90s Game Price Comparisions

detectiveconan16

detectiveconan16

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http://www.1up.com/news/90s-game-price-comparison-charticle

It's interesting how the price of a video has remained about the same for the past 20 years, even though everything else that matters has gone up a lot.
Sure discs are cheaper to manufacture than cartridges, but I thought at least games would go up to $70 new by now with minute increases in regards to inflation, and the exponentially higher costs of producing a game.
I guess it is a broader problem with electronics in general. Bread and milk may be $5 today, and the next year it would be about $5.20, and next year's rent would be higher by a bit. They're will be hell to pay if Call of Duty Black Ops 2 costs $80, and my next tablet would be $700.
 
Call of duty may cost , 60 bucks new for the retail copy but what about DLC maps? Game publishers have pulled a secret magic trick behind the curtains to raise the price of games, and its called DLC. Its a tactic thats far more successful than tacking on 10 dollars to the price of games every decade.
 
I remember Chrono Trigger for SNES absolutely busting me. I remember being so pissed at my siblings because none of them would kick in. Was it $69.99 on release? It was stupid. I'm not denying its influence or reputation, but part of my first playthrough of that game was soured by my being busted by that game. I don't know that I've ever given it a fair shake as a result.

Secret of Mana was a pricey mofo, too, but I lucked into that one on a mistaken discount or some such thing. It was right around the time Donkey Kong Country was released, I remember it being in a bin at my local Wal-Mart next to a stand-up cutout for DKC. On seeing it binned, bricks were shat.

That's probably my best gaming deal ever in context, at the time I was buying games with shitty part-time high school job cash, and to get a $69.99 (?) MSRP for $15 was a huge deal. 50 bucks was a lot of gas money and whatever the hell else I spent my money on in high school.

I don't know how the MSRPs came to be, but goddammit those circa 1992-1993 SNES titles were stupid pricey.
 
I don't think 8/16 bit cartridges had MSRPs. I remember seeing Chrono Trigger anywhere from like $79.99 to maybe $59.99. The one exception I can recall were Nintendo's early "Player's Choice" games. I think the Gameboy titles were $19.99 while the SNES ones were $39.99.
 
[quote name='Halo05']I don't think 8/16 bit cartridges had MSRPs. I remember seeing Chrono Trigger anywhere from like $79.99 to maybe $59.99. The one exception I can recall were Nintendo's early "Player's Choice" games. I think the Gameboy titles were $19.99 while the SNES ones were $39.99.[/QUOTE]

I remember this as well, but generally, I remember many stores pricing the common games (Marios, Maddens) less than the more uncommon ones (like RPGs).
 
[quote name='The Dord']Ajusted for inflation, games (most) back then were cheaper than today.

DLC tries to make up for the inflation. :([/QUOTE]

Wait - what? You have it exactly backward. Adjusted for inflation, games were far more expensive in the '90s. A $69.99 copy of Chrono Trigger in 1995 is equivalent to $104.55 today. Try usinflationcalculator.com for fun.
 
[quote name='Halo05']I don't think 8/16 bit cartridges had MSRPs. I remember seeing Chrono Trigger anywhere from like $79.99 to maybe $59.99.[/QUOTE]

I don't know how retail works, maybe it's not stamping an MSRP on a game, but at least the squaresoft SNES titles of the 90s were uniformly $69.99 or some such price. And it didn't waver, it was like that as long as it sat on the shelf (unless some dipshit throws it in a clearance bin -- thank you dipshits!).

I monitored those prices closely. Whatever you want to call that number was obeyed by the retailers in my area. Non-squaresoft SNES titles usually went off for $49.99 or $54.99, IIRC. Maybe $59.99? That just seems like a weird number.

And as coolz481 notes, that's some inflated bullshit relative to today's prices no matter how you cut it. Especially on the SS titles. Good games in general, but goddamn they were wallet busters.
 
[quote name='The Dord']Ajusted for inflation, games (most) back then were cheaper than today.

DLC tries to make up for the inflation. :([/QUOTE]

Completely wrong.

In August, 1992 Street Fighter II for the SNES was released for $80. This is the equivalent of almost $130 in 2012 dollars. For a 16-megabit cartridge. The typical 99 cent smartphone game is larger than that. The most recent Street Fighter iteration at release was $60, which is equivalent to $37.42 in 1992 dollars. Anyone would be thrilled to find a new highly anticipated game for that price back then.

The price for a top game back then was much higher and what you got for that money a far cry from what is expected of the cheapest venues now actively supported.

The hardware compares a little better but only if you look at it from a strictly gaming perspective. At launch a SNES cost $200 with Super Mario world bundled. In 2012 dollars that is $334.31. A fair bit less than the PS3 or 360 at launch but the newer machines had a lot more amenities included in their price: wireless support, networking, hard drives, video disc playback, etc. The modern machines go well beyond playing games in their native feature set.

In almost every measure we get more for our money today than ever before. The march of technology and the competition for consumers' money are wonderful things.

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
 
[quote name='dothog']I don't know how retail works, maybe it's not stamping an MSRP on a game, but at least the squaresoft SNES titles of the 90s were uniformly $69.99 or some such price. And it didn't waver, it was like that as long as it sat on the shelf (unless some dipshit throws it in a clearance bin -- thank you dipshits!).

I monitored those prices closely. Whatever you want to call that number was obeyed by the retailers in my area. Non-squaresoft SNES titles usually went off for $49.99 or $54.99, IIRC. Maybe $59.99? That just seems like a weird number.

And as coolz481 notes, that's some inflated bullshit relative to today's prices no matter how you cut it. Especially on the SS titles. Good games in general, but goddamn they were wallet busters.[/QUOTE]

In southern California the typical price at TRU for a new high-end SNES game was $80. The megabit count increased as the ROM got cheaper and kept things constant. The few games I've ever spent anything like MSRP for were games like Chrono Trigger when I was really depressed and didn't care if I starved to death while playing. (I've paid MSRP for less than two dozen games since 1981.)

Another big issue was that media cost was a really big factor for those types of games. Games from Square and Koei had really small production runs compared to something like a Street Fighter and this added tot he cost greatly. Mask ROM manufacturing incurs a cost every time you stop a line and change to making something else, so ordering the right numbers was really, really critical. Optical media doesn't have that penalty.

So it was really tough to make money on some types of games on ROM. This is why FFV never got a US release on SNES. Square just didn't see enough market here to justify committing the capital for the carts to be made.
 
[quote name='mrspicytacoman']Call of duty may cost , 60 bucks new for the retail copy but what about DLC maps? Game publishers have pulled a secret magic trick behind the curtains to raise the price of games, and its called DLC. Its a tactic thats far more successful than tacking on 10 dollars to the price of games every decade.[/QUOTE]

Not really. Keep in mind DLC hasn't been an option for consoles all that long. It only started in the previous generation and didn't mature until this generation.

Don't you think Nintendo would have loved to sell more levels for Super Mario Bros. in 1986 if it had been practical to do it as a small download rather than a separate cart?

Sega tried to get around this with hardware cleverness. Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles were originally a single game. It got too big for a single cartridge and parts of the games were taking too long. So it was split into two games that could be made to overlap by physically connecting the cartridges. It was an interesting novelty but not very practical for widespread use.


If you think the DLC is overpriced, don't buy it. A GOTY edition of the game will include it for a lower price than the original release without the DLC. Plus the bug fixes are usually applied tothat version, too. Patience is a virtue and a big money saver. Meanwhile, for the impatient and affluent, DLC is a good addition to the industry.
 
[quote name='epobirs']Not really. Keep in mind DLC hasn't been an option for consoles all that long. It only started in the previous generation and didn't mature until this generation.

Don't you think Nintendo would have loved to sell more levels for Super Mario Bros. in 1986 if it had been practical to do it as a small download rather than a separate cart?

Sega tried to get around this with hardware cleverness. Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles were originally a single game. It got too big for a single cartridge and parts of the games were taking too long. So it was split into two games that could be made to overlap by physically connecting the cartridges. It was an interesting novelty but not very practical for widespread use.


If you think the DLC is overpriced, don't buy it. A GOTY edition of the game will include it for a lower price than the original release without the DLC. Plus the bug fixes are usually applied tothat version, too. Patience is a virtue and a big money saver. Meanwhile, for the impatient and affluent, DLC is a good addition to the industry.[/QUOTE]
um what? how is dlc not a way for publishers to increase game costs? Buying all the dlc for call of duty can easily bring the total price of the game to 100 bucks, and not every game gets GOTY treatment.
 
[quote name='mrspicytacoman']um what? how is dlc not a way for publishers to increase game costs? Buying all the dlc for call of duty can easily bring the total price of the game to 100 bucks, and not every game gets GOTY treatment.[/QUOTE]

And the requirement to buy any of the DLC was what exactly? I believe the answer is none. It's all optional. It doesn't increase the cost of the game by one penny. You would have to be pathologically obsessed with completeness to think otherwise.

Would you like it better if the publishers never released any DLC if it contains something they didn't come up with before the game shipped? Would you rather they only release new material when they have enough for a full priced sequel?

There have have been a number of games where I didn't bother with any of the DLC, even when it was half price for DOTW. And there have been GOTY editions I passed up for a cheaper unit of the original release.

Why?

Because in both cases the DLC was solely for the purpose of online multiplayer and I've no interest in that. So no need for me to buy anything more but a good value for those who do like online multiplayer. Nobody has anything to complain about.

I just a game by what is on the disc I'm buying and whether that is worth the price. The value of any DLC is judged entirely on its own. There has been some DLC I've bought that in the past would have been sold at a much higher retail price as a mini-sequel. We saw a few examples of the int he PS1 and PS2 generations. Or, if it was a game that only had a small release in the US, the mini-sequel didn't get offered here at all. A venue like XBLA changes the economics and makes it possible to offer consumers more options. Nobody has to buy anything they don't want or believe is overpriced.

I can understand the objection when it's just a code to unlock stuff already on the disc. That is obviously going to get a bad reaction when you tell people they have to pay more to access stuff on the disc they already bought.
 
[quote name='mrspicytacoman']um what? how is dlc not a way for publishers to increase game costs? Buying all the dlc for call of duty can easily bring the total price of the game to 100 bucks, and not every game gets GOTY treatment.[/QUOTE]

Don't buy all the DLC, and the game just costs $60 again. Win...
 
it is a comparison of the retail cost of games in the 90s versus their equivalents today, matched with inflation-adjusted figures to show the real cost of those classics in terms of actual 2012 buying power.
 
WTF are some of you people smoking?

Even if every game was $50 in 90, without any of the premium games, that would still be $81 in today's dollars. Nobody is paying $81 for a REGULAR game today. You pay $20 worth of DLC (and really how many titles do you do that for? 2?) and you still come out ahead.

And obviously if you're buying $40 worth of COD DLC, you must really like the game. It's not like PC games back then didn't have expansion packs. I'm sure if they could've done it with the NES or whatever back in the day, they would have and the whole "Extra Cartridge Content IS THE DEVIL" rant couldve taken place 20 years ago.

Gaming is definitely cheaper today than it was in 1990.

Kids today don't understand how good they have it! Can't understand inflation math! /shakes fist
 
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