The value of modern videogames

(sorry about the lack of grammar I'm very dyslexic)

I have always been a bit of a collector of videogames. I have a nice collection of Gamecube games that can reach almost hundreds of dollars through the years.

However with the current online digital stores and publishers opting to include download codes in boxes instead of a physical disc I feel like modern games will never really have value apart from sentimental.

Each year my copy of skies of skies of Arcadia will increase in value as the number of copies gradually are snapped up by collectors. But my copy of read dead redemption 2 for example will most likely never increase in value. (unless the digital stores are shutoff)

I'm not really too bothered about the "value" of my games. I collect what i love to play.

I just wanted to ask you guys if you collect games how you felt about this.

This is something that I think about somewhat frequently, personally I don't think it's a bad thing or anything it just means that people can get their hands on video games more easily. I think the value going down in video games is pretty funny though considering the initial value of games has skyrocketed but the longevity of that price always drops (sometimes dramatically and instantly. E.G. Fallout 76)

I do think modern games are less valuable than older ones, but I don't think that's necessarily due to online stores; old Neo-Geo games, for instance, are probably valuable collector's items, but you can play most Neo-Geo games on the Switch nowadays (maybe other platforms too, I don't know). If physical copies of Red Dead Redemption 2 suddenly became very scarce, I could see it becoming valuable, but considering the staggering number of copies out there, I don't see it happening any time soon. That's one of the weird things about collecting things; as the population and the market grows, anything that comes out is automatically less valuable than anything older, and it's unlikely to ever be as rare.

As someone that has never been a collector of anything, including video games, I find the move to digital to be nothing but incredible.

I have my entire game library on demand. All I have to do is press a button and it's booting. Internet speeds are good enough now that even the largest games only take a few hours to download. I don't have to order anything and wait for delivery, I don't have to go to the shop to pick anything up.

The only problem with this for me is that it's actually too easy to acquire games. I have so many that I sit an look at lists of games instead of playing them.

I've never really appreciated the fact that things increase in valuable as they increase in rarity. I understand the economy behind it, but things are worth a certain amount to me, regardless of how many of them there are in existence.

@the_greg I can appreciate that viewpoint. Its a really good time for availability.

I'ts crazy how fast it decreased with fallout 76.

@acharlie1377 I can see some vita games being fairly valuable as time goes on. But you are right about neogeo games. They are thousands of dollars each its nuts.

I agree that modern games are usually worth less and will drop in price faster but also, I don't care. My collection of games is for me and me alone. I buy a game that I want to own, whether at launch because I need it now, down the road a little when I want to get to it and it's cheaper or years and years later at a bargain price because I just want to have it. My collection isn't to make a buck down the road, it's to ogle at.

The value of anything is based on demand. So, if demand increases so will prices.

With that said, ever since 1995 or the PS, N64, or Saturn era game production, most titles have been in the million unit + range. Even a game that has a limited run is numbered in the tens of thousands, which is 100x more than what was considered small-run the generation before in teh SNES/Genesis era. Because of this very few games from 1995 onward will ever be rare. because too many were made and people have held onto them far longer than in the past.

What made collecting comics, collecing sparts cards, or collecting movie posters even considered collectable was that mos of thise things had capabaly small runs and they were all considered garbage after use. Now 1/4 of video game players keep their games and what they keep is stuff that was produced 1 million times which makes mint texmaples literally "a dime a dozen".

I was happy to pay more to have less clutter. Now that online sales are getting better in the console space, it’s a win/win.

Screw discs and boxes. Give it to me raw and digital. Let me reclaim my house.

Nowadays if you want to collect physical copies of games that will increase in value premium/limited editions are the only things that will rise in value over time. Even then they really only retain value if they're not opened which makes it even more pointless to buy a game you won't play. With how easy it is to buy a game from across the world with a click of a button (physical copies included) standard copies for people who are looking to just play the game are too easily accessible not even taking into account digital sales to be worth anything.

I have a couple of limited editions I bought from NISA a couple of years ago that are now worth ~2x the price of what I paid for them but they're just sitting on my shelf. I'm not really a "collector" I just like artbooks, music cds, posters, and sometimes figurines included in limited editions and don't mind paying an extra $20-30 for that stuff.

Something that often confuses me is when physical copies of games are cheaper than buying them digitally. Brand new games that they had to produce and send a guy to my house to deliver is cheaper than me downloading it off their servers. For example I got Xenoblade Chronicles X for the WiiU for $19.99 CAD ($15 USD) and God of War for $65 CAD ($48 USD) on release date. Kingdom Hearts 3 is going to cost $40 CAD ($30 USD) according to amazon so I don't have a huge incentive to buy the games for 79.99 off PSN when they are way cheaper to grab a physical copy.

I've been thinking about replacing some physical stuff with digital but it still involves my hand going to my pocket. I'm lucky in that I'm not pushed for space just yet. There's some things I definitely want to hold on to and I'm buying less as the years go on.

We're not really going to know what the value of modern video games is going to be until twenty, thirty, forty years from now, when the vast majority of them are scratched to pieces, broken, or for whatever reason no longer working.

What I'm more concerned about is modern video games being playable forty years from now. As time has marched on, I've found myself looking more and more towards older games, or older-style games. I recently played a bit of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and that's the most I've played of any high-profile modern video game since God of War when it came out (other than Siege, which I seem to play at least once a week these days). This has me concerned about future generations who want to go back and look into games of this era. If I'm interested in games that people played when I could barely talk, surely there's a kid out there somewhere who is going to be interested in giving RDR2, God of War, and other big games of the moment a shot. Are they even going to have a way of doing that? PS3 emulators exist but they're far, far from good and there's no reason to assume that PS4 emulators are really going to make it that far either. Meanwhile, if you're interested in a SNES game, there are several different avenues you could take to play it.

Anyway, that's getting a little off-topic, so let's tackle this question a little more head-on.

Modern video games are, pretty much without exception, available digitally. As long as they continue to be available digitally and as long as machines exist that can play them, they'll never be as valuable as your copy of Skies of Arcadia because new copies will exist in essentially infinite supply. Your physical copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 might be worth something to individuals who, like you, enjoy having a physical collection, but I seriously doubt there will be many people out there willing to drop hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a game that's readily available.

This is only speaking in a monetary sense, which I don't think matters all that much. I have an original run copy of Metroid Prime, but its monetary value to me is "priceless" because I love that game and would never sell it for any amount. I have several other games in my collection that I feel the same about. At the risk of sounding like a sickeningly sappy movie, that's where the actual value comes from.

One can’t assume something will appreciate in value forever - just look at the mid-90’s comics, baseball cards, the ‘09 mortgage crisis, etc. a thing only has value as long as someone is willing to pay for it. If for instance Skies of Arcadia ever gets remastered/remade, those physical copies will inevitably decrease in value. I’ve primarily been playing games on PC for the last 15 years and have been digital-only for almost that long. The value of convenience, availability, sales, etc. is much greater than having a physical thing that JUST MAYBE go up in value. And since most games I play are online and service-based these days, having a disc doesn’t have a value anyway.

@turbomonkey138: I feel like, as some people here have basically said, games now have less value partly because of how easily available digital is. Just a couple generations ago, if you wanted to play a game, even if you weren't a collector you'd have to buy at least a disc. The amount of collectors and people who just want to play a game has probably stayed about the same proportionately, but now people who have no interest in owning a copy can just buy it digitally. Thus all these physical copies are still out there for collectors to buy, and combining this with how cheap a lot of physical copies are made now means there likely won't be a shortage of copies.

And more copies + fewer people who want them, generally = less market value.

This might seem like a bad thing, because our beloved plastic discs and plastic boxes we like to collect so much aren't worth as much now, but really it's better if you can get ahold of this stuff cheaper. Sure it's nice that I have a copy of Rule of Rose that I got for like 20 bucks, being worth over 200, but it's probably even better that if I wanna play a PS3 or PS4 game that I wasn't able to 5+ years ago when it came out I don't have to shell out more than it cost when it launched. That's way better than paying 100 dollars for a copy of EarthBound that doesn't even have a box with it... which is something I actually did.

You can easily download the entire set of SNES ROMs and dump them into a flash cart, yet there's still a thriving market for SNES carts.

Admittedly this isn't a perfect comparison since doing something technically illegal and figuring out how to make it work is always going to be a bigger barrier for many people than simply buying an old game from a digital store, but I think people will always want physical things as long as they can still get them.

There's never been a better time for value in games.

If you want to play a game there's generally a way to play them without paying an arm and a leg or having to look too far. And that's what matters to me more than collecting is being able to play the game when I want to play it.

I don't collect games as a "collector" but I don't sell mine back to game stores either.

Value for collectors I'm not interested in. I'd rather all games be freely available at a decent price on the latest platforms even though that isn't the reality.

I'm more concerned about the value of games where something as huge as Skyrim, is just a couple of bucks. I think games are undervalued in the marketplace.