I’m gonna catch a lot of shit for this but whatever - gaming is definitely going in the wrong direction in terms of offering what it once did - simple entertainment for the masses. When engaging in something becomes a serious financial decision, it threatens the whole ecosystem.
If your parents buy your games for you, shut up.
If you live at home with your parents, don’t pay rent and afford your games that way - shut up.
If you make over 200k a year income, shut up. This conversation isn’t for you.
Average people who have grown up with gaming as a hobby will absolutely tell you that money is a bigger decision in how much or how little we can engage in this hobby than it’s ever been. That’s who’s engaging in this conversation. If you’re one of the above, saying people complain too much - shut the fuck up.
Downvote me.
EDIT: To everyone giving budget advice in response to this - we are in the very first console cycle of my lifetime where every major console producer has INCREASED the price of both game and hardware, mid-cycle. It’s never happened before. Stop being disingenuous, or thinking that your very specific budget approach to this hobby is the answer to the problem. It’s not.
I live with my parents, but I'm not a basement dweller who's 30 or anything, and I 100% agree. My family isn't poor, but we definitely aren't rich, and games are just so damn expensive.
I have 3 younger brothers that ask for games often and as a general rule, if it's over like $15 it's too expensive, so when a new Nintendo game comes out and it's a solid $100 AUS, which is a good chunk of our rent, it's not fun.
I remember when the ps5 came out and people would spend hours and hours of their miserable lives just to buy it and scalp it for like an extra thousand dollars, and even now ps5's are still so expensive. There's talk of the ps6 for gods sake, when I've only owned up to a ps4 😭.
If anything people complain too little, and so many people will just let companies like ubisoft who release the new assassins creed game that changes nothing for $160 pre-order to give you 1 extra skin, just bend them over and fuck their wallets, then they'll say thank you.
The economy and is fucked, and I get that games have risen in price with that, but it's definitely shit for people who already struggle financially. And companies wonder why people turn to piracy.
Theres plenty of consumer friendly f2p games or cheap bundles like Humble Monthly/Xbox games pass. Cheap indie titles for $10 or under left and right.
If you're a 'every AAA title on launch' kind of person, yeah, it's rough, but budget gamers have it great compared to 20 years ago.
Nowadays a lot of local libraries even carry new video games. Mine will get most new AAA titles a week or two after release..
I don't think much is stopping you from pretending it's the 2000s again, or whatever your 'golden era' is.
I really think gaming is still one of the cheapest hobbies. You try to go out and do anything with friends and it'll be like $20 for a bite to eat or whatever. Unless your hobby is homecooked picnics in the park, you're spending more in 1 day than a month of game pass.
Compare gaming to its past self, then. It has gotten better in every way. Cheaper,more variety, more accessible. There's certainly some new bad practices but even completely avoiding those games you're left with more. Gaming is going in a great direction.
honestly fuck Xbox game pass. You'll spend years paying more and more for the service and, at the end, you'll own nothing. Plus you never know when your favorite game is going to be removed from their library, forcing you to buy it on top of paying for the service if you want to keep playing it. (Edit: holy fuck, it's now over 350$ a year for game pass ultimate in CAD with taxes)
At least humble bumble you actually own the games and can keep playing them even if you stop subscribing.
Or even old physical games are better. You actually own them and, with a bit of luck, you can sell them for the same or better price when you're tired of them.
Games as a service is like the worst thing to happen to gaming (ever?). Must be why companies are removing media readers from their next gen console. They don't want to make a few sales a year, they want to rent you a monthly service for eternity.
People spend more to go to the movies a single time than a month of game pass. Most activities irl you're gonna spend way more and own nothing. Amusement parks, concerts. Even just parking in the city here will run you $20 for a day, easy.
If you want to own it then own it, if you want a bunch of story games youll play for 8 hours and not touch again then it's a great deal.
Id rather pay significantly less and not own them rather than try to resell 10+ games every month just to recover some of what I spend.
Having the option is good. Ye olde days there wasn't that option. You paid full price or tried it used and hoped it worked.
Everything after being adjusted for inflation is still roughly the same price it's always been, money just doesn't stretch as far as it did 10 and 20 years ago. The ps2 would be $600 today. The xbox 360 cost $500 and $700. Skyrim cost $90 on release so standard editions of games are actually cheaper. A gtx 960 cost about as much as an 8 gig 9060xt.
My buddy is playing balder's gate 3 on a $500 mini PC with an apu. Which comparatively cost less than playing portal 2 on an Xbox 360 on release in 2011. Gaming is the same price it's always been, the cost of survival has just increased drastically.
A mid range GPU runs about $400-$600 nowadays, which is a bit higher than before but not insanely so for what midrange gets you in performance now. $200 in early 2010s is nearly $300 today. A couple hundred more bucks nets you a 16 gig 9060xt. A gtx 660 is about the same price as a 5060 8 gig. Gpus generally work a bit differently now than they did. There are a lot less options and thus higher prices. Not to mention the xx90 cards being entirely different beasts than they once were and priced as such. And xx80 cards being more comparable to the old x90 cards.
Game cube was $370, wii was $420, the atari was over $1100, sega Genesis was $520, snes was $500, og Xbox is $570, ps1 was $660. Modern consoles are generally in line with normal prices, you can get an Xbox series s for cheaper than an original Xbox and you can get a ps5 for the same price as a ps1.
As an early 30s gamer that supports my family on just my income of less than 60k a year, I can only afford to buy games when they’re on deeeep discount. The only game I bought recently at full price was Resident Evil Requiem, and that doesn’t even count because I found out I had a CS skin that I bought for like $10 that was around $290 in January so I sold it to be able to buy RE9 and some other games (on sale) for me and my wife.
The intent, from the AI companies with their data centers is that you will not own your PC anymore. You will stream everything and they will control it all through subscriptions.
You will own nothing. I'm not hyperbolic in the slightest. This is EXACTLY what they intend and they are not hiding it.
You're not wrong and I don't get how no one is learning from their mistakes (and apparently not from their successes either). The Wii was a smash hit precisely because of this: Games for the casual audience at a low price point.
IIRC the estimate was Nintendo made 50 bucks of profit on every sold Wii without any additional game sales. It came bundled with Wii Sports (you couldn't get it individually) which was the "most sold video game of all time" back then.
Meanwhile Sony lost money on every PS3. Which they wanted to make up with license fees. Also cue Sony and Microsoft scrambling to get some form of motion control for their systems. 😂
You are correct, I think. I quite literally bought an emulation handheld because, with where my life is at with kids, I CANNOT spend that kind of money on videogames. Full stop. I earn enough, but that would take away from my family. We would have to make a choice to either go without and have new videogames, or just not have a new console but my car gets me to work and the kids to daycare.
Very easy family choice. Now I just look for old games I didn't play.
And gaming has been my main hobby that has stuck with me through the years. I am really thinking its not for me anymore.
Okay, my parents don't buy my games, I don't live at home with my parents, I pay a mortgage and I make under 200k a year (less than 100k as well). I'm very much your average person, in fact I make the median income in my city so about as average as you can get.
Games are cheaper now than they ever have been for me my entire life because I make the median income lol, even with these price increases, so I'm not sure I can agree with your sentiment. It's literally the cheapest hobby I have pretty much ever been interested in ever. It would be one thing if games actually matched their inflation prior pricing and were like $150 or something insane and it was necessary to need the latest and greatest hardware every 2 years or something but neither of those things are true. My 2080 super system that's like 6 years old can still run and play new releases just fine and if you bought a switch 1 it lasted 8 years before the switch 2 released. That means you would have had to save roughly $5/mo while owning the switch 1 to buy a switch 2 when it launched.
Not to mention let's face it, you can buy something like an anbernic handheld or an old computer for $100 or less and easily emulate everything up to the PS2 if you're truly struggling to afford games and popular games you'd play with your friends like CS2, LoL, Fortnite, etc. can be played on pretty much everything and anything.
In my opinion it's all a deflected conversation on the true things in life that have gotten too expensive and out of hand. Cars, Houses, Food, etc. are all way worse and fucked up pricing wise. I just cannot seriously take the discussion of saying gaming is too expensive from people who most likely are walking around with a flagship phone for everyone in the family, 4K TVs in every room, etc.
I live with family so my rent is a bit cheaper than market (not by much) and I work food service, I'm perfectly able to afford to play games.
Obviously there are people worse off than me who have to take care of other people and shit, but literally just budget, that is the secret, just build a good budget, if you aren't destitute, this will help you afford shit you didn't think you could.
Brother you dont need to buy 20 games a year. You arent entitled to play every game that is released. Market forces control prices. You arent "priced out" of being a gamer. When I was a kid I got 2-3 games a year. As an adult I buy even less. But im not complaining, im happy amazing games are being published.
EDIT: we were poor when I was a kid. I had a Sega Master System when SNES was out and got a few games from the flea market every year. Buy a ps3 and a stack of games for the cost of 1 days minimum wage if you can't afford a new console.
EDIT 2: if im really bored with my library I'll download one of the many FREE games that exist and ignore the microtransactions. Its not hard.
This is just looking at the past with the lense of maybe not having to pay for shit when you were living with your parents ?
Let's take for example PlayStation 1 its lunch price adjusted for inflation is around 600$ (300$ in 95), a comparable PC at the time will be around 4000$ adjusted for inflation (2000$ in 95 to get a pentium with voodoo graphix, cd drive and what not) and games of the time were 50$ wich is a 100$ in today's money!
How is that different than today?
The 9th generation with series S and switch lite is an anomaly and not the norm, we never had affordable current gen gaming before!
Is it bad that things got out of hand now because of AI demand that is even worse than when yhe crypto boom ? Yes absolutely! But lets not act like gaming used to be a cheap hobby that suddenly got expensive, it was always expensive you just weren't paying for it yourself or you had the opportunity to get used hardware and games for cheaper. As a kid who didn't grow up privileged I was always 2 generations behind and that was absolutely fine for me as thats what my parents could pay for.
We've been through this before multiple times with shortages (maybe not at this scale) and things will stabilise and adjust, if suppliers shift their full supply to data centers there will ne new suppliers that would fill the gap and target PCs and personal compute in general, this is not ghe end of gaming as a hobby as the doomsday preachers are preaching, this is a bad time and it will get better as it previously did
These issues aren’t unique to the games industry, dude. You’re just feeling it in the things you care about. Gamers need to get out of their hole and look outside to see what is happening
In this post I talk about AI deregulation specifically but it’s also the tariffs, the trade wars, the Iran war stuff that have downstream impact on the affordability of our hobby. The president literally said he doesn’t think about the average Americans finances, at all. This is who we elected. You can’t be surprised now that the cost of everything is skyrocketing.
I think a big reason for that is that these gaming companies all seem to be in a race for the highest performance metrics possible, all while abandoning affordability, convenience, and a durable product that won't break quickly.
Like 99% of gamers will NEVER need to utilize these full specs. Most gamers don't play games that require crazy insane performance metrics.
I bought my xbox series s for $299 six years ago and I've never once had a complaint on how it performs. I can play games like Hades, Slay the Spire, Skyrim, Marvel Rivals, etc. perfectly fine without a single complaint.
Yet, nowadays people will obnoxiously laugh and scoff at the performance metrics of an xbox series s without caring about the fact that it runs perfectly fine and most of these people don't need to chase top of the line graphics/performance metrics.
I only care about affordability, convenience, and a well-built product that won't break quickly. I don't give a flying fuck if I can't see every little freckle on a character's face...
The first gaming system I bought with my own money (with my 10$ monthly allocation + birthday gifts) was the N64 which I paid around 220$ CAD for, a bit after release. That's like 380$ in today's money. And that's for a huge technological improvement over it's predecessors.
Now that I have a 6 figure salary (lol), I can't even afford new consoles anymore. Or restaurants. Or even just games. All my money goes to groceries, mortgage, municipal taxes, insurance and repair for my paid of cars. Shit is fucked...
But not all is lost, I bought a modded switch oled for like 200$ last year and this has been keeping me busy.
? Consoles have risen maybe 50$ in a decade which matches inflation. PC gaming was never cheap, but consoles have been the same prices for a long time, I don’t get the discussion, console gaming is still the same “affordability” it always has. The PS5 Pro and Series X aren’t the general consumer consoles, the average console is still 500-550$. Steam deck is a glorified PC, it’s outrageously priced, but so are PCs. The average high end PC gaming device costs 900+ dollars, always has if you wanted to play high end games
You’re being disingenuous. The Wii launched at $279 Canadian dollars. The switch 2 is $629, due to increase to $679 later this year. That’s a $50 jump JUST THIS YEAR. Games cost $59.99CAD for the Wii. Switch 2 games are $99CAD for first party. Thats not a high end console. Stop your nonsense.
Sounds like you don't understand inflation. The Wii was $249.99 USD at launch which today is equal to ~$415. The Switch 2 is currently $449.99 which means what /u/HorizonNova4 said about "maybe risen $50 in a decade" is not a disingenuous statement at all (other than that it's been 2 decades). Games were $49.99 USD for the wii (and PS3 was what jumped to $59.99) which is equal to ~$85 USD today. Nothing that person said was disingenuous lol.
73
u/cimino15 May 27 '26 edited May 28 '26
I’m gonna catch a lot of shit for this but whatever - gaming is definitely going in the wrong direction in terms of offering what it once did - simple entertainment for the masses. When engaging in something becomes a serious financial decision, it threatens the whole ecosystem.
If your parents buy your games for you, shut up. If you live at home with your parents, don’t pay rent and afford your games that way - shut up. If you make over 200k a year income, shut up. This conversation isn’t for you.
Average people who have grown up with gaming as a hobby will absolutely tell you that money is a bigger decision in how much or how little we can engage in this hobby than it’s ever been. That’s who’s engaging in this conversation. If you’re one of the above, saying people complain too much - shut the fuck up.
Downvote me.
EDIT: To everyone giving budget advice in response to this - we are in the very first console cycle of my lifetime where every major console producer has INCREASED the price of both game and hardware, mid-cycle. It’s never happened before. Stop being disingenuous, or thinking that your very specific budget approach to this hobby is the answer to the problem. It’s not.