Are Video Games Fairly Priced?
Grand Theft Auto 6 is expected to release in November 2026, and will be the fastest selling piece of media ever. There are fears about the price being something we've never seen before, so it begs the question if what we have is fair now and what might it look like in the future?
Do you remember movie and video game rental stores? You could go in, pay a super cheap amount for a game you couldn’t afford as a kid, and have fun for a weekend or week, return it, and do the same thing again with a different game. We had one really close by when I was a kid that charged $5 for a week or $10 for two weeks, $12 if it was a new game, and for any possible reason at all you were allowed to return it early and pick up a new game within that time and play that one for the remaining time. The best part was if you consecutively rented the same game you’d get a discount on both the rental or the purchase. They were the best.
Now obviously there’s a point to all of that. As a kid, I didn’t realize how renting was more of an economical way to get around my parents having to spend $60CAD on a game I might not ever fully complete. To my father, this made more sense as I was and always will be an avid gamer. In the end he continued to make the right decision, as culturally he knew what I liked, but with video games, he could never pick out the right games for me. I love WALL-E, so the natural conclusion for my dad was to buy me the WALL-E PS2 game for Christmas one year, and I can wholeheartedly tell you I never completed that game. The value proposition just never made sense, and honestly, it kind of still doesn’t.
With the rising costs of everything, video games, unfortunately, weren’t spared from this price increase. The benchmark price for games for decades was $60, regardless of inflation. In 2020, video game prices in the general market took the leap to $70USD, and now in 2026, major companies like EA, Sony, and Nintendo actively attempt to sell their games for $80USD. Now for most games today, the $70 price tag is not an unreasonable ask. Tears of the Kingdom, God of War Ragnarok, and most recently, Forza Horizon 6, clearly have a level of quality and care put into each game where you can see the time and financial investments made to push that price tag up. However, not all games are created equal, and we experience games with this price tag that feel unjustifiable in every way, yet are still set because it’s just the new normal, and sadly, some people will still pay that price. Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 immediately comes to mind as the biggest rug pull for fans, along with a price tag that will never be justified given its sales model. I’d like to dedicate an entire section to the comparison of these games, as this is will be a more biased post more than others, so I’ll just say that the pendulum swings both ways too, where we receive games that are cheaper than what we SHOULD be paying for them given the level of quality. You’ll know what game I’m talking about when you get there.