You do realize that video game prices haven’t increased with inflation in years, right?
A $60 game in 2008 would be $88 today just from inflation. This isn’t price gouging, it’s inflation correction.
It doesn’t matter if a $60 game in 2008 is worth $88 now if wages haven’t gone up to match that. Did you know that (at least in the US) food prices usually aren’t included in inflation calculations because they fluctuate too much? People have other things to pay for with their wages that aren’t video games, and those costs aren’t going down either.
Literally nothing ever has stayed in lockstep with wages, that’s not even relevant to the discussion at hand. Not sure why you think video games would be special, especially video games by Nintendo, solijce they’re literally the last ones on the “raise video game prices” train.
Entertainment is not a necessity, it’s not like people need it to survive. When it doesn’t move with wages people find ways to make it affordable (e.g. piracy, 2nd hand markets, or sharing physical copies with friends), or they find something else (steam, indie games, etc.). Wages are directly responsible for game prices in a lot of ways, and there are pretty good Steam statistics on this as well (which is why a lot of Steam games aren’t priced with 1:1 conversions in different regions, because doing so would basically price entire regions out of buying games).
Pricing fans out of games is exactly how AAA studios go under. A big AAA game flopping is basically a death sentence for a studio in the current landscape, and if Microsoft isn’t immune to that then Nintendo definitely isn’t.
And in addition to what Zangoose said, your argument ignores the basic principle of technological progress: as industries mature, costs typically decrease, not increase. Economies of scale, automation, and digital distribution should all lower the cost of making and selling a game over time.
A $60 game in 2008 had to be printed on physical discs, boxed, shipped to stores, and supported with traditional advertising. Today, most games are sold digitally, cutting out huge portions of that overhead. Studios also reuse engines, assets, and development pipelines now more than ever.
Sure, inflation is real—but so are productivity gains. If your costs are going up despite all these efficiencies, that’s not just inflation—it’s mismanagement or greed. Consumers don’t owe companies an inflation-adjusted price just because they want to maintain record-breaking profits and raise prices.
Uh, video games have VERY famously not been decreasing in cost to create- AAA games cost VASTLY more to create now than in 2008. The teams are much, much larger, for one.
It’s a trend I personally think is stupid and unnecessary, but productivity gains aren’t really happening that way in game dev.
Salaries grow because people negotiate for better salaries, either through collective action or by being indispensable and getting better offers, not by magic.
The game industry is full of wannabes chomping at the bit to get in, so maybe seniors can hope to haggle for a higher cut or become partners of a studio, everyone else is entirely replaceable, which means their salaries will grow extremely slowly already.
Add to that that the industry selects for financially stable/affluent croney kids by using unpaid internships to filter anyone who would be overly dependent on their salary and basically select for rich “starving” artist types and you have a recipe for a ridiculously strong buyer’s market when it comes to salaries.
You do realize that video game prices haven’t increased with inflation in years, right? A $60 game in 2008 would be $88 today just from inflation. This isn’t price gouging, it’s inflation correction.
It doesn’t matter if a $60 game in 2008 is worth $88 now if wages haven’t gone up to match that. Did you know that (at least in the US) food prices usually aren’t included in inflation calculations because they fluctuate too much? People have other things to pay for with their wages that aren’t video games, and those costs aren’t going down either.
Literally nothing ever has stayed in lockstep with wages, that’s not even relevant to the discussion at hand. Not sure why you think video games would be special, especially video games by Nintendo, solijce they’re literally the last ones on the “raise video game prices” train.
Entertainment is not a necessity, it’s not like people need it to survive. When it doesn’t move with wages people find ways to make it affordable (e.g. piracy, 2nd hand markets, or sharing physical copies with friends), or they find something else (steam, indie games, etc.). Wages are directly responsible for game prices in a lot of ways, and there are pretty good Steam statistics on this as well (which is why a lot of Steam games aren’t priced with 1:1 conversions in different regions, because doing so would basically price entire regions out of buying games).
Pricing fans out of games is exactly how AAA studios go under. A big AAA game flopping is basically a death sentence for a studio in the current landscape, and if Microsoft isn’t immune to that then Nintendo definitely isn’t.
And in addition to what Zangoose said, your argument ignores the basic principle of technological progress: as industries mature, costs typically decrease, not increase. Economies of scale, automation, and digital distribution should all lower the cost of making and selling a game over time.
A $60 game in 2008 had to be printed on physical discs, boxed, shipped to stores, and supported with traditional advertising. Today, most games are sold digitally, cutting out huge portions of that overhead. Studios also reuse engines, assets, and development pipelines now more than ever.
Sure, inflation is real—but so are productivity gains. If your costs are going up despite all these efficiencies, that’s not just inflation—it’s mismanagement or greed. Consumers don’t owe companies an inflation-adjusted price just because they want to maintain record-breaking profits and raise prices.
Uh, video games have VERY famously not been decreasing in cost to create- AAA games cost VASTLY more to create now than in 2008. The teams are much, much larger, for one.
It’s a trend I personally think is stupid and unnecessary, but productivity gains aren’t really happening that way in game dev.
CEO pay has also increased VASTLY, something isn’t quite adding up here. 🤔
Yeah, sales have also gone way up.
So then why haven’t software developer’s salaries gone up proportionally?
Cause that’s not how salaries work?
Salaries grow because people negotiate for better salaries, either through collective action or by being indispensable and getting better offers, not by magic.
The game industry is full of wannabes chomping at the bit to get in, so maybe seniors can hope to haggle for a higher cut or become partners of a studio, everyone else is entirely replaceable, which means their salaries will grow extremely slowly already.
Add to that that the industry selects for financially stable/affluent croney kids by using unpaid internships to filter anyone who would be overly dependent on their salary and basically select for rich “starving” artist types and you have a recipe for a ridiculously strong buyer’s market when it comes to salaries.