this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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Berzerk came out for the Atari 2600 in 1982 for about $30. That's $98 today. And that didn't take the labor of a movie studio to produce and sell. It was kinda simple.
My lawn. Off of it.
The sales volume was pretty small though, so it's not an apples to apples comparison.
Ubisoft would be pretty happy to sell a game for 1€ if all 8 billion people in the world bought a copy
It also required expensive ROM chips and cartridge assembly and came in a full color box with a full color manual.
Digital games don’t come with anything and don’t cost anything to ship.
Not to mention that salaries have absolutely not kept up with inflation so it’s not like that money is going to the developers.
A color box and manual, how... chic. As to salaries, of course you're right, but Atari was paying a couple of dudes vs. several teams creating a modern game.
Anyway, love to see gamers whining about prices as we head into a world where obtaining food is a challenge.
Economy of scale, the market has grown with the scope of games and also, most games do not require a team of hundreds of people to develop.
I covered it in another comment, but game development is easier now than ever, many of gamings greatest hits in the modern era are made by teams of less than 10 full time workers or even completely solo.
The Atari developers didn't have unity and Internet forums, they didn't have managed programming languages, they didn't have asset libraries, they didn't have modern art toolchains and 3d modeling software with high level easy to use features.
Additionally, looking back at old games is looking with biased eyes. The tech was just as cutting edge as it is today, and the learning curve was steeper, it was harder to just get a computer, let alone, learn how to program one. The talent pool was smaller and it was harder to get funding for a game, the higher prices reflected that you were paying for niche software. That isn't the case anymore.
And the argument doesn't even make sense. Should a Blu-ray copy of avengers cost $500 because it cost hundreds of millions to make?
Yeah, and they sold significantly fewer copies because video games weren't a popular household product at the time; they needed a higher markup to make a reasonable profit. Mario Kart 8 sold nearly 76 million copies. Nintendo made well over a reasonable profit on that game even with a significantly smaller markup, and they would easily continue to do so with the subsequent entry at the same price.
Solid point! But yes, the Atari 2600 was in pretty much every middle-class home at the time. Didn't get mine for years later because my parent's lived the Depression and WWII, didn't see the value in a $100 game. :)
So you're saying economies of scale and population made goods cheaper? That's sounds suspiciously like capitalism.
I can relate with : Me when a game exceed my budget(0$).