Games at that time were cutting edge technology, distribution networks didn’t exist, physical units had to make it to stores, etc. The environment isn’t the same. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think $80 is terribly outrageous in our modern economy but at that price point it has better provide 60+ hours of entertainment. If outer worlds 2 is as good as #1 it’s worth $40 tops. I played that game end to end and can’t recall a single characters name.
I agree about everything in your first point. I hadn’t previously considered that the novelty of a new technology would necessarily increase have disproportionately high initial cost.
That said, I feel like any calculation of cost against how many hours played is entirely subjective. Your suggestion of $0.75 / entertainment hour is quite different than what I consider ideal. Games will vary genre to genre, person to person, platform to platform.
A person with limited time might exclusively play shorter titles, or maybe just multiplayer titles. A person with significant free time might spent hundreds of hours replaying an RPG.
To be incredibly broad, I would say that games shouldn’t cost more per entertainment hour than half of what any given person earns at their job - but even that is quite subjective and should be taken with salt.
Games at that time were cutting edge technology, distribution networks didn’t exist, physical units had to make it to stores, etc. The environment isn’t the same. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think $80 is terribly outrageous in our modern economy but at that price point it has better provide 60+ hours of entertainment. If outer worlds 2 is as good as #1 it’s worth $40 tops. I played that game end to end and can’t recall a single characters name.
I agree about everything in your first point. I hadn’t previously considered that the novelty of a new technology would necessarily increase have disproportionately high initial cost.
That said, I feel like any calculation of cost against how many hours played is entirely subjective. Your suggestion of $0.75 / entertainment hour is quite different than what I consider ideal. Games will vary genre to genre, person to person, platform to platform.
A person with limited time might exclusively play shorter titles, or maybe just multiplayer titles. A person with significant free time might spent hundreds of hours replaying an RPG.
To be incredibly broad, I would say that games shouldn’t cost more per entertainment hour than half of what any given person earns at their job - but even that is quite subjective and should be taken with salt.