The AAA video game industry is in rough shape. The cost of development has been skyrocketing out of control for years, which means games are expected to sell in unrealistic quantities in order to retroactively justify those budgets. A.I. is sucking up all of our compute resources, which in turn drives up the cost of console and PC components. And there are of course the buzzards circling the scene, waiting to feast on the scraps of an industry that are left behind.
In this case, the chief buzzard is Gamestop, the video games retailer who has its fair share of critics, sure, but more than its fair share of fans, too. I heard the word on the internet same as everyone else, that Gamestops were selling PS5 Pros used at $500 over the cost of new consoles. I was incredulous at first. For one thing, the memo making the rounds said the price change was going into effect “tomorrow, 10/16,” and to the best of my knowledge, that has never been tomorrow, at least not yet. I was ready to dismiss it, but something was bugging me. I pulled up Gamestops near me and what do you know? Fifteen-hundred dollars for a piece of used video game hardware. At a retail store, in the year 2026.
Gamestop’s used game pricing has always been questionable, it’s true. Marking a $60 game down to $55 and asking you to thank them for it has been their M.O. for a long time. But we haven’t really seen markups of this level on hardware before. We expect it from scalpers out there in the wild, sure. They’ll flood into Gamestops, buy up consoles, then turn around and sell them at 50%, 60%, even 100% markup online. Those guys suck, and they smell bad, and nobody wants to be friends with them, and we’re not surprised when they behave that way. Despite Gamestop not necessarily being everyone’s favorite guy, this does feel surprising to me. The retail giant has become as one with the scalpers. I don’t need to tell you why that does not bode well for us, the consumers.
Gamestop’s core identity has been built around the used game market. For ages now, used games have acted as a sort of pressure valve. When the new game market is too pricey, gamers could always tighten the valve and retreat to the used game market. Sure, the aftermarket for a lot of classic JRPGs is ridiculously high and will probably always be, but for gamers looking to play contemporary titles, buying used was a way to engage with the hobby while spending far less money. Now, when we try and tighten that valve, expecting to find some deals, we’re instead getting blasted in the face with a wave of insane prices.
So why is this happening?
I think we can narrow it down to three different forces, all fairly disparate in origin but all with the same destination. The first is the ending of PlayStation disc production in 2028. Gamestop no doubt heard this as the bell tolling for their used game business. They can keep selling existing discs for a time, and lord knows there will always be more Funko Pops, but at a certain point, when we reach, say, the era of the PlayStation 7? How much demand is there going to be for a nationwide chain of game stores exclusively selling games that are multiple generations old? The second force is the cost of hardware. Never before in history have we seen mid-generation price INCREASES for hardware, new or used. But this particular genie is out of the bottle now, and I imagine it’s going to be extremely difficult to convince Gamestop or any other retailer to voluntarily put that away. And the final force is the ballooning budgets of AAA games. Let’s go over these point by point real quick.
The End of Discs
A lot of us have been wailing about the end of physical media for months now. We didn’t see it coming, or at least we didn’t see it coming SO SOON and FROM SONY. As a Sony kid myself, I’ve honestly felt betrayed, not just by their decision, but by the way they’ve gone about defending it: using cherry-picked data to try and build the case that almost no one values physical media. In fact, the reason Sony wants to leave physical behind is purely financial, and despite what they would have you believe, it has nothing to do with our preferences whatsoever. Sony stands to make significantly more money from digital games. That much is probably obvious, right? No manufacturing of discs, no middlemen, more money for Sony. But it goes beyond just a desire for more money. Sony now views every single physical sale as a lost digital sale. They may have cleared $35 on that sale of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but they didn’t make $35. They lost $15. Their attitude has shifted, and no amount of arguing with them is going to change it back. The only thing that could possibly motivate them is a massive loss of sales, and while they’ve lost my business, I’m sure there are many, many more people who couldn’t care less about physical games and are more than happy to keep buying into Sony’s ecosystem.
But hopefully you can see why the end of discs is contributing to this broader problem. We’re already seeing what happens when scarcity is introduced into part of the video game market. Without guardrails in place, guardrails like MSRP and respectable sales practices, that scarcity will drive prices up and up. Sony saves money, Sony makes MORE money, and we pick up the bill. Sony’s cost and risk decreases while ours as consumers goes through the roof.
The Memory Shortage
A.I. and data centers in general have sucked the life out of hardware manufacturing, leaving nothing but scraps behind for regular consumers. One entire computer memory company, Crucial, actually exited the consumer marketplace altogether in order to focus on A.I. This shortage drives up the cost of components, which has caused video game companies like Sony and Nintendo and Microsoft to increase the prices of their consoles. At a pure capitalist level, I think that’s actually fairly understandable. This series of events is unprecedented, and I don’t necessarily need Nintendo to take a bath on every Switch 2 unit it sells when forces beyond their control have crept in to ruin everything. I can imagine a time in the past where something like this could have happened, maybe not for A.I., since we’re imagining an alternate past. But maybe something like… really advanced dishwashers or something. Yeah, imagine really advanced dishwashers started selling like crazy, and they all ran on PlayStation 2 chips. The demand for the components goes up, so the price of new PS2s goes up as well. Where we as gamers would have been able to take refuge, though, was in the used market. We could have hopped into a Gamestop, or an Electronics Boutique, or a Babbage’s, or a Funcoland, and purchased a used PlayStation 2 if we needed to. It would have likely set us back maybe $120. Quite a bit less than the MSRP, and even more so compared to the new, dishwasher-jacked price.
But maybe I’m being too generous to this imaginary past. Maybe if retailers at the time had experienced a mid-generation price hike due to a component shortage, they would have seen fit to raise the prices on used consoles, as well. Even so, this is a problem for us. We have fewer options, or at least fewer options within a reasonable budget. Gamestop used to be that place you could go to avoid paying scalper prices. Now Gamestop is the scalper.
The Grand Theft Auto VI of It All
I’m sure many of you have already identified what is my actual point with this third force. Grand Theft Auto VI has been in development for seemingly an eternity. If you want to have your mind blown, consider that Grand Theft Auto V was originally released on the PlayStation 3, and we are fast approaching the dawn of the PlayStation 6. The amount of time and effort and money that have been poured into this game are astronomical. Too much, you might even say? Pundits have no doubt that GTA VI will go on to be the best-selling game of all time and it will all have been worth it, but I don’t know. Rockstar is a strong developer, but they’re part of the problem in that they’re helping to set a nasty precedent. Other companies, even some who should know better, will see the returns that Rockstar pulls in from GTA VI and they’ll be further buoyed in their belief that investing the GDP of a small country in a single video game is the way to go. And if that game can incorporate live service elements? They’ll basically have conquered the world.
Production costs of games go up, sales expectations for games follow. Price increases are a given. This is the world we’re moving toward.
What These All Have in Common
Each one of these forces is driving at the same thing, which is to give YOU fewer choices while loading you down with more cost and greater risk. Sony wants to take away the disc option, which means no more bargain bin shopping, no more used game purchases, no more trading or sharing with friends. Now, if you want a PlayStation game, you’ll have to pay $80 and have very little recourse available to you if you don’t care for it. You can’t resell it, you can’t give it away. It’s stuck there in the digital graveyard that is your game library forever. Hardware manufacturers and retailers are taking away your purchasing opportunities for new consoles, and even used consoles are being priced out of most people’s budgets. Gamestop makes more money in the short term, possibly at the expense of the console business altogether, and we either pay THEIR inflated prices, or we go online and pay some SCALPER’S inflated price. Not a lot of good options there. And publishers are making their bad budgeting decisions into your problem, by investing so much money into a small handful of games that, upon their release, utterly destroy the marketplace. Grand Theft Auto VI will probably be enjoyed by a lot of people, but at the cost of massive price inflation on consoles and even games going forward. We quickly went from $60, to $70, to $80. To get the full version of GTA VI with no downsides, you’ll need to spend $100. Where does it stop?
Yeah, but Come On…
Okay, okay. Some of you are thinking, it is NOT going to be as bad as all that. After all, there are plenty of people out there who are totally fine with digital-only gaming, right? If the market doesn’t fit me anymore, then I can take a hike. All the digital gamers can continue having a blast. Sure. And heck, it’s not like anybody NEEDS a PS5 Pro to play GTA VI. It’ll run just fine on a base PS5. And if Gamestop wants to grab that bag while they can, hey, the market allowed for it. The market is king.
I guess so. But there are consequences for all of this, and even if I were to suddenly leave the games industry, those who remain would have to suffer them.
What Comes Next?
Let’s prognosticate a bit.
The PlayStation 6 comes out, with a base 1TB model priced at $1199.99. That’s a toe-curlingly high price for a console, but it’s the new A.I.-powered world, and this console is LOADED. The most powerful processor ever found in a home console. Uprezzing for all your PS5 games. It’s a monster.
But all its games are digital, right? These monstrous games are gonna fill up that 1TB SSD pretty fast. But okay, no big deal, I’ll just buy a new drive. Except new drives are still selling for ridiculously inflated prices. A.I. is everywhere, and maybe I even recently lost my job due to A.I. taking over the tasks I used to do. So A.I. took my job, and it’s priced me out of a new hard drive.
Well, whatever. I can delete games off my SSD when I’m done with them. Thanks to my PlayStation digital library, I can always redownload them! I mean, unless and until my account is hacked and Sony shuts it down, offering me no recourse to get back the games I spent real American money on.
How likely is that, though? Maybe not super likely. So I’m not gonna worry about it. There are a bunch of new games out that I’d love to play, but I think I’m gonna wait for a sale. And wait. And wait. Oh, Sony isn’t lowering the prices? Why wouldn’t they want to put some games on sale? Don’t they want people to buy them? Well, I guess they DO, but they want me to spend MORE. Eventually, the price on a new game DOES go down a bit, so I bite the bullet and grab it. But I find out my buddy got it for $15 less than me, because Sony is using variable pricing. An A.I. is analyzing my behavior and it told Sony what it figured the maximum amount of money I would spend on this game. My friend’s behavior suggested the price needed to be lower, so he got a lower price. Lucky him, I guess! But I still love Sony, I love my digital present.
The Industry Is Ill
$1,499.99 for a used, contemporary console is an indicator of an industry in steep decline. It might not be too late to change course, but a LOT of things will need to happen in very quick succession: Sony will need to reverse course on its digital-only decision and replace the bigwigs at the top who sought to bring about that future; A.I. will need to be regulated to the point that hardware supply is freed up and prices come back down; and game companies will need to focus more creative effort on making games that don’t need to sell one billion copies to be profitable.
Am I optimistic that all will happen in time to save the industry as we’ve known it? Maybe not. But I don’t think that means it’s not worth trying.