How Much Is a Game Worth? 

Lesson 1 about game prices. Don't judge the price for its length. Judge it for its quality. And even then, full price is now a bit too much for games

11:10 retro games are in a massive bubble right now because of (basically) fraudulent game appraisals and market manipulation by auction houses and appraisal companies. Karl Jobst has a few very thorough videos about it on his channel

Overwatch 2 is indeed worth 0$ lmao

In Japan the prices are still all over the place, Pokemon costs 6000 yen while the MW2 reboot costs 10000 yen

I remember Bad Influence (UK games show) had a segment on "Are console games overpriced" and the answer was YES, they broke it down into how much manufacturing cartridges cost, how much cut the retailer should get, advertising, etc. Anyway, I don't think I've bought a full price game in YEARS. Last was probably some COD on Xbox 360. I mean other than multiplayer-focused games, most AAA games get at least a 50% discount after around 7 months on average. Also games in the UK were £39.99 new for Mega Drive/Snes/PlayStation, then the N64 made new games £59.99, except games that came with the rumble pak, which cost £69.99, then PlayStation "Platinum" range came out for £19.99 each.

That's why I wait for physical games to go on sale for more reasonable prices The older I get the harder it is to keep video gaming as a hobby

The standard of new video games is $70 unless it’s Ubisoft then the standard is a Poptart and a Juice Box

Such an underrated channel! Your videos are such a mood

Can't fuck with no 70$ digital copy. Guess it's true that the 90s really *was* the greatest decade of all time.

I had been so used to games being $50 back in the 2000's since I played on the Wii and didn't get a PS3 or 360. I guess as the result of change felt more natural to me. I grew up in the 90s but I honestly had no idea the cost of games back then because it was always my mom buying them. It's crazy to think that the prices were not a fixed amount back then

Thanks for showing the variety of game prices across the years. I was more knowledgeable about the $30-$35-$40 transition of Nintendo handheld games from the GB/GBC/GBA to DS to 3DS, respectively, but I wasn't overly familiar with console game pricing before the Gamecube/Xbox/PS2 generation.

This was randomly recommended to me today. This was a great watch! You got a new subscriber

Such an amazing video with such a simple answer to the question.

found your channel randomly through my recommended feed, keep up the good content

Only found your channel recently but really loving the content, Keep it up!

Standard price should Always be low, because not everyone is flowing with cash.

4:09 upside down disk

I still have the sticker on my Super Mario Strikers for GameCube. I bought that back in 2007 for $54.99

Your videos are under rated bro. Should have millions of views and subs! Gg!

They should be worth LESS. Sure, costs of development have raised, but games are no longer selling to a couple million weirdos. Theyre selling hundreds of millions of copies, before even considering the predatory monetization basically any "AAA" game costs. Plus, most of the ludicrous profits don't even go back to feed devs, it goes back to the fat leeches at the top.

20€ is pretty much my limit.

What this video tells me is buying a game digitally should be cheaper than the physical version

Great video as always Kiro!

my favorite part was the $10 movie ticket i’d love to find those

1:27 that’s with an SNES mouse included

ori and the will of the wisps cost me R$120 on release, which technically is the right price when converted but it has the same purchasing power as about $90-$100 games prices suck outside the US unfortunately :/

In my opinion. No game is worth over $40. It really doesn’t make sense to pay damn-near $100 for entertainment

Americans: Ugh, I can’t believe I have to pay $70 for a brand new game! Canadians: You have no idea of the suffering we go through.

What I've gathered is that it comes down to supply and demand. Can you get it digitally? Is it widespread on all consoles? It's why retro games CIB can go for outrageous prices depending on the game. It comes down to collecting VS just playing? I'm super glossing over but yeah.

Comparing game prices to food prices feels wrong

Your final assessment on the price was most accurate of reality The price is based on 2 factors supply(how much are available)& more importantly demand(how much a person would be willing to pay for it) The cost of manufacture has drastically dropped for most titles apart form triple A games that need to have higher prices to off set the cost of production Where as Indy games have much larger accessibility opportunity’s through platforms like steam & even epic to a smaller extent allowing for more diverse price ranging If and Indy title is not selling well simply dropping the price even a small percentage can get the costs up a massive amount & this actually happen quite often on steam

I remember when back in the day when stores like EBGames (Australian Gamestop) mark up their games and sell them for $100 AUD ($66.59 USD) each, rarely had games on sales and couldn't price match with other store, which was insane. Now all thats change for the better

MY NAME IN SHORTFORM IS KIRO AND LONGFORM IS KIROLOS HOW cool is that and I had been subed to you at last January you are eipc man

lol i grew up with a copy of super mario land thats missing the top half of the cartridge. the board is visible and missing a capacitor but it still runs

This is why we always see the phrase "vote with your wallet". Because only you know what good value is. As a paying customer it's your responsibility to decide which games you want to buy. Whether you pay full price or wait for a discount. Buy a physical copy or a digital copy. The industry needs to maintain that flexibility of choice.

Of course short games are easier to replay, and some times truely become more fun the more you play them. A game like Mario Odyssey was an absolute blast, but I'm also not super inclined to replay it, because it is so long and the element of discovery is some what lost after you've already seen everything.

Main question: how can a physical copy cost exactly the same as digital?

I always judge any video game as £1 per hour of enjoyable play. I use that same metric for deciding if I should continue paying for subscriptions etc also

5:14 jokes on you im watching this via a mythical orb i found in the woods

The fact that most 3ds games are amazing and were sold for 20 dollars, while the switch games come out half baked and cost 60-70 dollars is terrible

I remember the origingal Phantasy Star on the Master System costing $79.99 when it first came out...and you def got your money's worth out of it contentwise.

So you’re telling me that street fighter 2 was an equivalent of $161 today? That’s insane

So the real reason that the Genesis version of Hangtime cost that much is because it had to come on a large 32 megabit cartridge which cost more money to manufacture, where the PS1 version came on a CD which is much cheaper to produce and allowed for the lower profit margin.

I mean Nintendo games.prices don't drop, them being replayable or not, a Zelda isn't more replayable than a GTA or RDR nor they are more popular, yet Rockstar's games are often on sales

7:26 Omori only costs 25 Dollars and has the same ammount of playtime

I will never pay $70 for a video game unless it's some rare treasure from the past. These people aint gettin my money. Most games go down to $30 in the first year anyway

I got SMB1 for $10 at a local mall last year.

Idk if you count taxes but here in France the new price is 80€ on current gen consoles even tho you can find them for less day 1 at supermarkets

Wouldn't mind the $70 if we get more complete games at launch, but I know that won't happen

I think the only reason a physical copy of SMB1 is so much is because it’s old and it’s a novelty item, since you can just pay $20 a year to play it, plus more

What about Dreamcast games? They were $19.99 at retail.

Well, it's collage grads punching out games in 6 years, and company's punching out games in 1 year. Or half.

As a guy from brazil, i think 60 dollars is really cheap

1:20 EA charged more for an annual sports game than Nintendo did for Zelda, lmao. Seems in character.

im gonna be honest I've never paid full price for any triple A release recently

Imagen finding a cib turtles in time today for only 65 dollars XD

I'm surprised you talked about cartridge production prices without mentioning the Neo-Geo! Absolutely massive cartridges bigger than VHS tapes for an arcade-accurate experience! Retailed at $200. And that's 90's dollars. For arcade games with short playtimes. Then they kinda fixed it with the Neo-Geo CD afterwards. Arcade games at home for an actually normal price... and the world's longest loading times! For, again, short pickup-and-play arcade games. Ugh, what a shame.

If its a couple of dollars and its on like Mac or something (since I bring my macbook with me everywhere and rearly touch the PC anymore) I might buy it digitaly. BUT if its like 10+ $ Im always gonna look for a physical release on PS or Nintendo. I just want to have the game in my hands at least. if it makes any sense

Well that was fun

If a game slaps I buy their soundtrack dlc or something. Generally if I've had an hour of genuine enjoyment I want to be spending £1. Key words are genuine enjoyment, I bought MWII last year and played the £100 game (I was an idiot and got the vault ED) for 220+ hours. The game is absolutely miserable and If I could I'd have played the free modes instead. On the contrary I've played 200 hours of Bloons TD 6 which I got on sale for about £2. I've since bought the double cash mode for £14 and the soundtrack for around 5. I'd say that's good going considering it's one of my favourites!

I hate the fact that 70 is the new standard because in Canada they cost 90 now

I’m willing to pay $60 for most triple A games… if they work. Lately I’ve waited up to a month to buy a game, just to make sure what I’m paying $60 for isn’t secretly still in beta. Lol

the gameboy advance cartridges never cost more than 30 dollars apiece. it was only ever the consoles that were super expensive in the old era. the games only became 60 dollars in the xbox era.

I have a belief that if a game is no longer being sold, it loses all monetary value for the data. I also think after like 10-15 years, a game has lost all need to make money, the device it's made for is likely no longer being touched, and if the game has failed to pay back minimum expectations, it was just not meant to be. Like, take for example mega man 1, that game is older than most people alive now, and grabbing the original run version is pretty much impossible legitimately, it only makes sense that it should be made free, especially since the creators of the game probably aren't making any money off the game anymore. I of course will always give the indie studios a lot of slack here, it's painful to get that game off the ground, and so long as you have it available to obtain legitimately, I'll gladly buy it over pirating it.

What is the name of the game shown at 5:46?

Well to tell you the truth, I didn’t want to spend over 300 on an authentic Mega Man X3 Cartridge but I guess it’s worth it’s price so here we are

Retro games wouldnt cost so much nowadays if people werent paying those ridiculous prices. It's that simple unfortunately.

Thank you for telling us that a burger costs $48

Nice gloves

Thank God Nintendo isn’t changing their prices.

We need to talk video about exchange rates across countries, because I'm tired of hearing Americans complaining about a game that cost them 70usd when it costs me 110nzd

Terraria is 10€/$ and that is a perfect cost for a big game.

6:16 unless it's a switch game.

meanwhile, every single call of duty game, no matter how old, is still $60 fucking dollars on the Xbox store.

I don’t think most games nowadays are worth full price since a lot of games are broken and buggy, I normally just wait 3 year to play them so they can be fixed. I had a year old game that turned out to be broken and had to wait another year. So I just wait 3 years now.

What's the game at 6:15 called?

Yeah thats cool and everything but... why does "baba files taxes" exist😂?

I'm never buying a game over 60, I will rather wait for the discount and get it under 60 and avoid spoilers than accepting the ever increasing greedy shit

There're a bunch of old games that're way overpriced for its value. I suppose it's priced based on its rarity, valued for collector's items. But if it's for the gameplay, it's best to just move on, because it may not be as good as you remember it to be.

4:05 does the Xbox actually take discs that way?

There's one thing for sure. No game from Ubisoft, EA or Activision is worth 70 bucks.

MID

TL;DW he doesn't know

if i buy a game for $60 i want it to be ATLEAST 60 hours long

My opinion on game prices? Honestly, I'm one of the only people who actually doesn't mind a $60 game. I guess it's because I don't care about my money anyway, but I think $60 isn't exactly *too* expensive. But any $70 dollar game is definitely overpriced for certain.

(1) The joycons have a LOT of technological features that the N64 controller didn't have (and they have all of these features in one third of the space, given how much smaller the joycons are)... It's OBVIOUS that they would be more expensive. So, your "what the heck, Nintendo?!" comment is completely out of place here. And I'm sorry, I know every gamer out there is desperate to at least partly blame Nintendo for the disaster that this generation ended up being, but that's something you simply cannot do, because in this generation specifically, Nintendo has been the ONLY big company that's been doing things the right way. That's why the Switch is the clear champion, even with its "dated hardware", "cringeworhty, bad graphics" and "horrible 30-fps performance". (2) Another thing you and most other people nowadays get totally wrong is that thing about "hours" and "quantity" of content. I spent 60 dollars on Metroid Dread, and it took me only 10 hours to finish, so, according to your mentality, I should feel ripped off. Yet I don't, AT ALL. That 10-hour game was worth EVERY SINGLE penny I paid for it. Heck, even worse, I spent 60 dollars for Mario Wonder and that one took me A MERE FIVE HOURS to beat, and yet I felt it was worth every single penny too. Actually, there's a RU-vidr who's becoming one of my favorites as of late: The Elelectric Underground. THAT guy could be called a gaming philosopher, honestly. He is absolutely SPOT-ON. He says that the reason "modern games suck" is that a HUGE shift took place in the industry, and this shift should NEVER have occurred in the first place. The shift he talks about is when game developers abandoned what he calls "the arcade design mentality". I think he's absolutely right. You said it yourself: Street Fighter II cost a lot of money back when it was released, and yet EVERYONE got their money's worth. Why do you think that is? It's because that was an ARCADE GAME. Arcade games are 100% pure, unadulterated, undiluted gameplay, with no "downtime", no "side chores", no "huge, open worlds" to spend hours in just boringly walking from place A to place B, and no filler content, and precisely because of this they were INSANELY replayable (every second spent on these games was a second spent having a lot of fun; and the gameplay was so good, even after beating the game you still wanted to keep experiencing it). That's where Street Fighter II's value comes from. That's why people didn't feel ripped off. Replayability is the best type of content, and arcade-type games were, and still are, the most replayable. But I'm not talking about the "replayability" developers nowadays refer to (where you simply have "branching paths", "decisions that matter", "lots of side quests", "new game plus", etc.). No, not that. The replayability in arcade games comes from the GAMEPLAY ITSELF being super engaging and addictive, and from the GAME itself not having any filler spaces whatsoever, and, yes, from them BEING SHORT too. That's why modern games (especially those released for PS and XBOX) are not replayable: they are way too convoluted, WAY TOO LONG, and have way too many hours of nothing. And the problem is that, since those games cannot be replayable in the old, arcade way, they need to ARTIFICIALLY create more "content", to make the player feel that they "got their money's worth", and this, in turn, creates the typical, horribly disappointing "triple A" experience of today: games with a lot of graphics, but also a lot of boring filler content, a lot of downtime, and a lot of cutscenes (which are interesting the first time around, but are completely skippable on replays). Modern games are created with a "one-and-done" mentality, while arcade games were created with a "forever fun and replayable" mentality. In fact, the reason I just HAD to write this comment today is that I'm currently playing The Witcher 3. I LOVE this game. I love the gameplay, I love the graphics, I love story, I love the setting... I love absolutely everything about this game. And yet, I'M ACTUALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO FINALLY BEATING IT SO THAT I CAN MOVE ON AND PLAY OTHER THINGS. This happens precisely because this is a modern game, with all the flaws that entails. Even with how much I ADORE this game, I'm starting to feel exasperated by its length, because I feel it's like a vampire who wants to suck all my free time for itself. This doesn't happen with arcade games. Arcade games keep you completely hooked and enslaved until you finally feel you've squeezed all the satisfaction you want from them. It's no wonder that way more people have put way more hours into games from arcade genres (like shmups, fighting games, beat-em-ups, platformers, racing games, etc.) than on games like The Witcher 3. The problem with modern games is that, since they are so long, and since all of them depend 100% on "a story" or "progression systems", they become a "one-and-done" thing. And that in turn, incentivizes developers to keep adding more "extra content" so that the players would feel they got "their money's worth", and yet this only exacerbates the same problem, because adding more content makes the game even LESS replayable. It's an unending cycle of doom. I mean, take a look at today's gaming landscape. Many, many, many gamers nowadays have been abandoning modern games and embracing older ones as of late. Why do you think that is? It's because older games where designed under an arcade philosophy, and, as such, are superior and simply more fun and way more replayable than modern games. My recommendation to the reader is: if you've been playing "bombastic, larger-than-life, tiple-A games" almost exclusively, and you've started to feel that gaming is getting stale, try playing a game from an arcade genre (like shmups, fighting games, beat-em-ups, platformers, racing games, etc.), and you'll have a eureka moment. You'll realise where the fun has been hiding all these years.

naah i aint paying $70 for a digital game LMFAOOO

No views but 2 likes?

You realise joycons are the price they are because of all the extra tech in them right?

No game is worth $60 let alone $70. Inflation didn't just affect game prices but salaries as well. Also most games release unfinished with a bunch of DLCs and season passes making the base game even more worthless. Just wait for the complete edition to go on sale. Edit: I mean this especially for digital games, I'm willing to pay a bit more for physical since those can never become as cheap as a code and they also look nice on a shelf and can be resold. But for digital $40 is the max I'd find acceptable.

I don’t mind the 70 dollar price point if it’s a game I’m interested in or a series/publisher I like if it’s somebody like EA or Ubisoft I usually wait for a sale.

It's worth 0.000001$

funny thing is, console Terraria is $60

E

That reskin mw2 absolutely isn’t worth $70. It’s just a shameless cashgrab. Then again what els do we expect of those filth types. But the ones that really are to blame are the absolute idiots still buying that crap. Quality over quantity. Call of duty sure as hell isn’t quality no more. It’s just a polished turd but still a turd

Boxes aren’t games.

world of warcraft litteraly costs hundreds of euros

2 shillings

Anything is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Stupid people and stupid prizes lol... Over 500 on a Graphics card? to play how many games?

I am one who will say games like God Of War Ragnarök and the Deadspace remake earn their 70 dollar price points lol they're so damn good Idk about fifa 23