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A 2 hour movie is about $9... here, hear and hair me out ;)

nbkicker

Member
Considering prices havnt really changed in the 30 yrs ive been gaming, i dont see the problem paying £70-80 for a game if u like it, 30 yrs ago i was £100-150 a week and a game could be between £40-£60, a third of my weekly wage, now im on £850+ a week and game prices are still same, i see it as i could go out round town with mates drinking and spend the price of two games or more for one night, yet a game you like could give you 50-200+ hrs of entertainment
 
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Jurry132

Neo Member
Games have barely increased in price over the years but their scope and development cost have increased tenfold. If you don't like paying 70 bucks for a game you don't have to. But complaining about it makes zero sense to me.
Good games also make a shit ton more money then they used to do.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Well comparing entertainment this way I‘d suggest y‘all better start reading books instead of playing games, the time/dollar ratio of books wipes the floor with games.

This.

You also get a whole host of health benefits while reading. When it comes to escapism hobbies, reading is king.
 

zcaa0g

Banned
How many of those hours are you experiencing something new rather then a repeated task/mechanic, side quest, having to travel, or just padding? A game is way more stretched out than a movie.

Yet movies have very little rewatch value compared to replay value of games. Plus, you are not supporting some Hollywooder's coke habit.
 
I don't really use it to compare games to each other because a 10 hour A+ game is more worth it than a 60 hour B+ game to me, but it's definitely a good type of comparison to show gaming isn't actually that expensive of a hobby when comparing how much you get for your money. A night out with friends, going to nice dinners, going golfing, tons of other things people do as hobbies, they are usually more expensive than video games if you do them regularly, =way more so when you start figuring how much they cost per hour of enjoyment
 

OrionNebula

Member
How many of those 80 hours were enjoyable and not a slog?
Do you always enjoy every minute of every movies?

On Topic : even if common, it’s still an interesting way to look at it. Same principle also applies to music, to an extent.
But I don’t think it can only be looked at or compared at on an hourly matter
 

McCheese

Member
They often shoot 4-5 hours worth of footage for movies then edit it down to 2 hours. If movies were produced the same way as videogames, they would only shoot 2 hours, then have you watch one hour of it again, then make you watch the last hour again backwards.

If I'm bored for more than say, 5-10 minutes for a movie - it's a bad movie, but in games, you can easily have hours of padding, grinding, fetch quests etc. So I feel like you don't get the same bang-for-your-buck.
 
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TLZ

Banned
You're comparing renting vs buying. You can rent a game for much cheaper if you want. Still comes out cheaper than watching a movie a guess.

But the experience is different too. Watching vs interacting. I can sit and play a game for 5-8 hours straight, but I can't do that with a movie.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Is this a fair way to look at game prices?
No. Unless you're in prison, looking at value in terms of hours of life subtracted is pretty dumb.

I'd rather play a mind blowingly good game for 5 hours than an okay one for 100. Quality of experience is always first when assessing value.

If a game is great and it's so long or replayable you can play it for hundreds of hours and your enjoyment never diminishes then that's great, of course. But value is much more than time wasted.

Also I platinumed Spider-Man in like 25 hours, tf are you doing?
 
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Mabdia

Member
Well... to me it is not about the time you spend on a game. It is about how good it was. I get the Ultimate edition of Spider Man to PS4. I paid around U$ 30 to 40, I don't remember. Played it for 20 hour and I really regret that I lose my money and my time with the game.

Loved the gameplay, hated the characters and the story if the game.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
I'm in the category where people always say "get gud" to. If a review says the game will take 30 hours to finish, I know it will take me at least 60.

Same thing with Persona 5 Royal, I think some say you can finish it on average in 60-80 hours. I took the scenic route of 180 hours ;)
P5 is long as fuck though, I beat the vanilla version in like 110 hours or something. And that's without the royal stuff.

Spider-Man doesn't have that much stuff though. I loved it, I platinumed it and 100% all the expansions but it didn't really take that long.
 
The other day my friend told me he bought Miles Morales Ultimate Edition for $70.

We started talking about game prices, me saying games are too expensive these days.

And he asked me how much time I spent on the original Spider-man(without the Miles Morales game) with all the DLC, I told him around 80 hours(still haven't done all the challenges).

He said going to a 2 hour movie is around $9. If he is entertained by Miles Morales Ultimate Edition for 70 hours, that's $1 an hour.

That caught me off guard. I never thought about it like that.

I must have spent 180 hours on Persona 5 Royal. Bought it full price at the time for $60, so that's $0.33 an hour...

Is this a fair way to look at game prices?
I don't know man. It has never happened to me when I go to see a movie that I have to wait 5 to 10 hours so they can put the updated film or that all the sudden the movie stops working. Usually the movie just works and you have a great experience WITH YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY because you can actually share the experience with other people on the same room with you. Crazy right?

When I go to see a movie I'm sure it's going to be entertaining, gaming on the other hand thas a lot of games that you have to endure hours of gameplay just to watch the story. When you go see a movie and it's boring there's a great chance that you still liked the experience because you went with someone else.

So actually you're paying for the experience, (get together, date, family time) and not so much for watching a movie.
 

Zeroing

Banned
First it depends on the quality of the movie, recently I’ve watched an French movie (1990) that was 5 hours… I stayed brain dead for 2 days….

Second I do agree games are over priced, but we gamers collectively let other shitty things happen without complaining much so what can we do? Nothing will happen :(

If we buy games at full price we feel disappointed because the money spend didn’t felt it matched the content.

If we buy a game at a discount we have devs saying we didn’t support the game….
 

Dark Star

Member
Gamers who buy literally hundreds of games every console gen enjoy collecting, not so much actually playing the games. There's probably a dozen people ITT who have unopened PS4 discs still in the case that they paid full price for (around 60 bucks) like a year ago lol. Gamers will pay premium for the experience of owning video games and having the option to play them as soon as possible (they don't, but they like having the option).

I personally don't buy games until they're like 50% off through PSN sales (yes, digital is better nowadays), so price per hour of entertainment is something I don't think too much about. I also enjoy shorter 10-25 hours linear games compared to 200+ hour open world slogs, so I'd rather pay more for quality experience over a quantity experience.And I don't think it's fair at all to compare video games to movies, unless we're talking huge "blockbuster" titles like TLOU Part 2.

When it comes to watching movies most people are content with a Netflix or Disney+ account so that 9 bucks you'd spend on a blu-ray or theater ticket really isn't relevant anymore compared to a streaming service subscription. I do think gaming is overall a very cheap hobby compared to something less accessible like having an exclusive golf club membership or whatever rich people do with their free weekend time haha.
 
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Eh, apples and oranges, imo. Movies don't have gameplay loops, for instance. Some games do give you very good bang for your buck and likely could stand to cost more, but I don't think it's as simple as x hours = x $$$.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Where is it that cheap going to the cinema? Here it's more like $15-20. But yes, the point still stands that gaming is generally very cheap entertainment.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
No doubt gaming on a dollar per hour ratio can be solid. The long the game, the better the ratio.

However, it's still an upfront $70 US (or $90 CDN + tax which breaks $100).

Thats a lot of $10 movies you got to watch to get to $100.

Netflix is $15/mth for the main package. You can get 6 months of movies for the price of 1 game in Canada for $90.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
Add in that movies can’t even maintain a steady 30FPS

That's actually the reason I barely go to cinemas anymore - 24FPS matched with constantly shaking camera and/or rapidly changing 0.5s sequences make you unable to see what the f is actually going on, long time gone are times of long, steady sequences, yet the "cinematic" framerate remained unchanged. TVs with BFI or other motion smoothing tech have been a godsend for modern cinematography.
 

dcx4610

Member
Time is one way to look at it but also the quality of the entertainment. If I pay $60 for something but I remember it forever or gave me an experience worth of $60, that's all that matters to me.

A lot of my favorite games of all time are short but highly memorable.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Yeah, I know. When I go to see a movie, I tend to pick the theatre with the recliner lazy boy seat setup which brings it to around $15-20. But you can also find those old fashion movie theatres out there with seats from 20 years ago for the price of $5 too.

Those cost even more here. $15-20 is for a regular old seat. But I'm in Sweden, where everything except healthcare, education and internet access is more expensive than in America.
 
Where is it that cheap going to the cinema? Here it's more like $15-20. But yes, the point still stands that gaming is generally very cheap entertainment.
No, not really. Why are we comparing gaming to movie theaters? Why don't we compare it to Netflix? Netflix costs me 15 dollars a month and I get countless hours of entertainment.
 

Lanrutcon

Member
Dumb comparison, but let's get REAL dumb.

If a 2 hour movie is $9, then a 12 hour game should cost $54. Except most games are the same elements repeated over and over, unlike movies, where almost every shot is unique for the movie. So if we cut a game down to unique experiences (if it took you an hour to kill 60 goatmen then you only got a minute's worth of actual content)...then a 12 hour game isn't actually 12 hours. More like, 2 after cutting all the repetitive stuff the developers just copy pasted. So we should be paying $9.

So what this comparison tells me is that we're being grossly overcharged for games.
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
I don't think they're comparable... When you pay for games you're paying it at once (unless you want more content, but main package is usually enough for most), if you wanna have the same amount of hours of entertainment with movies you'd have to pay more, but then you'll be paying it in smaller amounts, just like paying a 1 month subscription versus 6 months in a lot of services.

Also by the sole nature of their businesses they're very different, in movies they pay literal millions for a single actor/actress so it's normal that cost per hour is much larger than other entertainments.
 

Kao The Kangaroo

Neo Member
As a good comparison - even though I bought No Man's Sky as a preorder, I've never felt that I was scammed. Thanks to their ongoing development I enjoyed every single minute in this world, but I had to wait for it.
 

Pejo

Member
So if you're really bad at videogames like journalists, you get even more value. If takes you 3 days to make it through a tutorial, that's like limitless value almost.

I don't think they can be judged equally
 

93xfan

Banned
On the other hand, with a movie, you could watch it in slow motion and really get your moneys worth.
 

NahaNago

Member
I've had similar thoughts in the past about movies and video games. Then again I would probably compare it to buying a movie and buying a video game though. I don't think the analogy even matters anymore since free to play games, and all of the steam sales have destroyed the pricing that AAA publishers have for their game which has slowly started to trickle to console gaming. The only one not affected is Nintendo since they rarely lower the price of the their games.
 

Vesna

Neo Member
Is this a fair way to look at game prices?
Fair way is not looking at the length of a game.
I've had way more fun with 70$ Returnal and Demon's Souls than most other games around. They are actually revolutionary and excellent, so the price tag of Sony games is justified. They need the extra support in case if the game fails, especially if it's something like Housemarque game which needed expensive 3D graphics. If Returnal was a top-view arcade game, didn't have expensive cutscenes (doesn't matter that there's a few of them), it simply wouldn't be as memorable.
 
It's not a good or relevant comparison. You can also spend $20 to buy a basketball that gives you years of entertainment.

Compare it to other games for the best comparison. Time alone is not enough to make your value judgements though. There's some games that can have you grinding the same repeated content for dozens of hours.
it is a good comparison. you are just making the case that a basketball is an incredible value.

video games are easily one of the best values for entertainment. i will gladly put up $60 for anything that provides me even just 8 hours of entertainment like the shortest of rpg’s.

of course some games arent worth it to you personally but that doesnt change the fact $60 can get you 20,40,80, or even 200+ hours of awesome entertainment if you pick the right game.
 

ZehDon

Member
I rechecked my original post, and I am pretty sure I didn't mention Sony once. I own a PS5, a SeriesX, and a PC Gaming rig. I always look for deals in each platform. I even stated in my original post that I thought prices of games were getting expensive. As far as I know, both Sony and Microsoft will be selling next-gen game at the increase price. Unless that has changed?

My friend just gave another perspective that I thought was interesting and made me evaluate how I look at prices of games.
Your OP is based around Spider-Man: Miles Morales, a launch title for the Sony PlayStation 5, a Sony first party platform exclusive, and one of the first titles to bear the new Sony price point that has dozens of threads and lots of discussion elsewhere in the industry. The only other party to confirm they'll be raising all of their prices to the same price point is Activision. Other publishers have commented they're looking at it - which is corpo-speak for "We'll see how much shit they get before we jack our prices too". So, whether you wanted it to be or not, this is a thread about Sony's price point and how its not so bad if you perform mental gymnastics to support it.
 

bender

What time is it?
But then, how do you explain most gamers - enthusiasts especially - happily waiting a few months for the latest AAA to drop in price, and seeing things like Mario Kart(a game that can offer hundreds, or thousands, of hours of gameplay) hold its price for years as highway robbery?

Humans are fucking stupid and should be put down like the rabid dogs they are.
 
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