That is an incorrect comparison. The movie industry makes its money via theatrical releases. If you look at the data, you'll notice that the price of a movie ticket has doubled since 1990.

This is already factored in. Games are substantially cheaper today than 25 years ago when you account for inflation. The reasons for that you have (in part) outlined above.

Still have to disagree. After factoring in the removal of packaging and distributions, AND adding in the increased number of buyers, I don't see how its even a wash, let alone "substantially cheaper". The tech these companies are buying is also getting exponentially cheaper (PC's to develop on, software suites becoming available and affordable to indie studios). The fact that some companies are effectively making good games for cheaper than 90.00 tells me that 90.00 isn't the correct inflated price point. As I mentioned in the OP, consider Divinity:OS. Its launch price was 40$ if I'm not mistaken. It was made by a professional studio with experience in the industry. They released the EE for free. The game has hundreds of hours of professional, very highly polished gameplay and yet they are profiting from it at $40.00.

While this is an example of games being cheaper, its in direct contradiction to your claim that $90.00 is cheaper.

But they did deliver that in their big sales, which means you can pick up more games than you can reasonably expect to play in a year for massive savings. I doubt Valve promised huge savings on new releases.

So that "Season Pass" paper is just an advertisement. Damn, that really sucks. I'm probably going to wait for the Complete/GOTY to play the game myself.

If you want to know what USD 50 in 1990 would be now, you can check here: http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

But the thing is: Even in 1990 you got discounted games. So you didn't have to pay 50 bucks, if you were willing to wait.

I would have to disagree on the following points you've made:

1. Development being cheaper.

The more complex the games and the technology become, the more people a company has to hire and the more these people have to specialize. While the PC has become cheaper, there are now other money sinks. Voice acting (controlled by an evil union an thus very expensive,) motion capture, graphics and physics programming as separate disciplines, the list goes ever on and on. Game development used to cost a lot less.

Example:

Wolfenstein 3D (1992) cost about $100,000 to create and involved a team of several people.
Grand Theft Auto V (2013) cost about $265,000,000 and involved a team of several hundred people.

There is no question about this, game development costs have skyrocketed in the past 20 years. And with good reason. We now expect a lot more from our AAA games.

2. Divinity:OS being a good game.

It is a reasonably high quality indie game, yes. But the fact that it's a low budget offering shows all throughout from the very beginning. I am not being disrespectful towards the team. As you said, they are experienced professionals. They did an excellent job with the resources that they had. That said, the game is quite unfinished and unpolished, which speaks to the fact that they simply could not afford to finish and polish it.

Though sometime like with ubisoft Game i buy the Steel books or Cardboard cases with the extras when they dropped to about 30 or 40 dollars depending how much i want to play the game and get the season pass during specials - though with AC3 i did wait because i knew of the Washington Edition which i got for $28

But in Australia as it is well known Games can start at over $100 compared to 1st world countries, my last example was the the Skyward Sword Collectors edition which in Australia was at a price that i could have bought 2 including shipping from the United kingdom and still saved money

$128,000,000 were marketing costs, though.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop

Would in invalidate my argument if I omitted the marketing costs and listed the overall cost as $137,000,000? =)

Or 870$ for Mass Effect 3 + all DLCs and all! ;-)

http://kotaku.com/5888816/buying-all-of-mass-effect-3s-dlc-will-cost-you-870

This is silly.

Games cost what you're willing to pay for them. Same for the special editions etc. Pay $870 for ME3 if you want, it's your money.

It's only an expense when you spend it. To me, not even StarCraft 2 was worth $90. To some it might have been.

Games companies do not set the price - demand does.

That's why there's no point anymore in buying games at launch. If you wait a year and a half, 2 years maximum, there will be a GOTY edition with all DLCs for 49,99.
And by then you'll have most bugs already patched.
Not to mention that it's much easier, and cheaper, to keep your hardware up to date to play 2 years old games than it is to play new ones.
Nowadays, i mostly play 2-years old AAA games and indies, with the occasional exception.

You misunderstood. I was merely stating that some costs are cheaper. I know full well that it costs more to make games now overall. That is one reason why my movie reference was valid. They too have exponentially inflated expenses, yet have managed to keep costs down for purchasing. It doesn't matter that ticket prices have doubled. Home media prices have not changed. This is significant.

Companies have to manage digital licenses that never existed, they are simultaneously releasing on multiple formats (DVD, Blu-Ray, 3D, Streaming, etc). They have, by far, more expenses than ever before, yet I can buy a DVD, Blu-Ray, 3D, Digital download quad pack in the store for the same price the VHS tape cost 20-ish years ago.

Most of the time, its the exact same cost to buy the movie on Itunes as it is to buy it in the store. In fact, in many cases its more for just the digital license. That tells me something about the actual cost and value of that content to the content owners.

I think what convolutes this issue is the 90% off sales we are accustomed to. IMHO, that does not belong in this conversation. As someone else mentioned, games went on sale and depreciated over time in the 90s too.

If we were merely discussing the jump from 50 to 60 base price... I would agree wholehartedly with most of your comments. But the twist that I am referring to, is the Season Pass that gets tacked on to the game after market. THAT shoots the game past reasonable inflation IMHO. However, I'm not arguing more than opinion, as I fully agree that we have to pay the value we feel the content is worth. That is what caused me to raise the question... When I realized I was not getting the DLC included in the price tag I paid, I realized I'm much better off waiting a year on any new release. Surely, that sort of feedback from the consumer should have an impact on the publishers? Wouldn't they want my money sooner?

In the times of the Atari 2600 and the Odessey 2 (Videopac 2000 over here) you paid a lot more, when you take inflation into account, for a game that was programmed by one person in the timespan of a week and you could count the pixels of the single playscreen.

No really gaming in general has never been cheaper then now, if a game is too expensive and has overpriced DLC, just wait a few years and you can get it for a dollar with everything included.