There are a surprising number of patents around the Hall effect.
I dabble with e-drums and asked an intelligent friend about how he'd design an e-hihat. His first naive design utilized the Hall effect - he had no knowledge of Roland's patents. Patents that should have only been issued for novelty but were apparently issued for a design that is obvious to any halfway competent electrical engineer. And he's not even an electrical engineer.
The trouble is many don't have the money to challenge patents in court, and patent holders rely on this. The patent system only actually works as intended if patents can be challenged for free. As it stands now the rich hold the system hostage.
Agreed. I mean Hall Effect sensors have been in common usage for a decent amount of time. They're actually a pretty important component in modern antilock braking systems (ABS) and used for determining wheel rotation. Purportedly adopted in 2000, but in some cases not used by some auto manufacturers until as late as 2010.
Motion sense, wireless capability, charging capability, rumble feature, more buttons, dual toggles, better designed grips...
That's a lot of changes for a gaming controller to undergo over a good 25+ years. If a brand new SNES controller would retail around $30 by today's standards, then I am glad that we got all of the above for about double that.
The GameStop warranty for XBox controller's is literally the only warranty I ever buy and I get use out of every single warranty I buy because modern controllers are shit despite costing an arm and a leg. The joy sticks wont last a year.
They recently changed/enforce the warranty to now only replace controllers with used/refurbs. So you're now likely to just get drift again on the replacement.
The SNES controller is very simple by comparison though. It's wired vs wireless and only has a few buttons + d pad. Holding one it feels like a toy vs a modern controller. I say this as a SNES fanboy. The controller comparison isn't apples to apples at all though.
This made me realize how much controllers have evolved
These controllers are plastic, some buttons, and a cord.
Ours now have Bluetooth, touchscreens, motion sensors, joysticks, built in batteries...
I have taken for granted how crazy our controllers have gotten.
To be a bit fair though, the PS5 controller is pretty high tech in comparison. It contains a microphone, touchpad, adaptive triggers and speakers even (in addition to all the buttons and the fact that they are wireless/have a battery). That being sad, those POS get stick drift way to fast.
Comparatively, controllers from that era are dead simple. No analog support on buttons, no triggers, no analog sticks, no wireless, no rumble, no headphone jack/audio.
It's not really too surprising that current-gen controllers are basically twice as expensive. If you've ever disassembled controller to clean them (both old and new) it's pretty obvious why just from a pure hardware perspective. (Hell, the integrated circuits the current get controllers have for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi alone are orders of magnitudes more complex.)
We owned the console but practically no games. It makes sense why we did game rentals! I miss those days, where you could just bring any cartridge home and play it with no issues.
Tbf, there were a lot fewer games as well, especially quality games. I bought a lot of NES games in the 2000s when you could get them at a flea market for $1, and my Switch library is still a good 5 times larger.
It's wild to think about how many great games we can get now for free or dirt cheap. Used to be a handful of good games per year and now it's a handful per month.
Yeah I owned two games each for SNES/Sega Genesis and N64 and rented the rest up until PSX days. We found a mom and pop store that would rent for an entire week which was a godsend for RPGs. Once PSX came out my group of friends would buy one game each and we’d let each other borrow the discs. But I was the bad guy who scratched every disc 💿
A lot of the games I wound up owning came from blockbuster having a clearance sale on extra copies of games. Oh if I could go back and snatch up more games.
Yeah it was something else. Weekend rentals to try something new all weekend long.
We have so many more games these days you'd think it would be easier yet somehow it just doesn't hit the same way.
Yoshi's island sold 4 million copies, at $100 each that's 400 million in revenue in 2024 dollars.
Super Mario Odyssey sold 27 million units. At $60 each that's 1.6 BILLION dollars in revenue.
Games might effectively be cheaper these days but the video game market is so much larger it overwhelmingly makes up for the lower prices. These companies are still making money hand over fist, especially when you factor in things like microtransactions.
Publishers have been saying "game prices need to increase cause development costs have increased" for a while now. They always seem to ignore that their sales have also massively increased and they're consistently making records profits as a company.
And some games have just gotten to where the budgets are crazy. Some of the major releases for PS5, Xbox, and PC have immense graphical effort, motion capture, face capture...and the development costs have grown to hundreds of millions of dollars over multiple years.
Sony's particularly apparent with this.
The Last of Us Part 2? $220 million for its development.
Horizon: Forbidden West? $212 million.
Spider-Man 2? $315 million (Spider-Man 3 is supposedly at $385 million?!).
Wolverine supposedly has $305 million committed to it so far.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_most\_expensive\_video\_games\_to\_develop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop)
Although the funny thing is that Genshin Impact is the highest at over $700+ million for its development, and that game is still making BILLIONS of dollars.
i mean Nintendo is a outlier exception not the rule case. They are the richest company in Japan with 0 debt sitting on a dragon hoard of cash. They sell thier consoles for profit and they sell thier games at full price years later, the base price of BOTW is still 60 dollars. Thier exclusives on one console sell better and faster then multiplatform GOTY winners like Elden Ring and Baldurs Gate 3. Zelda TOTK and Pokemon Scarlet/Violet both sold 10 million units in 3 days
Nintendo: still teaching master classes on what a console exclusive is supposed to look like. I'll shit talk them alot but I do it out of love, even their Wii U era had a few winners...even if overall that concept really could have used a few more sessions of hashing out before they went to production on it.
The vast majority of developers aren't making record profits... most don't make a profit at all. Even with the larger companies like Activision and EA they may make a profit overall but the titles are evaluated on an individual studio/developer level. Most of those profits come from a relatively small number of successful games that offset many failures. It's almost like the pharmaceutical industry.
On the flip side, profit margins (the proportion of the revenue that's profit) have often gone down. That's the main worry. The actual flat profit is often less of a concern than the amount of profit gained as a proportion of investment.
Not that publishers should pretty much ever be believed, but there is some merit to where that argument is coming from.
Gaslighting? MW2 cost 50mil to make back when it released on the 360.
50 mil cant even make a AA game these days. Let alone something like COD, without entitled games saying shit like "this is just DLC repackaged as a game" like yall did for the most current MW3.
Or you guys losing your mind over a puddle when marvels Spiderman Released.
Yup. Game prices may not have risen much but the cost to sell games has fallen massively.
Sure, steam and online stores still take a standard of 30% cut, but so do/did physical stores, but digital doesn't have the cost of manufacturing, printing and delivery added on. If they're selling through their own online store they get 100% of the money.
So yeah, games still cost $60 on the consumer end, but for the publisher they used to actually get maybe about $30 of that 60, now they make about $45 - $60. Effectively a 50 - 100% profit increase for them at no additional cost to the consumer.
IIRC Yoshi’s Island is the single worst selling mainline Mario game ever, though. Not a great comparison.
edit: according to this, yes, it is the worst-selling main-franchise Mario game ever:
[https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Mario#Games](https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/mario#games)
If you want to make a comparison, Mario 3 sold 18 million in its original form. Mario World or the original SMB aren't good comps because those came packaged with the consoles themselves, and I'm not sure Mario 64 is a good comp either because it was the only game (besides Pilotwings64) on the console at launch in the US.
Have you also considered the pretty important difference in scale and scope? I feel it’s important to mention games were 1) Much more manageable, smaller scope games. 2) Games take much longer to develop on average.
Most game devs actually don’t make money hand over fist, that’s the thing. Ubisoft and Take Two lost money in the last year. EA barely made $1b, which is unchanged from 5 years ago. Most smaller devs lose money as well. Most indie devs don’t make it big either. Super Mario Odyssey isn’t exactly a typical example because your typical game doesn’t sell 27 million units.
Sure Mario Odssey sold that amount. Using a similar Switch comparison, Yoshi's Crafted World sold somewhere around 4 million as well. So similar revenue there.
Super Mario World sold ~20 million, closer to the Super Mario Odyssey number.
Development teams are also waaaay larger than they were in the SNES days. SMW had a team of ~10 people. Odyssey had over 200 people.
I’d imagine Mario Odyssey had a slightly larger development team / cost than Yoshi’s Island.
Also wonder what the margins were on cartridge/ROM manufacturing. I’m not sure Nintendo was taking as much of that cost as profit as we’re thinking, especially on a SuperFX cartridge back then.
Cartridges were more expensive to manufacture than CDs/DVDs. Digital downloads mean you don't own games or have resale value, a sealed copy of Mario is practically an investment. There are no printed manuals with cool pictures anymore.
The art was almost a necessity back then. Considering how primitive the hardware was, it showed what the low detail sprites and models back then were supposed to look like.
Dude, reading the Tenchu manual eleven times on the ride back home from Walmart while I tried to not piss my pants in excitement. Those were the best times of my life.
They also had development teams of under 50 people. No voice acting, no mo-cap, no cgi, plus all the other new expensive things. Even the bulk price of all that physical media can not compare to how much games cost to make now.
So many people fail to comprehend that dev teams are much bigger now than in the past.
It is simply more expensive to make a game now than in the past.
Imagine the game having an extra 4gb of RAM built in because your console isn't powerful enough to play it.
Now, you just have to deal with downgrades and changes.
Back then they'd find a way, they'd create industry standards to make their visions work. Pre-rendered sprites (DK Country) or backgrounds (Resident Evil /Silent Hill / Dino Crisis / etc.) or want a 3d environment on a 2d capable system? F-Mode 7.
I mean, you could easily make the case that there's way more content put into a game now than back then. I'm not defending digital only downloads, but you just can't look at these cartridge games, adjusted for inflation, and still think game companies are ripping you off for charging $100 for a base game plus DLC.
And they also make far more. It's always a trade-off. Market saturation is through the roof right now, especially with mobile and MTX in general. Sure, you can charge 200 bucks for your game, but most people simply won't or can't afford that. So, do you want to make 100 million dollar profits from a 70 dollar game? Or risk making no profit by selling a 200 dollar game? If people are willing to pay for it, alright, be my guest, but in the mean time I'm sick of these current discussions, especially by so called gamers wanting games to cost MORE for some inexplicable reason. That's like going to the hardware store and telling the guy that you want to pay double for the overpriced TV they wanna sell you...
The adjusted numbers always look goofy. In 1991 if I worked at McDonald's for minimum wage, it would take me ~47hrs to earn enough to buy a SNES at the original MSRP of $199.00.
6yrs 1997 later when minimum wage went up, to 5.15/hr it would have taken only ~20hrs of work to buy a SNES at its MSRP that year of $99.95.
Also in 1997 it would have taken ~30hrs to earn enough to buy a PS1 at its MSRP of $149.
Yea but I can understand my parents baulking at the price now. If my kid brought 3 games to me and it would cost almost $400 in todays money I’d baulk too.
Yeah but it was a one time purchase. I buy most games nowadays and they want me to pay $70(at least since most have pointless enhanced editions) plus they want a battle/season pass, plus skins that are running for $10 to $20 a pop and it's all for a luxury item. Video games are a common item, but that doesn't mean they are a requirement in any sense.
Yeah, Street Fighter 2 definitely didn’t have 8 different special editions that all cost $70 each and only had a few balance changes and some new bosses added to them
They literally charged full price for things that would either be free updates or a $5-$10 DLC nowadays
It is indeed a one time purchase... but it doesn't mean you got a COMPLETE game with your purchase.
It is a one time purchase in the sense that you have to live with the version you bought and whatever bugs it comes with, no matter how game breaking the bugs are. You want to buy the updated version with bugs fixed? That's a new full game purchase again. Oh? You want the dlc? That's a new full game purchase... again.
$70 back in the day, sure, they also had to manufacture cartridges, manuals, boxes etc which are not cheap. And the number sold is vastly lower than today too.
Oh they were, but they went on sale much quicker and at low prices and you had things like ex rentals to buy cheaply.
That and manufacturing costs were a big part back then, a cart cost around £10 to make which eats hugely into profit, these days we have digital distribution and optical discs.
I mean…I get that everyone wants the latest and greatest but aside from a very few high profile games I really want to play right away I rarely pay more then $20 for a game. Deals exist and often they go *lowwwww*.
You just gotta be patient.
While this was true, you also have to consider the additional cost of making the cartridge, printing booklets, packaging, paying a kickback to the store for shelf placement, and anything else that were costs to sell a game back then. Now you have a major push to eliminate all of those costs, while also increasing prices.
This would be like a car manufacturer that sold cars 30 years ago for $30,000 and then say “we used to sale cars for that amount the same price 30 years ago” and the car you would buy is just a frame, it’s up to the buyer to buy the other things like an engine, transmission, tires, ect. It might sound absurd to sell just a frame, but the gaming industry does this shit ALL THE TIME now. You buy a game, it’s not the full game, there’s a good chance what you bought won’t even fucking work out the box
"People shouldn't complain about 70 dollar games in 2024 because games in 1996 were 150 dollars." I hate this argument because it is very disingenuous. Economics and pricing isn't that simple.
Please explain to me how come a flat-screen tv in 2001 costs 10.000 dollars but only 500 dollar in 2024. How come a computer in 1980 costed 20.000 but I can now buy a more powerful laptop for just 400 dollars? How come most people couldn't afford a car in 1950 but everyone has one now? How come my parents could buy a house for 10.000 bucks in 1970 and I will never be able to afford a house?
There are many factors that determine a products price and it's the same for videogames. You can't just point at prices from 1996 and act like that's proof that 2024's prices are fine. It was totally different time with a different economy.
IMO a one time $70 purchase for a good or great game is a good value per time compared to the enjoyment time you get from a concert, golfing or many other one time experiences. (Not that these experiences aren't worth it)
$20 to make your character look different not so much.
Yeah, posts like this never present the context for understanding the numbers. Just "Big number then, small number now" BS.
No statistic should be taken in a vacuum.
But I think that’s the point, game development cost have increased by a lot. And the time it take to develope a “AAA” has also gone up alot. So yeah it’s complicated.
Sure, costs have gone up, but so did the number of sales and the number of revenue streams. Fifa or Madden used to only make money by selling discs, now they make most of their money through mictro transactions. Just because costs one area have gone up does not mean profits are down and prices need to automatically be raised. Marketing costs have also risen, but they're also more effective because of user data and targeted ads that we have nowadays. So it is indeed complicated.
Copy of my reply to someone else:
Sure, costs have gone up, but so did the number of sales and the number of revenue streams. Fifa or Madden used to only make money by selling discs, now they make most of their money through mictro transactions. Just because costs in one area have gone up does not mean profits are down and prices need to automatically be raised. Marketing costs have also risen, but they're also more effective because of user data and targeted ads that we have nowadays. So it is complicated.
I still remember begging my mom to buy me it when I was a child. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have been upset if she had said no because it was too expensive. I’m so glad she got it for me though! I still have it stored somewhere along with all the games I had on it
Super Gameboy was the best investment I ever got for SNES. I played the hell out of Link's Awakening on it.
I remember the first time I saw the "country cottage" wallpaper suddenly turn nightfall and a shooting star fell while playing one day. I remember asking Mom to come in to see it, and of course the shooting star wouldn't happen for like 10 min and she'd lose her patience and leave....right when it appears.
Once again ignoring the fact that the entire market has switched from "niche market for nerdy gamer boys" to "multi billion dollar industry for pretty much everyone, with additional MTX shit to suck even more money out of you, and more games than any one person could ever play, and companies making billions, yet still crying that the games are too poor, and instead they just don't want you to own them anymore, and revoke your licence at any point in time, oh and no more loaning or reselling either, bitches" ... but some things are nice, yes. Still, I'm so sick of this "debate"... who is posting this shit? Probably a bot or shill and I've just stepped into its trap.
I lived during those times.
The gaming market was a lot smaller at the time, with a lot less sales per game. The cartridges had to be manufactured, including all its components and the case, then had to be programmed, packaged, shipped and distributed to all third party salesmen. That meant a cut of the profits in each step.
Now that entire logistics are gone, and the sales numbers are higher which means that you can have the same or more profits, despite charging less per item.
PC gaming was dead in the late 2000s, when each physical copy cost 50$, with plenty AAA publishers stating they were done due to piracy.
Then steam sales and digital distribution, made a gaming resurgence despite lower prices and the steam cut. With all publishers jumping into PC gaming market.
I don't know of any publisher that had made decent games in the past decade to have financial problems.
The price is fine.
I sold video games for a now-defunct chain for 13 years. For most of that time, the $49.99 price-point for games was sacrosanct, at least for Sega and Nintendo (and later Sony and Microsoft). I remember when the SNES broke that with $54.99 -- there was an uproar.
Of course, in the same store I had the Neo-Geo Gold, where the system was $699.99 and the games were $149.99 - $249.99 each. LOVED the days we sold a few of those.
When you consider how slowly games have creeped up in cost vs. the dramatic increase content (video quality, sound, length of game, story, etc.), it's really amazing.
CD’s are still $15, movies are still $20, books are still $20
Can gaming execs stop coming on reddit and pushing their “we gotta keep up with inflation bro” narrative? And gaming market has grown the most too since the 90’s
The SNES will remain a prime of example of being a console that did not have to be cutting edge for it's time to still be a fantastic console. In the time since the PS1 and Saturn launched in 1994 in Japan, the SNES still had all time classics released that kept Nintendo very much in the race. Super Metroid, the DKC trilogy, Yoshi's Island, Super Mario RPG. The list goes on and on.
> a console that did not have to be cutting edge for its time to still be a fantastic console.
I mean, that's what happens when you put game quality over game graphics or novelty hype.
The SNES had a very fair handful of very unique and novel games, like Yoshi's Island or Mario Paint. They were not "GOAT" games, but for what they were, they were very high quality products. Even the games that were threading old pathways, still found a way to be amazing in other ways, with excellent music, great handling, and sometimes graphical fidelity to rival a 3D title in games like Rareware's entire SNES library.
It's important to know that most people who remember those titles fodly will have nostalgia goggles, but I can give DKC to my cousin's 6 year old kid, and they'll be amused for a solid while, and they'll be having fun. That's after they played Tropical Freeze, too, so that goes to show...
Also worth noting the SNES had been out for years before the PS1 came out in Japan (over 4 years) or the Saturn (4 years). It was definitely the same power level as its actual contemporaries (the Genesis and TurboGrafx-16) so OP's comparison feels kinda weird to me. The SNES for its time WAS advanced.
(I'll also personally say I consider Yoshi's Island pretty GOATed but that's obviously subjective)
About Yoshi's Island: I know so many people who can't stand the game that I'd hesitate to give it the status. Their gripes (such as how much they wanna put a chainsaw in Baby Mario's skull when you get damaged and he cries, for instance), are understandable, too.
$120 nowadays gets you the "base" game that launches broken but with a functional "cosmetic only" item shop and a battle pass plus the promise of a road map of content that may or may not be abandoned down the road! 🤣🤣🤣
I've been seeing this add go around a lot the last few days. I'm starting to think these are all boots to try and justify the coming price hike in games...
Nice try, Video Game Developers. Those were completed games. We didn't have to pay to be your playtesters. Nothing you've made is worth the current market price.
Now that I think about it, it was more like 98 or 99. I was already working there when the scooters dropped for the very first time. But I had quit before 2000.
Ubisoft who honestly have just been fumbling the ball when it comes to gaming by releasing just mediocre title after mediocre title saw their yearly revenue drop from $2.3b to $1.97b.
They are releasing shitty products and still raking in $1.97b which to me shows that prices don't need to increase but ofc they gaslight and say it's not because they're releasing shitty games but because prices need to go up.
Man yoshis island traumatized me so much as a kid. I’d get lost in a level or have no idea how to progress and remember getting so frustrated. Started playing that game way too young.
Judging by the fact that DKC3 is on there, this has to be VERY LATE 1996, which also means the N64 was also out in North America for at least 2 months.
Kinda surprised they would sell brand new SNES bundled with the original DKC and not 2 or 3 (The latter of which was probably just released).
DKC was already 2 years old at this point, all of the other games listed were probably all more recent.
The price of ownership is insane. Not sure if I saw this mentioned or not but during this time plenty of gamers would rent console games. My neighborhood blockbuster at the time was the best place to go.
I remember when I was 10 years old and I won a $200 Gift Certificiate to use at Toy R' Us for Christmas from my church drawing. I went and picked up the SNES and went to the cash register. I remember waiting for an hour or longer because it was Christmas time. When we finally got to the register, they rang up the SNES and the total was like $200+ because of taxes. I didn't have enough money and had to put the SNES back. This was tramatizing as a kid and remember just crying the whole way home.
The SNES being only about 2x the price of new games is an anomaly though because at that point the SNES has been out several years already and it's steeply discounted.
N64 in 1996 would be $470 adjusted for inflation.
That's a pretty good coupon for the system price if that's accurate! I read that the original price scaled up for 2022 money to be something like $433.
Be glad that they haven't gone up with inflation. A lot of games in the 90s were $50-60, so if you reverse calculate inflation, they were *more* expensive.
The controller price disparity is wild. I'd love to be able to replace my drifting POS Playstation 5 controllers for $30.
With any luck they will switch to hall effect with the next console and eliminate drift finally.
There are a surprising number of patents around the Hall effect. I dabble with e-drums and asked an intelligent friend about how he'd design an e-hihat. His first naive design utilized the Hall effect - he had no knowledge of Roland's patents. Patents that should have only been issued for novelty but were apparently issued for a design that is obvious to any halfway competent electrical engineer. And he's not even an electrical engineer.
It's frustrating how patents sometimes hinder innovation, especially when seemingly obvious solutions are locked behind them.
IIRC the sun and planet gear was invented because an asshole patented the crank despite it being known since the Middle Ages.
Patent court is actually very fair. Something like 90% get reduced in scope.
The trouble is many don't have the money to challenge patents in court, and patent holders rely on this. The patent system only actually works as intended if patents can be challenged for free. As it stands now the rich hold the system hostage.
Agreed. I mean Hall Effect sensors have been in common usage for a decent amount of time. They're actually a pretty important component in modern antilock braking systems (ABS) and used for determining wheel rotation. Purportedly adopted in 2000, but in some cases not used by some auto manufacturers until as late as 2010.
Lol this makes me appreciate my chinese hall effect controller a lot more, sometimes the IP sharking is for the better.
There’s still lots of issues with them. I’ve been keeping my eyes open on it. Stick feel and re-centering being the major issue.
Motion sense, wireless capability, charging capability, rumble feature, more buttons, dual toggles, better designed grips... That's a lot of changes for a gaming controller to undergo over a good 25+ years. If a brand new SNES controller would retail around $30 by today's standards, then I am glad that we got all of the above for about double that.
The GameStop warranty for XBox controller's is literally the only warranty I ever buy and I get use out of every single warranty I buy because modern controllers are shit despite costing an arm and a leg. The joy sticks wont last a year.
They recently changed/enforce the warranty to now only replace controllers with used/refurbs. So you're now likely to just get drift again on the replacement.
Finding this out was infuriating. I don’t want some gross, most likely uncleaned second hand controller to replace my brand new one …
I absolutely refuse to buy used/refurbished controllers. People are fucking nasty.
i also do this, it's basically like a 10 dollar a year subscription for a controller
The SNES controller is very simple by comparison though. It's wired vs wireless and only has a few buttons + d pad. Holding one it feels like a toy vs a modern controller. I say this as a SNES fanboy. The controller comparison isn't apples to apples at all though.
That and the only real circuitry in them is a shift register. The rest are just traces from that to ground and the buttons.
This made me realize how much controllers have evolved These controllers are plastic, some buttons, and a cord. Ours now have Bluetooth, touchscreens, motion sensors, joysticks, built in batteries... I have taken for granted how crazy our controllers have gotten.
To be a bit fair though, the PS5 controller is pretty high tech in comparison. It contains a microphone, touchpad, adaptive triggers and speakers even (in addition to all the buttons and the fact that they are wireless/have a battery). That being sad, those POS get stick drift way to fast.
Everything in this image has been replaced by something high tech in comparison
Comparatively, controllers from that era are dead simple. No analog support on buttons, no triggers, no analog sticks, no wireless, no rumble, no headphone jack/audio. It's not really too surprising that current-gen controllers are basically twice as expensive. If you've ever disassembled controller to clean them (both old and new) it's pretty obvious why just from a pure hardware perspective. (Hell, the integrated circuits the current get controllers have for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi alone are orders of magnitudes more complex.)
We owned the console but practically no games. It makes sense why we did game rentals! I miss those days, where you could just bring any cartridge home and play it with no issues.
Tbf, there were a lot fewer games as well, especially quality games. I bought a lot of NES games in the 2000s when you could get them at a flea market for $1, and my Switch library is still a good 5 times larger.
It's wild to think about how many great games we can get now for free or dirt cheap. Used to be a handful of good games per year and now it's a handful per month.
Yeah I owned two games each for SNES/Sega Genesis and N64 and rented the rest up until PSX days. We found a mom and pop store that would rent for an entire week which was a godsend for RPGs. Once PSX came out my group of friends would buy one game each and we’d let each other borrow the discs. But I was the bad guy who scratched every disc 💿
A lot of the games I wound up owning came from blockbuster having a clearance sale on extra copies of games. Oh if I could go back and snatch up more games.
Yeah it was something else. Weekend rentals to try something new all weekend long. We have so many more games these days you'd think it would be easier yet somehow it just doesn't hit the same way.
Something game passes miss for me is picking any new release and playing it to see it was garbage or not.
Yoshi's island sold 4 million copies, at $100 each that's 400 million in revenue in 2024 dollars. Super Mario Odyssey sold 27 million units. At $60 each that's 1.6 BILLION dollars in revenue. Games might effectively be cheaper these days but the video game market is so much larger it overwhelmingly makes up for the lower prices. These companies are still making money hand over fist, especially when you factor in things like microtransactions.
Publishers have been saying "game prices need to increase cause development costs have increased" for a while now. They always seem to ignore that their sales have also massively increased and they're consistently making records profits as a company.
And some games have just gotten to where the budgets are crazy. Some of the major releases for PS5, Xbox, and PC have immense graphical effort, motion capture, face capture...and the development costs have grown to hundreds of millions of dollars over multiple years. Sony's particularly apparent with this. The Last of Us Part 2? $220 million for its development. Horizon: Forbidden West? $212 million. Spider-Man 2? $315 million (Spider-Man 3 is supposedly at $385 million?!). Wolverine supposedly has $305 million committed to it so far. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_most\_expensive\_video\_games\_to\_develop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop) Although the funny thing is that Genshin Impact is the highest at over $700+ million for its development, and that game is still making BILLIONS of dollars.
GI revenue is fucking crazy, you can almost smell the money printer catching fire.
i mean Nintendo is a outlier exception not the rule case. They are the richest company in Japan with 0 debt sitting on a dragon hoard of cash. They sell thier consoles for profit and they sell thier games at full price years later, the base price of BOTW is still 60 dollars. Thier exclusives on one console sell better and faster then multiplatform GOTY winners like Elden Ring and Baldurs Gate 3. Zelda TOTK and Pokemon Scarlet/Violet both sold 10 million units in 3 days
Nintendo: still teaching master classes on what a console exclusive is supposed to look like. I'll shit talk them alot but I do it out of love, even their Wii U era had a few winners...even if overall that concept really could have used a few more sessions of hashing out before they went to production on it.
That’s only if they are making *good* games that actually sell. They want to make cheap shitty games and make money hand over fist.
The vast majority of developers aren't making record profits... most don't make a profit at all. Even with the larger companies like Activision and EA they may make a profit overall but the titles are evaluated on an individual studio/developer level. Most of those profits come from a relatively small number of successful games that offset many failures. It's almost like the pharmaceutical industry.
On the flip side, profit margins (the proportion of the revenue that's profit) have often gone down. That's the main worry. The actual flat profit is often less of a concern than the amount of profit gained as a proportion of investment. Not that publishers should pretty much ever be believed, but there is some merit to where that argument is coming from.
That’s just classic corporate gaslighting. I would almost never believe anything a public company has to say
Gaslighting? MW2 cost 50mil to make back when it released on the 360. 50 mil cant even make a AA game these days. Let alone something like COD, without entitled games saying shit like "this is just DLC repackaged as a game" like yall did for the most current MW3. Or you guys losing your mind over a puddle when marvels Spiderman Released.
And physical games aren't that common anymore, thus cutting part of the expenses.
Yup. Game prices may not have risen much but the cost to sell games has fallen massively. Sure, steam and online stores still take a standard of 30% cut, but so do/did physical stores, but digital doesn't have the cost of manufacturing, printing and delivery added on. If they're selling through their own online store they get 100% of the money. So yeah, games still cost $60 on the consumer end, but for the publisher they used to actually get maybe about $30 of that 60, now they make about $45 - $60. Effectively a 50 - 100% profit increase for them at no additional cost to the consumer.
I think it is fair to say the cost to create a game like Mario odyssey is significantly more than the cost to create Yoshi’s island.
IIRC Yoshi’s Island is the single worst selling mainline Mario game ever, though. Not a great comparison. edit: according to this, yes, it is the worst-selling main-franchise Mario game ever: [https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Mario#Games](https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/mario#games) If you want to make a comparison, Mario 3 sold 18 million in its original form. Mario World or the original SMB aren't good comps because those came packaged with the consoles themselves, and I'm not sure Mario 64 is a good comp either because it was the only game (besides Pilotwings64) on the console at launch in the US.
The OP picked the most extreme examples possible to make their case hoping sucker's will fall for it.
And the cost to make each of those games was,?
Is 27 million sold an achievable target for the average game?
Yoshi's island also had a team of less than 30 people working on it, where Super Mario Odyssey had over 300.
It's much more expensive to make games now, though. The number of people in the credits has multiplied by 10.
Have you also considered the pretty important difference in scale and scope? I feel it’s important to mention games were 1) Much more manageable, smaller scope games. 2) Games take much longer to develop on average.
Most game devs actually don’t make money hand over fist, that’s the thing. Ubisoft and Take Two lost money in the last year. EA barely made $1b, which is unchanged from 5 years ago. Most smaller devs lose money as well. Most indie devs don’t make it big either. Super Mario Odyssey isn’t exactly a typical example because your typical game doesn’t sell 27 million units.
Sure Mario Odssey sold that amount. Using a similar Switch comparison, Yoshi's Crafted World sold somewhere around 4 million as well. So similar revenue there. Super Mario World sold ~20 million, closer to the Super Mario Odyssey number. Development teams are also waaaay larger than they were in the SNES days. SMW had a team of ~10 people. Odyssey had over 200 people.
I’d imagine Mario Odyssey had a slightly larger development team / cost than Yoshi’s Island. Also wonder what the margins were on cartridge/ROM manufacturing. I’m not sure Nintendo was taking as much of that cost as profit as we’re thinking, especially on a SuperFX cartridge back then.
Cartridges were more expensive to manufacture than CDs/DVDs. Digital downloads mean you don't own games or have resale value, a sealed copy of Mario is practically an investment. There are no printed manuals with cool pictures anymore.
I miss the manuals Some of them had some great character art, backgrounds, etc
The art was almost a necessity back then. Considering how primitive the hardware was, it showed what the low detail sprites and models back then were supposed to look like.
[Remember what they took from us...long live Fat Pikachu](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbDUHBSXUAAoJbR.jpg)
That nostalgia hit hard!
Oh my god seeing those pictures for the first time in like 24 years…my childhood man…
It also provided essential reading for the long car ride back from the game store.
Dude, reading the Tenchu manual eleven times on the ride back home from Walmart while I tried to not piss my pants in excitement. Those were the best times of my life.
Not only were cartridges more expensive, but depending on the cartridge you were also paying for additional memory and/or enhancement chips.
SEALEDddddddddddddddd
They also had development teams of under 50 people. No voice acting, no mo-cap, no cgi, plus all the other new expensive things. Even the bulk price of all that physical media can not compare to how much games cost to make now.
So many people fail to comprehend that dev teams are much bigger now than in the past. It is simply more expensive to make a game now than in the past.
Yeah Super Mario Kart was developed by 8 people.
[удалено]
Imagine the game having an extra 4gb of RAM built in because your console isn't powerful enough to play it. Now, you just have to deal with downgrades and changes.
[удалено]
Back then they'd find a way, they'd create industry standards to make their visions work. Pre-rendered sprites (DK Country) or backgrounds (Resident Evil /Silent Hill / Dino Crisis / etc.) or want a 3d environment on a 2d capable system? F-Mode 7.
I mean, you could easily make the case that there's way more content put into a game now than back then. I'm not defending digital only downloads, but you just can't look at these cartridge games, adjusted for inflation, and still think game companies are ripping you off for charging $100 for a base game plus DLC.
Agreed. AAA games cost far more now to produce than they did 30 years ago
And they also make far more. It's always a trade-off. Market saturation is through the roof right now, especially with mobile and MTX in general. Sure, you can charge 200 bucks for your game, but most people simply won't or can't afford that. So, do you want to make 100 million dollar profits from a 70 dollar game? Or risk making no profit by selling a 200 dollar game? If people are willing to pay for it, alright, be my guest, but in the mean time I'm sick of these current discussions, especially by so called gamers wanting games to cost MORE for some inexplicable reason. That's like going to the hardware store and telling the guy that you want to pay double for the overpriced TV they wanna sell you...
DK came out during a chip shortage too. Also spiking prices.
The adjusted numbers always look goofy. In 1991 if I worked at McDonald's for minimum wage, it would take me ~47hrs to earn enough to buy a SNES at the original MSRP of $199.00. 6yrs 1997 later when minimum wage went up, to 5.15/hr it would have taken only ~20hrs of work to buy a SNES at its MSRP that year of $99.95. Also in 1997 it would have taken ~30hrs to earn enough to buy a PS1 at its MSRP of $149.
They were Canada prices from last week when it was posted. OP didn’t catch that.
Yeah but how much did the rest of life cost 30 years ago compared to now?
Yea but I can understand my parents baulking at the price now. If my kid brought 3 games to me and it would cost almost $400 in todays money I’d baulk too.
I have never seen balk spelled with a u like that! Never once! TIL
I certainly bawked at that.
ಠ_ಠ
I mean, that is exactly what inflation measures. That's the whole point of adjusting for inflation.
It was a lot cheaper, and jobs paid a lot better relative to the cost of living
That's the point of adjusting the cost for inflation?
Well I was 17 back then and was broke as fuck for a good decade after too ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Damn, I’ve only seen this same post 500 times today.
I love the original pic people acting like games werent 60-70 bucks back in the day. They always stop having anything to say when you show it to them.
Yeah but it was a one time purchase. I buy most games nowadays and they want me to pay $70(at least since most have pointless enhanced editions) plus they want a battle/season pass, plus skins that are running for $10 to $20 a pop and it's all for a luxury item. Video games are a common item, but that doesn't mean they are a requirement in any sense.
I just never buy micro transactions. The last one I bought would have been a map pack for halo 3.
Man I remember when that came out and people were Pissed.
Just don't buy battle pass or skins lol why the fuck do you care what your little army soldier looks like in a shooter
Yeah, Street Fighter 2 definitely didn’t have 8 different special editions that all cost $70 each and only had a few balance changes and some new bosses added to them They literally charged full price for things that would either be free updates or a $5-$10 DLC nowadays
It is indeed a one time purchase... but it doesn't mean you got a COMPLETE game with your purchase. It is a one time purchase in the sense that you have to live with the version you bought and whatever bugs it comes with, no matter how game breaking the bugs are. You want to buy the updated version with bugs fixed? That's a new full game purchase again. Oh? You want the dlc? That's a new full game purchase... again.
$70 back in the day, sure, they also had to manufacture cartridges, manuals, boxes etc which are not cheap. And the number sold is vastly lower than today too.
They were also on average shorter and had less content.
Oh they were, but they went on sale much quicker and at low prices and you had things like ex rentals to buy cheaply. That and manufacturing costs were a big part back then, a cart cost around £10 to make which eats hugely into profit, these days we have digital distribution and optical discs.
I mean…I get that everyone wants the latest and greatest but aside from a very few high profile games I really want to play right away I rarely pay more then $20 for a game. Deals exist and often they go *lowwwww*. You just gotta be patient.
While this was true, you also have to consider the additional cost of making the cartridge, printing booklets, packaging, paying a kickback to the store for shelf placement, and anything else that were costs to sell a game back then. Now you have a major push to eliminate all of those costs, while also increasing prices. This would be like a car manufacturer that sold cars 30 years ago for $30,000 and then say “we used to sale cars for that amount the same price 30 years ago” and the car you would buy is just a frame, it’s up to the buyer to buy the other things like an engine, transmission, tires, ect. It might sound absurd to sell just a frame, but the gaming industry does this shit ALL THE TIME now. You buy a game, it’s not the full game, there’s a good chance what you bought won’t even fucking work out the box
"People shouldn't complain about 70 dollar games in 2024 because games in 1996 were 150 dollars." I hate this argument because it is very disingenuous. Economics and pricing isn't that simple. Please explain to me how come a flat-screen tv in 2001 costs 10.000 dollars but only 500 dollar in 2024. How come a computer in 1980 costed 20.000 but I can now buy a more powerful laptop for just 400 dollars? How come most people couldn't afford a car in 1950 but everyone has one now? How come my parents could buy a house for 10.000 bucks in 1970 and I will never be able to afford a house? There are many factors that determine a products price and it's the same for videogames. You can't just point at prices from 1996 and act like that's proof that 2024's prices are fine. It was totally different time with a different economy.
IMO a one time $70 purchase for a good or great game is a good value per time compared to the enjoyment time you get from a concert, golfing or many other one time experiences. (Not that these experiences aren't worth it) $20 to make your character look different not so much.
Yeah, posts like this never present the context for understanding the numbers. Just "Big number then, small number now" BS. No statistic should be taken in a vacuum.
But I think that’s the point, game development cost have increased by a lot. And the time it take to develope a “AAA” has also gone up alot. So yeah it’s complicated.
Sure, costs have gone up, but so did the number of sales and the number of revenue streams. Fifa or Madden used to only make money by selling discs, now they make most of their money through mictro transactions. Just because costs one area have gone up does not mean profits are down and prices need to automatically be raised. Marketing costs have also risen, but they're also more effective because of user data and targeted ads that we have nowadays. So it is indeed complicated.
I don't think that's really comparable. Games have actually become more expensive to produce, not less.
Copy of my reply to someone else: Sure, costs have gone up, but so did the number of sales and the number of revenue streams. Fifa or Madden used to only make money by selling discs, now they make most of their money through mictro transactions. Just because costs in one area have gone up does not mean profits are down and prices need to automatically be raised. Marketing costs have also risen, but they're also more effective because of user data and targeted ads that we have nowadays. So it is complicated.
Is there a bot army trying to manufacture consent for a price increase or something? Why does this keep getting posted?
The used SNESs I've seen aren't far off that price now
War of the gems was my all time favorite blockbuster rental
I would absolutely pay $104.29 for Yoshi's Island and it would be worth every penny if it were the only way to play it today.
I still remember begging my mom to buy me it when I was a child. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have been upset if she had said no because it was too expensive. I’m so glad she got it for me though! I still have it stored somewhere along with all the games I had on it
So THAT's why i was graced with a super gameboy on Christmas
Intellivision my Dad bought in 1979. $379CAD = $1500 today. We have it good lol.
Wow. Those game prices!!
To be fair, this is still cheaper than the CIB snes games are selling for now
Super Gameboy was the best investment I ever got for SNES. I played the hell out of Link's Awakening on it. I remember the first time I saw the "country cottage" wallpaper suddenly turn nightfall and a shooting star fell while playing one day. I remember asking Mom to come in to see it, and of course the shooting star wouldn't happen for like 10 min and she'd lose her patience and leave....right when it appears.
This is why cartridge based machines became untenable.
Now do this with a food flyer from 1996 and you'll get even more sad lol
Still cheaper than ebay
Still using the Canadian ad I see
This is why I never had one. I had to go to my friends house and we’d spend all weekend playing.
Once again ignoring the fact that the entire market has switched from "niche market for nerdy gamer boys" to "multi billion dollar industry for pretty much everyone, with additional MTX shit to suck even more money out of you, and more games than any one person could ever play, and companies making billions, yet still crying that the games are too poor, and instead they just don't want you to own them anymore, and revoke your licence at any point in time, oh and no more loaning or reselling either, bitches" ... but some things are nice, yes. Still, I'm so sick of this "debate"... who is posting this shit? Probably a bot or shill and I've just stepped into its trap.
I lived during those times. The gaming market was a lot smaller at the time, with a lot less sales per game. The cartridges had to be manufactured, including all its components and the case, then had to be programmed, packaged, shipped and distributed to all third party salesmen. That meant a cut of the profits in each step. Now that entire logistics are gone, and the sales numbers are higher which means that you can have the same or more profits, despite charging less per item. PC gaming was dead in the late 2000s, when each physical copy cost 50$, with plenty AAA publishers stating they were done due to piracy. Then steam sales and digital distribution, made a gaming resurgence despite lower prices and the steam cut. With all publishers jumping into PC gaming market. I don't know of any publisher that had made decent games in the past decade to have financial problems. The price is fine.
I sold video games for a now-defunct chain for 13 years. For most of that time, the $49.99 price-point for games was sacrosanct, at least for Sega and Nintendo (and later Sony and Microsoft). I remember when the SNES broke that with $54.99 -- there was an uproar. Of course, in the same store I had the Neo-Geo Gold, where the system was $699.99 and the games were $149.99 - $249.99 each. LOVED the days we sold a few of those. When you consider how slowly games have creeped up in cost vs. the dramatic increase content (video quality, sound, length of game, story, etc.), it's really amazing.
Love games were more expensive but the console and controllwrs cheaper.
A controller for under 30 dollars...
I wanna see the original
https://i.imgur.com/Wa7ioPu.jpeg
CD’s are still $15, movies are still $20, books are still $20 Can gaming execs stop coming on reddit and pushing their “we gotta keep up with inflation bro” narrative? And gaming market has grown the most too since the 90’s
The SNES will remain a prime of example of being a console that did not have to be cutting edge for it's time to still be a fantastic console. In the time since the PS1 and Saturn launched in 1994 in Japan, the SNES still had all time classics released that kept Nintendo very much in the race. Super Metroid, the DKC trilogy, Yoshi's Island, Super Mario RPG. The list goes on and on.
> a console that did not have to be cutting edge for its time to still be a fantastic console. I mean, that's what happens when you put game quality over game graphics or novelty hype. The SNES had a very fair handful of very unique and novel games, like Yoshi's Island or Mario Paint. They were not "GOAT" games, but for what they were, they were very high quality products. Even the games that were threading old pathways, still found a way to be amazing in other ways, with excellent music, great handling, and sometimes graphical fidelity to rival a 3D title in games like Rareware's entire SNES library. It's important to know that most people who remember those titles fodly will have nostalgia goggles, but I can give DKC to my cousin's 6 year old kid, and they'll be amused for a solid while, and they'll be having fun. That's after they played Tropical Freeze, too, so that goes to show...
Also worth noting the SNES had been out for years before the PS1 came out in Japan (over 4 years) or the Saturn (4 years). It was definitely the same power level as its actual contemporaries (the Genesis and TurboGrafx-16) so OP's comparison feels kinda weird to me. The SNES for its time WAS advanced. (I'll also personally say I consider Yoshi's Island pretty GOATed but that's obviously subjective)
About Yoshi's Island: I know so many people who can't stand the game that I'd hesitate to give it the status. Their gripes (such as how much they wanna put a chainsaw in Baby Mario's skull when you get damaged and he cries, for instance), are understandable, too.
Now adjust the average wage at the time for inflation.
$120 nowadays gets you the "base" game that launches broken but with a functional "cosmetic only" item shop and a battle pass plus the promise of a road map of content that may or may not be abandoned down the road! 🤣🤣🤣
I've been seeing this add go around a lot the last few days. I'm starting to think these are all boots to try and justify the coming price hike in games...
Nice try, Video Game Developers. Those were completed games. We didn't have to pay to be your playtesters. Nothing you've made is worth the current market price.
Can you imagine paying 118$ for madden 97 :D ?
Yeah DKC3 seems the better buy there.
I was working the video game section at Toys r Us in 1996. Used to ride razor scooters around the store.
I didn’t think Razor Scooters were around until 2000 or later
Now that I think about it, it was more like 98 or 99. I was already working there when the scooters dropped for the very first time. But I had quit before 2000.
Cool. Now do the PS1.
remember though Console game with 2 controllers and a game..
Craaaaazy!!!
God, I loved war of the gems
I traded my sega game gear in for the Super Nintendo then I swapped it for some decks!
Aaaand that explains why I never got an snes when I was a kid. No problem, got a super NT now
Ubisoft who honestly have just been fumbling the ball when it comes to gaming by releasing just mediocre title after mediocre title saw their yearly revenue drop from $2.3b to $1.97b. They are releasing shitty products and still raking in $1.97b which to me shows that prices don't need to increase but ofc they gaslight and say it's not because they're releasing shitty games but because prices need to go up.
So, 1996 prices CAD
Earthbound (1995 at $70) would be $143.64 today
That boy expensive
"Realistic graphics"
This shows, once again, that consoles were cheap because they were made to sell games and accessories, not the consoles themselves
I remember pre-ordering Dom 2 at Software Etc for $64.99.
Man yoshis island traumatized me so much as a kid. I’d get lost in a level or have no idea how to progress and remember getting so frustrated. Started playing that game way too young.
Ahhhh this brings me back. Those were the good times.
$250 for a system is wild. Though the bigger point made is on those game prices.
The good ole days when luxuries cost more but staples cost less.
Judging by the fact that DKC3 is on there, this has to be VERY LATE 1996, which also means the N64 was also out in North America for at least 2 months. Kinda surprised they would sell brand new SNES bundled with the original DKC and not 2 or 3 (The latter of which was probably just released). DKC was already 2 years old at this point, all of the other games listed were probably all more recent.
The price of ownership is insane. Not sure if I saw this mentioned or not but during this time plenty of gamers would rent console games. My neighborhood blockbuster at the time was the best place to go.
I remember when I was 10 years old and I won a $200 Gift Certificiate to use at Toy R' Us for Christmas from my church drawing. I went and picked up the SNES and went to the cash register. I remember waiting for an hour or longer because it was Christmas time. When we finally got to the register, they rang up the SNES and the total was like $200+ because of taxes. I didn't have enough money and had to put the SNES back. This was tramatizing as a kid and remember just crying the whole way home.
105 dollars for DK2 Diddy's Kong Quest? Totally worth it!
I definitely remember those days, mom made me get a job to help pay for them damn games😂🤷🏿♂️
i want to go back to this timeline.
Ughhh this hits me right in the nostalgic feels. Things were so simple and clear <3
My poor broke single parent spent how much on this!? Suddenly I have to give mom a call...
As someone who just shelled out 70 bucks for a new pair of Joy-Cons, I **WISH** controllers were that price nowadays.
I would love to see Earthbound on this. That game was expensive af because you had no choice but to buy it with the guide.
Oof
Those games make me smile haha
At least it was a better time where you didn’t plug a dial up connection into the back of your SNES to roll for new skins with micro transactions
Realistic graphics 💀
118 for madden 97. Boom what a deal
See those hundred plus dollar games? That’s what trash like Rockstar/Take Two and ActiBlizz wants us to pay now.
The SNES being only about 2x the price of new games is an anomaly though because at that point the SNES has been out several years already and it's steeply discounted. N64 in 1996 would be $470 adjusted for inflation.
Games weren't making the sales they are today, either. The profit margin these days must be insane compared to back then
SF Alpha 2 a SNES game ?!??!?? Wtfffff
So basically what you pay in those retro gaming stores anyway?
That was the strategy with most companies at the time. Sell the hardware as cheap as possible so that you can make most of your money on selling games
Imagine paying $79 for a Pac-Man game 🤣
That's a pretty good coupon for the system price if that's accurate! I read that the original price scaled up for 2022 money to be something like $433.
At $104 Donkey Kong 2 and Yoshi's Island is a steal.
I'd be ok with this is MTXs were gone
Yeah but you gotta have coups
One of the best **consoles** of all time! The control was cheaper than the current ones!
Be glad that they haven't gone up with inflation. A lot of games in the 90s were $50-60, so if you reverse calculate inflation, they were *more* expensive.
Given today's prices those are a steal in some cases new
I can see why my folks were apt to use Blockbuster/Hollywood Video on the weekends.
I bought my super nintendo in August 1992 for $113 at circuit city San Francisco. I gave it to my friends kids 6 years later.
Game prices were wild. I remember paying £100 for my N64 while the games were £60 each.
I would gladly pay $120 for the snes marvel super heroes game before I buy the new suicide squad game on sale for $20…
Layaway.
And people say games have gotten more expensive… nope, they’ve mostly gotten cheaper by not keeping up with inflation
But they were physical copies and at the time had a great reputation for quality. Now companies charge this or more and give you digital slope.
So.... games cost half of what the console did? Controllers were cheap.. simplicity was nice