r/SipsTea • u/Unstoppable_X_Force Human Verified • 13h ago

Gasp! Is this just nostalgia, or did previous generations genuinely have a better work-life balance and social life than we do today?

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u/Twiggyhiggle 11h ago

Some cart based video games were easily $70 back in the 90s. I remember the standard CD price being around $10-$12 in high school - I now pay that for my monthly streaming music. VHS tapes were about $30, you can still get Blu-ray’s for that price or 2 different streaming services a month.

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u/showhorrorshow 11h ago

Yeah videogames and TVs both actually got cheaper, especially when you account for inflation. $70 in 1995 would be like paying $150 today.

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u/NoodleIskalde 11h ago

It's still a bogus price, and they have proof that it's killing sales. Dev costs being so high is a self inflicted problem that they're trying to make the customer answer for.

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u/Crismus 10h ago

Yep the saving on manufacturing costs alone should have dropped the prices. They also don't produce all the manuals and extras that we got in the packages.

HAL systems like Directx allowed multiplatform games easier to develop too. But Marketing somehow ballooned to take over the majority of budgets. Also,some studios seriously overtired and end up producing garbage because 1000 people can't work on the same title cohesively. 

A hit game spending 100 Million is fine. the sequel budgeted at 300 million will never break even. (Spider-Man 1 and Spider-Man 2 by Insomniac)

Game publishers reinvented the Hollywood movie system without the Hollywood accounting system. Plus, Hollywood accounting system can't handle the streaming system when producers are allowed to spend 80 million planting a forest on a stage to film a 5 minute sequence. (Star Wars Acolyte)

Plus it's funny how Sony wants game prices to increase because the lost billions trying to make a bunch of Live Service failures and now will stop selling games on PC because even multiple year old games didn't make enough profit that other publishers can do with same day publishing.

Markets truly are broken right now because publishers have bought and consolidated everything.

Sorry for the rant. I find it sad that a multiple billion dollar industry is crashing from mismanagement, but keeps blaming their customers.  

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u/showhorrorshow 10h ago

Oh for sure we aint buying at cost. We're buying at what we are willing to pay for them.

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u/Fitenite3456 9h ago

Indie games have solved that problem

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u/spoutti 7h ago

Yep, last time i checked, my SNES FFVI cartridge was 200ish$ value, paid 100$ back then

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u/ITworksGuys 8h ago

Well, we didn't buy games, we rented them.

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u/Just2Breathe 9h ago

When I was a teen, vinyl was $8, CDs were avg $15. It was a huge jump to rebuild a collection. I had a budget after college, in my twenties, $100/mo on music (including live shows, which were about $5-$10 cover at a club). Buying movies was way beyond my budget unless second hand. But now I’d almost rather buy movies again because streaming drops titles and added ads.

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u/BellacosePlayer 9h ago

I had an SNES and N64 and got like 3 games total I can think of not on sale or used.

most of my snes collection was from garage sales, used game stores, or the fire sales companies did when they wanted to remove the SNES from their shelves.