3 ms·
Ok now do it again as a per hour of enjoyable gameplay. I can't remember a game lately that anyone paid for /once/ and got as many hours of enjoyment out of as
by harry8 6y ago
Ok now do it again as a per hour of enjoyable gameplay.
I can't remember a game lately that anyone paid for /once/ and got as many hours of enjoyment out of as Super Mario, Sonic, Half Life etc. CoD MW2 vs Half Life 2? There's an order of magnitude difference if not 2. Also the price nowadays is the price of the first 3 chapters and you have to pay plenty more to get the full game, that's still kinda short. Then the fifa/2k games, that's an anuual subscription and not the price of a game so that comparison from yesteryear sucks. They really aren't better games this year to last and haven't been for a decade or more.
Pricing alone is only a part of this story. There's more to it that cannot be ignored if you want to make meaningful comparisons over time.
Taking pricing alone we would still expect the price to come down over time as the marginal cost of production of an extra unit of a game is approaching $zero and the market is vastly bigger now than 20 years ago. So maybe total revenue is a better thing to compare in 2020 dollars?
The good news is that if you stay a generation or two behind you get the good stuff, the hype bubble surrounding titles has dissapaited and it's a lot cheaper. The water-cooler aspect might be impaired for you but ymmv.
- cameldrv 6y agoYeah but there's a red queen problem with games. Better GPUs come out that enable more capabilities mean more work to fully take advantage of them. Those that do are more likely to sell a lot of games. Producing a AAA game is about two orders of magnitude more expensive than thirty years ago -- compare Super Mario 3 at $800k with GTA V at $130m.
- harry8 6y agoTotally. Super Mario 3 is a lot more fun to play and cleverly executed. It's not even close.
- moritonal 6y agoYour math around pricing is wrong, it's not about how much it cost to make, it's about how much you'll pay to play it. Some people are willing to pay for quite little. AAA games are more like AAA movies. But just like film, I find myself enjoying good TV more, which explains why I play smaller more procedural (ha, play on words) games.
- harry8 6y ago>Your math around pricing is wrong Well I doubt that. From a business perspective pricing is what you can get so you're saying OP is using the wrong model. But using the "what the market will bear model" you would need to use a rate of inflation that reflects nominal growth in dispospal income of the customer segment with the lowest disposable income. Then go a little further becuase the size of that demographic may have changed and changed shape. Estimate the demand curve, the elasticity of demand then maximise revenue in the short term Alienate your biggest customer base at your peril, as always. Short term revenue maximization is not necessarily long-term revenue maximization and is frequently at odds with such. So yes the original naieve application of cpi to retail price leaves something to be desired.