Is $60 a good price for games?

I recently came across scans of some old copies of Electronic Boutique catalogs dating back to the early '90s. The majority of new games in 1993 were priced between $48 - $65. When counting for inflation, games today are cheaper at launch than 20+ years ago.

A few examples of launch prices in 1993 include Super Mario Kart at $54.99, Menacer $64.99, Batman Returns $51.99, Mario Paint with Mouse $59.99, NCAA Basketball $54.99, Golden Axe II $51.99, Sportstalk Baseball $64.99 and X-Men $54.99.
 
Well, nah. I'd say it's pretty expensive. Especially for young people who don't work full-time and don't want to be leeches in regards to their parents money. That's why the whole gaming community should be friendly and people should keep lending one another their stuff.
 
$60 is waaay to much in my opinion. I wait until the games I want to play go down to at least $30. $30 to $35 is about the maximum that I would pay for a game. Remember when games used to be 20 to 30 bucks brand new? And the super price-y ones were 40 bucks? Also, yes DLC's seems to just be another money making tactic for companies nowadays, which sucks!
 
artyarson said:
Was it like 10 years ago, right? Correct me If I'm wrong.
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Brand new console games were never $20-$30, at least not AAA titles. This website has scans of old Electronic Boutique and Sears catalogs dating back to the late eighties and early nineties. Brand new games for the NES and SNES were $40 - $55. The majority of new games for the SNES in 1993 were priced between $48 - $65. When taking inflation into consideration, games are actually cheaper today than they were 20+ years ago.
 
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I was just playing around with this Inflation Calculator to see how much games in 1993 cost in relation to today's $60 baseline. A $50 game in 1993 would be the equivalent to $81.98 today! So, games today are indeed cheaper than 23 years ago. Now, one could perhaps make the argument that with the addition of DLC, you are paying more than just the initial purchase price for the game, and that there are games that are released with crippling bugs that require Day 1 patches, but I still think that games today offer greater value than those released 20+ years.
 
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Once, as a very young lad in the early nineties: I lost a rented NES cartridge on route to returning it! My parents were absolutely furious with me as the rental store charged us a whopping $100 to replace it! (In early nineties Canadian dollars no less, which even taking the then exchange rate into consideration seems artificially high compared to @dillinger10's quoted figure for the USD price of a game from 1993!) The insult to injury that makes this story kind of funny: this lost NES cartridge was, I kid you not, the truly terrible Gilligan's Island!

More generally, I recall scrimping and saving in the years thereafter to very slowly build up the funds for a new game. A process that made the purchased games feel more special and earned than if they had been gifted to me or purchased later on as an adult when the cost of a new game is a much smaller percentage of my disposable income.
 
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No, it's not a good amount for a game. It just shows that the developers and publishers spend way too much on making the games they expect us to pay a high amount for the games they make. I understand the business of it but it just proves that the companies don't really care about their customers. I know that Value wanted to give their customers maps for free if they bought a certain game. But Microsoft contacted them and said they can't do that because it would set a bad example for other game makers.
The fact that Sony charges for online use now proves that it's all about the money. Microsoft is the same way, it's because of them that Sony now charges us for something that is free for them to have. Now, the state of America is not that good. A lot of people are having hard times finding jobs and the ones who have jobs are struggling to survive. So I think it is wrong for the companies to charge so much for the games when the quality of the games is lowering. The graphics are getting better but everything is getting worse. I know when I played God of War: Ascension I was so damn disappointed because the graphics were amazing but there was no story.
 
Well it depends of what the game is, as well as I much I'm willing to spend, but I believe $60 is not really high, comparing what it would cost if the same prices from the 90's were the same (someone made the maths up there).
 
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Another thing that should be taken into consideration is the undeniable fact that the cost to develop games has increased exponentially over the years. The average cost for a Dreamcast game was around $250,000. It took between $5 to $10 million to develop a PS2 game versus $800,000 to $1.7 million for the original PlayStation. The cost to develop a PS3 game shot up to the $20 - $50 million price range, and for PS4 games, estimates are in the $60 million range.

The leaked contract for Destiny reveals development and limited marketing costs totaling $140 million.
 
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It really depends on the quality-per-hour of the game. If I'm gonna play a game for 200 hours and enjoy the heck out of it, you're damn right it's worth under 50 cents an hour! Especially if I can resell it for half it's price! A lot of people focus on the upfront investment of a game without realizing that it's about how much joy you get out of it over time.
 
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dillinger10 said:
Brand new console games were never $20-$30, at least not AAA titles. This website has scans of old Electronic Boutique and Sears catalogs dating back to the late eighties and early nineties. Brand new games for the NES and SNES were $40 - $55. The majority of new games for the SNES in 1993 were priced between $48 - $65. When taking inflation into consideration, games are actually cheaper today than they were 20+ years ago.
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Thanks for the interesting research. Yep, that's even surprising a bit. However, I never did really whine about that. I prefer sharing my stuff with good friends of mine, so we don't have to spend much. They, of course, give me theirs.
 
artyarson said:
Thanks for the interesting research. Yep, that's even surprising a bit. However, I never did really whine about that. I prefer sharing my stuff with good friends of mine, so we don't have to spend much. They, of course, give me theirs.
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The large number of different avenues available to re-sell/trade-in physical copies of the games also helps to reduce the overall cost of the games. As does the wide availability of buying used games at a lower price. So there are definitely a number of different options available to save money and not end up spending $60 for every game you buy.
 
I'll pay the full price if it's a game I know I'll enjoy but most of the time I'll just stick the game on my Steam wishlist or pick it up used at GameStop once the price drops. The last game I paid full price for was Fallout 4. Still haven't bought any DLC for it though.... probably should get on that.
 
It depends on the game I guess. When you consider how good a game Grand Theft Auto 5 is then $60 for it is perfectly fine even when you consider that they still try to push microtransactions onto players. But then there are other games out there, that don't have any DLC or added costs that still would not be worth $60. Need for Speed Payback would be one game that comes to my mind. The trailers and gameplay looked amazing, so I preordered the game. After playing it, I realised it was just way too boring and awful for the price I paid so I ended up returning it to Amazon. Payback is worth around $30-35. Anything more is just way too much.
 
Honestly, for the most part I don't really feel that the majority of games these days deserve to have a $60 price tag. Perhaps it's my own bitter outlook on the current state of the video game development/marketing industry, but I can almost never justify forking over $60 for what usually ends up feeling like an unfinished cash grab of a video game.

There are obviously exceptions out there. Recent games such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Assassin's Creed: Origins, and Horizon Zero Dawn were all games that provided $60 worth of entertainment and much more. To put it colloquially, those were games that had heart.

Then let's take a game such as the infamous Star Wars Battlefront II, and ask me if it deserves $60. I'd say absolutely not. For one thing, it was quite obviously created as a cash grab right from the get-go. And for another, any game featuring loot crates, micro-transactions, or DLC that should clearly have been included in the original game, should instantly be sold for less than $60, in my opinion.
 
It depends men, if the game has outstanding graphics and rich on narrative about the story it is worth it. personally im a PlayStation fan horizon zero dawn is worth it and some open world game like witcher 3 and AC origins
 
I think it is fair. Maybe it can be lowered a bit to around $40 - $50 but I don't think it's too greedy of them to ask for 60 because it does take a lot of resources to make games nowadays and to ask for less will just make it not worth their time and effort to do a good job, probably. I get that there are DLCs now but I think that's where they should cut down a little instead of the main price of the game because those are supposed to be supplements and they should be priced and treated as such unless they are bringing in major updates in which case I think they should be allowed to increase the price a bit but only to a fair amount, especially considering that the product is digital and doesn't cost them as much as it would if it were physical.
 
Honestly, depends what it is! Depends on the console it's compatible with, depends on the game and how long ago it was released, depends if it's a brand new game or if you're buying it second hand! It could be seen as super good value for some games but really overpriced for others.
 
MisterRay97 said:
I personally think that $60 for a new game is a bit too expensive because most games these days have stuff like pre-order bonuses and include a lot of DLCs which are pretty expensive most of the time. A game could cost around $150+ if all the DLCs are added along with the base game! My smartphone itself costs around $100 and I don't think paying more than it makes sense for a 'complete' game. Therefore, I always buy games on sales or in bundles; I never pay the full price, because the full price is ridiculous.
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Not paying the full price is one thing that I beneficial to many of us that are still gamers. I have come to notice that the benefits of buying on sales is really nice as we can get to see that from time the game is on sale, the price will definitely go down a bit.
 
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