10 Ways The Video Game Industry Has Gotten WORSE This Decade

10. Pricing

This affects the console crowd a great deal more than PC folk, but the arrival of the Xbox One and Playstation 4 saw a jump in the RRP of console games from a reasonable £40 in the UK to a harder to justify £50, with the US spiking from $50 to $60 respectively.

The inception of free-to-play and games on Android and iOS (something I'll get into more detail later) brought in a new wave of casual gamers, and gave rise to a different way of monetising video games as a service rather than a one-off single purchase.

With this model being adopted by many of the bigger publishers and developers, it makes it a hard pill to swallow when a consumer is asked for £50 upfront, £20-£30 for a season pass, and heavily encouraged to spend money in an in-game marketplace.

As the paradigm slowly (albeit with some understandable reluctance) shifts towards digital downloads over physical discs, this has yet to be reflected in the marketplace pricing. As the titan that is Amazon offers decent prices on most games and CEX has cornered the market on preowned titles, the Xbox Marketplace and PS Store price themselves out of their own game.