re: Never Realized How Expensive Games Used To Be

A lot of the Square games were even more expensive. I think FF3(6) and Chrono Trigger were $80 at release.

quote:

---

I keep waiting on this to happen. With each new generation I expect to see a 5-10$ increase but it never happens.

---

Did it not happen this generation? I remember most new games during the ps2/xbox/gamecube era were $49.99. Now most new games are $59.99.

quote:

---

Reason being is their profit margins have probably increased since then, because making the tech/games has gotten way way cheaper but the prices obviously don't reflect that.

---

Actually the exact opposite seems to be true.
Blockbuster titles have budgets similar to that of major movie releases the past few years.

The profit margins are actually shrinking which has closed the doors on basically every major game developer out there. The last standing "giants" are EA/bioware and ActivisionBlizzard. Outside of those 2 you've got Bathesda and Ubisoft as 2nd tier developers now.

It seems like prices are where they are because going any higher would become prohibitively expensive to the consumer and studios who can set the prices (like EA and Activision) know theyre maximizing profits while smaller studios are forced to release at the $59.99 price tag knowing they will have to sell a million+ copies to break even.

Once the next Xbox and PS are released, I imagine we'll start to see our first wave of $69.99 games hit the shelves, else EA and Activision will become the Microsoft/Apple of game development.

Yeah like I said, go big or go home. Hopefully the next-gen console have digital distribution integration so game developers can cut out the middleman and get a better return on their games.