Sure, some very poor people had them even, but there was a strong link between owning a SNES and being wealthier, because it was by far the most expensive console to buy, to buy add-ons for, and to buy games for. It wasn’t even particularly close.

“And games were absolutely selling in a million copies by the 90s”

Can you name some of those Genesis games which you’re claiming went for $60 or $70? Because they sure didn’t go for the equivalent of that in the UK.

“As much as my initial thought was “Fuck that greedy bastard” he is not wrong.”

You are just old. I’m 45, and being real, there are vastly more good games now than there were at any earlier time in my life.

The only games which were $60+ in the later 1980s and early-mid 1990s were SNES games. And it’s no accident that it tended to be the wealthier kids who had SNESes.

What does “substantial” mean? With a physical copy, 50% straight-up went to the retailer, so your entire revenue was dependent on how much you could squeeze out of the other 50%, and very often about a third to half of that was taken up by manufacturing, shipping, and distribution costs.

The costs of those overheads are pathetically tiny compared to the costs of manufacturing and distributing physical games, let alone the costs the stores themselves had.

Which Genesis games, EXACTLY, were over $60? I can’t think of a single one.

Your entire argument is based on NES and SNES games, and ignoring that all the other consoles, PCs, Atari ST/Amiga, Commodore 64 and so on existed and indeed were the vast majority of games sold.

“That said, I assume the cost per unit would scale down based on quantity so a million cartridges probably cost $1 each.”

“amount of units sold has increased like crazy”

“This is emphatically not true.”

The thing you’re not getting re: Keanu and Idris and so on is that, that’s a pretty cheap. Keanu, at most, was paid very low millions, probably not even that. There’s no way Idris got more than hundreds of thousands - probably under 300k. He’s a huge star, but this is voice-over/capture work, which usually requires a…

“And games as a market are much larger now than they’ve ever been previously.”

This biggest difference, which this article bizarrely doesn’t even mention, and the only reason expensive games even get made is that sales have also gone up by like 100x since the 1980s, especially of games outside a few extremely “essential” ones.

76 is an MMO

It's amazing how humourless and snotty some people are. Massive "fun at parties" energy.

I’d love to see a source for the Larian exec claim, because I don’t believe any “Larian exec” (and who even is a “Larian exec”? Swen owns the entire company) has ever said “$5m would be fair” or anything similar. You got one? If not I’m sorry buddy but I’m going to consider that made up bollocks - perhaps not by you,…

“As for amazing games rarely appearing on GP, it’s rare for amazing games to appear anywhere.”