It’s honestly kinda crazy how long some games spend in development. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is a perfect example of something that should’ve been quick but ended up being so bloated and took forever to make.
FF7Remake was announced in 2015, got stuck in development hell for a bit, released 2020. The sequel released 2024. The third one still hasn’t been teased yet. How many people are attached to a franchise if it takes 10 years to get the full story? I loved the first remake but dropped the second one, I just didn’t care about the story as much as I did ~5 years ago.
Gaming was always expensive. Super Mario 3 was 50 dollars in 1990. That’s 120 dollars in today’s money.
That was at its infancy though. And the market for video games is bigger than the movie and music industry combined, which wasn’t the case back then.
Makes sense for niche hobby to be expensive and then fall over time as the potential userbase for it grows, so price adjusting to maximize profits by finding one that reaches as many people as possible versus trying to stay afloat off fewer consumers.