot keeps his software company in California?
Someone who wants to pick from among the best programmers instead of just whoever happens to live in one state. And, I hate to break it to you, even in Iowa the salary for a good programmer with some experience is closer to 100k than 65k.
The job market's bad for a lot of fields, but it's not currently bad for good programmers.
Of course, if you want to take the viewpoint that all developers are equivalent, you certainly can run your business cheaper in Iowa. Let us know how that works out for you.
Re: (Score:2)
There's also the fact that good programmers can afford to be choosy and most likely will not want to live someplace like Iowa. There's a reason programming is concentrated on the coasts: software engineers, by and large, like the urban lifestyle. They don't want to live out in Bumfuck with no major cities nearby.
(Obviously, there are exceptions and I don't mean that developers are a monolithic group, but the trends and demographics are certainly there.)
Re: (Score:2)
IIRC, Elite for the Speccy - which came with a full user manual AND a novella - was about £12.99 when it first came out, in other words, about £30-£35 in today's money. That was by far the most expensive game at the time. £5 or £6 was considered "full price" in the mid 1980s.
Re: (Score:2)
They missed out on the old Amigas, Spectrum and Commodore era. I remember picking games up for under £3.
But where that the high profile games and did you buy them brand new on launch day?
It is not exactly hard to find games for $5 or $10 these days either, but those games are of course not the Modern Warfare 2 that people buy right on the day of the release, but stuff that is a year or two old and in the bargain bin or indie stuff.
Overall game prices really haven't changed much at all, new Amiga/PC titles always used to be a cheaper then console stuff, in the 40EUR range, while consoles always where in the 50
Re: (Score:2)
4 year old game, the first zelda release for the Wii... is STILL $50.00
many game makers are refusing to drop prices on their games even years after release.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is quite common with games that are still popular many years after release. If your game is still selling a lot of copies 5 years after launch, why should you cut the price? Slashing prices is how you move more units. You don't bother if you're moving plenty of units already.
Diablo II is 10 years old and the Battle Chest still goes for $30-40. Blizzard must still be moving a decent number of copies otherwise they'd drop the price. Businesses do their best to maximize overall profit, so it doesn't make
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Master of Orion and Master of Magic work perfectly in Dosbox [dosbox.com]. Day of the Tentacle (and other Lucasarts adventures) work better-than-original (due to nice graphics filters) in ScummVM [scummvm.org]. Dunno about the other two.
I wonder if one could remake MoM as a mod for the latest Civilization... Civ4 was pretty flexible, and Civ5 is supposed to be even more so.
Re: (Score:2)
Battlecruiser 3000AD had multiple sequels, any of which should work well under XP.
The original game should run reasonably under DOSBox, or possibly in a Windows DOS session with VDMSound.
There was a 2.0 version that was compatible with Windows 9x, however it is utterly unsupported under 2000/XP and I've heard varying reports as to whether it works. Seems to depend on your specific setup, but people have had good luck with the aforementioned VDMSound and using compatibility mode.
Re: (Score:2)
If you miss some of them, maybe do something about it so you're not missing them?
Master of Orion I and II [gog.com] for just USD$6
The complete Total Annihilation suite [gog.com], also for USD$6
Well, whatcha waiting for?
Re: (Score:2)
BTW, TA is still being played online through several services and is still being actively modded [tauniverse.com].
Re: (Score:2)
I still play Day of the Tentacle on my phone.
Re: (Score:2)
Video games ARE too expensive. IIRC I paid $30 for the original Duke Nukem registration and they threw in another shareware title to boot.
And "inflation" is a terrible metric for comparing prices. In 1990 a new computer was around $3,000-4,000, had a 20 meg hard drive (if that), 360k of ram. I paid 1/10th that for my Acer Aspire with its dual core CPU, 1 gig memory and 180 gigs drive space. In 1976 I paid $600 for a 25 inch TV set. Some prices have risen, some have gone down.
A far better metric is your coun
Re: (Score:2)
If you're making minimum wage, video games are still one of the cheapest forms of entertainment when you figure it in dollars per hour.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I'm confused both by why you feel inflation is a terrible metric and why you feel the minimum wage would be a better metric. According to a department of labor page I pulled up here [bls.gov], in 2009 only 3% of workers aged 25 or up made at or below the minimum wage. So you've got a number that's only important to a very small percentage of adult workers that's supposed to someone be more important then inflation, which effects everyone?
I could see arguing about which inflation metric to use, ie core inflation rathe
Re: (Score:2)
If you're curious, using overall inflation rates, $69.99 in 1996 is $94.73 in 2009 dollars.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Go down to your local Goodwill. In the past couple week's I've bought Outpost 2, both Aces games, Tie Fighter, Dark Colony, Return to Krondor, and Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego. All complete, in great condition, for $2.99 or less. Now really is a cheap time to be a gamer.
Re: (Score:2)
If I send you a pic of the damaged Tie Fighter CD I made into a clock, will you hook me up with the game files? ;)
Tie Fighter is still the best space combat sim ever... there's games that do more now, but none of them are as polished. Sure, it's easier to polish a small piece of jewelry than a whole crown, but that's not the point, is it?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>Cartridge (ROM) based games are more expensive to manufacture than CD/DVDs. Perhaps a comparison of like for like would be better.
Ok, but what about the billions and billions of dollars they don't lose to piracy? Doesn't that factor into the pricing somehow?
Re: (Score:2)
There's a lot more people playing (and buying) games today. Total sales is what really matter, and even if your modern game has a piracy rate of 75%, it's likely you'll be selling more copies than a 'similar' game did 10-15 years ago which had a piracy rate of 1%.
Then there's the issue with trying to work out what the actual losses are. i.e. if your game cannot be pirated, then many of the people who would've pirated it simply won't play it. So, the high rates of piracy we have now don't necessarily indicat
Re:DVD vs cartridge (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, but what about the billions and billions of dollars they don't lose to piracy? Doesn't that factor into the pricing somehow?
It's generally a bad idea to try to factor imaginary money into your pricing scheme. [arstechnica.com]
Re: (Score:2)
You're absolutely right, games released on DVDs in the 80s and early 90s were so expensive I can't even find records of the prices!
Reality check: The medium for the games has changed. The only real comparison to be made is "What does one game cost?", maybe with some fancy math involving the average amount of hours of gameplay you get for your money.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. This article selectively looks at the history of prices, choosing the data that supports their thesis and ignoring that which doesn't. It's concerned mainly with cartridge based games that grew to insanely high prices, but neglects the major drop in prices when companies moved to optical disc based systems. At the Playstation launch, many titles debuted at $39.
The current pricing scheme is quite a hike. And more so when you figure that you often don't even get the full game at that price. You need