Ashtear ,
@Ashtear@lemm.ee avatar

In the US, since the conversation began with an American retailer? No. The larger trend in this reference window--since the early 90's--is flat wage growth versus inflation (productivity has increased massively, but the implications of that are a whole other conversation). There was a recent, brief period of inflation outpacing wages as a result of the pandemic, but that trend has also since reversed to a small degree. New fast food hires weren't making $15 an hour in 1992. There's been wage growth, just closely in-line with inflation over the long term. It's an apples-to-apples comparison here, unusually so.

Video games are dramatically less expensive now to purchase than they were in the fourth gen. It's easy to see why, too; the marginal cost of a cartridge-based game was substantial, owing to a relatively complex manufacturing process. That marginal cost dropped substantially with disc media (with a corresponding drop in game prices at retail), and then again to near zero with digital distribution.

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