Ciarán Purcell discusses the future of the standard industry price for triple A games of €60 and whether it’s time is over.
Video Games are one of the most controversial, but also contemporary art forms to exist within the modern cultural zeitgeist. They got their start in arcades, popular in places like the United States in the mid 1900s. They quickly began to rise in popularity with the introduction of systems like the Coleco Vision entering the home in the 1980s. This system at the time cost $159 ($517.19 today), equating roughly the price of a PS5 today.
Where the conversation gets more interesting is when looking at the price of games. They cost roughly $30 at the time, which when adjusted for inflation that equals $97.58. This would indicate when adjusting for inflation that games have in fact gotten cheaper than they would have been in the 80s.
When looking at the price of games in the system generation previous to the one that we are currently in. For the purposes of this we will consider PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. We see that games cost €60 or €75.33 when adjusted for inflation. This is what makes this conversation interesting, as the prices that we are seeing for games at the moment are roughly in line with this if not a little higher.
Another interesting observation I’ve made in my research can be found on the Smyths toys website. Smyths is one of the largest video game retailers in Ireland, especially since GameStop pulled out of the market. The platform that a game releases on seems to influence the price.
Taking the example of the upcoming FC26 (the spiritual successor to the highly popular FIFA series). On PS4, PS5, and the Xbox family of systems, the price is the same at €75. However, the Nintendo Switch version is priced at €60, with no Nintendo Switch 2 version in sight for this year. Others, such as the upcoming 007 First Light, which is releasing on PS5, Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch 2, has an identical price tag of €65 across the 3 platforms.
All that is to say, AAA games don’t seem to have a unified agreed price anymore. Developers are charging whatever they feel is fair for the product that they are delivering. Some fans are disagreeing with the pricing strategies. Many argue that between the increasing prices, as well as the prevalence of paid DLC, that developers are asking too much of the consumers.
The most recent example of this being the upcoming Pokémon Legends Z-A. The game will cost €70. You'll also need to spend €30 for the upcoming DLC storage expansion, plus at least €8 for 3 months of the paid online service to access the ranked battle mode as certain mega evolutions are locked behind it, totalling a whopping €108 for the game.
This has understandably left many frustrated. However, looking back at the 80s, there’s an argument that could be made that this is simply what games cost. The €60 game may be going extinct, but maybe it’s not that games are becoming more expensive, maybe they’re just recovering to their baseline price after a generation of bargains.