I see a lot of people complaining in various forums that games have been increasing in price with new releases sometimes hitting the $80 mark for a standard release. Everyone talks about how gaming is getting to be too expensive compared to how it used to be and nowhere else is this most evident than it is with people that are over 30 years of age and remember the 90's and how much things cost back then.
The problem with their way of thinking is that they are simply comparing the dollar value (or Pounds, or whatever the currency happens to be) and they are not factoring is something that is very important: Inflation.
I found this picture that shows an advertisement for specials that the store was having but someone took the time to adjust all the prices for inflation since then.
Now that seems absolutely outrageous right? Paying $130 for a single game? That's outright insanity!
Here is the original unaltered image.
The problem with the whining that goes on these days is that people fail to factor in everything involved in the grand scheme of things. A dollar now is not worth the same amount that a dollar was worth in 1996. It's not even close.
I am reminded of when my father surprised us with an Atari 2600 one day. My family was not wealthy so this was an extremely rare treat for us. The launch price of an Atari 2600 that came packaged with one game was $199 in 1977. We didn't actually get one until the early 80's so I would imagine that the price was probably brought down $50 or so but since I didn't buy it, I have no idea.
If we factor in inflation to $199 in 1977 compared to how much that is in today's money it is nearly $700. Can you imagine the outrage if Sony was to drop the PS5 on us for that much money? I mean, people would still buy it but there would be plenty of moaning about it.
If anything, videogames have become considerably less expensive than they ever have been in the history of videogames. In the past 10 years or so, virtually all consoles have been sold at zero profit or actually at a loss for the companies that make them. They plan or hope on being able to make that money up on game purchases. It is a huge gamble on the manufacturers side of things because some people out there open the machines up and have them altered so that they only ever play pirate games. I know several people that have done this and the only thing they really miss out on is that they can no longer participate ever in online play. Some people don't really care about that though. I am one of them. I also don't want to contribute to the downfall of a wonderful industry though and this is why I have never had this done to my own consoles.
So for all of you people out there complaining that gaming companies are taking advantage of their customers with inflated prices you can sit down... you are wrong. Now microtransactions on the other hand, that is a crock of shit, but at least it is an elective one.