Before bundles, steam and GOG I have never bought games as they were too expensive. Now I have 200+ here and over 600 on steam. Many are games that I've pirated before...

I know inflation exits; I'm not denying it doesn't. I guess we're just looking at it from different perspectives; you're celebrating that prices have stayed the same, and I'm wondering why they haven't gone down with the advent of digital and the mass acceptance of not really "owning" a game but having a "right" of purchase to use it (Steam). If there are no physical costs, boxes, cd's, printing, manuals, shipping, and inventory, the fact that "major" games still cost what they used to seems odd to me - so in that sense I don't see it as "no inflation."


In 1989 I was twenty. I don't feel old. :-)

First off, there is a LOT more to gaming than just Steam. I am referring to the entire gaming market in general, not just Steam. Steam is simply a piece of a MUCH larger market. Not to mention, you can still buy physical copies of many PC games. Your choice to buy them digitally is exactly that, your choice. Console owners still buy physical copies of their games. I own a crap load myself. Just because you can buy digital games today doesn't change anything. Yes, the game companies make more money off of digital games and thats a good thing as hopefully that increased profit margin will offset the rising costs of game development and will stop them from raising prices, which in all honesty, they have a 101 reasons to do just that.

And technically speaking, the prices are going down. They go down every year that passes. Thats the entire point about inflation, or more accurately the lack of inflation that exists in this market. Without inflation your paying less and less each year that passes as your money is worth less each year that passes. Just because the price tag stays the same doesn't mean your paying the same amount. Your not. Your basically paying around 1.5% to 3% less with each year that passes as your money is worth 1.5% to 3% less with each year that passes.

Xbox 360 and PS3 owners were paying $59.99 for games when those consoles were first released. Just because the price tag is still $59.99 today doesn't mean people are paying the same amount they were back then. This is an aspect of game pricing that many people don't understand and most people take for granted. People walk into Best Buy and see the $59.99 price tag on games and just assume they are paying the same price they have paid all along. Again, that just isn't the case. Xbox 360 and PS3 owners were paying 21.6% more for their games back in 2005 than they are today, even tho the price tag is absolutely identical to what it was back in 2005. 21.6% is a significant figure. They are basically paying $12.94 less today than they did in 2005. Again, that is a significant figure and digital distribution doesn't suddenly wipe these facts from the table.

The bottom line is that these companies have every right to raise prices every few years to adjust for inflation. Its just the way the world works in regards to money and the pricing of goods. Yet amazingly, each year passes and we see no price adjustments in this industry whatsoever. Well, that isn't entirely true. The price of games used to be $59.99, but then the prices dropped to $49.99 when cartridges were replaced with discs. It then went back up to $59.99 at the start of the PS3 Xbox 360 generation. So technically, that could be considered one case where the price was raised, but it ultimately brought the price of games right back to what they originally were. Basically the price were paying today is the same exact price people were paying for games like Kings Quest, Day of the Tentacle, and Indiana Jones. No matter how one looks at it, that is something to be HUGELY grateful for.

At this point I only buy games not on sale. To me, the sale prices are too cheap and I don't need that many games.

if I see a game on sale that looks good, I put it on my wishlist, and might buy it later after the sale ends, if I remember.
In 1994, a 386 or 486 is far more likely. DOOM also didn't run on a 286, at least not initially. Not sure if someone ported it at some point. 60mhz pentiums and 486 variants both appeared in 1994. I know because I was deeply steeped in the demoscene at the time and every performance increment mattered.

Well the 286 chips did have access to up to 16 megs of memory space, I remember reading an article on it when I was younger. But since it wasn't a true protected mode, Windows 3.1 and programs relying on it were very unstable as I recall; Windows was just a GUI and nothing more. I know for most of the time I had the laptop it ran MS-DOS/Windows 3.1.

As for the year... 1994 would make me 12-ish, which does seem more likely. Did I get some dates mixed up? Must have, I didn't get that laptop until after we moved, twice... yeah 93-94 is more likely.

Yes, the 286 had a method of addressing 16MB of memory, however it wasn't flat, but rather another segmented scheme. The only product I'm aware of that used it was Desqview.

DOOM certainly wasn't written for this, but instead used the 386 instruction set and the flat memory model which was only available on 386 cpus and up. Implementing this on MSDos was a feat, of course, because DOS itself didn't run in that mode -- it pretty much pretended everything was an 8086, for the most part. As a result, it was necessary to use so-called "dos extenders" to access files and such for 386-native programs in that environment, leading to an iD developer commenting (was it dave taylor?) that dos extenders sucked "dead bunnies through a straw" or something along those lines. The whole arrangement was rather fragile.

This is why I'm pretty sure you had a 386sx or perhaps 486 if "60mhz" is anything to go by. I don't think there were any general market 386 chips at that clock rate ever. Maybe some weird embedded chips did, but that world was pretty much steadfastly ignoring 32bit chips in general in that timeframe, let alone the x86 arch.

Indeed, they do. Just as the 'cheapskates' have every right to not buy because they don't feel the price is right, fair, or worth it. That's basically having the price being dictated by what the market will bear. And you know what? The market is huge now compared to what it was 30 years ago. Something you seem to have overlooked in your initial rant. It's basically economy of scale and the gaming market now is a multibillion dollar industry with hundreds of millions of potential customers. This wasn't even conceivable thirty years ago.

But now, even though prices haven't risen in an absolute sense, the sheer size of the customer base means that game companies, despite what may appear to be the case, don't need to raise prices to still make profits on games. Sure, there are some game developers that pour huge budgets into their games, but is it really necessary? Yeah, some of these big-budget AAA games may 'fail' and not break even. So should we all just reach into our wallets and throw more money at these game devs? No.

This big, ever-increasing game budget model is, IMO, a dinosaur and unsustainable. Just because companies decide to throw millions into games (much of which ends up going towards marketing) doesn't mean we 'cheapskates' need to change our attitudes and decide we should throw more money at them. Nope. The market price will be what the market will bear. And to be quite frank, the 'cheapskates' are more and more often saying "We're not paying that much for your games".

So the wheel will turn, game budgets - with the exception of a few blockbuster franchises - will likely fall, and game prices will be what they'll be. Call people cheapskates if you want, but in the end it's the consumer that dictates whether or not they're going to buy. And if you overprice your product, good luck staying in business.

60 is a guess that's unlikely ; It could have been 20Mhz, 30Mhz, 33Mhz (more likely). It did run rather slowly as I recall; Course if you played in a smaller window it rendered faster...

It also only had 4Mb ram as I recall.

That's a misleading argument. Yes, your money is worth less, but that doesn't mean that things cost less (that's backward thinking). Prices should be compared to income, not to other prices, and income has been going down in recent years, so technically speaking products, even if their prices stayed the same, became more expensive.

The OP fails to see the obvious fact that the HUGE growing of the market compensates and exceeds the "theoretical" inflation of the old and limited market that was 20-30 years ago.
Basically, supply exceeds demand.

Therefore, there is absolutely no point in being "HUGELY" grateful for. It's just Evolution.

Meta critic is weird people make it 10 or zero. and both aro not true. when you actually a finish game then you can give it like 7. like it black flag ass creed, I give it 7 some after minutes I gave it 9 but finishing that it is just seven.

I would like some sequel to dead space, It got more actiony. but still it was an awesome series, better than many else.

I can see both sides. On the one hand some people seem really reluctant to part with anything more than a shiny silver shilling for top quality entertainment, and there’s an expectation that a game on GoG should always have a deep discount during a time when GoG is trying to branch out and get us newer more expensively-made games.

On the other, I grew up on demo discs and pirated floppies, because games used to be an expensive luxury – I’d get genuine version of a game for Christmas and one for my birthday, that was it. Do you think publishers can exist as they are if the prices were to rise for everybody? Hell no. They have stockholders to please, meaning they have to cast the net wider each time. You do that by making games more affordable, not less.

about cd/dvd other physical games VS digidownloads

i can be brief:

i have discusssed this for years with various digi-games providers, but they think and belief that a game can and might cost 30 or 40 bucks for a digidownload or for a physical cd/dvd

I myself think that digigames can be 50% lower (at least) then full blown dvd/cd games

1)no physical storage required
2)never out of stock cause digital never runs out
3) since theres no cd/dv or pack to promote, expensive adds /commercials on tv and radio arent needed
4) no more big ads on the busstations, or busses...
5)never afraid that the physcial games/music gets damaged by water or fire :D
cause nowadays they seem to have a amazon server where billions of digital stuff is stored so tehres always a game back in notime... so digital games can be very cheap


etc etc etc

so once a game is done an finished and ready to be sold... lets take the sims as example

it should not cost 44bucks if its digi: 10 bucks would be enough
IF you have a nice old package with bonus , manual (paper(no pdf), extras, maybe a little keyhanger or whatver....
then only then a high price is justified.




Okay back to GOG, i myself find that the GOG games the old ones have a good price, there's sales , extra promos etc etc...

Okay theres new games like pillars , very very expensive.... BUT.... you are free to buy it at that price
no one forces us to buy it... so i think GOG is doing excellent.... keep doing the great work GOG.

we get updates/patches..... via a nice system....

there are loads of online game providers that dont give you that service :D
Gamersgate is a very nice service (also have account there since a few weeks), but theres no updates for us, the gamedevelopers who submit games decide if and when there are patches, thats kinda sad, other than that there are also sales.

origin/uplay and steam.... HAHAHA i wont discuss that cause thats crap....(my humble opinion)
on those you only buy stuff thats 40cents to 2 bucks... tops

it looks that steam has so many great games... but when you really take the time and 'disect' the offers and kinda games, its basically avaialbale everywhere, the good games are stil high priced, so you might aswell get those retail steam games on cd/dvd

Conclusion: GOG is the best it has GOGs, and indies and some nice newer games aswell, updates/patches
gamersgate is nice cause they have indie and casuals

If GOG had casuals, i would not have gamersgate....
GOG rules

exactly

and we should never forget that the most things that are happening are the humans own fault.
We decided to introduce the money(currency)system, it was not forced upon us by uber aliens who gave it and then abandoned us.

99% of all that is happening is mans own mistake, so we should clean up the mess ourselves, and stop complaining, except about the game fact :D

ps: another thought: that digistuff could also been introduced many years ago, as soon as we had internet
okay it would have been very slow, but slow is only what we are used to experience as slow.... if you dont have anything to compare it with, you have nothing to complaint about.

If we never had cash we would not complain about the fact they are thinking of removing all physical cash aswell, and only use it to exchange things, meaning money be tehre but not in the pocket it will be digital wallets :D
So this also proofs man has f-ed himself, all the things we suffer from is our own doing, we cant blame a god or alien race, we did it and we have to face the concequences.
We, mankind have f-ed our climate... not an alien or a god, but we the people.
All our trouble is our own doing :D

And they are. Sure the initial price is high to earn more, but it drops more and more over time (and often pretty quickly), and because the copies don't cost a thing and are infinite in number, it's actually practical to keep these games at these prices, whereas for physical products there's a point where the associated costs means you're better off selling some other higher priced game.

If you buy early, you pay to get it early, and obviously you're willing to pay the associated price. No reason to complain. If you don't have to have the game right now then you get the benefit of lower price thanks to digital.