hearing ps5 games are gonna be more expensive and knowing the inevitable discourse that will break out i'm just gonna repost myself https://twitter.com/spacetwinks/status/1292115298452221954

also while "games are more expensive to make now" might be true, that cost never gets back to the actual people making the games and ends up just as bonuses for the people at the top who then fire tons of people when their record breaking sales still fail to meet 'internal goals'

games by smaller teams will still be dirt cheap and underpricing themselves all the time under these dynamics as well, as everyone will be doing everything they can to have to compete with those $70 AAA games while, still, everyone (both devs and buyers) are dead broke

macroeconomic trends are so much of why games and games reporting are the way they are nowadays and i don't think they got brought up much at least in part because people feel helpless to do anything about 'em - but they're still probably the most important factor

this is also a big reason why companies are getting way into streaming stuff. it's not just so you don't get to actually 'own' anything (though that's definitely part of it) but it's so they can keep making money with cheap subscriptions as everyone continues to be broke as hell

i think of the parallels to all this in the video market as well; yes, we used to pay 30 bucks for VHS tapes of two episodes of anime and that's funny and all, but one of the big differences is that enough people had enough disposable income that they *could* do that

now the video is unbelievably cheaper, but your wages are the same, and rent, healthcare, tuition, and food are all more expensive - people don't have the disposable income to throw around anymore even as media should be easier and cheaper than ever to snap up