In my limited experience where this has happened they at least gave me a free upgrade to the remastered version, or the deluxe or whatever they decided to name it.
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More than 5 years since launch, the Epic Game Store has still not turned profitable
- Thread starter Marees
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Steam is fighting lawsuits over their region locking right now. They are trying to argue it’s in the best interests of the developers and have managed to pass some of them down to them bringing them in as coconspirators in the cases. Capcom got nailed because of it, others too, but the cases continue.
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I got it because of the 1 year exclusive rights to Mech Warrior 5 mercenaries. Not terribly upset, Valve got me in a similar way with their exclusive rights to the Shogun games back in the early 2000’s still bitter because my internet was shit and I was pissed I, I drove 2h in the snow to buy that game from a store to find the CD within was just a steam installer and the CD key was the activation code. But I can now accept that’s the way it is, just as some games were exclusive to EB, or Toys-R-Us.Pretty much the only reason I have Epic installed...free games.
d3athf1sh
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original GTA trilogy, saint's row iv
Armenius
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I made a post in the GTA thread showing me downloading and playing the original GTA3 after the "remasters" came out.
Don't know about Saint's Row IV, but I'll check tonight.
TheSlySyl
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What? Yes they did.
here are some actual advertisements of NES, SNES and N64 games.
View attachment 613866
Krenum
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Ah the memories, thanks!
Yeah man, when the N64 hit, those games were expensive! I even remember the SNES version of Killer Instinct being $80, and that was 1995 money.
Darunion
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I remember KI being really expensive. They were so proud of their work on that one!
Certainly couldnt afford impulse buying of video games back then for me lol.
III_Slyflyer_III
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No wonder my parents didn't buy like half the games I wanted... lol. Great part now is though my SNES is in perfecting working order and I buy some games in great condition on ebay for dirt cheap!
No wonder my parents didn't buy like half the games I wanted... lol. Great part now is though my SNES is in perfecting working order and I buy some games in great condition on ebay for dirt cheap!
Oh God I have something burned into my memory where I convinced my mom to stop at some game store like over 2 and a half decades ago.
I had zero concept of how how expensive games were, so I picked 3 of them. Which of course probably rung up at like $200. I guess she didn't realize it until checkout either because I still remember that noise and contortion in her face like she got punched in the gut. Like I can replay that exact moment and GUGHHH sound in my head as the breath was forcefully expelled from her body.
Mr. Bluntman
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That's... actually reasonable. Good on them. I could see this being a negative though if the remaster is half assed, broken and buggy, or both. I do have access to the original version so it's not a huge deal, but I was looking forward to trying out Bioshock Remastered... Found out 2K pushed an update that added a paid content store over a year ago that made the game crash. They've yet to fix it. I'll have to resort to murkier waters I will not get into to get the game running. Regarding this game the point is kind of moot, but for other titles which have had the original pulled I could see this being a problem. Especially amongst AAA publishers.
Mr. Bluntman
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I am aware of this. I should have been more clear, perhaps? Steam just obfuscates the listing from the Steam program's search. A quick Google search usually pulls up the link to the store page, though. I was able to do this for Skyrim to play on a X58/GTX 295 system running Windows 7 a couple years ago. (Which, I might add, as long as I didn't go over the 896MB framebuffer per GPU ran really, really well in SLI...) I am not sure what other games this applies to, however as I only tried with OG Skyrim.
The only game in my collection where that happened was with Mafia 3 which really didn't change much but used a slightly older build as the base that didn't include some bug fixes, I also believe it cut music which is probably my biggest complaint regarding content cut from digitally distributed games. Another issue I have with digital distribution is that they usually force any updates on you which can lead to current save games being broken or introduce new bugs.
Someone mentioned Saints Row IV which was downgrade in numerous ways from the original however Steam now allows you to select the legacy build as a beta. I prefer it when they add new versions as a separate listing and compared to not allowing you to play the original I would prefer that even when they make you buy it again to get the new version.
In my case it was Space Marine, getting the Ultimate Edition upgrade and a few 4x Games getting a similar update.
TrunksZero
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Yeah cart based stuff was expensive. Not that I remember PlayStation, Saturn and etc games being allot cheaper. I do remember video game rental being extremely popular due to the high costs. That and used game
Flogger23m
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I think N64 games were $50-60, at least Nintendo ones. 3rd party games were cheaper. $50-55 was common. Playstation games were $30-40, as were PC games.
Edit: View above posts for examples. In Nintendo's defense, the cartridges were more expensive than CDs.
Nintendos pricing strategy for the NES and SNES was “how many quarters would it take to finish this or get bored of it” and that’s how they determined their pricing for the cartridges. I don’t know if that continued to the N64 era or not.
But that’s why there was such a swing in pricing for titles back then, it was based on offset arcade revenue.
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Starfalcon
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I was based of the amount of chips and size of the eproms in the carts. I bought mostly RPGs back then so those always used the bigger ones so they always tended to be much more expensive. They even got more expensive during the SNES days. The most I paid for a SNES game was when I bought Lufia 2 at the tail end of the SNES I paid $125 for it. Most of the Squaresoft games were in the $70 to $90 range.
DukenukemX
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Good, that antiquated crap needs to go away. The only reason region locking exists is because of currency differences.
Armenius
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It's the publisher's choice to do that, not Steam's.
PlayStation games were $30-50. I think they went up to $55 when the console first launched. I do recall Saturn games generally being more expensive than PlayStation games.Yeah cart based stuff was expensive. Not that I remember PlayStation, Saturn and etc games being allot cheaper. I do remember video game rental being extremely popular due to the high costs. That and used game
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Mr. Bluntman
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I meant to say that. Valve just does what the publisher requests, I realize this. Brainfart on my part. My b...
I do remember paying $299 for my console. Got it in mid 1995 with a copy of Doom. Heh... I can't remember what I paid for the game, though. Also had the Saturn. But again, I can't remember how much I paid for games as I didn't have very many for that system. Just a few. It wasn't like PlayStation or N64 where I had over 20-30 games for each at the end...
sharknice
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I'm pretty sure all of those pricing justifications were just speculations from random people. My speculation is Nintendo just charged what the market would bear. People would pay more for higher quality games with more content so they charged more.
d3athf1sh
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was that canada or america? well nes def wasn't over $50 for games, and i pretty much got out of gaming for a long time until GTA3 on PS2 and i know i never paid more than $50 for a game on that.
and i know some places charge more for stuff depending on where you live too. take cheeseburgers or apartments for example. but i can specifically remember the uproar about new games being $60 i think when xbox360/ps3 came out and here recently before PS5 when everyone was complaining about the fact there was gonna be $70 games. so. idk. i still think if you were paying $70-90 (edit: in the USA) in the 90's you were getting ripped off. is what it is. gotta shop smarter not harder.
You weren't ripped off if you got $70-$90 worth of value out of the software.
d3athf1sh
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it is if you could have gotten it for $50
Not if $70 is what the developers needed to charge in order to make enough money to feed their children.
The NES was released in the US from about 1985 to 1995. Inflation adjusted $50 back then would be $143 (1985) to $100 (1995) in today's money. So... still more expensive than games today, a lot more expensive.
I'm not telling you that you have to pay for a game if you don't want to, but this whine that games used to be cheaper in the past is silly. Game prices have stayed the same in terms of nominal dollars for a long time, which means in terms of real dollars they have gotten a lot cheaper.
There is some argument for but the market for those games has drastically increased so revenue has greatly increased proportionally. But yes cost per unit is way down.
TheSlySyl
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Look, I presented you with unedited, unmodified, pictures of game prices from magazines when they were new. Your memory is the one in the wrong.
d3athf1sh
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my original post was claiming that nes games weren't $70-90 and you got to remember, there was no internet. people weren't lining up outside stores to have to have such and such game day 1 so they could brag about it on social media. i think most people by the time they found out about games they were probably already on sale and a lot of people rented games too. also most of these $70-90 games today all have day 1 dlc and microtransactions. did you see how much the new mortal kombat's running? i don't even want to know what it will end up costing to own everything. well, unless you wait a year or two and get the goty edition on a steam sale... long live pc gaming
d3athf1sh
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you also never answered if you live in canada or not. but i'm not worried about it really. but in those pictures there are no NES games for 70-90 there were some super nintendo for 60-70 but i'm just telling you they were never that much were i lived that's all. and there were other places with deals but i feel like i'm writing the same comment again so i'm gonna end it. if you paid that much then good on ya. nintendo thanks you
d3athf1sh
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so lets say the new Madden/COD/MK/GTA only sells a million copies X $70 = $70,000,000 + microtransactions + dlc (deluxe editions, collectors editions)
but i'm pretty sure they sell way more than that.
It is estimated that Modern Warfare 2 registered launch sales of a minimum of 8 million copies
Link to google search
edit: and they don't even press physical media any more for most of them or make circuit boards like they use to have to do for cartridge based games.
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No, there weren't NES games with a nominal price tag that high, though I seem to recall some N64 games that got that high. My point is though, nominal dollars aren't how to look at it, real dollars are, meaning inflation adjusted. You always need to look at real dollars when comparing things across long time scales to see if something is actually cheaper or more expensive. Really percentage of average income is a better, but harder to calculate, metric but basically what it comes down to is that you have to think about expense in terms of how much work a given thing requires to purchase. NES games cost more, a lot more, than games do today. That is just the fact of the matter.
They also got you less game. People complain about modern games padding gameplay with shit like collectables and stuff like that, and they do for sure, but you are forgetting how old games used to be. They usually padded gameplay with high difficulty, life counters, and often no continues. They made you do the same shit over and over, because the actual game was not very long at all.
I'm not saying there aren't bullshit money grab games that aren't worth their cost. MW3 looks like overpriced garbage... so just DON'T BUY IT. However there are also plenty of good games out there and complaining because they want $60-70 silly if your argument is that Nintendo games were only $50. If Final Fantasy 1 was worth $50 in 1987, which is $135 today, then $60 is not too much for Baldur's Gate 3.
Flogger23m
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I don't recall many sales back then. Nintendo games at least retained the value. Gamestops would sell used N64 games for $45 or so, for Nintendo ones at least. It wasn't like today where we have big Steam sales. PC games would typically start at $40, and then stay that way for 2 or so years. Then they would drop to $20, although most stores would maybe have 1-2 copies on the shelf. Finally some games would get an ultra thin CD case, and those might be found in a $10 bin.
Mr. Bluntman
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Also Nintendo 64 cartridges were not cheap. Those "large" carts were sold directly from Nintendo to the publisher. At a profit. I distinctly remember spending about $75 after sales tax (US) for my copy of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter back in 1997.
Man. Turok 1 did not age well by the end of the N64 in 2001.
Armenius
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Perfect Dark was one of the cheaper games I had for the N64 at $50 when it came out in 2000, but they got you with requiring the expansion pak to use all the game's features, which was an extra $30 for the Nintendo version. I got a third-party one that worked just as well for $20.
It's still one of my favorite FPS games. The Nightdive KEX Engine port on PC is amazing.
Mr. Bluntman
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That's probably thanks to denser ROM chips and smaller lithography. I remember the early games all costing between $60-80 in my area. If you could find what you wanted. There was a city of a quarter million about an hour drive away, and that's where I bought said $73 and some odd change for my copy of Turok...
TBF most of those ads look to be from Toys R Us which was notorious for having high game prices, at least during the early Gameboy era which was the only time I bought console games. They followed the model that Best Buy does for TVs and cables, selling the TVs for a decent price and then trying to overcharge for the cables you buy to go along with it. They had the best selection of console packages that were often on sale and expected that anyone who bought a console would want to buy some games to go with it. I did buy a number of Gameboy games there when they had buy one get one half off but that was the only time they were price competitive and it was only a good deal if there were two new release games that you wanted.
Honestly I don't think single game price comparisons are really that relevant to the conversation though. For one thing the whole retail chain has changed with most stores being big chains that don't go through a wholesaler and accept lower margins than they used to, plus the move to digital distribution means even higher margins for publishers. The market is also drastically bigger than it was back then.
Since development costs are high and manufacturing costs are almost non-existent pricing is based on how many copies they can sell at any given price and finding the sweet spot of the highest price that will still sell well. Everything I've seen indicates that the game industry is still lucrative and that games make good profits unless they're not good, if that changes I'm open to price increases but until then I see any talk of raising prices as publishers simply wanting more money out of greed. I will admit that the recent inflation we've seen we might start seeing some small legitimate price increases due to paying increased wages but given the long production times of games those should start trickling in over the next few years.
OutOfPhase
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Turok, Mario 64, and Wave Race were just incredible titles.
I got rid of a lot of my old stuff, but I really wish I kept the N64 for the next gen (of kids).
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