Rising Video Game Prices?

This is hopefully a first post in a mini-series about the current state of game development in 2026. This is not defending the rising cost of video games, just some history I find it surprisingly unknown when conversations come up to help educate on this conversation.

My first experience with Video Games was at my grandparent's house. Back in the early-mid 80's the systems were so expensive I didn't know anyone that owned one in my circle of friends. It was a luxury item sold to those with money. It wasn't until LATE in the Atari 2600's life span that the same grandparents bought us one for Christmas after playing it at their house for years. I didn't know anyone else with one, but it was a hit to play with friends well past it's relevance in the industry.

1983 Games Cost ~ $98

This add is from circa 1983, well after the Atari 2600/VCS launch (1977 at: ~$200), and the 5200 was already out. I used this image because there are multiple systems and game prices. The $29.99 games adjusted for inflation in 2026 would be around $98 today and they peak at $37.

1996 Games Cost ~$145

My first system was the original Game Boy and I saved up and bought a SNES on a Black Friday door buster sale years into it's life cycle. I had a friend with an NES, another with a Genesis, but most still didn't own a system. It was a big deal when one of my friends has a sleepover weekends where they rented a SNES and Street Fighter II and we played it most of the 3 day weekend. It was still expensive enough families chose one system and you'd pull all your birthday/Christmas money to buy one game and sometimes be able to scrape up enough to pull something out of a bargain been a couple other times a year at best. I'd get 3-4 games a year, play the ()*$# out of them, and towards the end when they were more common swap games with friends for variety. Part of the choice of game purchase was something you couldn't swap with someone in your circle of friends. Blockbuster was a popular choice to rent a game over the weekend if I had $5 saved up.

Gaming became very popular again with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES, released in 1985 priced ~$200) and continued growing up through today. This add from circa 1996 and shows multiple games at $69.99 adjusted for inflation (2.45%) in 2026 that's about $145 per game.

2006 Game Cost ~ $96

I've own every PlayStation and this is when games started being affordable to the general public in my opinion. I was still selective with my game choices and rented many games. I worked at Blockbuster Video when the PlayStation 2 came out and would stay well after out midnight closing to play the rental system until 2-3am trying out new titles before I could afford the PlayStation 2. 

This add is from 2006 where games still sold for $59.99 adjusted for inflation that's $95-97 in 2026. I'm going to stop here as I feel like 2006 to now is better understood and documented.

Summery:

In summery games never really adjusted for inflation. Their prices have always been around the $60 mark for new releases. If the games did adjust for inflation like groceries or almost anything else in the world we would easily be paying $150 for just a game. You can see this with console prices that started around $200, but the PlayStation 5 is selling now for $549 (released 2020 at $400).

So should games cost $150 now, and why don't they?

The teams that create these games have also grown from a dozen people total to thousands. Salaries are higher now, but not adjusted for inflation. Developers don't make the money anymore. I've worked with people that have been in the industry since the 90's or earlier who have a Ferrari parked at their parent's house they don't use, another who worked nearly every waking hour because he got paid for overtime and built his wealth by working hard while companies still shared the profits with the people creating the games, another owns one of the world's biggest Yachts and retired traveling the world. These are only examples I personally worked with, bigger stories are out there and easy to find. Developers used to be paid well for their successful work, don't get me wrong they're still paid well, but the majority of the money doesn't trickle down like it used to.

So how does the industry beat inflation? The short answer is they make enough sales to cover it. Let's look at the top 5 Atari 2600 game sales:

• 8 million - Pac-Man
• 6 million - Space Invaders
• 4 million - Donkey Kong
• 4 million - Pitfall
• 3.8 million - Asteroids

Let's compare that to the top 5 selling current games (mostly cross-platform, but Nintendo?!?):

• 350 million - Minecraft
• 220 million - Grand Theft Auto V
• 82.9 million - Wii Sports
• 79 million - Red Dead Redemption 2
• 78 million - Mario Kart 8 / Deluxe

So the highest selling "modern" game has 4,275% more sales than on the Atari 2600. (Minecraft, released, 2011, $29.99, adjusted for inflation $44 in 2026).

I do think the main thing game pricing got right even into the early 2000s is that everything wasn't at the max price point, games had a better understanding of where they fit in the pricing system than they do now, indie are the only place that still applies today.

Speaking of indies are you interested in why indie games feel more like these classic games a lot of us still love in 2026 watch for another post soon trying to tackle that idea.