Or live with AA and indie games like many of us do, at tell AAA publishers to get fucked by not spending money on their live-service crap.

Just don't buy Triple A titles.

The last "AAA" title I bought was elden ring for 30$ (unless you count Silk Song)

There are plenty of indie style, A or AA studios that are in the 5-30$ range.

The more people who move over to that type of mindset and buy from small titles, the more apt that large companies are going to lower their prices.

Pricing is dictated by what someone is willing to pay for it.

For me, $70 USD is too much for the average game that is being sold at that price tag because those types of games(AAA/AAAA) are:

• Broken at launch
• Unoptimized/framegen crutch
• Basic features missing
• Nickle and dimed to all hell

Again, not all, but the average AAA slop title usually has one or more of the above points.

BUT, that doesn't mean that Indie games at $20 USD are a "steal" or "bargain" either. There are many Indie games I bought at their launch(Silksong), but others I have waited for a decent sale.

If everyone stopped buying games at $70 USD then prices would fall and/or projects going forward would be re-evaluated to either keep costs/expectations down. But people are paying the $70 USD so that price point is here to stay.

This may sound crazy, but hear me out... $70 might just be relatively cheap right now, when considering historic prices and inflation.

So about 20 years ago, I used to work at a game shop and at that time all new AAA console games were all $50 and I believe the switch to $60 happened just shortly after I left.

That said, a quick web search says that there's been 65% inflation since 2005. $50 x 1.65 = $82

So at least when compared to other products, $50 to $70 is not a huge price jump.

Now all that said, this does not account for the added cost of micro transactions and paid dlc which didn't really exist in 2005. So the actual lifetime cost of a top pricing tier game may actually be higher than $70. Honestly, I have more of a problem with that than with the higher base cost, hidden costs are deceptive.

Edit: I looked it up, the switch to $60 actually happened in 2005, I was probably still working there when it happened. If we were to do that same calculation starting with $60, that's $60 x 1.65 = $99. So there's food for thought

This sentiment for a hobby is actually insane. Press X to doubt you can get that quantity or quality of entertainment anywhere else for what.... Cents per hour in most cases?

Check out ITAD then... lots of ways to make sure you get stuff super cheap.

https://isthereanydeal.com/

They already are. It's called - sales.

The problem are people going out in droves, willingly spending $70 or more on special editions. They've caved to FOMO and it is a them problem.

We're still in the best age of gaming where there are sales in all directions.

Have you met our lord and saviour, retro gaming?

Become a patient gamer. This winter sale, I bought probably 25 games totaling around 30 dollars. It's enough to keep me busy for the next 5 years.

Bloomberg's all broken for me, so going by the snippet:
I get the impression the absolute majority of games aren't even past the 40 USD threshold, including the majority of successful games I see in the wild. If the snippet considers the AAA games as a good sample for the gaming market, I'd argue otherwise, that they're a loud minority of games, and a decaying one at that for multiple reasons, including the bloated prices.

I think the last game I paid full price for was the MGS Collection for PC. Otherwise it's waiting for sales, usually 75-80% off original price then I buy.

https://gg.deals/ is pretty nice for PC games at least

You can go AAA for cheap no problem, people just need to not get FOMO‘d out of their minds and half-resist the compulsion to jump on the next shiny thing immediately.

The newest DOOM is around 27 Euros rn and not even a year old. Buy on release - or worse yet, pre-order - and you‘ll get the worst deal (financially as well as technically).

Game prices are fine for me because I literally just wait until they‘re at a point where I don‘t see them as a waste of money anymore. In the meantime, there‘s 203 untouched games in my Steam library that had reached that price at some point in the past already. Not even mentioning the hundreds of games I got for free between GOG, Prime, and Epic.

Bring back rentals

Aren't inflation-adjusted prices for video games quite low, comparatively? Charts like this comes up in a quick search: https://infographicsite.com/infographic/console-game-prices-inflation-adjusted/

I haven't paid over £35 on a game in years. Quite a few games are free now too, though some have kinda scummy cash shops.

That's what indie games are for, instead of these absurd-budget blockbusters that often aren't even fun, but also, the world just needs to be cheaper to live in. Games are first on the chopping block because disposable income for entertainment is always the first to collapse.

No they don't. For every indie dev who made it there are 100s of software engineers doing some voodoo math 90 hours a week to make my triangle look cool getting paid literally half my salary. 

Y'all screech and bitch constantly about an absurdly healthy and competitive industry. It's tiresome.

Perhaps a privileged take but I'd be completely willing to pay way more for games with no micro transactions or other "live service" BS. Like if economics make it so that it doesn't make sense to sell most high budget games for $70 without micro transactions then sell me one at $100. Video games were way more expensive when I was a kid and prices haven't risen with inflation at all. Consider that Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time retailed for $59.99 in 1998 while Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom cost $69.99 in 2023. That is a 16.7% increase over 25 years, or an average increase of 0.619% each year. Meanwhile, average CPI inflation is usually ~2% per year.