Xbox raised prices today. On literally everything. I think PlayStation did too. And the PC space has been getting hella ‘spensive for a long time now. I’ve been talking recently about what I am going to do about these rising prices, if anything. I’ve also been talking about the impact that playing Clair Obcur: Expedition 33 has been having on me. That latter one has had me thinking, as I wrote the other day, about buying consoles again and focusing on single-player, story-driven games. That would kill two birds with one stone. It’d split my gaming time up onto things less expensive than $2000 GPUs and let me get back into playing games from start to finish like I used to, and fewer GAAS games.
That was until The Great Price Hikes of 2025 went off today, having been sparked by Nintendo being so bold as to go first. Now I am encouraged to hover and hold position for a bit. Because I might just be escaping into a space that is just as prone to the risk of spiraling higher prices right alongside PC GPUs.
And what of those people who feel like gaming is a commodity experience that everyone should have access to? That these prices should not be getting so high that they become a luxury product and only the privileged and rich have access to them?
Who’s gonna tell ’em?
We should be careful of how we use the term “rich”. When I think of that being a household income barrier to participation in gaming, I am thinking of households in the single digits of the upper income of America. We like to still think of those people as “middle class” because the gap between a $300k household and billionaires is MUCH greater than is perceived when we talk percentages. Because the top 6 – 7% can’t be THAT far away from the 1%’ers, right?
Prices are getting high. But we are not yet at crisis levels and I am not sure we will get there in my lifetime. Is it getting so that some people who have not historically had to make choices now have to? Sure.
One of my pushbacks about a lot of the console war talking points about prices was that they were centered around consumers who could only afford one console, and so they had to make choices. I didn’t have to make choices.
But I gorram sure do now. That’s also because I have creeping life responsibilities and new expenses encroaching on what was once a decidedly bachelor-centric lifestyle. And because in a time when prices held steady for a bit, I grew comfortable with not having to wait six months after launch to get the new cutting edge silicon. But I remember now that I used to. And I suspect a lot of us gamers used to make choices, and have grown comfortable during years when the industry held prices and we were living high on the hog. I am not sure we should be panicking (or letting clout-chasing influencers incite us to panic) just yet. We might just have to go back to a time when we were not gaming on every platform and when we were not buying every game day one. And make choices. Like adults. Sorry.
Rounding Off Infinity 