The "To-Do" List™

Gavyn's thought bubble

There's been some pretty *interesting* discussion around the topic of Nintendo and the Switch 2 release lately... Something about paving the way for an 80 dollar standard or whatever. In MY opinion, too many people focus on the fact that the price of games is increasing but the question I raise is... what makes a video game even worth 60 dollars to begin with?

Everyone is pulling out the inflation calculators going "look look, nintendo 64 games were 60 dollars 30 years ago! due to inflation games should be 90 dollars today" as if there's any world that was a justified price for a video game like that to begin with. We live in an age where video games releasing at premium prices are often buggy and unfinished when they come out and they expect us to pay more and more for what feels like a whole lot less. Of course some games are closer to exceptions than others, not every AAA game is garbage but I still wonder where the idea of even 60 dollars being a justified price comes from when we have a ton of games that offer not just a better value proposition but even higher quality launching at prices as low as 5-15 dollars.

And another thing, take a look at prices over time. A lot of people complain that companies like Nintendo refuse to lower their game's prices as they get older... Well, what exactly determines a game's price as it ages? How is it's value decreasing? Fundamentally, the game doesn't change at all and sometimes by the time a game has it's price slashed, it's complete and might even have MORE content than it did launch. So why is it cheaper? And better yet: are video game prices arbitrary? Well... yeah, obviously.

but this was the best thing to come out of it all