Last week, as I stared at the $70 price tag on Nintendo's latest release, something inside me finally snapped. Remember when we were told that going digital would make everything cheaper? That the elimination of physical production, distribution, and retail spaces would result in savings passed down to us, the consumers? Well, here we are, fully immersed in the digital era, and somehow everything costs more than ever before.
The digital transformation wasn't just a technological shift. It was marketed as an economic revolution. No more printing costs. No more shipping expenses. No more retail overhead. The math seemed simple: fewer costs should equal lower prices.
Instead, we have witnessed the opposite. Software subscriptions have replaced one time purchases. Digital content that once cost pennies to distribute now sits behind escalating paywalls. Services that were once included now come with "premium" tiers and endless upsells.
Even more infuriating is how these digital "purchases" aren't really purchases at all. We're paying more than ever for games we don't actually own. That $70 digital title? You can't lend it to a friend. You can't resell it when you're done. If the digital storefront closes in a decade, your "purchase" could vanish into the digital ether.
Even worse, the entire industry is rapidly shifting away from the complete single-player experiences that defined gaming for decades. Instead, we are being herded toward subscription based service games designed not to be finished but to be endlessly played and paid for. These "games as a service" models aren't about delivering rich narrative experiences or well-crafted worlds, they're about creating psychological loops that keep you logging in daily and regularly opening your wallet.
Where are the feature complete adventures that tell a story from beginning to end? Where are the games crafted with care rather than designed by monetization experts? They're being pushed aside for battle passes, season content, and artificial grinds specifically engineered to make paying extra feel like the reasonable choice.
Meanwhile, Nintendo reports record profits. The same goes for Sony, Microsoft, and the other gaming giants. Those digital savings didn't disappear they were simply redirected from consumer wallets to corporate bank accounts.
The physical games I purchased for my playstation decades ago still work perfectly. The digital game I "buy" today comes with an expiration date determined by corporate servers and license agreements.
It's time to start emulating old titles. Reject new "games" in general (that doesn't mean that you can't pay for what you think deserves e.g. 70$ but to hell if any Mario Kart title deserves more than 40$). And if you must buy digital buy on extreme discounts.
This isn't the digital future of gaming we were promised. It's time to demand better. Because right now, the only thing getting played is us.