Recently I was playing Metal Gear Solid 4 on my Playstation 3 and while marveling at the incredible feat that is Hideo Kojima's latest god child I remembered something Id read a while back when contemplating whether or not to buy the game. I remember reading that MGS 4 almost completely uses up the available memory on the allocated blu ray disc. For those of you that don't know, a blu ray disc has 50 gigabytes of memory on it. Now considering that the average movie is about 700 Megabytes to 1 gigabyte, do the math and you begin to realize what a technological marvel The Blu-Ray Disc association have made.

A blu ray disc can cost anywhere between 35 to 50 dollars. That is a single, blank Blu ray disc, with no imprinted data present. Now look back to what video games used to be put on. Back in the PS2/Xbox generation. Regular DVD's with 2 to 4 gigabytes of memory. You could buy a hundred of them for say 40 or 50 dollars. This works out to roughly 2 or 3 dollars a DVD for all of you too lazy to do a sum. Dual layered DVD's of course had about 8 gigabytes of memory but that is irrelevant at this point.

Compare these prices. 50 dollars for a Blu-Ray Disc and 2 or 3 for a DVD. I know what you're thinking. Discs with more memory are necessary to play modern day games. Consoles gradually get more powerful and more able to handle larger games as technology becomes more advanced. As a result, the discs the games are printed on become larger to facilitate the games being put on them. Okay fair enough but think about this for a second. When you buy a game you're paying for two things. The game data itself and disc it was printed on. Dig deeper into the sandpit of technology and look a few decades into the future. Who's to say that games won't be printed on discs with the equivalent memory of a modern day hard drive? Now think how much one of these would cost? Can you imagine how expensive a 400 gigabyte game would be? Not only that but imagine the combined cost of a game as well as the beast of a machine capable of playing such a game?

Considering this I eventually came to a hypothetical conclusion that gaming will, one day, be that expensive that at some point or another it may cease to exist. Consoles and Discs will become that advanced that average people and even upper class people will no longer be able to afford them. This is just a prediction. An opinion of someone with a little too much time on their hands. I'm not saying it will necessarily happen. Just that it's a possibility. Maybe developers will find a way to make games and consoles better at a lower cost. Perhaps games will revert to a more primitive, affordable form. I dont know. This is just my opinion. I'm not an economist so you will have to forgive me if my argument seems flawed. Please read and leave a comment giving your thoughts.

-Excessum ado

But as technology increases, cheaper ways to make the discs become available. Also, if gaming became unaffordable, the companies would lose out. Its still about making money, and if no-one can buy it, you dont make money.

excessum ado:
For those of you that don't know, a blu ray disc has 50 gigabytes of memory on it. Now considering that the average movie is about 700 Megabytes to 1 gigabyte, do the math and you begin to realize what a technological marvel The Blu-Ray Disc association have made.

The average HD movie is closer to 18-20GB.

A blu ray disc can cost anywhere between 35 to 50 dollars. That is a single, blank Blu ray disc, with no imprinted data present. Now look back to what video games used to be put on, back in the PS2/Xbox generation. Regular DVD's with 2 to 4 gigabytes of memory. You could buy a hundred of them for say 40 or 50 dollars. This works out to roughly 2 or 3 dollars a DVD for all of you too lazy to do a sum. Dual layered DVD's of course had about 8 gigabytes of memory but that is irrelevant at this point.

A single blank writable blu-ray disc costs about that. When manufactured in the kind of batch runs that are common for games and movies, the cost amortises out to about $2 per disc. (Still expensive compared to DVD, at $0.45 a disc, but not prohibitive either)

The real cost of high definition gaming is that the amount of detail present in the environments multiplies the amount of time taken to create those environments several times over. It's man hours of artist, animator, and programmer time which is the big budgetary cost in modern games, not physical media. Metal Gear Solid 4 might fill a BD disc, but a lot of what does it is lossless audio compression and high bitrate high definition movies.

That's also why games haven't gotten any significantly bigger or longer since the introduction of CDs, because as the graphical capacity of the target platforms expands, the time taken to create the same amount of stuff at the higher detail now expected (and the amount of space that takes on storage media) expands in line with it.

Basically, why would games companies price-out their target audience? That's the business equivalent of slitting your own throat.

GloatingSwine:

The average HD movie is closer to 18-20GB.

.

I wasnt talking about high Definition movies.

excessum ado:

GloatingSwine:

The average HD movie is closer to 18-20GB.

.

I wasnt talking about high Definition movies.

Then you were making a fallacious comparison. If you're going to talk about games on HD media, the apt comparison is films on equivalent media.

I was just trying to emphasize the advancements that have been made. Regardless your right about the average Hd movie size.

Gaming is already unaffordable, what are you talking about? ._.

Ha Ha not quite.

Well, it's getting there, that's for sure. But just like everyone said, as the technology goes forward, it becomes cheaper and easier to put more onto a small disc.

meatloaf231:
Well, it's getting there, that's for sure. But just like everyone said, as the technology goes forward, it becomes cheaper and easier to put more onto a small disc.

Along with this it is becoming easier to make games as technology is becoming more advanced. Pc gaming is the only thing I can see possibly getting too expensive. I hope not though as I'm pro Pc.
Consoles however are just getting started in my opinion. I'd buy one if mouse support became standard.

Shadow Tyrant:
Gaming is already unaffordable, what are you talking about? ._.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

I anticipate that disc based media is on the way out. I think that vidjamagames will eventually be back to carts. Yeah, I said it: CARTS. Flash technology is advancing quickly. I think it will soon completly replace disc based storage. It's already starting to replace hard drives in PCs. The technology is still pretty expensive at this point, but it will advance enough to allow it to be dirt cheap very soon. I think that if not next gen, then the gen after that may very well use carts at that point. (If they can get past the stigma of using carts again) They are smaller for one AND would allow for non hard drive saved patching through the console. Also, they are recyclable. They can store other information. Who knows.. maybe even a 'core' trade in like when you trade in an alternator for your car.

Just my opinion..

I'm sorry, but I can't agree with you on this. I'm not an economist either, but I believe that your argument can be countered by simple logic.

As you point out, new technology is always being developed & released, making previous versions obsolete. But prices for these items will always remain relative, or else no-one would ever buy them - Not exactly a good business model for those in the video game industry.

New technology that has only just been released will always be more expensive than tech that has been kicking around for years. That's because it's the best available at that time, superior to all else on the market, thus justifying the bigger price tag. However, as time marches on, new tech is developed & older models are made redundant. No-one could plausibly argue that a brand-new PS2 is worth as much as a brand-new PS3, could they?

Let's roll with the Playstation brand as an example here. When I bought my PS2 back in 2001, it cost me £400. I didn't begrudge paying that, it's a great console that is still with me, & that I still use. Fast-forward to 2006. I'm buying my nice, new shiny Xbox 360. How much did it cost me? £300. Even today, it's easy to find a new 360 for cheaper than that, the basic PS3 costs the same, & the Wii is almost half that price.

You also speak about games coming on discs that have significantly more memory than their predecessors. That's true, but their prices haven't increased to the same extent. In fact, prices haven't really changed for games at all. Back in 1992, I remember pestering my poor old dad for Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES, the 'must have' game at the time. It cost £40 at the time, & I was very grateful to my dear old man for buying it for me. Fast-forward again, this time to 2008. The last new game I bought was GTA 4, & how much was it? £40. So your point about more memory = more cost doesn't really hold. Of course an 8 gigabyte dual-layered DVD is worth more than a 3 megabit RAM cartridge, but at their respective times of release, they were both the most cutting-edge technology commercially available.

My hypothetical conclusion is that gaming will continue to go on for quite some time, & that it will be just as affordable as it is now.

tooktook:

meatloaf231:
Well, it's getting there, that's for sure. But just like everyone said, as the technology goes forward, it becomes cheaper and easier to put more onto a small disc.

Along with this it is becoming easier to make games as technology is becoming more advanced. Pc gaming is the only thing I can see possibly getting too expensive. I hope not though as I'm pro Pc.
Consoles however are just getting started in my opinion. I'd buy one if mouse support became standard.

If anything i find PC hardware was been pretty cheap recently and the games have always been cheaper than the console ones.

Well, computer hardware has this trend of starting off as costing you an arm and a leg, and then a year or so later you can afford 3 of them with two weeks pay since some new models came out - this also applies to consoles since they use the same hardware.

Gaming is just "it's expensive now but it won't be later, do you want it now or later?"

tamla:
Basically, why would games companies price-out their target audience? That's the business equivalent of slitting your own throat.

QFT

Simple solution. Downloading games will be the future for the market.

DVD's were just as expensive as Blu Ray when they were introduced.

As were VHS.

Think about it.

Its less than a year or so. The prices drop in months, even weeks. Nvidia recently slashed nearly $100 off the new 280 GTX series cards to rival the new Radeon HD 4870, the card has only recently came out.

Codgo:
Its less than a year or so. The prices drop in months, even weeks. Nvidia recently slashed nearly $100 off the new 280 GTX series cards to rival the new Radeon HD 4870, the card has only recently came out.

That and the fact that everyone and their mother was saying the card was an underperformer...

Gaming is already unaffordable.
$600 consoles.
$90 games.
$15 per month paying for online MMOs.
$50 per month of internet.
$50 controllers.
$60 memory cards.
$200 accessories.

Gaming's always been like this. At least the first two points have been. It's already to the point where all the other stuff is true too. I think my biggest turnoff from the Gamecube was how expensive its memory cards were.

Theo Samaritan:

Codgo:
Its less than a year or so. The prices drop in months, even weeks. Nvidia recently slashed nearly $100 off the new 280 GTX series cards to rival the new Radeon HD 4870, the card has only recently came out.

That and the fact that everyone and their mother was saying the card was an underperformer...

Yeah, the new Ati cards really screwed Nvidia price and performance wise.

Are we all not forgetting that there are plenty out there buying the cheapo Wii and DS and not complaining the lack of 50gigabite games?

I think that you are a little off base.. and this issue is as old as sand. All technology begins as enormously expensive and then becomes insanely cheap, we all remember the CEO of IBM famously announcing that the world-wide market for computers will max out at less than ten machines because of their cost. Blu-ray discs will get MUCH cheaper. Not that we will be using for much longer because as bandwidth grows almost all media will be downloaded and rarely sold on discs of any kind.

As far as the cost of consoles, just as an example, here are the consoles released by Nintendo with their inflation adjusted and actual prices on release-

NES - $364 (Original price in 1985, $200)
SNES - $293 (Original price $200)
N64 - $254 (Original price $200)
GC - $225 (Original price $200)

Notice a trend?

Daemon888:

NES - $364 (Original price in 1985, $200)
SNES - $293 (Original price $200)
N64 - $254 (Original price $200)
GC - $225 (Original price $200)

Notice a trend?

Nintendo got crappier?

haha

at least it quantifies nostalgia

Codgo:
Its less than a year or so. The prices drop in months, even weeks. Nvidia recently slashed nearly $100 off the new 280 GTX series cards to rival the new Radeon HD 4870, the card has only recently came out.

Yeah computer hardware is much more forgiving, I'm seeing so many price drops I just love it - new model comes out, people test it, it gets a little marketing, and then 150 dollars get slashed off the price tag. Now if only intel could put a price drop on some of their processors >_>

tamla:
Basically, why would games companies price-out their target audience? That's the business equivalent of slitting your own throat.

This dude already got it. The prediction is a silly one, since it forgets that little of the end price actually goes towards production costs. The majority of it is for paying people. And even the greediest bastard ever to walk the Earth would lower his prices before people stopped buying his goods. Less profit>company going bankrupt.

as an answer to the primary question.

in america, yes, if the dollar keeps dropping like an obese afterbirth

Weren't DVDs also incredibly expensive to begin with, and became cheaper as they got more commonplace?

ElArabDeMagnifico:

Codgo:
Its less than a year or so. The prices drop in months, even weeks. Nvidia recently slashed nearly $100 off the new 280 GTX series cards to rival the new Radeon HD 4870, the card has only recently came out.

Yeah computer hardware is much more forgiving, I'm seeing so many price drops I just love it - new model comes out, people test it, it gets a little marketing, and then 150 dollars get slashed off the price tag. Now if only intel could put a price drop on some of their processors >_>

Intel's top chips are VERY overpriced but they do have some very nice mid range stuff. The Q6600 has been one of the best chips in years and you can easily overclock it past the 3ghz (QX6850)mark on air.

i think that one day just because of this problem all games might just be downloaded onto a system with massive amounts of storage space

tamla:
Basically, why would games companies price-out their target audience? That's the business equivalent of slitting your own throat.

Right, this answers the OP's question.

stompy:

tamla:
Basically, why would games companies price-out their target audience? That's the business equivalent of slitting your own throat.

Right, this answers the OP's question.

Yeah. Wash hands, dry on pants, get out.

TMAN10112:
i think that one day just because of this problem all games might just be downloaded onto a system with massive amounts of storage space

Download 50gb? I would rather not...( I know most likely it will be less and the data will be compressed but still at that time it will probably amount to something like this because games with be better then real life it seems in years to come.)