Have video games always been expensive?
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MightyHedgehog
Member
Games have always been fucking expensive. Emphasis on fucking. Technically, they're cheaper now...but if you look at the cost of living and the average income, it's gotten more expensive...but not by much.
Mecha Gandhi
Member
I know it was a fairly British thing, but the home computer craze back in the 80s came with alot of cheap games. I'm talking about the tape cassette games for systems like the Spectrum ZX, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC 464
I could walk into my local newsagent in random suburbia and pick up a new tape game for £1.99 - £2.99. I'd just buy games on the merit of the cover artwork. They were, with a few notable exceptions, rubbish.
Then I got all geeky and imported a Super Famicom. The most I ever paid SNES-wise was for Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (Jap import) on the week of it's release. It cost me £65 and I got mugged on the way home : ( Although the mofos who nicked it almost certainly didn't import their weakass PAL snes, so I hope it didn't work and that whoever they sold it to couldn't get it to work either. Bah!
I could walk into my local newsagent in random suburbia and pick up a new tape game for £1.99 - £2.99. I'd just buy games on the merit of the cover artwork. They were, with a few notable exceptions, rubbish.
Then I got all geeky and imported a Super Famicom. The most I ever paid SNES-wise was for Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo (Jap import) on the week of it's release. It cost me £65 and I got mugged on the way home : ( Although the mofos who nicked it almost certainly didn't import their weakass PAL snes, so I hope it didn't work and that whoever they sold it to couldn't get it to work either. Bah!
bjork said:
Phantasy Star 2 for Genesis was 6 megs, not 5. Yeah, that was the most I had ever paid for a game also up until that time. I remember when I bought Revenge of Shinobi (Genesis), and the one store in the area that had it was selling it for $80; my dad nearly choked when I asked him for the money.
Then about a month or two later, PS2 came out and retailed for around $87 iirc. Well, my dad got it for me, but said that from then on, he was only giving me up to $60 for games, and that the next one would have to wait a while. 
I believe Sword of Vermillion was the game that said "5 Mega Memory" on the front (in fact, I specifically remember it), but that came out way after PS2.
Games have gotten somewhat cheaper, though, yeah. While a big price drop was expected when the medium switched from carts to predominantly CD's, it was never fully realized, as there was a simultaneous increase in the budgets of games as well as the level of marketing that goes on. The cost of the medium (carts) used to be the driving force for the price of games-- the bigger carts like Strider or FF3 or Chrono Trigger were always much more expensive than usual. Nowadays, the budget of a game is the driving force, with the bigger budget titles tending to be priced a bit higher-- or at least taking a bit longer to come down in price so devs and publishers can recoup their costs.
Nintendo Ate My Children
Member
Using the handy-dandy inflation calculator, a $50 NES game in 1988 is equivalent to $77.22 today (or at least in 2003, the most recent year available.
Anyway, yes, videogames are much less expensive than they used to be. Newly released NES games ranged from $40 to $60 in late 80's/early 90's dollars (possibly more during the "chip shortage"). Super NES games were generally between $50 and $70 in the 90s, Genesis games (on average) were generally $5-$10 cheaper. Sony's first PSone games were $59.99, and N64 cartridges ran from $50-$80, at least early in the system's lifespan. The $70 and $80 games eventually disappeared as Nintendo lowered licensee fees.
It's also important to remember that the Player's Choice/Platinum Hits/Greatest Hits line of popular games for $20 is a recent innovation. Nintendo re-released a limited number of NES games late in the system's lifespan for $30 years after they were originally released, and that was considered cheap at the time. They continued this practice with Super NES and Game Boy games, but Sony was the first to establish a wide line of relatively recently released (say that three times fast) hit games for only $20.
Anyway, yes, videogames are much less expensive than they used to be. Newly released NES games ranged from $40 to $60 in late 80's/early 90's dollars (possibly more during the "chip shortage"). Super NES games were generally between $50 and $70 in the 90s, Genesis games (on average) were generally $5-$10 cheaper. Sony's first PSone games were $59.99, and N64 cartridges ran from $50-$80, at least early in the system's lifespan. The $70 and $80 games eventually disappeared as Nintendo lowered licensee fees.
It's also important to remember that the Player's Choice/Platinum Hits/Greatest Hits line of popular games for $20 is a recent innovation. Nintendo re-released a limited number of NES games late in the system's lifespan for $30 years after they were originally released, and that was considered cheap at the time. They continued this practice with Super NES and Game Boy games, but Sony was the first to establish a wide line of relatively recently released (say that three times fast) hit games for only $20.
Heh, interesting story on this one. SoA initially PASSED on publishing PS IV, saying it wasn't up to snuff. I was so shocked, I was willing to break our "CD only" rule and tried to license it from SoJ (which was completely okay since SoA had formally passed, and we already had a good relationship with them on the SEGA CD side). Buuut, when SoA found out about our interest and SoJ questioned SoA's initial judgment, they decided to teach SoJ a "lesson" and decided to do it after all, but jack up the price to an ungodly $99.95 to insure it would sell badly and justify their initial position. Unfortunately, it, uh, sold out. People were so desperate to have it that they paid $100 for it in droves. +1 SoJ.
Had we done it, the price was to be $79 (it WAS a big cart, but not $99 big).
Anyway
MightyHedgehog
Member
Hey, Vic...you owe me a new Parasol Stars (TG)...the one you sold me on ebay a few years ago died last year 
j/k ...but it did die. So much for solid-state HuCards.
j/k ...but it did die. So much for solid-state HuCards.
Hey, Vic...you owe me a new Parasol Stars (TG)...the one you sold me on ebay a few years ago died last year
j/k ...but it did die. So much for solid-state HuCards.
Wow, a dead Hucard? Did you try taking an eraser to the connectors? I've seen them oxidize and make a cart not work or have glitchy graphics, but never seen a Hu go bad as dead. Weird.
MightyHedgehog
Member
Ah yes. How could I forget the eraser trick...and it works!
fennec fox
ferrets ferrets ferrets ferrets FERRETS!!!
Here's a table that you'll hopefully find interesting. What is it? It's a list of NES/SNES games with their suggested retail prices, followed by the price the company charged for the game to distributors.
This info was taken from price sheets given out at CES and such. This was back at a time when the media cost a lot, of course.
The Conquest of the Crystal Palace price was probably after a discount or two btw.
Code:
NES
Company Game Retail price Price charged to distributors
AGCI Death Race $29.95 $16
AGCI Chiller $29.95 $16
AGCI Captain Comic $24.95 $13
Asmik WURM $44.95 $24
Asmik Conquest/Crystal Palace $19.95 $13
INTV Monster Truck Rally $34.95 $21.95
LJN Karate Kid $25.50
LJN Back to the Future $28
SNK POW $44.95 $26
SNK Crystalis $59.95 $36
Electro Brain Ghoul School $27.90
SNES
Electro Brain Raiden $43
Asmik D-Force $64.99 $41.50The Conquest of the Crystal Palace price was probably after a discount or two btw.
MightyHedgehog
Member
And worth every penny, too!
As long as you don't mind waiting a few months after they're intially released, most games released today can be gotten for around $20-$30 brand-new. The big successful ones stay high, but they're in the minority.
It is in this fashion that I plan on buying many, many games in the post-Christmas wasteland of passed-over software.
It is in this fashion that I plan on buying many, many games in the post-Christmas wasteland of passed-over software.
Actually, games got cheaper over time as the industry gets bigger (wich is a logical thing).
This lowering was of course tempered by the inflation.
I think right now we did manage do diminish the value of games a little bit. Not by much but it's cheaper than before. Continue to buy games please.
This lowering was of course tempered by the inflation.
I think right now we did manage do diminish the value of games a little bit. Not by much but it's cheaper than before. Continue to buy games please.
Just some minor corrections... the NES rereleases (Zelda 1, Metroid, etc) were $19.99 at retail while the SNES Player's Choice rereleases were $29.99 (GB was $19.99). Also, Sony's Greastest Hits lines started at $24.99 originally (on both PS1 and PS2) before moving to $19.99.Nintendo Ate My Children said:
Interesting... got any more stories about games WD almost brought over? Wasn't After Armageddon on the table for Sega CD release following Lunar EB?vireland said:
D
Deleted member 284
Unconfirmed Member
Vic are you serious? Jeez, Sega really was run by mokeys back in the day..attempting to sabotauge(sp?) their own company.vireland said:
I believe (personally, this is by no means a proven fact) that this particular episode was one in a long string of events where SoA tried to gain position as SoJ's superior in decision-making. By "proving" SoJ was wrong on a game they would have another "see? we were right" moment. SoJ fortunately kept their heads, and the upper hand when this and other events backfired.
There are a ridiculous amount of (true) stories that will probably never see the light of day about things that went on in this era. Remember Wild Woody, the SEGACD game about the pencil? Would you believe motion-capture studio time was wasted to motion-capture...a pencil. That's right...a cylindrical, basically inflexible object.
vireland said:
Ah, the good old days.
I wish the Naughty Dog website still had the stories about making Way of the Warrior in their apartment.
Edit: Hey, that Wayback Machine at archive.org is the shit:
"Becuase we had no blue screen, we bought a gigantic tan canvas. We called it the tan screen. We nailed the thing straight into the walls of the apartment we rented in Boston. Our landlord was pissed. We lost our security deposit.
"To get the right focal distance to film the characters, we had to put the camera in the hallway outside of our apartment. Our neighbors were always walking by looking in our door at guys in Ninja costumes dancing around. We never explained it to them. They were pissed.
"Way of the Warrior was the 3DO's first fighting game. It beat Super Street Fighter and Samurai Showdown to market. Way was among top 10 best-selling 3DO games at the time, and it ended up outselling Samurai Showdown in the States. They were pissed."
DFS.
Mecha Gandhi said:
That wasn't always the case though. Before Mastertronic, Firebird & Codemasters, the normal price for a game was £8.99. Most of the premium (Ultimate/U.S. Gold/Imagine/Ocean/etc.) stuff was that price, and I think Mel Croucher's Deus Ex Machine was a pricey £12.99.
Mastertronic et al. sold cheap knock-offs of arcade games(Carnival being the most memorable) for low prices via the newsagent channel, whereas the more expensive games were only available in John Menzies/WH Smith/Virgin/HMV etcetera.