Bullfrog Productions, game featured: Populous, acquired by EA in 1995
Maxis, game featured: Sim City 2000, acquired by EA in 1997
Westwood Studios, game featured: Command and Conquer - Red Alert, acquired by EA in 1998
DreamWorks Interactive LLC, game featured: Medal of Honor, acquired by EA in 2000
Honorable mention to Mythic Entertainment/Bioware, acquired by EA in 2006
Song referenced: Runaway Train - Soul Asylum
Well I don’t pay for early access, which to me, seems like it should be cheaper because you are buying something in a less than finished state.
Also, $30 for any new title, seems high.
I know I have railed against the “AAAA” grasp at $70 price point for new games (and I will continue to do so) but making games does cost something. And, unless you’re only buying indie ‘experiences’ with runtimes in the refund range, I think $30 is reasonable for a video game. Especially when sales will knock that down by at least 50%, eventually.
It just goes to show, no matter what position you have, someone will exist that goes further.
Oh you are more than correct. I’m just slow to buy games because there is such a large backlog of amazing games out there. For example, I only played Witcher 3 last summer.
Also, I’m old. PC games used to be much cheaper in terms of real physical dollars. And they were no better or worse than what is available now. An example I can provide is quite literally, Syndicate. I got it as part of a one of those big cardboard sleeves of 6-10 cds you could buy from places like compucenter or other big box stores. I think it was on the order of like… $10-30? It was a mix of demos, freeware, and full games. I know for a fact that in the same sleeve that I got Syndicate in, I also got Populous and Realms in the same pack, either 1993 or 1994. At least one or two of the CD’s were just a bunch of demos or small free-ware games. Those were the games I remember and it had 5 other games, at least.
So in inflation adjusted dollars we’re taking $35. For all that. Practically new, when there was no such thing as digital distribution. These days everyone seems to think their “whatever” game is worth, a lot? But like, it didn’t used to be this way. What would be considered AAA games were simply cheaper (for the PC versions) in real inflation adjusted dollars, back in the day.
There was a fundamentally different spirit around games back then, especially PC games.
The Realmz demo was such a good game, I probably put hundred or thousands of hours in. And I bought a bunch of the expansions. Its mind-boggling to me how they weren’t sued into oblivion by D&D, because it was basically a clone of AD&D. The expansions, you quite literally just mailed them cash and got mailed back codes.