[1] as of 1990. $48.94 adjusted for inflation.
I'm not sure that $/hour is a great way to evaluate games, since it would encourage developers to pad games out with repetitive content.
What you want to optimize is
(profit per customer) * (number of customers)
The economic assumption behind the price increase is that by this change the "profit per customer" increases "more" than "number of customers" decreases.
We will see ...
I've maybe bought 4 games at full price in the 4 years since I got it. I (and my wife) game on it almost daily.
How many people purchased computers that cost in the same realm as a mortgage payment? I personally know a several people who paid >$1500 for a GPU during COVID.
The price hike sucks but I doubt it will convince people to transition to a different hobby.
I think there are more or less two different useful definitions of gamers. People who do consider it a hobby, ie an area of active interest that they expect to spend considerable amounts of time, money, and attention on. And people who play games as entertainment or recreation only, but still prefer it over other consumption that could fill that time like streaming shows.
The time-use patterns might be similar (idk) but the price sensitivity may not be. If console and game prices are low enough it may be impossible to distinguish these two groups even. But at a certain point I expect them to diverge in their playing and spending habits.
Like nintendo's astounding success in the wii era was due to specifically targeting the second group. The different characteristics and pricing strategies of PC vs mobile games are a major split between them too. I think if console prices go up enough these groups will diverge even more. The less-price-sensitive "hobbyist gamers" mostly probably won't bail for another hobby, but the "entertainment gamers" certainly may; either for a different kind of gaming or for another source of recreation all together.
Where I did spent more money was the 300 euro for PS2Linux.
Versus a couple gigabytes of bandwidth.
ceejayoz•13h ago
The games aren’t shipped over from China. They aren’t imports. And yet…
explodes•3h ago