I always remember seeing this item on UK games show Bad Influence! about how consoles were cheaper in the US (but importing them wasn't really worth it) in 1993. Now, BBC Archive have released a news clip from 1994 about the Office of Fair Trading investigating the price of video games. This is shared on our Facebook page. It's an interesting article breaking down the price of games... especially looking at the pricing back then compared to now. I'll have to see if I can dig out any articles on the OFT case. Who remembers these price arguments? What do you think of game pricing nowadays?
I think game pricing now is absolute ass to put it lightly. Game + Day1 DLC + Season Pass to get a "full package" is not okay but not just because it's separate charges, but because it's still a buggy disaster of a release at best. That's a handsome amount of money for AAA releases. Indie titles I also feel have some weirdness in pricing but I cant think of any off the top of my head (caffeine withdraw headache). 60USD for a price should be Game + Season Pass at minimum, and retain only a FEW bugs. Let the devs finish a game, don't make them rush shit out the door then fix as they go. It may be convenient but it's a terrible way to treat a consumer. Just today at Gamestop I had a moment with an employee saying "Remember when you just come in, buy a game, leave and play it? Why did we need to change half the store to this other merchandise?" he told me "I miss when I could just come in for games. Now we get unfinished shit shoved to store shelves and we're expected to sell it. People come in for non-game stuff a lot more than games now." The last part being referenced to Funkopop vinyls and fidget spinners (also my goodwill sells these).
Absolutely. Broadband may have opened up the World of patching games and even not needing expensive media, but it seems to have brought lazy coding with it. There's no longer a need to optimize code to fit on a cartridge and, as you say, games go out buggy just to get them out on time. On cart, it was final, so you'd put the release date back. There's no excuse, really. You would think mobile gaming would be different - there's only limited RAM and internal (or card) storage. Yet games, even from big companies like EA, often need a ridiculous amount of space and use a lot of RAM, often remaining in memory and slowing the device down. The funny thing is, as you say, I'm not a fan of season passes. However, the one place you'd think it would be useful is sports games. Sports don't change. Surely they've made the games as good as they can be? Make one amazing game and release the team updates every year as DLC. Only they don't do that, because they can get away with charging you for a new game.
The only argument with this is that poor choices were made to rush a game from those who oversee the project. Look at Sonic Boom, initially to have much more powerful target hardware, only to get the WiiU, and a nearly impossible deadline, and an engine that didn't support WiiU to begin with. The contract for 3 Nintendo exclusive titles really damaged that title, and what was initially on track as a fairly optimal release. Add in something like No Mans Sky, which I could argue is more of an indie title than a Tetris clone. Game looks nice, but promised features aren't in, like the multiplayer functionality, which even had stickers over the box to hide that part. And while I know it's gotten far more attention than it needs to, it's like, being sold at a 60USD price tag (at launch) where at random points the game will crash on both target platforms, PC side being miles worse (PS4 is more inconvenient if you ask me). It was supposed to be out for basically all platforms, but that was dropped too (leftover data for Xbone, 360, PS3). Then take things like Skyrim...
