Cosmetics. Not sure why they said single player.

Salaries do not keep up with inflation.

In the last 22 years the per game production cost has gone down. Back then games were largely physical and had a huge distribution network. You had the cost of putting the game on a disk or a cartridge or whatever physical medium, then you had the logistics cost to distribute it and finally the store selling you the game put their own marginal to justify keeping it on shelf. That was also what kept the indie scene from springing into existence because getting your game released was a massive undertaking. And you had to test test test because patching games post-launch was a pain in the ass. Now physical media is largely streamlined and the focus is shifting more on digital (because it gives better margins). Development tools have also improved and day 1 patches are the norm, all of which bring down development costs. So you can't really compare the cost of a game from 20-25 years ago to the cost of a game from today because the industry has matured massively in that period.

And the industry has been complaining about game development being on the verge of collapse for around 15 years. I made the argument back then and that argument has largely stayed true for most of that period. The argument is that if making games is so unsustainable we should see a reduction of scope. Instead of throwing every bog-standard AAA feature into a bloated AAA game we should see games with a more focused vision and minimal bloat. It's only in the last few years that we've seen studios try to cut the bloat. So I believe gaming right now has reached a point where it's unsustainable for AAA but in previous years I'd argue it was just fearmongering to justify squeezing out more money. But it doesn't mean the price increase is justified. Indie games and games made by private companies prove that the price increase isn't necessary. The best game of 2025, Clair Obscur, was $50. One of the best games of 2024, Balatro, was $15. The best game of 2023, Baldurs Gate 3, was $60. None of those games were made by a publicly traded company. It's the publicly traded company mindset that necessitates the price increase because you need to spend every penny you get and your returns need to grow with every release so you could get more money to spend which then means you need to make even more profits.

I'm not saying the price should stay at $60 for forever, but so far I haven't seen a good reason why it should increase when we can get quality games at that price point or even at a lower price point.

NES games were $80. Thats why most households usually only had 1-2 games.

It wasn't until resell shops came around that everyone sold their games, and bought 2-3 used games with that money.

Video gaming was unaffordable in the 80s too. I think if you compare lifetime sales of most NES games to most modern games, you'll find the trend was that if your game wasn't mario, it didn't sell all that well on the NES. Even Zelda in the early days had a rough start.

Whereas these days, the industry has grown so much due to keeping prices relatively stable for 40 years. So now consoles sell more, games in general sell 10x more.

Prop that price up and watch the sales fall.

You really shouldn't be downvoted for stating facts. Inflation is a real thing and prices of games have lagged significantly behind it for decades - that is an observable fact. The $60 price point was held static for almost two decades but inflation marches on, so in real terms most games are cheaper than ever.

The one thing that kind of does make gaming unaffordable currently is hardware prices, but you can still do the indie gaming you mentioned on a cheaper PC so it's mostly just the AAA market that is getting pricier.

It's only on PS5 and XBOX, good luck with that!

You're welcome :) I can recommend getting GrayJay to search across platforms.

I was going to say, my PC is only 3 years old but from what I noticed is if you had an above average GPU from the past 6 years then you are absolutely still ok to play a lot of stuff from today just fine. I dont think thats really going to change much for a while either as cards have turned to faking pixels over trying to achieve higher performance gains so progress is a bit slower in that area.