this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Gaming

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Players Have Too Many Options to Spend $80 on a Video Game (web.archive.org)
submitted 1 month ago by ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net to c/gaming@beehaw.org
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Fact 1: Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox announced this week that it will sell “some” of its upcoming video games for $80 — a hike from the previous standard price of $70, which itself was a hike from $60 just a few years ago. This comes in the wake of Nintendo Co.’s announcement last month that the new Mario Kart game for Switch 2 will be $80.

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Fact 2: The three highest-reviewed video games of 2025 so far, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic, are Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Blue Prince and Split Fiction. Those games cost, respectively, $50, $30 and $50.

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Perhaps it’s a coincidence that the best-rated games of the year just happen to be budget titles. But I think the two facts above point to something else — a critical flaw in the video-game industry’s operations that has contributed to its plateaued growth and widespread layoffs.

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[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 month ago

The fact that there has been so much noise over $80 video games makes me question the thesis here. There are a huge number of video games out there now, it's true, but if gamers truly gave a shit about them, I think everyone would be rather quiet about the prices from the big publishers.

All of the noise tells me that gamers will continue to prioritize big name, big dollar releases, rather than actually even glance at their backlog of Steam games. And $80 spent on games you never, ever play is not a better investment.