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Comment by ludamad | Hacker News Reader

"Retail prices for major release (or “AAA”) games haven’t moved since Activision released “Call of Duty 2” for $60 back in 2005"

Google tells me inflation since then has been around 35% - is this really news? I feel like price memory trips people up, it would be nice to report a stable figure that doesn't become obsolete in a decade

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Since 2005 games have been more or less cutting content and nearly every AAA title now has some sort of monetization other than the retail price, season passes, micro-transactions, DLC....

Call of Duty 2 had a 9 hour campaign and everything out of the box was free, there were two map packs costing $5 each and as long as one person in the lobby had it the entire lobby could play on those maps.

The latest CoD, Call of Duty Modern Warfare has a campaign length of 6 hours a season pass and micro transactions.

My friends and I just got back into CoD with the new modern warfare for the first time since mw3. While I've been annoyed by Blizzard's launcher compared to Steam, I haven't been too bothered by their season passes and stuff. I bought the game for $40 I think, and haven't felt a need to put another dime into it. In fact despite owning the full game, we spend quite a bit of time just playing the free to play mode.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather they did away with all of it, but I don't get a sense that content was cut from the game in this particular case.

There have been many games giving you far more content for the same amount of money. And the amount of work to create the same amount of content had increased, the level of detail is far higher.

Some examples I have played include GTA V, Doom/Doom Eternal, Dirt Rally, Fallout 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and the Uncharted series. There are lots of games that have far more content and detail then their predecessors, and still sell for $60.

Some of those games have additional monetization (ex. GTA online, Fallout 76), but I think if you just buy the game you still get a lot more than before.

There are so many entertainment options today. Far more than in 2005. Price increases may be met with more resistance for all but the most popular titles. Perhaps it's telling that it took 15 years for this price increase.

YoY growth of gaming market was at least as much, so it makes sense that the prices didn't go up.

At the same time I wish the production quality of games went up instead of the number of games (I feel the same with movies as well though).

Yeah shouldn't be news N64 games were around 50 bucks in 1997 which is ~80 dollars with inflation.

N64 games would go for 59.99 to 69.99 for 3rd party games if you bought it from Electronics Boutique or KB Toys for instance. I remember paying 69.99 before tax for Turok at Toys R Us on We release.

I vaguely remember $60 and (a limited amount of) $70 SNES games in the mid-90s (US)

I remember paying 64.64 after tax for Killer Instinct on the SNES when it was released. We were desperate to get it after release so not sure if that was lost price. Friend and I at the time took it as a nice sign for the upcoming Nintendo 64.

SNES games were more expensive to manufacture at the high end, having more powerful processors embedded in the cartridge than even existed in the console.

N64 didn't have any extra computation in the carts for the most part.

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