Worth mentioning that games are still among the cheapest forms of entertainment when you look at dollars per hour.<p>Lets say Mario Kart had a cost of 40 dollars. If you played that version of Mario Kart 20 hours over your lifetime that is 2 dollars per hour of entertainment. If you played it 40 hours over your lifetime that is 1 dollar per hour of entertainment.<p>This new Mario Kart costs 80 bucks. So now the cost per hour has gone to maybe 4 dollars an hour or 2 dollars an hour.<p>Ultimately this is still one of the cheapest forms of entertainment. The only thing cheaper would be watching free videos on YouTube or Tik Tok. Or maybe Netflix streaming (but even this depends on how many hours a month you spend watching Netflix stuff).<p>Of course the best form of entertainment is still reading books. It's the form that is the best for you as a person and it is still the cheapest considering the price of books and how many hours it takes to read a good book. And books are free at your local public library so that's even better.
Sonic 2 cost about £40 when released.<p>Forty quid in '92, plus inflation, takes us to about... £80.<p>I wrote about this a few years ago - <a href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/02/why-are-video-games-so-expensive-these-days/" rel="nofollow">https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/02/why-are-video-games-so-expe...</a> - people have a terrible memory for what things used to cost.
I'm glad to see this type of explanation of inflation that uses examples familiar to different audiences.<p>We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that Mario Kart is a whole lot of <i>fun</i> (many video game producers have totally lost the plot on this). Mario Kart would probably be a value at $120, while other AAA games are a waste of money (and time) even at $10.
We keep saying this and forget that videogames started being sold digital, which saves about 30% on their retail cost, and avoids second market entirely, removing that "cost" too.
So of course videogames haven't gone up in price, companies started saving an enormous amount of money on videogames.
The value of entertainment has gone down since the 90s. Inflation isn’t the only consideration. I don’t pay $15 for a movie ticket or CD anymore because 2 hours of video entertainment is basically free now and artists upload their tracks online.<p>That said, it’s Mario Kart and decades of price history of Sega Genesis games doesn’t matter. People will still pay whatever for Mario Kart.
I don’t think articles like this are useful. Buyers always compare prices to current competitive offerings. In that respect, it is that high and that’s all that matters to the would-be consumer.<p>The history makes for a fun analysis but has little relevance to the current market.
It is when you factor in the potential customer base for it. Yeah sure it costs a bit more to make games these days, people expect more, but the amount of people who game is absolutely massive now.