I know how it works son, and it's from first hand experience not repeating what 10's of thousands of people have said since the Internet's inception. Yes it's true that consoles have licensing fees but that isn't my point.
I've been here since the birth of the modern gaming industry. In 1991, I became gainfully employed and started supporting my own gaming hobby. I bought a Sega Genesis and I was paying 50$ on avg for new games.
I wouldn't be trying to act senior if I started gaming with the Genesis. I'd say that makes you late to the party
I still have my Nes, Snes, and Gens with bags of games... but even that isn't impressive. There will be many on these forums who still have their old Ataris.
I paid the same price for games on my PS1, PS2 and Xbox. 1 year after the Xbox 360 released the price went up to 60$. It didn't go up because the licensing fees went up from 10$ to 20$, it went up because of inflation. It's only a matter of time before the PC is forced to follow. It might not happen all at once but by this time next year ALL new games will be a min of 60$. Mark my words.
No, it's not a matter of inflation. If it were, console prices would rise at the same time, but as you see, they aren't doing so. Rather, some publishers, for some of their higher-profile games, are leveling the shelf price-point between the mediums because they think customers will accept it makes sense on face value without understanding the reason for the initial discrepancy between them, and also, because they calculate that people will want to buy these higher-profile games regardless. $60 is not the new norm for PC games. $60 is the premium price for new high-profile PC games (CoD, Skyrim, Bf3, etc).
The reason why games haven't overwhelmingly changed in price over the past couple of decades is mainly a matter of production costs vs profitability. Games are far more profitable today than they've ever been, and that's after inflation and bigger production expenses are factored in. The gaming market is absolutely massive compared to what it was in the 90s, and only massively moreso compared to the 80s.
Another reason why PC game prices typically cost lower than console prices is piracy. I think we're all tired of hearing developer after developer blaming PC piracy for why they turned their productions to a console focus (as if there are any left who haven't made the shift), but when the cost of the game is higher than people are willing to accept, they steal it instead. For most PC games, charging $60 a pop would be a form of fiscal suicide.
If any one wants to complain about this, like i said look at other forms of entertainment and compare to % of increase in the last 20 years and know that gamers have always had it easy.
New album cost 20 yrs ago = 12-16$ -- Today = 26-32$
Movie ticket cost 20 yrs ago = 2-6$ -- Today = 8-15$
Concert ticket cost 20 yrs ago = 15-40$ -- Today 40-100$
Sporting event cost 20 yrs ago = 25-50$ -- Today 45-150$
Video games can not and will not stay the same cost for the foreseeable future.
With "foreseeable" referring to what we can currently see, what we can currently see is that $50 is still the norm for PC games, while $60 is a new price-point for some blockbuster AAA titles. The biggest factor in whether more games start to use a higher price-point will be how willing the PC gaming community is to accept those higher prices. With the newish Medal of Honour, the experiment of charging $60 was a failure. People weren't willing to pay it, and the price on the game dropped rapidly. Publishers have to be very careful about which PC games they choose to launch at the $60 price-point. In the end, though, PC gamers who pay $60 for a game are paying more for the actual game than are console gamers who pay that price. And that's after all the extra expenses involved in buying a gaming PC. Unfortunately, $60 per game is taking advantage of PC gamers.