inclementimmigrant"I don't know" how much Borderlands 4 will cost, Gearbox boss says, but it had "more than twice the development budget for Borderlands 3" and "it might be" $80 like some Nintendo and Xbox games
Super Mario bros 3 was $59 in 1992
Borderlands 4 should be like $180 accounting for inflation
At $80 it’s not a terrible price.
Don’t get mad at me about our money being worthless.
I just wanna play games too.
Super Mario Bros. 3 was released as a fully finished product that I actually own a physical copy of.
Borderlands 4, will probably be a quarter finished when it released, filled with all kinds of apologies, possibly have micro transactions, and will likely be able to be taken out of my library at some point as it’s digital only.
The value is not the same.
You’re right the value is not the same.
Super Mario 3 would be $180 today.
Borderlands 4 will be less than half that.
It’s a good deal.
Think of how many more pixels you’re getting though.
I hate that you get downvoted for pointing out the reality of the situation.
Relative to the price of every else, $80 for a AAA videogame is actually reasonable. The problem is that rent has gone up drastically, food has gone up drastically, and our wages have stagnated. Getting pissed off at Gearbox for charging $80 for Borderlands 4, and then paying $15 for a burger and fries without an equal reaction just doesn’t seem sensible to me.
Everything is awful, and videogame devs aren’t the ones stealing all our buying power.
Very in point. These same people complaining about the price of games will still buy a packet of chocolate biscuits for $7.
You have no idea how the people complaining about video game prices spend their money. You just disagree with them and make shit up apparently.
Your just butthurt because I’m just not agreeing with the majority.
Of course. I’m literally shaking with pure rage.
I’m not sure where you’re numbers are coming from, but the inflation calculator I found through Google says that $59 in 1992 is more like $135 today. That’s still a significant increase of course, although I wonder how much publishers benefit from not needing as much physical distribution. After the initial investment selling digital keys on a third-party storefront like Steam should be pure profit, no?
1992 was a very different time with very different market conditions and consumer behaviour for video games. Games used to have a much greater perceived entertainment value, despite their relatively small development budgets compared with today. They were also entirely physical media and renting was still a very common way to play them. From what I remember, it wasn’t the most financially accessible hobby either. Most of my friends growing up didn’t have permanent access to their own gaming console and not everyone that did had all the latest games. Nowadays, the gaming market is completely saturated with high quality titles, most of which are fairly cheap as well if you don’t buy them on release.
In any case: Super Mario Bros 3 came out in 1988 and released 1990 and 1991 for the US and Europe respectively. It also didn’t cost $59 and your inflation calculation seems off…
The industry is completely different now. The original was made in the 80s where programmers were hard to find and it took 10 of them 2 years and a million dollars to make. Then physical cartridges needed to be made and distributed that only ran on specialized hardware that also needed to be made and distributed. It selling for the equivalent of $180 could be justified since it was niche technology. There’s a reason Biggie Smalls brags about owning a Super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis in a rap song. That shit was expensive even in 1994.
Today, someone can make Super Mario Bros 3 in a month after watching some game dev tutorials on YouTube, upload the .exe to Steam, and sell limitless copies to anyone who owns a computer. Selling it for $180 would be ridiculous. There’s no reason tech today should cost the exact same as it did in the 80s.
you can’t use straight 1:1 inflation to infer what the contemporary cost should be of digital products like video games, movies, tv shows, music etc. There is no physical asset to tie the individual product value to. There are of course production costs, but those are the same whether you make 10 thousand copies or 10 million.
The reason inflation hasn’t hit video game prices is because the video game market has grown exponentially since the 90s. They make more money by selling low margin at higher volume, compared to high margin and low volume. It’s all about maximizing that total profit, not individual sales.
Publishers can try to charge more, but it’ll be up to consumers if that actually gets them any more money overall. only time will tell.
arakhis_reddit moment
jinarchedNah. I keep seeing this argument and I really disagree with it. It’s actually really simple economics; we don’t need to calculate inflation into this. If I think the price of something is too high (especially something I don’t need to survive), I don’t buy it. Companies can cry all they want, in the end I don’t care.
It doesn’t seem like you disagree with anything they said?
If everyone followed your lead, the end result would be that video games don’t exist anymore. Just in case you didn’t play that out completely in your mind.
The industry makes something around 190 billion per year, they will be fine without raising their prices to 80$. I ran that in my head considering that I worked in the industry myself. Devs aren’t paid enough not because we don’t pay games enough but because these companies are run by greedy fucks. Don’t feel bad for them, buy games when they are on sale or buy indie games. Games won’t go anymore be reassured.
What in the late-stage capitalist brainrot.
It’s “simple economics” to attack people trying to make art and entertainment for having the gall to ever consider increasing their prices, knowing full well that the cost of living has increased drastically? You’re going with “that’s just the market telling them they’re charging too much” while ignoring the reality that rent has doubled - and in some cases tripled - food costs have gone up 50%, and wages have barely improved? It’s the fault of video game developers that you have relatively less money and cannot afford to purchase their product around the other products you need or are expected to purchase?
If your wage increased with the cost of living, you would not see this price as “too high.” But because some price increases are on necessary purchases, we attack the unnessecary ones, like good little capitalists. Adam Smith would be proud.
That’s not how the market works
Dremor$60 in 1992 is about $135 in April 2025, inflation included.
Sure games became more complex, but tools became more powerfull, and so did computers.
When in 1992 you often had to code your own engine, which amounted for a good chunk of the development cost. They had to do that using a ressource envelope magnitudes smaller than what we have today. Heck, a jpeg caoture of the original Mario game is bigger than the whole original game itself. And then, games where physical, which had to be included in the final price.
Todays devs often uses off the shelf engines, tools that automate some of the tedious task, like naking trees (Speedtree) and asset reuse is done on an industrial level, there are even marketplaces for that. Moreober, game distribution changed to be mostly digital, you don’t need to factor the medium price into the asked price.
You cannot really compare 1992 dev costs with modern ones. The whole way games are done changed way too much for that.
Moreover, the market has grown way beyond what is was then. The required profit per copy sold is a lot smaller than it was then, and thus should be accojnted for.
Honesty, I don’t see a AAA needing to have more than $60-70 atm, and I think this bump in price is entirely due to the ever increasing marketing cost, more than the game development.
Got it, so wait for it in humble bundle or buy it once it sinks to $5.
$80 I can wait.
I mean. Of course vidya games’ gonna get hit with inflation from time to time… just like every other product…
every link in the chain, from producer to consumer needs to have an ever growing increase in profit for capitalism to work
ok whats your point besides outing as a shill
I don’t think I’m shilling for everything… I’ve been sailing the seas for as long as I can remember… I just don’t understand why people keep getting surprised at games increasing in price - have you guys forgotten how capitalism works?
Like do you go to your local grocery store and see that cheese has yet again shrunk in size, and increased in price, and then think “this’ll never happen to my precious videogames”?
just because its common doesnt mean its justified.
i see youre pirating ok. doesnt make youre pro-increase opinion due to “link from producer to customer” argument any more true… the only blatant justification for n-letter company is exploitation. literally
I’m not justifying it anymore than justifying the increase in price of cheese.
But instead of spending your time being angry or annoyed at individual companies. Spend your time being angry with the system that requires the companies to have an ever increasing profit.
And stop being surprised by it, accept that this is a symptom of the capitalism, and if you want change… well, then… it will not happen by itself, and it will not start in the gaming industry.
It’s not worth $80 to me, and that’s also the way prices work. Things are worth what people are willing to pay. I’ve purchased so many games for $20 and less that have given me more enjoyment than any borderlands game.
And that’s completely fair as well, but there will be compromises… because 100DKK is not worth the same 100DKK as for 10 years ago, so as time goes by - the games you’ll be able to buy for 100DKK, will have reduced effort equally to the reduction in value of your currency
That’s a sensible way to buy all video games
With all the dlc.
But of course.
Aaaaaand I’ll wait for a sale. If I consider it in the first place. Gaming is so saturated, all these days 1 buyers are fucking us over.
Even worse than my backlog, there are all the comfort games I play every few years and which takes me months to complete (cause some of them are fairly long like The Witcher 3) and thanks to my crappy memory, multiple choices and mods I can enjoy them as much every time
Been having that itch for witcher 3 again. What an amazing adveture
I have trouble letting 2 years go by not playing it, I can’t wait for the remake of the first one
I made it so far in that one, I think, then I practically skipped tw2 and went straight for 3 and soon became so hooked. It’s crazy how huge and dense that world is, with scenery that never looks repeated.
Ooh you should give the 2nd another chance, they f’ed up the combat (I think they wanted to copy Souls games) but the story is great and honestly it still looks fine for a 2011 game
It’s more war/politics oriented, and the story is about clearing your name and recovering memory and less about saving someone/the world
If the combat part is the issue, some mods can improve that (or make you hard to kill)
Borderlands 3 was barely worth $60 and I still waited for it to go on sale.
I bought it in Fall 2024 for like 25 bucks with all DLCs. So I’ll wait year or two with BL4 no problem, there’s plenty other games I can play. I never buy brand new games.
I’ll wait for my girl to gift me the game 😍
She is fit 😏
the more of us just wait a couple months, the cheaper it’ll get and the sooner too
:p
B1 was fun and interesting, B2 was brilliant, BTPS was fun, but slightly less so than B2, B3 was just annoying cringe.
And yeah, I played through all the games to completion including the DLCs.
I was just flabbergasted that they decided to make all of their perk trees boring and lame. I genuinely don’t remember anything about the characters other than disappointment.
Roland, Mordecai, Brick, Lilith: character design masterpieces. Distinct styles and strengths but not overly limited. Zer0, Salvador, Gage, Axton, Magic Chick 2: great, less type specialized but that’s not a bad thing.
Everyone else? Just walking gun stats. And not particularly fun ones.
I don’t even remember bothering with the spec trees on B3.
I did play as Claptrap i B3 to get some variation, his special was just stupid
That’s pre-prequel not BL3.
Ah good catch!
I mixed it up, in BTPS I did indeen play as Claptrap the last time I played it, I played as Moze when I played B3
marighostBorderlands 3 had some of the best gameplay in any shooter I’ve played, story and difficulty be damned. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands was back to form, despite its disappointing post-game and 3-room DLCs. The only reason I’m excited for 4 is because the gameplay looks solid and they’ve yet to tell a single joke.
I never liked the gamplay in B3, though to be fair, I did grow up on UT2004, which other have told me is very floaty, so I may be biased on that…
Reisenthe thing while yes, inflation will make things more expensive, the more expensive things become the less folks will just spend on random entertainment. they will have to use their money more deliberately and frugally.
and the problem with games are that there are many free and cheaper alternatives. if you wanna game you can just spend less and still game and have fun.
if you wanna go to the cinema it pretty much costs what it costs so you might go less often or buy less popcorn but you won’t skip one movie because it’s more expensive than another.
you can just skip full price AAA games. buy them on sales, play games you already have, play free to play games, emulate retro games, play indie games.
Exactly. Also it’s way costlier to set up a hone theatre at home compared to buying a cheap gaming laptop and play indie oe competitive fps games.
ampersandrewI once paid $140 (just pre-pandemic inflation) for a meal with two drinks at a fancy restaurant for a friend’s bachelor party. It was delicious. At the same time, I realized that no one meal, no matter how good, was worth that price. I don’t know what the threshold is for how much I’ll pay for a single video game, but $80 is more palatable to me when the game asking for it isn’t Mario Kart.
I’d gladly pay 80 bucks for games, Ive paid way more than that in 40K, Warmahordes and Advanced Squad Leader.
If digital games would give me the same kind of “ownership”, like full access to the code and free reign to modify the rules sets as well as spreading those changes to friends and strangers I wouldn’t hesitate to spend similar amounts. However digital games, even physical on disks, has too many limitations as riders for that price to be motivated
I wish we lived in a world close to that one, and maybe someday we’ll get there. Guilty Gear Strive’s source code just got leaked in its entirety, so complete that it can just be loaded as is into the Unreal editor, and a lot of people see this as a bad thing rather than the game ascending to immortality.
The Plus R community has been begging ArcSys to release the source code for a long time—hopefully, this will push them to reconsider their stance on open source.
But are getting argyle gun skins?