2025 has felt like a speedrun toward economic ruin for anyone who wasn’t already unfathomably wealthy. You don’t need me to tell you that prices have been on the rise for months on just about everything, from basic necessities like food and utilities to electronics, with no end in sight. Even if the games industry was somehow immune to all these political and economic quakes, the fact that regular people are starting to make more difficult choices with our dollars was going to come to a head sooner or later.
Of course, games are not exempt from the realities of bipolar tariff policies and soaring inflation. We saw this months ago when the Nintendo Switch 2 preorders were delayed for weeks after President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs were announced. While the console itself was spared from a price hike (for now, at least), other hardware and games have raised their price tags, with $80 games slowly becoming the norm. Even just last week, Xbox sent out a warning that it, too, would be embracing the $80 standard for its AAA games starting this year, alongside a $100 increase on its almost 5 year old Series X hardware.
There have been warning signs about $80 games for months now, but we’re finally on the cusp of it being a reality. In order to keep this hobby as part of my life, I have no choice but to become a more discerning player.
Better late than never
Video games are an expensive hobby. Whether it was when games topped out at $60, $70, or now $80, games have always been a luxury. That base price of admission was right on the edge for me in terms of having to give each purchase deep consideration before investing. Granted, I fully admit that I am in a very privileged position where I do get access to some games through my job, but I still pay out of pocket for the majority of the games I play.
At $80, I have to stop and think a little more. I don’t know if it’s the psychology of that number or if that $10 extra dollars really is the line for me, but I am already looking ahead at some of my most anticipated upcoming games and asking myself if I’m willing to spend that much money on them. For some, the answer is yes, but there are plenty of games I think I will end up waiting on at that price. I know that is going to trigger plenty of FOMO, but I can’t afford to not be selective anymore. I have to choose my shots more carefully and decide which games are the ones that I cannot wait to play, and which are the ones I can wait a few months for to get on sale. Plus, time and time again we’re seeing that it pays to wait for games to get patches and improvements in the months after release.
Even just performing this exercise, I realize how few big AAA games that are likely to hit this $80 price are ones that I feel that level of passion for. If a game isn’t speaking to me or doing something truly special in the space, I’m not as willing to drop my cash on it for what will only amount to a decent time.
The silver lining here is that most of these special games are no longer coming from the AAA space where this pricing is most likely to appear. The indie scene has been on a warpath of delivering amazing experiences for over a decade and are only getting more and more notoriety. Last year Balatro swept dozens of awards on the biggest stages in gaming, and Blue Prince seems like it could do the same in 2025. The once withering AA space is also starting to sprout once again, with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 being the frontrunner for my favorite game of the year.
For every AAA game that is trying to cater to the entire gaming audience, there are a dozen indies and AA games with a laser focus, like Animal Well, UFO 50, Mouthwashing, and Split Fiction that end up creating a much stronger connection with you. The more breakout successes we can get with games like Blue Prince and Clair Obscur, the more confidence I hope other studios will have in exploring the range of game scope and pricing. A game’s price never has and never will correlate to its potential to move you.
This is also where subscriptions are going to show their worth. Game Pass has always been a no-brainer, but now more than ever to secure day one access to Xbox’s massive publishing catalogue on top of the selection of other games it adds every month. PlayStation Plus caters to my nostalgic side with PS1 and PS2 games alongside its own growing library. These subscriptions aren’t cheap themselves, but I can always subscribe for a month or two when I know there’s something appealing on offer.
I don’t blame companies for moving to the $80 price point. It was an inevitability even before tariffs entered the equation, with bloating team sizes, production costs, and a relatively stagnant player base that couldn’t support those projects at that price. That said, it isn’t yours or my responsibility to support an unsustainable business model. I personally don’t see this being something all, or even the majority, of games are able to get away with but it certainly isn’t going away. I just hope that companies are able to respond appropriately if/when sales decline without resorting to more layoffs and studio closures. Sadly, that is a lesson this industry just never seems to learn.
I want to support this industry but at this point I, and many people like me, are going to have to be more discerning if we want to participate in this hobby at all.