Fallout 4 + Season Pass is actually 110 of my Canadian dollars.

Im not even mad about that, I knew that paying my CAD as if they were USD on Steam wasnt going to last forever. 70 for the game and 40 for the season pass isnt that bad, there's certainly some really intense strategy games I can think of what are -way- worse than that.

Damn, that HD must have cost a mint!!!!

And I feel your pain....As my sig says I've recently upgraded lol, not everything but a good $1k when I wasn't planning on it but oh well

One thing that pisses me off, it that digital games costs the same 60 usd/euro as physical ones, i would like digital games at-least 15% cheaper damn it.

I think even back in the pre steam days the price of making the copies themselves wasn't that much. I don't know the actual numbers, but I always thought of the prices were paying for the games to be compensation for development of the game itself, with the actual disc and box being way on the low end of what is costing the developers money.

That being said though, the last boxed Bethesda game I bought was Oblivion, and Morrowind before that. Ive lost the maps that came with them, but damn were those nice maps. Morrowind had a really useful one aswell, the map I had pinned up to my desk of Vvardenfel was far more useful than the ones ingame.

Thanks for the tip, been waiting for it to come on sale for a while now!

No.

Video games have been at $60 for a very long time. That's great for the consumer in the short-term of buying the game, but inflation is a reality so there is going to have to be less bang for the buck if developers want to stay in business. I'd rather see a moderate price increase so that developers have more of an incentive to develop. That said, when (not if) that happens, it is going to svck pulling out the credit card.

I was kind of surprised the Next Gen consoles didn't bring a $10 bump in prices for new games. Pretty sure that happened with the 360/ps3 launch

I wasn't. The whole "ZOMG, games too expensive!" thing has been all over the net for a few years now. If they pumped the price $10, there'd be riots - or at least it would seem like it, with very vocal net folks & coverage by all the gaming blogs/sites.

And anyway, they've figured out plenty of alternate ways to get more $ without raising the base price - DLC, season passes, in-game microtransactions, plastic toys (Skylanders/Infinity/Dimensions/Amiibo), etc.

Yeah, I agree with those commenting that there are two topics here, price of PC hardware and price of games.

I generally get a new PC every five years, and when I do, I go for above-average so that it's going to last. As a graphic designer my livelihood is on the computer, so because I already have a computer, I'm not spending anything extra for the gaming platform. As such, I've never owned a console, and couldn't justify spending the money for a console when most of the games I want to play are available on PC.

As far as the value of the game goes, Bethesda Game Studios is one of very few trusted developers for me where I know that I'm going to enjoy the game and I always look forward to their games, so it's definitely a Day 1 purchase, as opposed to a wait-until-sale-on-Steam purchase. With an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game, I know that I'm going to get hundreds of hours of gameplay ouf of it. In terms of entertainment value in hours per dollar, compare it to something like 2 hours of entertainment that you get when you go to a movie. There's just no comparison.

As far as the cost of physically manufacturing a game, as someone who used to prep projects for replication plants, I can tell you that manufacturing cost is very, very cheap for a box, a game, a manual and the cost of physically shipping those packages. And these days you mostly don't even get a nice box for a standard game, you just get a cheap DVD case - and you're lucky if you get a manual or other printed goodie. I again agree with others here - the cost of the game is the cost of development.

That underlined part to me is why we get the short end of the stick. Every so often is like every year. Console gamers don't have to worry about that. The graphics now are comparable unless you have a mind blowing rig, but I personally don't have the money for that and I don't think 75 - 80 percent of people do. For me I'm starting to evaluate how this is on my wallet and the fact that I just went out and spent 300 bucks on a 970 with 4 gigs of ram and that card isn't even the top of the top says a lot to me as a gamer.

No, gaming is cheaper than any other hobby.

Cars for example, i would love to build another turbo r31 skyline but i dont have a spare 5k lying around.

Serious question here, are these websites where people are getting the game cheaper than its MSRP of $60 USD to be trusted? It seems really iffy to go buy a Steam key from anything but Steam, in my head it doesn't make sense and is risky since it could be a duplicate or faulty key which would be taken away from you once it's discovered by Valve. So even if you guys can't share links or company names, can I at least get some sort of assurance that it's safe to get a Steam key for less than their asking price? I want to ask about a certain site I found the game on selling a Steam key for $39.99 and the season pass for $24.99. I searched the site name and reddit users attest to its legitimacy but I don't understand how they're pulling off selling it for less when it isn't even out yet. Is it legit?

You're suggesting that a pc gamer has to keep spending hundreds of dollars in new hardware to stay on par with a console that is static?

Also you don't need a mind blowing rig to blow console's out of the water. I got my pc 4years ago, i have yet to upgrade anything about it and it has the ps4 and the xbox one hands down beat.

Of course both these consoles where cheaper than my pc was, but my pc is still better and I got more longevity out of my pc as i can upgrade parts should i want to. But even if i don't it'll take the next generation of consoles to outpace my pc that is already older than the current gen consoles.

The upfront investment is smaller for consoles, but with how cheap gaming on pc is i wouldn't even say console are really cheaper when looking at the the long run.

It isnt cheap if you want to max out games (it has never been cheap) but if you want to run games low-med settings then thats the whole different price range. Also, used parts are very inexpensive. Check out these:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8mG-RkN2uTyuEutQa79RZ0Q5u5gteUci

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLpF3QiOdXU

Do what's best for you bro. I don't know where you live but Fallout 4 alone should NOT be $100. And PC gaming to me is a double edged sword, in the sense you need constant upgrades using real life money to stay at the top of your game; while also being able to mod and make dreams come reality.

About gaming being expensive, I agree. I work a new job at the city recycle center thats very physically strenuous and with poor working conditions; although expensive and growing evermoreso, personally I pay for the games (however high their price) because I enjoy playing them to relax and take my mind off things for a moment.

I myself am having to save to once again buy the PS4, PS3, and Xbox 360 consoles after having sold them in a poor turn of events. I would also like to buy an Xbox One... (though this goal has been severely derailed). This of course requires long, hard hours at the job, frugal living, consistent saving, and careful budgeting. And with the costs of Actual Life.. well its not pretty but hang in there bro

Admittedly I have spent close to a grand on upgrading my PC for Fallout 4. Before it was announced (because I had a hunch it would be) plus the newer games were chugging anyway.

It's been an expensive year...

Can gaming be expensive? Well, yes, certainly. I'm barely scraping the specs to run Fallout 4 on PC, and looking around a few websites I'm going to need ￡500+ to upgrade my rig to anything actually worth the money. That's a lot of cash to have expendable in one place at one time. It's expensive.

But if I look at the big picture then it all becomes rather cheap. I don't buy games on release very often; GTAV was the last one, and before that it was Assassin's Creed Black Flag. Everything else is classics from car-boots, or new(er) games at discounted prices. I've probably spent ￡100 this year on games so far. OK, so I bought an Xbox One from a colleague on impulse (￡150) and used my 360 trade-in money for a few games too, but that doesn't really count. I built my current rig four years ago on a budget; it was my first proper gaming rig in my first full time job whilst my girlfriend was pregnant, I was moving house, and saving for the wedding. I think I spent about ￡1000 over the course of the year on components, and i know I wasted a lot of money on rookie mistakes. But if I take that average over the last four years and add a bit: let's say ￡1500, how many hours of entertainment have I got out of that PC in four years? I don't have any data, but I can guess it's up in thousands and that's just gaming, it doesn't factor in that it's the media hub of the house, so it does Blu-Ray, DVD, catch up TV, the works for my family and friends.

So at a cost of ￡375 a year I have had an amazing experience. In a world where a cup of coffee is ￡4+, a new set of tyres for the car is ￡150+, a weeks shopping is ￡60+ (for my family at least), an annual TV license is ￡120 (which I don't bother with), then yeah, it all comes out quite cheap overall: it's just having a lump sum to invest at the right time that makes it seem expensive.

i see it 60 dollars regular version and 120 pip boy edition. im not sure if this is legit but 40 dollars for pc version http://www.cdkeys.com/pc/games/fallout-4-pc-cd-key-steam?gclid=CjwKEAjw-vewBRDH1-b52Lig1hkSJACTPfVFKG8myW-Uguggjk3qS8FxqdHOV_OjG5zGDbUAoTcGjhoCy8Pw_wcB

and to answer the question yes, if you dont have 100s of dollars to spend all the time, which according to unemployment numbers is a whole lot of people in america, then video games are getting expensive as hell, especially with the dlc. that was the point of these mega corporations taking over video game industry, to make more money off us. greedy [censored]ers havent made [censored] off me im buying used copies like hell. if i dont buy used then its a 5-10 dollar digital download thats on sale lmao

This might be the solution to your problems:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_13?url=search-alias%3Dvideogames&field-keywords=xbox+one+fallout+4+bundle&sprefix=xbox+one+fall%2Caps%2C165

In my humble opinion, Xbox One with Fallout 4 bundle would be a way to go. You get a nice up-grade in hardware, one of the best controllers ever, and the game comes included in the deal. With mods coming to consoles it makes it an even sweeter deal. No more relying on PC for mods. What's not to like, unless you are a die-hard PC fan, that is.

This is true.

It's also become much easier to make games in that time period. Easier to patch and fix them. I wonder if the costs were so high back then due to the requirement of rigorous testing.

If chrono trigger had a bug at release there's no way to patch it, and so I'm guessing testing would be a veritable gauntlet. Dozens of people testing each and every scenario exhaustively.

It would definitely warrant some extra price.

Where as now, the developers can tap a few buttons and send an update to the globe to fix a typo.

I've upgraded one component in my computer in four years. and added one more (a ~$20 sound card & 50 headphones, to try out this "fake surround sound" thing).

Before that, I played games for years running Win XP on my static-hardware iMac - but like I said, that was during the heyday of the PS3/X360 era, where PC game system requirements (at least the minimums) barely moved up at all.

Requirements are going up now, due to the big hardware shift in consoles. We'll have to see if, in two years or so, the min reqs end up being kind of static again, or if devs don't keep building their PC versions to match the console ones.

(And yes, now that reqs are going up so much, I'm contemplating upgrading the core of my system - CPU/motherboard. But I'm still a bit above the minimum reqs for Fallout 4. With a computer built in 2011. For $800, not some super-monster machine.)

Not to get too off topic, but they still MAKE soundcards?

I haven't seen one of those since the 90's

Heh.

http://www.newegg.com/Sound-Cards/SubCategory/ID-57

Yeah I think the price of graphics cards is out of line with the price of other PC components. I see that as an issue. They'll need to find a way to bring graphics cards prices down to keep people buying PC parts in the future.

The worst thing with Nvidia is how they deliberately sink the value of their previous gen cards by making drivers that only work well with their latest and greatest card. A lot of people have cottoned onto this over the last few years, if you read their driver forums at all. They effectively try to push sales of new cards through these dubious methods, while inflating its sale price. I hope to see changes in this in the future.

In 1983 my parents bought me my first computer and a single video game cartridge. Going by an online inflation calculator, that dinky little box that took an entire day's worth of typing to get it to swirl a circle around the screen and game cost the equivalent of the rig I just built for FO4, including new monitor, sweet Corsair keyboard, and a copy of FO4. I got several thousand hours of enjoyment out of Fallout 3 versus maybe 20 hours of frustration on the game from 1983. So for me, the price of gaming has stayed the same for 30+ years but the experience has gotten exponentially better.