The developers of Call of Duty have just announced the latest release has already made $1 Billion in sale.

This is an impressive sounding figure. But the game has been released cross platform on PC, PS4/5 and Xbox S/X. So they are fulling in first day same from 3 platforms.

And the price of games has increased a lot. COD:MWII is £70, with the vault edition being £100. And the more dedicated COD games will all being buying thy most expensive version.

If you only took the £70 version the $1 Billion in sales would equal to 12.5 million sales. At £100 it would be 8.7 million. So as a rough average lets say 10 million sales.

That sounds impressive for a first week release figure. But spread over 3 platforms, let's say about 3.5 million sales per platform is now more of an avwrage first week sales figure for a AAA high profile release.

Anyway, my point is, are games now too expensive? Do you ever buy games at these prices? Or are you normally happy to wait for them to drop in price or appear in sales?

I have preordered a few games at quite high prices, but it's rare. Gran Turismo 7 is the only PS5 games I've preordered and paid full price for to date. And that was because if been waiting so many years for a new version.

Other than that I'm happy to wait for sales or for them to appear in the PS Plus library.

And it's very rare O ever but a game full price on PC. Most higher profile games appear within 6 months to a year on Humble Bundle, or heavily discounted on Steam.

PC games to a larger extent have avoided the big price increases compared to consoles. Maybe because the hardware manufacturers claw back loses on the hardware from software sales? Only a few PC games are released at the same prices, such as EA games.

It is great that we are still seeing quite a few lower profile games launched at far lower prices through. Many even £15. Including remakes or remastered from companies such as Square. That can help a lot with their sales as many will take a chance at those prices.

Final thought. We do have it good in gaming really. Compare any other market and compare the prices of items from 1990 with today and inflaction over that time has seen big changes in price. Gaming, music and films really haven't gone up with inflation veey much at all. We were paying £25 for a new PC or Amiga games in 1997, and £45-50 for a new console release even on the SNES. So games haven't really increased in price until very recently by much at all.

But £70 still seems a lot.
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