Since someone actually asked
Like corporations are bad, but there’s a bigger reason that games cost so much. I’m actually okay with mainstream games getting more expensive bc it helps raise the floor on indie game prices (which should all be higher, Stardew Valley being $15 is actually bad for indie devs everywhere bc everyone compares your indie game to SV and is like why can’t you have this much content and be this cheap. SV should be like $40-50.) bc then me an indie dev might get paid more and not be starving.
The nuance is that twin evils are at work here: 1. video game costs have kept up with inflation (as they should to pay for the higher fidelity gamers demand and to pay the bigger and bigger teams) but wages have not. Ppl should be asking why isn’t our minimum high enough I can afford a game with a few hours of work (the equivalent of less than half an extra shift if you wanted to take it once a month)?
Essentially: please gain class consciousness, bite every billionaire, demand minimum wage and thus all other wages be raised to keep up with inflation and suddenly you will have money for games and consoles, and game devs will be able to make quality products that allow them to feed their families.
Evil #2, (this evil is also why AI has gotten so big) is that art has been even further reduced to things that are solely meant to be consumed, spit out and then immediately forgotten for the next item of consumption. This conflating of art (and video games are art!) with products and consumption is the other half of the nuance here. It’s not wrong for people to ask, hell even to demand they get paid well for making good art. They should be getting paid well for it.
Either that or gamers need to lower their impossible standards.
Anyways. Corporations are evil and not your friend, that includes Nintendo, but please consider using this anger to gain class consciousness and realize that the real thing to be mad about is not that games and consoles are more expensive, but that you are not getting paid enough, are being exploited, capitalism is a failed system and all billionaires are evil and need to be forcibly divested of their money.
