> This was a huge barrier of entry for a lot of people who now have the ability to afford it and can make a living using it. Today photoshop is $9.99 per month
It wasn’t though. People learned photoshop on a pirated copy and used that to make art that Adobe didn’t care about. Companies are the ones who paid the $1000/seat license for their professional designers.
In your videogame example, there was no change in the concept of ownership between Nintendo 64 games and Playstation 5 games. If you have the physical media and the console, you can play the game.
Although Nintendo 64 tried to push the envelope in what consumers would pay, the price of video games on the mainstream consoles has stayed in the $50-$75 since at least 1985.
I don’t have a PS5 but my Xbox (my first one ever) is an absolute nightmare to play, even if I have the physical media. Still demands an internet connection. Still demands updates before I play. Typically I would expect to wait 2+ hours before I’m allowed to play a game I have on physical media. Often the estimated time is so long I just give up and don’t play. I let it update and then forget about it. Come back a week later and it says my system is out of date and needs an update before I play.
Most consoles and computers today don't even have a way to insert discs. You have to download the game which means you can't share or sell the game when you're done. That's why the price is lower. You license the software rather than own a copy. Also, $75 in 1985 is the equivalent of $224 today so even though the number has stayed the same the real cost is much lower now.
And how many games do people have to subscribe to PSN to use? How many people have to pay for internet to use their game? How many games have microtransactions or DLC? How about a season pass? How about all of the editions they have? What's the cost of a controller? Does a console come with one or two? How many times do you have to buy a game because backward compatibility doesn't exist?
I'm not a big gamer and I realize some (maybe most) of these are not required, but let's not act like the gaming industry is surviving off the base price of a game like in the 90s.
> I think the reality is most people are ok with not owning things.
> By removing ownership from the product offering the seller can reduce the price.
The price of ownership is greater than the price of licensing, as it comes with additional rights and privileges than licensing.
If a product or good is only offered and priced without ownership, how can you say that people "are ok with" not utilizing an option that's not provided to them? They cannot purchase ownership, by what means could they experience the difference?
The products you use as examples were wildly successful under an ownership paradigm, what says that Photoshop or N64 games would have been somehow better if they were licensed goods?
I agree "The price of ownership is greater than the price of licensing, as it comes with additional rights and privileges than licensing." That's why it was more expensive to purchase a product with ownership rights.
The reason I say people are ok with it is because the companies who didn't switch to a licensing model and kept their old prices either are no longer around or had to switch to a licensing model in order to stay competitive. If people were ok paying higher prices for the benefit of ownership then that's what we would see in the market today.
> I think the reality is most people are ok with not owning things. Otherwise, they wouldn't agree to licensing software from companies.
This is such a huge hand-waving blanket statement that I apologize in advance for my response.
The CAD shop I worked at was doing fine on R14 for YEARS and specialized apps/etc with hardware dongles until everyone got onto the 'SaaS' or 'Subscription' mode. And frankly, the "choice" our shop had more than once was 'our customer signed a deal to use this so we have to buy it'. What was worse was they did that twice in one year, and the second product cost as much per seat/year as the first product cost FOR OUR WHOLE TEAM per year.
> Another example is video games. The average Nintendo 64 game used to be $75.99 in 1997 which is $150 in today's dollars. Today the average PS5 game price is $70. That's half the price.
You're comparing apples to oranges there. Heck, even back then, a -huge- benefit of the PS and Saturn was that production costs for discs were -cheap-. Something like 3$ including case and sleeve. Compare to N64 carts which as far as I can understand would cost somewhere between 15-30$ depending on size of ROM. Neither of those factor in actual 'distribution' costs (i.e. shipping to retailer) but I know which format was lighter/smaller... Also PS1 'greatest hits' were the closest we had to steam sales at the time.
> By removing ownership from the product offering the seller can reduce the price.
Says every SaaS that gives a nice intro contract that will even give a nice first contract, knowing that by renewal the buyer will be more at their mercy with too much pain involved to 'get away' from ever-increasing prices... Low-Code tools are really good at this strategy lol.
The CPI was already built into the discussion (the original discussion was inflation--CPI adjusted--prices, and this branch was about a comment that indicated that wages had not kept price with inflation) and the housing price thing just indicates that buying a house has gotten more expensive even adjusting for inflation, which is true but way afield of the discussion of game prices.
few companies actually offer products that you can just pay for. Its pretty rare and usually extremely celebrated when it happens. When it comes to things like housing and cars, very few people can buy a home and have to rent or take out gigantic loans. I wouldn't read this as "people are okay with not owning things" so much as "what choice is there?" and thats at the root of the problem. Monopolies and collusion have destroyed choice and competition which is supposedly the root of capitalism and neo-liberalism.
