Gaming

32068 readers

138 users here now

From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!

Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.

See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

remington@beehaw.org

alyaza@beehaw.org

TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org

gyrfalcon@beehaw.org

Whom@beehaw.org

The_Hunted_One@beehaw.org

chloyster@beehaw.org

Players Have Too Many Options to Spend $80 on a Video Game (web.archive.org)

submitted 2 months ago by ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to c/gaming@beehaw.org

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Fact 1: Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox announced this week that it will sell “some” of its upcoming video games for $80 — a hike from the previous standard price of $70, which itself was a hike from $60 just a few years ago. This comes in the wake of Nintendo Co.’s announcement last month that the new Mario Kart game for Switch 2 will be $80.

...

Fact 2: The three highest-reviewed video games of 2025 so far, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic, are Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Blue Prince and Split Fiction. Those games cost, respectively, $50, $30 and $50.

...

Perhaps it’s a coincidence that the best-rated games of the year just happen to be budget titles. But I think the two facts above point to something else — a critical flaw in the video-game industry’s operations that has contributed to its plateaued growth and widespread layoffs.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Glide@lemmy.ca 36 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I'd hardly call $50 games "budget titles." Is paying $30 for a meal at a steakhouse a budget meal just because that high-class $50 a plate reservation-only place exists?

I agree that price doesn't equal quality, but I don't feel so good about trying to normalize AAA $50 games as "budget titles." And the link to the article is broken, so I am not sure what the greater context and points of the article are.

[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 5 points 2 months ago

Budget title is definitely a stretch, but I think that was just poor word choice - the fact that those three games are less than the typical "AAA" price of $60 I think really proves their point that gamers by and large are choosing cheaper games — it's the industry trying to push premium priced games.

[–] madame_gaymes@programming.dev 4 points 2 months ago

Just so you have more reference. Original link is in OP's link, but I think they had too many tracking arguments in the URL so wayback didn't work. Always test before going live!

Original Article

Working Archive Link