See, here's the thing. With incomes remaining low and everything else raising in price, people have to make tough choices about what they'll buy... and they're not buying the upscale model of a game system when the budget priced model plays just as many games, and looks nearly as nice. Hell, they can barely afford groceries. And you think it's just fine and dandy to raise the price of a five year old system that nobody wants. It's withered technology at this point! The price is supposed to go down with time. Nobody's going to pay a premium for obsolete technology, and they sure as fuck aren't going to pay eighty dollars for a video game. A game, one must point out, that comes with the barest essentials and absolutely none of the downloadable content, because that's sold separately. (Likely for the same extortionate prices.)
So I ask you, Microsoft and the video game industry in general, what the hell are you doing? Do you want another video game crash? Because this is how you get another video game crash. I wasn't paying sixty dollars for video games before, and I won't pay eighty dollars for video games now. Not when Steam's own games sell for a fraction of that price, and Epic is just giving them away. Sure, they might have been on the shelves for a couple years, but that doesn't make them any less playable.
You know what else is cheaper than eighty dollar video games? Indie games. I just bought Dave the Diver for ten bucks at Wal-Mart, and Balatro for fifteen dollars on the Switch eShop, and Balatro in particular is more entertaining than any five bloated "triple A" games put together. You know what else is cheaper than eighty dollar video games? Buying a dozen games in a Humble Bundle, or a whole shit-ton of games from Itch.IO, when they're raising money for the latest global crisis. There are so many global crises at the moment that you're never going to run out of sales! There's one going on right now to keep Benjamin Netanyahu from throwing Palestinians into a chipper-shredder!
You know what else is cheaper than eighty dollar video games? Retro games, which are legion fifty years after the invention of home game consoles. You can buy them in collections for a small fraction of the retail of a big-budget release, or just buy the actual games from a pawn shop or a Goodwill or a yard sale. You know what else is cheaper than eighty dollar video games? Making your own using the wealth of development tools available on the internet. CVBasic in particular costs nothing and supports over a dozen systems, including the goddamned Master System. I didn't make much money from the half-dozen versions of Whack 'Em Smack 'Em Byrons I made with CVBasic, but I sure as hell didn't pay eighty dollars for the opportunity.
I don't give a damn about inflation. I don't care about the tariffs, because corporate America made them happen by installing Donald Trump as president. Put bluntly, we don't have the money. You made sure we don't have the money by raising the prices of everything while keeping wages at the poverty level! We not only don't have the money, but we wouldn't give you the money if we had it, because we have more important expenses, and countless other options to amuse ourselves without selling a vital organ for it.
Know this, Microsoft. If you crater the video game industry with eighty dollar games, it's no skin off my back. That software will instantly drop to clearance prices at stores, and the miserable sons of bitches who sucked the fun out of this hobby with their greed will be flushed out of it like so many turds. It's happened before! It's why there's no Data Age, no Mythicon, and no Apollo Games. A video game crash on the scale of 1983's "Atari shock" would do this industry a world of good. If you think it can't happen now, just keep pressing your luck. You'll see just how wrong you were... and if we're really lucky, Microsoft itself will become a bitter memory. I'm overdue for switching to Linux anyway.
