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.