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[Icymanipulator]

I remember as a kid I had one of those huge crayon piggy banks and I saved up 75$ for the SNES version of Street Fighter 2… I can only imagine what that translates into today… : (

 

[Kikorin]

Yes, I remember I bought The Lion King for Sega Mega Drive for 149.000₤ back in the days (you could think of it as basically 115€ in today's scenario lol), and the average price for PS1 games was 99.000₤ (like 75/80€ today). That's why I'm very surprised games still cost the same or less 30 years later, considering the budget of today's games.

 

[darth.shrimp]

So what youre telling us is that you've learnt how to read and do basic maths?

No no no, he learned to ask ChatGPT to read and do basic maths.

 

[bobone]

You're absolutely right, but that has nothing to do with gaming. You're talking about two different things. Gaming is a luxury hobby, and relative to the things you mentioned, inflation in gaming isn't even in the same universe. Perfect example, people still find a way to afford their gaming hobby when young but can barely afford the things you mentioned if at all. Why is that?

Any comments regarding finance need to look at the big picture. Saying something costs X amount of money means nothing if you don't know how much money people had at the time.

And I don't necessarily agree that gaming is a luxury hobby. It was designed for children in the time period he mentioned. And parents had no problem buying games for their kids. The NES had a game/console attach rate over 8. Which was better than most of Nintendo's later offerings.

 

[olninty]

Yeah, and I would pay that again if I got the whole game and zero bugs. I'm not paying for full price games when im not receiving a full game in return. You can still resell zelda on the nes today, you won't be able to sell many modern games in the future.

 

[ecosse_011172]

I mean,

1. That's not really true. Aside from some hiccups, real income (adjusted for purchasing power) has gone up for decades in America; and

2. What does the relative price of those things have to do with games?

We went from 1 salary comfortable affording house, car, holidays and bringing up family to 2 salaries being unable to do any of that.
I'm glad things have improved so much.

 

[ReBurn]

I remember as a kid I had one of those huge crayon piggy banks and I saved up 75$ for the SNES version of Street Fighter 2… I can only imagine what that translates into today… : (

Google will tell you if you ask it.

 

[drotahorror]

My pal couldn't afford a controller pak for his N64 so we left Blast Corps on for a week and the N64 died lol

My parents got me a PS1 and Resident Evil 1 but no memory card for xmas. Just kept dying at the snake boss. Finally got a memory card a month later for my bday.

 

[AJUMP23]

All because Miyamoto like walks in the woods. Brilliant game.

 

[drotahorror]

I remember as a kid I had one of those huge crayon piggy banks and I saved up 75$ for the SNES version of Street Fighter 2… I can only imagine what that translates into today… : (

Granny asked me to pick a game out of the JCPenney catalog one year for Christmas. Megaman 5 was what I chose and it was $90. JCP was taxin on them games back then.

 

[Punished Miku]

And most kids only got 1 game on their birthday, and maybe 1 on Christmas. We can go back to those times if publishers want. 2 games a year, because that's what they'd sell at that price.

 

[StereoVsn]

But this usual "ak-shually the numbers say you're better off than ever" line falls completely deaf today on nearly everyone for good reason.

I lived through the 80s & 90s as many of us did, and I remember the world of yesterday... it is absolutely true that the ability of the typical couple to secure a decent house, savings, and stability -- very often, back then, with just one income, like my dad who was by no means making a lot of money or holding advanced degrees -- has absolutely fallen off a cliff relative to that time.

These measures are very complex and can be extraordinarily misleading, particularly with averages that don't look at the distribution across ages, relative to personal debt ratios, etc. Some of it is also that the parameters of life today are built upon much higher consumer spending, which makes the case that it is indeed somewhat self-inflicted, but at the same time the game we're running as western economies has built itself (questionably) upon that consumer spending so that it's almost as if the machine has to keep being fed by extravagant over-spending or the current market propped up by it collapses.

It's a total mess, hard to assign blame across all the layers, but today are people substantially better off in their basic living / working arrangement? I'm going to say, hell no they are not at all.

And if you spend some time quality times with modern chatbots using their research features (I pay for Gemini and CharGPT subs), you can get some of the underlying reasons for above.

Everything has gone up in price like crazy but especially housing. I picked Oklahoma because that seemed sort of a middle ground and it wasn't well off in 1986. Available income after spend was about $18K a year less for a "median", not "average", family of 4. To be fair , it was negative for both of those timelines as LLMs calculated but much worse off now vs then.

 

[StereoVsn]

What has really changed positively is that secured fields do exist for everyone and you don't need to be a spoiled privileged kid to choose a secure path for your journey. The real problem is there's just too much noise out there.

What are these secured fields? Nursing, HVAC, Electricians and Plumbing?

White color jobs (especially for recent college grads but also for older folks) have been decimated recently. Marketing, finance, IT, development, even engineering, all have had huge cuts.

 

[PlayStaytion]

What are these secured fields? Nursing, HVAC, Electricians and Plumbing?

White color jobs (especially for recent college grads but also for older folks) have been decimated recently. Marketing, finance, IT, development, even engineering, all have had huge cuts.

I relied on my income from Real Estate for years and used my Tech degree to create a product. When society expect you to be a prodigy then you left with no other choice.

 

[StereoVsn]

I relied on my income from Real Estate for years and used my Tech degree to create a product. When society expect you to be a prodigy then you left with no other choice.

And that's fine, you worked hard and succeeded. But this isn't doable for large swaths of people.

And especially real estate is going to have issues with new rules and mostly frozen market.

 

[PurePlatinum]

Either budgets have to come down, or game prices have to go up. AAA western development is totally unsustainable at this point outside of the studios owned by the publishers, and even then you're likely to get shuttered if you deliver a dud or take too long.

I'd vote for budgets going down. Uncharted 4 is still in the top 5 best looking games ever made, and it came out almost a decade ago, and cost a fraction of what say, "Spider-Man 2" cost, and it looks 90% as good.

 

[PlayStaytion]

And that's fine, you worked hard and succeeded. But this isn't doable for large swaths of people.

And especially real estate is going to have issues with new rules and mostly frozen market.

Don't believe the talks. Realtors have the right answer to every problem in the industry.

 

[p_xavier]

Wasn't Chronotrigger like 900 quid?

Cost me 109$CDN plus tax back in 1995, so 205$CDN in today's dollars. Crazy.

 

[Ainem Enamas]

How much did it cost to make the game?

 

[Guardian Monkey]

How much did it cost to make the game?

Probably a few hundred thousand , took about two years for a team of around 10 people.

 

[Signalis]

Asking ChatGPT is the modern day moron test

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Great game. Never owned or beat it since I rented it twice on different occasions back then.