By: Thomas Horvath

The video game industry is thriving and developing at an exponential rate, seemingly advancing more and more with every new console. Games are becoming bigger in size, which is great for technology and consumers, but comes at a price. Modern video games are becoming quite pricey, with the average price for a new game ranging from $60-70. The consoles themselves are all at least a couple hundred dollars, and that doesn’t include new controllers, adding more storage, and online services. While video games are becoming better made, are they becoming unaffordable for the average consumer?

Video games have never truly been cheap. Games for the Atari averaged between twenty and thirty dollars in the 1970s, which translates to around $140  today. So $60 for a game is not too bad considering how expensive games used to be. But this was also when video games were brand new. Now that there are so many and common, many people are not willing to pay that amount for a game, and especially not seventy. It doesn’t matter how expensive games used to be because people got used to a certain price range. The news that inspired this article was a rumor that Grand Theft Auto VI would be a whopping $150. To many, it does not matter how good a game is because most people will be unwilling to buy one game at that price range. The video game industry will continue to advance, but many of these companies will have to start lowering prices to reach a larger group than they already have. This could be why Nintendo is outselling its competitors, because the console is nearly half the price of the PS5 and is easily transportable, with an exclusive library of video game icons such as Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokemon. Even still, their prices have slowly been going up too. Either the consumers are going to adapt to pricier games, or the industry will have to give in to having lower prices.