Thread 712470306

so why are people kvetching about $80 games?

Yeah it's weird all pc games are free anyway so what's everyone complaining about

>>712470306 (OP)
wow now look at the average wages

>>712470306 (OP)
Because if a game with the quality of today's AAA game were released in 2004 it would be in the damn $5 bargain bin at the Blockbuster

A $50 game from 2004 would also have more, better content and ran better.

>>712470306 (OP)
kys boot licker

>>712470306 (OP)
because games today aren't worth $60.
Also there's no reason for games to cost as much as they did back then. No shipping. No packaging. No manuals. No cartridges with expensive rom chips.

>>712470306 (OP)
Minimum Wage in USA has remained the same for 15 years.

>>712470306 (OP)
It’s almost like wages haven’t went up the same amount inflation has. Huh. Weird.

>>712470306 (OP)
Disingenuous cunt. Games in 2004 were a complete experience and were significantly more polished and bug-free. These days games release in a shit state with a bunch of dlc or microtransactions added. But no, tell me more about how gaming is better now.

>>712470306 (OP)
how much were the dlc, the digital deluxe pre-order edition, and the mountain dew gaming skin in 2004

>>712470306 (OP)
because all $80 games from this gen are garbage games, no exceptions

>>712470306 (OP)
Why are people, who use an inflation calculator, such retarded faggots?

>>712470396
If they don't package and ship the games to stores I can't buy them. It's that simple.

>>712470491
>>712470680
>>712470796
median household income was
>$44,330 in 2004
>$80,610 in 2023
so the numbers all track pretty closely
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N

>>712470847
>Games in 2004 were a complete experience and were significantly more polished and bug-free
LOL

>>712471023
I thought I todl you to kys boot licker

>>712470917
because they just discovered it.

Digital distribution should have made games cheaper

>>712470306 (OP)
Umm mr. Goldstein, we should be living in post-scarcity society, not paying a week's living to be allowed to copy a bunch of 1 and 0.

>>712471023
>per household
>not per capita
>in the worst housing market of all time
nice cherry picking your stats, nigger

>>712471023
>so the numbers all track pretty closely
No, they don't.
You know why?
Because the taxes and prices were much lower.

>>712470306 (OP)
A $50 game in 2004 didn't have 12093812093 free or heavily discounted alternatives on the internet.

inflation posts are so god damn retarded, why do people keep posting them

>>712470306 (OP)
>kvetching
Why are you LARPing as a jew?

>>712470306 (OP)
Tech is deflationary. The digital only the mass appeal product pricing is lower and this is before the AI apocalypse in hiring. Companies needed to downsize more. We are at a point where a single nobody can make a game and can make an ass ton. What we are paying for is middle men, marketing, and previous loan mistakes. Good AAA is dead.

>>712471023
Look at my made up cherry picked bullshit. My father made more money per hour from his skilled labor job in the 90's than he does now. He had to take multiple pay cuts just so he could keep a job at all. Most small tool shops have closed their doors. These shops went from taking in Millions in profits every year to barely scraping a together a hundred grand in profit for the year's end.

>>712470306 (OP)
>Spend your money, ot it just expires
Holy shit. Fiat currency is such a blatant scam.

Corporate bootlickers need to be killed. It’s gotta happen folks. You know it, I know it, even they themselves know it. It’s gotta happen.

>>712471287
>Tech is deflationary
Ain't that the fucking truth. I knew a couple kids in highschool that went to jail over trying to steal a couple laptops from the school. Two years later those same laptops were completely worthless.

>>712470306 (OP)
>same wages
>gaming has a wider audience and thus more money as it is
>companies frequently monetize in other ways on top of the price of the game
I'm not a out to buy an $80 game with $50 DLC that was made by a bunch of outsourced clowns and runs like asshole on UE5.

>>712471023
>median rise
>pices rises
>otherwise go bankrupt
is that simple

>>712471339
Your dad is a retard that should have transitioned into management. If he’s been in the same field doing entry level grunt work for decades he has nobody to blame but himself.

>>712470306 (OP)
because people are broke and retarded
as if developers aren't paying the same money they do for food and other goods
then they'll whine when games keep getting worse and worse because nobody worth a damn will do game dev LMAO

>>712471191
so why kvetch about the price if there are so many free alternatives?

>>712471339
>Look at my made up cherry picked bullshit.
"median household income" is the exact opposite of cherrypicking, anon. it's the most even-handed way to represent trends in income.
I'm sorry your dad chose employment in a shrinking sector of the economy but that's not really the entertainment industry's fault, now is it?

>>712471152
Taxes were higher back then.

>>712471545
Easily, I have found this advice for you. KillYourSelf
It's as simple as that.

>>712471287
In the end, the higher quality product with the lowest price will win. Since AAA is all garbage, now it's time for indie devs to shine.

>>712471617
So you're just lying then.
Great job lying on the internet. And telling everyone that they're crazy for thinking their life sucks when in fact it's the best it's ever been. You're a piece of shit.

>>712470306 (OP)
because most games are filled with dlc and microtransactions so they should have to be cheaper not more expensive.

>>712471705
If it's so expensive why don't you save money by killing yourself

>>712471545
An industry owned exclusively by boomers. People moving up into management.
Anon, I don't believe you understand how things work.

>>712471648
rofl

>>712471758
anon, median household income has increased - that's a fact. if you just want to say "nuh uh" forever because your own personal life doesn't reflect those trends, then we're not going to be able to have a conversation.

>>712470306 (OP)
Now adjust for the lack of all physical-product related costs. Do not attempt to pull any bullshit like "muh electricity and bandwidth for distribution", those are accounted for in the digital storefront's cut already.

>>712470306 (OP)
Good, good. Now show how much job wages have stagnated as well as the price hike for basic necessities.

>>712470306 (OP)
now do it with wages

>>712471705
Damn, all that for an .exe and absolutely nothing else? What a rip. For that price it should at least come with its own dedicated drive to store the game on.

>>712471705
Retard posts a picture from Canada from when there was a chip shortage.

>>712471992
>>712471995
here you go anons
>>712471023

>>712471143
Are you not part of a household?
Skill issue

>>712471931
You keep repeating the same lie and expecting people to believe you.

Man, back in the day, a computer cost a million dollars and took up an entire building, and here you are complaining about Nvidia's 8GB VRAM GPUs...

>>712471941
>Now adjust for the lack of all physical-product related costs.
a CD and a jewel case, together, cost about $0.30 in 2004. But the marketing and production costs would be handled by the producer in exchange for a cut of revenue, just like they are today.

>>712471987
>USAIDS
Miss me with your third worldia

>>712470306 (OP)
come on. We all know that money and inflation is real like any other god.

>>712472039
What is with you retards and posting Canadian prices that use fake money?

>>712472203
That's US income.

>>712471023
Real wages, anon.

>>712472208
Extremely antisemitic post

>>712472267
That's what I said, ESLoid.

>>712470306 (OP)
Legit question, why should games have the same price as 25 years ago, if now we have all the games from the past 25 years + the games from today?
I already have more games than I can play in a lifetime, so why should the prices be the same if games have less value?

Imagine if computers tried to force the exact same price-to-memory ratio they had 25 years ago.

>>712472285
This.
It's just people lying to you. Telling you that you're crazy and that everything around you is doing great. When your town's mall just got demolished. Two more restaurants closed their doors. And half of the shops downtown are vacant.

>>712470306 (OP)
Because my crackhead brother steals my welfare money for drugs. I can't afford anything, and I'm probably gonna end up homeless...

>>712472285
>>712472446
>average income
that's why I posted median income: >>712471023

ironically this post uses the phrase "average income" to create its own false narrative. no actual statisticians are using averages in that context. "Median income" does represent a normal experience for a normal person.

>>712472524
You posted some meaningless cooked graph like a fucking retard.

The real question these past 20 years is why digital games still the price of physical copies?
In fact if the digital games are being sold at a full physical price shouldn't that offset the inflation costs?

>>712472518
prostitute that bitch

>>712471023
Congrats dumb fuck you just presented economics in the exact way modern economists do that have enabled this K-shaped economy of haves and haves-nots that plague just about the entirety of the first world for decades.

To briefly put this into perspective, 40% of US citizens do not have any form of asset portfolio, out of the 60% of the US population that does own assets, 90% of those assets is owned exclusively by the top 10% of earners in America. Depending on the assets, those asset-holders have been seeing growth in wealth, while the remaining 40% who own nothing are only getting poorer. (Thus, the K shape.)

The issue is, economists look at the economy, just like you, as a single entity, lumping all of these groups together, when viewing the economy through such a lens, it gives the impression of growth while in reality it's not hard to find millions of people who are financially struggling.

While yes, it is true that $80 dollar games today is still effectively cheaper than a $60 dollar game in 2006 in terms of buying power, with general consumers becoming poorer thanks to weak wage growth over the same period of time that $80 dollars becomes a much more painful ask, leaving only the more wealthy consumers capable of perpetuating economic growth, the moment those same consumers become cost conscious as well and stop spending, the entire house of cards will crumble.

>>712470306 (OP)
cause salaries arent catching up with inflation
and games are plenty and not essential - so its easy to not buy the overpriced ones

>>712472524
Sorry didn't fully read your post.

Games also were physical, came with cool fucking boxes and manuals that were a joy to read and a lot of extras. Game devs kept making their own tech, engines included instead of using ue schlop with everything premade.
Now you get an activation key to download your contentless schlop that's 6 times fatter than it should be because of audio and textures.

>>712472524
It doesn't represent a normal experience for a normal person. It represents a normal experience for someone approximately in the middle index of earnings, assuming the data isn't too modal.

Do you have graphs broken down by percentile? It's very easy for the median to go up while a completely normal person (in the bottom 30% of earnings for instance) isn't doing nearly as well.

Unironically games should be cheaper than ever before.

>>712472615
Because entertainment pricing is completely arbitrary and most of it is distributed by the members of one big cartel. The same reason as for why everything else is expensive too, the free market is dead and kikes killed it.

>more digital sales
>cheaper cartridges
how about executives earn less money

>>712470306 (OP)
Because instead of going into negative inflation or raising wages to match inflation, caused by the egregious and ridiculous spending during Covid, every country has just thrown their hands up and said "guess you better get used to everything being 20% more expensive!" and people are not happy about it.

Nobody wants this to be the new normal except the people who want you poor and stressed about being poor.
Hang politicians
Hang bankers
Hang CEOs

>>712473010
No anon, if Mr.CEO cannot pay for his harem, then development must cease.

Meanwhile, 1999 has ads for pizza being $10 for a large
At the absolute fucking HIGHEST its only $15 today. Depending on the place you get a large for fucking $5. So make it make sense.

>>712472724
good take anime poster and this is why you should never buy them at full price, it is not your problem that games get more expensive because companies get overstaffed and when expectations are not met replaced with jeets, without a single trail of thinking due mismanagment and overbloating people in suit positions

>>712471023
skewed statistics. there are more households with 2 income than in 2004 (basically all of them when it was like 70% then). the real difference is just every woman being forced to work instead of have babies

>>712470306 (OP)
disposable income as a percentage of wages. end of discussion.

>>712472910
>It's very easy for the median to go up while a completely normal person (in the bottom 30% of earnings for instance) isn't doing nearly as well.
but the corollary to that is this: if income inequality is increasing while the median remains consistent, then we're creating proportionally as many new rich people as poor people. With video games being a "mature" market, it could be reasonably expected of poor people not to buy new video games, and to buy old (but identical in terms of entertainment value) ones instead. We should expect the price of video games to target expectations of the median consumer, which means matching inflation.

>>712473170
i would like to see the quality of ingridients also being used back then compared to now

>>712470306 (OP)
Is there a term for inflation relative to income and cost of living? I'm pretty sure that $50 in 2004 represented a smaller expenditure for the average adult, compared to their disposable income, than $85 would today

>>712470306 (OP)
Fast food didn't cost $20 and houses didn't cost 7-digits.

>>712470306 (OP)
It doesn't work that way. $50 then is $50 now.

>>712472324
You said third world. Do you know what that means, ESL?

>>712473372
Quality?

>>712470306 (OP)
Woah that's crazy. How much did the battlepasses cost back then? How about the cosmetics? How aggressive were the psychological tricks trying to brainwash kids into buying skins? Di you get lots of free lootboxes or gacha rolls to keep up with the people who paid more?

>>712470306 (OP)
Probably because wages have not increased, we've been through two recessions, and job market got worse in the last two decades

>>712470306 (OP)
Sales don't care about your feelings.
Price go up, sales go down.
Price go down, sales go up.
Inflation arguments and any sort of argument is cope.
Also you can literally control how much you spend on producing a game, and make a game that give you profit from $1 to $100
But the $100 will sell less units.

>>712473405
sounds like the cost of video games, proportionally to the other expenses in a person's life, are actually going down then

>>712473531
why are you buying battlepasses and skins if money is tight? when did it become the company's fault that you have awful self-control?

>>712473606
>Inflation arguments and any sort of argument is cope.
No,
END THE FED.
TKD

>>712473725
You will never own a video game again

>>712473725
What I mean is today, people have less disposable income for games because the cost of existing is higher.

>>712473914
>implying

>>712473725
>when did it become the company's fault that you have awful self-control?
Probably around the time they started hiring psychologists to help them design gameplay systems that """encouraged""" players to spend more money.

>>712474086
>I spent $1,300 on gacha shit last year
>am I unwilling to control my own life?
>no, it's the companies who are wrong

>>712474389
Yes.

>>712472285
>>712472446
>taking the average for something like this
That guy is retarded and so are you for posting this picture. Which means that your numbers are also most likely completely made up.

>>712470306 (OP)
my wage hasn't gone up 70%
fuck off inflationcuck

>>712474086
>make your mom & pop store look nice
>reeeeeeeeee I'm being manipulated
You're dumb.

>>712474641
What the fuck kind of schizo nonsense did you just type? Did you think it'd make you look smart?

>>712472341
>I already have more games than I can play in a lifetime, so why should the prices be the same if games have less value?
that's exactly why corpos are desperately trying to take down all rom sites and destroy emulators. to restrict the supply of games so you'll be forced to play the latest slop and only that slop. it's the same deal with music, movies, and books

>>712474389
Personally I don't buy MTX and I don't play any gacha games but that doesn't mean that I can't recognize someone else being exploited.

>>712474821
aren't most gacha games free anyways? what does that even have to do with this conversation?

>>712474935
>The first hit's free
Where have I heard this before...

>>712474624
how much were you making in 2004 and how much are you making now? If your income genuinely hasn't increased by 70% in the past two decades, you may have made some terrible career mistakes

>>712472040
>snoyshit

>>712473320
this should be the default copy/pasta to these spam threads

>>712474389
>psychological manipulation isn't real
>t. psychologically manipulated man

>>712470306 (OP)
They have not gotten $35 better. They've somehow gotten worse.

Because Nintendo did it with a new game. Sony did it with a remake of remaster of TLoU and it was fine.

>>712471023
>CEO's pay themselves more
see the average wage went up

>>712470306 (OP)
Just let companies charge whatever they want for their slop... they will go out of business faster that way.

>>712475249
I've somehow never spent a dollar on gacha. sounds like a skill issue to me

>>712475314
who said anything about getting better? $50 in 2004 has the same value as $85 today - things at that price point can be expected to be the same, not better.

>>712475410
>another anon who doesn't understand median vs. average but still feels compelled to comment

>>712471224
retard website

>>712472724
Forcing best friend to not drink for a month!

>>712470306 (OP)
yeah but a $50 game in 2024 would cost $50. you ever think of that retard?

>>712473456
You know what. It certainly feels that way.

>>712475549
>anon doesn't understand that neither of these matter when you separate the top 5% from everyone else
you're retarded I'm not going to continue this argument

>>712475036
NTA, but in 2004 I was making $9 USD an hour fixing computers for a small business.
Today I make $0.

>>712474389
>hmm, a handful of whales make us 80% of the profits
>Let's make products that cater to the compulsive minority rather than focusing on quality

This is how we got grindy AAA single player games with MTX to skip said grind and P2W slot machines and waifufaggotry in every multiplayer

>>712470396
Things got cheaper. Most of the sales are digital. They don't have to spend on manuals and packaging. Games today launch with DLCs already in development, so they are geared to make much more than $60. They can much more easily be multiplataform than back in the day too.

>>712471931
That's not true at all, unless you are in the top 10%. kek

>>712470306 (OP)
>got the entire game
>it was fully on disc
>didn't have to pay $30 for early access
>no mtx
>no battle pass
>most likely no paid online
>didn't have to wait weeks for devs to patch glaring issues
It's not the same.

>>712470306 (OP)
>>712470306 (OP)
not to mention the modern $80 has 4 times as many people making it

>>712470306 (OP)
Now do the same thing for wages.

>>712475923
do you know what a median is?

>>712476202
see >>712471023 - median household income has increased.

>>712476303
see above

>>712470306 (OP)
I'm not a huge fan of stagnant purchasing power

>>712476256
the cost of software distribution is now nil and the potential audience is 100 times greater

>>712473240
Project manager should be in the hole with the dev team, its arguably even worse position to be in. I'd rather be on dev team than deal with the shit that comes with being a pm.

>>712472039
>SNES Doom for 95$
lol

>>712475036
>career mistakes
the fuck do you mean? wages in general should have gone up 70%, but they haven't so get fucked

>>712476374
nigger, my dad was a truck driver, in 10 years he was able to build a huge ass house while feeding a wife and a kid
I'm an engineer and it'd take me 25 years to pay off an apartment 1/5th in size, salaries are fucked, cost of life is fucked, the entire economy is fucked and there's nothing we can do

>>712471023
Bullfuckingshit

>>712471023
>>Games in 2004 were a complete experience and were significantly more polished and bug-free
>LOL
They had just as many bugs but you usually had to do obscure stuff to encounter them, whereas in a modern game the bugs are stuff like "if you try to load level 2 the game crashes".

>>712470306 (OP)
>memeflation
Good corpo boot licking cattle. Not buying $80 games, I'm just not. $60 was already too much for most of the shit released in the last 10 years.

trying to argue with disingenuous small hat tribe poster is tiring

>>712471023
>median household income
Most people who play video games are early 20's young adult males that are not part of a household and have entry-level jobs. How about you look at wage growth for these people?

>Pirating games in 2004 cost: ZERO FUCKING ZERO DOLLAPESACENTAUROS
>Pirating games in 2025 costs: A REPLY OR YOUR MOTHER DIES IN HER SLEEP TONIGHT (FOR FREE)

>>712472039
>canada
But that's why Playstation 1 won, the games were dirt cheap compared to cartridges.

>>712477291
nintendo fucked up by chasing away all third parties with the raw deal they gave them. not to mention their draconian content policies. they never should have crossed sony

>>712471705
Anyone paying that back then is as retarded as anyone paying more than 60 today.

>>712477030
>$60 was already too much for most of the shit released in the last 10 years.
/thread
Most games are worth $39.99, very few were worth $59.99, no game is worth more than $59.99.

>THE PRICE IS ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION, CHUD!
>wages are not adjusted for inflation

>>712470306 (OP)
I don't give a FUCK how much you boomers paid in 2024. 20$, take it or get cracked.

>>712471023
>median household income
You know what else has increased? Extended immigrant families packed into a single household

>>712476734
your own income should increase over time as you develop skills. if you're making as much money at the age of 40 as you were at 20, you've fucked up

>>712477030
>Not buying $80 games, I'm just not.
you probably are going to, though.
>MW2 "boycotts"
>Windows 10 "boycotts"
>Switch 2 "boycotts"
>the coming-soon GTAVI "boycotts"
on average, gamers and consumers fold almost instantly when it comes to change

>>712477656
Dev teams are inflated by a few magnitudes so the stagnated wages aren't enough to keep games at a 20 year old price even if the buying power is same/down as well.

You can't buy a game made by 50 or less people from the 2000s for the same price as a modern studio has 5000 people involved in the process.

>>712475036
But if wages have been rising in step with inflation wouldn't he be earning 70% more even if he hadn't advanced at all?

>>712475748
you cant

>>712470306 (OP)
Because my pay didnt go up $40 an hour since 2004.
No $15 no buy, simple as.
Corporate tried a LOT of $130 AAA games in the last 2 years and all of them flopped cuz their trash products are just too expensive.
Remember this is happening in every industry right now.
Go out to eat at a restaurant, you're lucky to pay under $50.
Go out to a bar for a drink, you're looking at $14 for a beer.
Go to stay in a hotel, a dingy moldy bedbug-ridden motel with stains on the sheets is $200/night.

>>712477837
How do I crack games where all the fun is online?
>virtual LAN
I meant with an actual playerbase to play with.

because people would rather pay less money than more

>>712476450
>the cost of software distribution is now nil
30% steam tax

>>712470306 (OP)
Yeah games are still way underpriced. The $60 price point was established in 1985 with the release of Super Mario Bros. That would be the equivalent of a game costing $178 in 2025. So $80 is still a bargain.

>>712478115
that's exactly my point. even burger-flippers are making $15/hour now. if you're legitimately making the same exact amount of money 20 years later something has gone terribly wrong

>>712478349
>I got mine mentality
kys yourself

>>712473321
We should expect video games to do whatever it takes to make as much money as possible, and that's what they'll do. The fact that that practice disproportionately affects the poor is the thrust of most of the anti-capitalist discussion we've had for the past century. At some point as income inequality increases, your argument will be repeated more and more often, and eventually one disenfranchised group or another will wonder why they're participating in the system at all. None of its supposed benefits are intended for them, after all. And that group will probably end up taking what they want by force, and if that group is large enough, they'll disrupt the system dramatically, and if it's even larger, they'll overthrow it. And a lot of people will die, and people will live horrible lives, and we won't get to play video games any more because we've been drafted at gunpoint to join one side or another.

To avoid a future where I have to give up all my modern luxuries and enter a global class war, I am more than happy for the corporations to give up a small portion of their vast wealth as a concession to the poor.

>>712470306 (OP)
Because the games are lower quality today.
Because my money hasn't been raised proportionally.

>>712476107
Things didn't get cheaper though. Any cost savings from not having to manufacture a physical product were immediately eaten up by increased production costs to make the game itself, increased wages for developers, server maintenance and fees charged by distribution platforms to have their game hosted there.

>>712478082
>need 20 different people to place a single fucking rock in the map
>80$ IS A PROPER PRICING
yea i think those niggers have to drop a bunch of retards doing nothing and just keep the people actually doing something

>>712478284
The upfront cost of putting a game on steam is 100$
Also the Steam tax hasn't been 30% for a long while

>>712478010
I can proudly say I've never spent more than 60 dollars on a game release and never will. But unfortunately, you're right. GTA VI can cost 150 dollars and normalfags will still eat it up. And they'll pay 80 dollars for Black Ops 7, even with it available on Game Pass.

>>712478082
I would love it if we would stop hiring teams of 5000 people to make a video game.

>>712478264
No, if that was a majority case then games WOULD be cheaper. This is all minority larping. Games are sold more than ever before to higher prices than ever before, especially when counting microtransactions.
If the cost was TOO DAMN HIGH to reach a sale target then prices would undeniably have gone down. You think all that software spying on you is just doing it for shits and giggles? People say one thing to virtue signal and buy heaps of whatever because their true desire is more important.

>>712471023
Why should anyone care what the median is when 95% of the population sits significantly below it?

>>712478528
>Because my money hasn't been raised proportionally.

That's a you problem. You clearly don't have the skills the current labor market is looking for, which is why you have a substandard wage. This is how the economy has always worked. You are paid based on the value of your skills according to your employer, not based on what you need to survive.

I'm just not gonna pay it ok? Every single one of you niggers can go broke and hungry, not paying more than 70 dollars and, not a cent more for a game that is anything else than a 10/10 with infinite replayability. Eat shit.

>>712470306 (OP)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Selects
>Please please please rip me a new one
Enjoy, faggot.

>>712478832
It is a me problem. I thus won't buy your games, will continue to pirate, and will shoot you dead in case the situation becomes critical enough in the future.

>>712472648
That has nothing to do with the MEDIAN, that affects the MEAN. If you have 10 people, 1 earning $100 and the others earning $1, the Median would be $1 and the Mean would be $10.90. That's why he used the Median instead of the Mean.

>>712478676
But then how would we get the new GTA where things are meticulously created to basically simulate crime life from TV but in an interactive manner which matches, or even exceeds, current graphical fidelity on an enormous scale?

>>712478775
Except they don't. You clearly don't understand what median means.

>>712479017
I don't know what any of that means and I wouldn't want it if I did. Try going outside.

>>712477140
A household can be just 1 person. What a household is, statswise, is how many people are living together. If you live with your wife in an apartment, that's a household. If you and your ex-wife live in two separate houses, that's 2 households.

>>712478528
if the games are worse, why are you upset about getting priced out of the market?

>>712478775
anon, a median divides any group into equally-sized halves. Medians and averages are different things. If you're a median earner, that means 50% of people make more than you and 50% make less.

>>712478895
>70 dollars
you're part of the problem

All of you stop fucking arguing about the median, I already got us past that section of the fight. You have to respond to this now: >>712473321

You guys are so fucking bad at video games it's insane.

>>712478956
>and will shoot you dead

No you won't. You won't do shit except continue to impotently bitch and moan on the internet. It is so eye-rollingly cringe when you poorfags try to act tough.

>>712478969
The median income value is $50. The median person's income is $1. Typical half truths

>>712475549
You don't even play games.

>another muh inflation
Typical excuse of the suits to justify their greed. Simple as that. If you call it into question you'll just be told "you're not educated"

A lie is a lie no matter how many excuses you try to justify it with. I will now be indulging in my afternoon cunny comic marathon and achieve 3 orgasms within an hour.

Games no longer have to pay for physical distribution but still charge the same.

>>712472285
>Bluesky
I couldn't find any data to back this up, actually. The average income in the US when you factor out the top 0.1% is around $60k, not $35k. And the top 0.1% is 330k people, not just 1k.

Mind you, this is income. The tranny is probably arguing about wealth, and wealth is something entirely different. You can have negative wealth if you have too many loans, and wealth includes intangible assets like stocks and bonds that cannot be 1-for-1 liquidated. They're not exactly fungible money you can use to buy a cheeseburger.

>>712479181
That's been the price for the last 15 years, retard. I'm saying I'm not moving beyond that for anything less than a perfect game. Prices aren't gonna come down before the well deserved crash that's coming.

>>712478694
Games aren't reaching sales targets. Studio after studio has been collapsing in recent years. Why do you think so many studios have sold themselves to Microsoft or EA? Because they can't sustain themselves

>>712479951
Yes, 50 is in the middle of 1 and 100

i used to buy used games for like 5 bucks at gamestop whos buying brand new games, these games coming out especially nintendo dont ever go on sale, which normally is good, but the games on the switch 2 aren't permament meaning if services go down you cannot install the game so the value will be shot where as the games of 2004 are stable or going up now

>>712478539
it is 30%
20% only exceeding $50 million - and thats 10 millions stolen

>>712478331
Do you enjoy being retarded?

>>712479998
Then the solution isn't to offer their games for less, or they would have done so.
People are retards who think the price of a game directly correlates with its inherent value to them. A triple A game released for 30$ would make people hesitate to actually buy it. Just like a game getting put up for sale "too fast" makes it seem like a garbage bin price.

>>712479248
He's going to do exactly what you're doing?

>>712479890
>15 years
Where the fuck do you live, nigger? They were 59.99 until this shitty gen launched. And yes, you're a fucking retard if you pay more than that for any game, "perfect" or not. No game is worth more than 60 dollars. Make up all excuses you want to be a filthy consoomer, but gtfo with that shit.

>>712471023
Lol at all the seething crats in response to this truthpill

>>712471705
Games back then
>Came on physical cartridges that were actually expensive to make
Games now
>$80 for a digital release (physical is just a card with a download code)

>>712479998
AAA studios are getting slaughtered because their business model is dying

AAA game studios:
>price: $60
>tech: Unreal Engine 5
>costs: programmers + artists + HR + accounting + management + legal + marketing + office space + Microsoft licenses

Indie shit:
>price: $20
>tech: Unreal Engine 5
>costs: programmer (1)

>>712479890
>That's been the price for the last 15 years
No.

>>712480228
30% is the industry standard btw, Sony and M$ get 30% for games distributed on their respective consoles. similar fees go on google play and ios app store
Nice job hyperfixating on Steam just like Timmy wanted you to, at the end of the day no one is immune to propaganda

>>712478895
>not paying more than 70 dollars
*60
>That's been the price for the last 15 years
*5
fixed.
are you implying you bought a game at launch in the last 5 years? i sure as hell didn't

>>712470306 (OP)
You assume that the game quality stayed the same.

85$ * 60% average quality score = 51.05$

>>712480084
That's not how the median is calculated. You line up all the numbers in a row and count from the top and the bottom until you reach the middle value.

Don't believe me? Here's a 3rd party calculation.

>>712470306 (OP)
Because change.
But also because most people didn't buy most of their games new back in the day, they'd buy them used or borrow from a friend or rent from Blockbuster or just wait for the price to go down. These aren't really things anymore. And most gamers nowadays are adults spending their own people. Back in the day they were kids and mommy bought their games for them so they had no idea how much they cost and they probably didn't give two fucks whether it was new or not.

>>712470306 (OP)
>redditor can't into share of wallet or cost of living inflation
not my fault
if they want my money they need to charge what I'm willing to pay
I'm not willing to pay $80

>>712480565
This nigga wants the development cycle of Overgrowth to be the norm. Early access hell, decade long development, never truly finished, looks like below mediocre, infested by fans who rabidly defend the dev's rock texture update after 6 months of radio silence.

>>712478676
Okay sure, but the normie audience LOVES ultra-HD games. That's why Squeenix, M$, Sony, Rockstar, Ubisoft, and Capcom have such inflated dev teams. If you want more reasonable dev teams, games are going to have to look closer to what Nintendo makes than what Sony makes.

We warned you back in the early 2010s that graphics-whores were going to kill gaming. And yet you fags didn't listen. You need those nosehair and leaf crinkle textures to be CRISPY.

>>712470306 (OP)
Have wages risen to match? No? Then shut up, retard.
Beyond that, I refuse to subsidize these bloated budgets.

>>712481121
Yes, actually. See: >>712471023

>>712481109
Can normies name the 5 games in this image?

>>712480968
>I'm not willing to pay $80
Doesn't matter when marketing automatically steals the mind of everyone minimally interested in the latest hip video game thing (it has always been the same). Proof? Marketing budgets far exceeding dev budgets.

>>712481121
Of course they've risen you retard. In 2004 even working mcdonalds was 6 an hour. Now it's 20.

>>712472648
>haves and haves-nots that plague just about the entirety of the first world for decades
What. People live like royalty today. 100 years ago they ate dirt.
>40% of US citizens do not have any form of asset portfolio
40% of US citizens have an IQ below 90. 40% of US citizens are non-white/non-Asian. Why would they have an asset portfolio, anon? Are you high?
>90% of those assets is owned exclusively by the top 10% of earners in America
It's called a Pareto distribution. Those 10% of earners sound awesome. Know who doesn't have money? That anon from last night who didn't understand how 500 was 25% greater than 400. That guy's not a "top 10%" of anything.
>it's not hard to find millions of people who are financially struggling
As always has been and always will be. Give a hobo a million dollars and he'll be back on the street in a year.

>>712481007
Overgrowth is more successful and more playable than Concord is

>>712481121
They have - but they shouldn't have. Shitlibs keep artificially increasing the value of low skill labor by increasing minimum wage, which in turn causes everything to become more expensive since low skill labor workers inevitably get paid as part of the production and shipment for just about everything, which will then in turn cause low skill laborers to complain that they don't make enough money, which will then in turn causes shitlibs to increase minimum wage, which will then-

>>712481447
Why do you celebrate corporate serfdom?

>>712481490
And it has NOTHING to do with how much it cost.

Nintendo derangement syndrome

more vidya purchases in 2025 than 2004; prices should've remained at $50 or gone done.
Stop doing the boomer thing and making excuses for people fucking you over.

>>712471023
FINALLY SOME FUCKING NUMBERS

Literally blowing the anuses of nonwhite anons and poor white trash

>>712470306 (OP)
Because we're still making money like it's 2004

>>712471776
kek this

>>712481649
Why do you celebrate being a spearchucker?

>>712479597
Source? Or is that ai shit?

>>712480737
Yes, when you line up all the numbers between 1 and 100 you'll find 50 in the middle. 1 is the income of the median person. 50 is the median value

>/v/ was wrong about nintendo switch 2 sales
>Suddenly brown and poor white trash are armchair economists

I knew this board was brown and indian but this is a whole level of larp

>>712472285
I like how people will post nonsense like this and retards who really want it to be true will just believe it. I guess that's how all ideologies work.

>>712481792
Nobody's fucking anyone over, commie. If you want to live in a mud hut so badly you can just move.

>>712470306 (OP)
how much has sales increased in the last 20 years?

>>712481649
Cause i was financially literate and bought sp500 before the covoid boom

Ie, FUCK YOU, I GOT MINE. Why does this affect you personally ??

>>712470306 (OP)
Prices are getting inflated? Cool let's see my paycheck getting inflated too

>>712482293
>businesses are not allowed to be lucrative
Please go be brown somewhere else.

I'll be happy for them to adjust the price of games to catch up with inflation just as soon as my wages do the same.

>>712470306 (OP)
Oh wow, what a steal. I am so happy that I get to pay 80 bucks instead of 60 now.

>>712480246
>Can't actually refute the facts
>Resorts to petty insults

Typical 4chinz behavior. This place is intellectually bankrupt. Which is why most of you are poorfags with no marketable skills.

>>712471023
Now look at real wages per capita instead of "household income" which doesn't tell you how much people actually take home from work..

>>712470306 (OP)
Back then they had to ship it worldwide physically and they couldn't patch it so they had to get it right day one. Now you're just paying for a glorified download link that can be patched anytime. You also have like a billion games to choose from so competition increased which also means lower prices. You're free to set your game at 80 but don't be surprised when no one buys it.

>>712470306 (OP)
Nintendie hands made this post.

>>712482741
Real wages are adjusted for inflation, anon. so if changes to real wages are 0%, then the consumer is actually still coming out ahead because the adjusted price changes to video games are less than 0% - games going to $80 in 2025 represents a decrease in adjusted pricing.

>>712471023
>household
>two or three times as many young adults living with their parents than in the 90s (and that's down from the COVID highs)
>people renting with ever larger numbers of roommates
>immigrants packing themselves like sardines into single properties
>household
Fuck off with this gay shit. Show me the changes in single income minus necessary expenses or shut your faggot mouth.

Does anyone of you buy anything? Like just look at the food prices past decade.

>>712472285
Not my problem I make 80k a year

>>712470306 (OP)
DLC and extra editions pump up the actual final cost of a game to $90-$100 if you're lucky

>>712470306 (OP)
a game costs as much as you decide to put into development costs and marketing. the potential customer base only keeps growing and it costs literally nothing to manufacturer and publish the game itself, only having to pay royalties to the storefront at time of sale. games are worth what I want to pay for them and giving the paltry showing over the last decade and a half, that isn’t much

>>712471143
This anon lives in his car

Inflation didn't inflate my income

>>712481648
>doesn't mention how profits have inflated far faster than costs due to economies of scale

>>712482456
>nooooooooo how dare you not lest corpos rape you harder stop being anti-semetic goy!
not my problem rabbi. stop gouging people and they'll buy games

>>712470306 (OP)
How much has your pay gone up in 20 years?

>>712483347
Sounds like a hillbilly problem, move from you shitty coal town

>>712483473
about 5x

>>712476202
Goddamn, you are *aggressively* retarded. First look up the definition of the word "median"

>>712470306 (OP)
no dlc in 04
distribution costs were higher
market was smaller

>>712477140
Why don't you? You lazy fuck

>>712478775
I'm convinced the average IQ of a /v/ user is like 50

>>712483673
Anon, if you multiply 0 by 5 it's still 0

>>712483426
People are buying games though. It's only poorfags like you that are bitching and moaning about being priced out of the hobby.

When games like E33 can sell for $50, slop like CoD don't deserve to be $80, especially not when half of it gets sold to you later anyway.

>>712483414
Profits have nothing to do with the value of labor. If you can only do jobs that a literal monkey can be trained to do, then I'm going to pay you bottom bargain bin wages regardless of how profitable my company is. Why? Because that's what your "skills" (or really lack thereof) are worth.

>>712480372
>no game is worth that price
Any game that I can enjoy playing over and over is worth that to me, keeps me from wasting money in the latest slop. Maybe I got the timeline wrong but PS4 games were that price here and since I've owned various systems, price points have varied. Puerto Rico btw.

>>712471023
>household
???? why does this even matter, more people are living with their parents/roommates more than ever, why are you pretending like this is a nuclear family

>>712470306 (OP)
because my money is worthless nigga, theyre trying to imprison me

>>712483108
>>712482741
Show it yourself, bitch

>>712484539
As well as that both parents are working full time as well. Stay at home mums are getting much more rare

>>712485001
Corporate cock slave.

>>712485001
Don't need to. People can look out the window and see that the sky is blue. You're the retard trying to convince them that it's actually green.

>$80 for games

*does nothing*

>>712474935
Are you fucking retarded?

>>712476016
Name 5 (five) studios that do this in their single player games.

>>712485093
I'm just asking you to show your work. If you believe something, you must have a reason to believe it. Some data that supports your argument

>>712483574
SAAR YOU WANT CURRY BEST CURRY

>>712485556
Don't worry anon his source is his dreams

>>712479073
ok but what about the bottom 50%? are you saying that 1 every 2 people ought to wallow in poverty?

I rented my games from Blockbuster for like $5

>>712485675
Even if I was Indian I moved away from my shitty place and now I have a good job maybe you should try that

I hate shitposting on my phone

>>712484276
That's fine, just stop crying about increased costs. The world's smallest violin is getting worn out

>>712482174
you are clowning or legit retarded, its counts every entry not just uniques

>>712485545
Ubisoft
EA
WB
Capcom
Square Enix

>>712484539
so your parents work/receive a pension and your brother - who also cant afford to move out works - so its even more income per household? stop complaining, goy ^)

>>712487905
Name the games

>>712470306 (OP)
DID THE WAGES RAISE THAT MUCH TO OFFSET INFLATION YOU RETARDO? NO? WHAT IS THAT? IT'S ONLY 2.8 PERCENT? WELL WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT

>>712478532
Which was also compensated by the huge audiences we have today. The public is bigger and they are making much more money.

>>712470917
For the same reason investors are: numbers are king, and no other facts surrounding those numbers matter.

>>712470306 (OP)
That was before the industry decided that normalfags had to be their audience. When they shifted to that focus, the "loss" from inflation was well more than offset from how much larger their audiences became, and it worked for everyone for a good 15ish years. Now they want premium prices AND maintain the massive normalfag audience, and we've had TWO price hikes this generation.

If you really can't see any issue here, you're retarded.

>>712488192
Assassins Creed, ever since origins, maybe sooner
EA pretty much everything
Shadow of war
Dragon Dogma 2
Final fantasy VII character boosters

>>712483473
My pay has doubled in 13 years but I'm probably an outlier.

>>712485815
I make minimum wage and have central air, a fucking computer/camera/flashlight I carry everywhere with me with unlimited wireless Internet in my pocket and I bought my first car with cash. What the fuck do you mean 50% of people are living in poverty? What the fuck is "poverty" to you?

In 2010, I didn't have a stable 24 Mbps download speed so I could only watch my 440p streams when the stars aligned. In 1999, I used the Internet on dial-up, couldn't use it when my grandmother wanted to use the phone and every picture I looked at had to load one line of pixels at a time. Now I have something better than that in my pocket and it cost barely anything. These doomers who try to make modern living look like shit are simply living in a fantasy world.

Unless you're talking about a collapse in IQ and social cohesion thanks to dysgenics and multiculturalism, as predicted by the cycles of civilization. That one's true. By in terms of wealth? No.

>>712484539
Because back before the end times (pre-60s) it was pretty much only men working. So when you talk about income back then, you're really talking about how much the average man makes. Nowadays, that doesn't make sense anymore. When women entered the workforce in droves it drove wages down thanks to simple supply and demand. So the expectations people used to have for a working man to support his wife and children have now been converted to the expectations people have for a working man and working woman to support their children. Being single and living on your own isn't easy anymore, just like how it used to be impossible for women.

So using household income makes sense. It could be looking at a Chad with a stay-at-home wife or a working couple who pays some stranger to be a mom for their kids.

>>712470306 (OP)
my 1500$ salary from 2004 should be $2552 today, guess what it is instead?

>>712471705
>back then they had a 50% price cut after a year
>now they stay 90$ forever

>inflation
Explain this

>>712492332
ZASED

>>712470306 (OP)
>Quality goes down
>Price goes up
>Oy vey, goy! Why are you kvetching? Just buy the games!

>>712491215
1550?

>>712491215
>refers to salary as being monthly
this thread refers to US pricing exclusively. I cannot account for foreign prices

>>712492530
if the games are so bad, why are you angry at not being able to afford them?

>>712492783
>projecting your impotent rage on everyone around you
yikes

>>712470306 (OP)
Because games is 2004 were better then the garbage coming out today

If games were as good as $50 games then I wouldn't bitch.
As it stands, Sonic CrossWorlds is $90 and I'd rather buy Sonic And Sega All Stars Racing Transformed which is 20.
I'd even be inclined to buy five copies for me and some friends.

>>712483219
lol poorfag

>>712470306 (OP)
>a $50 game in 2004 would cost $85 today
Not my problem. What game prices are viable and profitable is ultimately determined by the free market, not by the inflation of other goods. Food and gas being more expensive is not a mandate to spend more on entertainment. With or without inflation, sometimes the prices of things go down over time.
Indeed, adjusted for inflation, games used to be worth more to me. I used to be willing to pay $50 for a game in 2004 dollars, and now I'm not even willing to pay $50 in weaker 2025 dollars, let alone $85, because
• the market is oversaturated with practically infinite games, including indies priced well below the AAA standard, and older games that are still available for sale and still enjoyable to people who care about more than graphics;
• I've already bought shitloads of games in my life, and haven't even finished them all, so at any given moment, I can just play one of those instead of buying a new one; and
• I don't have as much time for video games anymore, which means that spending even $50 in today's money on a single game is rarely a good decision even if the game has $50 worth of content — because yes, I'd rather spend $5 on a 10-hour game than $50 on a 100-hour game, because I have a life so 100 hours is several weeks of gaming time and I don't want to play one game for that much of my life.
If my taste in games were so narrow that I were starved for new games to play, and if I wanted one game to be the only game I'd play all summer, then yeah I'd probably drop $80 on some AAA time-waster.

>>712481109
You didn't warn me. I warned you.

>>712470306 (OP)
because spending more than $20 for a computer game is stupid

Reminder that USD inflation would basically be a non-thing if Jew York and Commie Fornia had their own tardbucks to use.

>>712493721
Yeah, the number of games published has long since passed the point where one person could play them all. Hell, f2p players probably can't even spare time for more than 2 or 3 of the massive live service games that keep coming out.

Games are no longer competing for your wallet. They're competing for your time, or even just your attention (the knowledge that the IP exists, what it looks like, what it's about). I genuinely could not tell you anything about Genshin, ZZZ, wuthering waves, nikke, honkai, blue archive, I literally know nothing about them besides their names and maybe what they look like - you're competing with games that are happy with THAT. Completely free games that are spending huge amounts of money on advertising just so I don't forget they exist. The market is so saturated that I don't know anything about literal giants of the industry, let alone have time to learn more about them or play them. These games are free. You're expecting me to not only learn and care about your game, but you also want me to pay ten dollars MORE for it? Insanity.

It's not about a fair price. It's about appealing to me, a consumer, when I could easily spend the rest of my life playing games that are bigger and better than yours. I am not demanding your game at all.

>>712488703
Well that shut the other anon up.

>>712495783
He will be real quite for a while after that showdown. Anon probably taught him a lesson. FAFO

>>712470306 (OP)
You're retarded fat & stupid. Go take a shower you sweaty fuck I can smell you from here

>>712470306 (OP)
>2004
are you fucking retarded or something

>>712471023
not only that. tax distribution got better too which means better infrastructure and so on. on average ofc

>>712478969
>>712479458
>>712479951
you absolute fucking mongrel retards. when they list median income is X, it simply says lower 50% earns less than $50k and top 50% earns more than $50k
they also do mean obviously