$60 Games Are Here To Stay

Next Generation explores the price jump for 'next generation' titles, looking into the success of the $60 price point for videogames. They have a copious number of graphs and charts to support their findings: "Even without Guitar Hero II, prices in 2007 are still at historically high levels. In January, fully four of the top 10 games sold for $60 or more. In February, that jumped to five $60 games, and the average rose accordingly. While there were four $60 games in March, they shared the top 10 with two Nintendo DS games which brought the average down sharply. This happened again in March -- the month of Pokemon -- and also in May."

Comments

Re:They did not go up in price, the dollar went do

[Red Flayer]

The Fed caused the Great Depression.

What are you responding to? I was talking about the boom-bust cycles prior to the GD that you still fail to address. You know, the ones that occurred while we were still on the gold standard? 1837, for example?

Inflation causes the boom-bust cycle as I easily explained in this post and in previous ones in the same threads.

I see, the claims you made that I'm disputing are the counterargument? Give me a break, you're saying "it's fact because I said so". Once again your base definitions are incorrect. Inflation is not the creation of money, it's an increase in the money supply in circulation, which is different. To illustrate this, consider a constant supply of paper money. Inflation can still occur because if people take cash from savings and place it into investments, they have increased the money supply. This is exacerbated by banks extending more credit, since that in effect also increases the money supply. Yes, printing more currency contributes. However, in today's economy, the extension of credit affects the money supply far more than the increase in currency.

You seem to think that speculation cycles only happen because of increased currency in circulation. This is proven false, because no free market is an ideal free market which, as you continue to ignore, requires full knowledge of the market by participants.

In a free market, stocks go up in value because they either pay more dividends, or because the company is truly worth more money now or in the near future.

No. In an ideal free market, this is true. However, the free market you espouse exists only in theory. You confuse free-from-govermnment-action with free as it is intended in "free market" by theorists. In reality, even with fixed money supplies, speculation occurs. However, with a fixed money supply, there is no way to mitigate the bust cycle that follows the boom cycle.

Does this mean that the Fed didn't screw up in the 1920s? No. But this doesn't mean that the Fed is inherently bad, it means that errors were made in policy and in implementation.

Society blossomed during a stable currency base during the Industrial Revolution. Why? Companies and individuals found ways to become more efficient, introduce more products and services to the market, and reduce prices for everyone (deflation).

Once again, correlation != causation. Furthermore, define "society". Let's not mix social terms with economic ones, since one could easily argue that society withered during the industrial revolution, with theretofore unprecedented decreases in quality of life not due to natural disaster.

The dollar has lost 98% of value since 1913, because of inflation/the Fed.

That's a useless statistic, since wages are not the same as they were in 1913. It looks good, makes it seem like there's this huge drastic problem, but in reality, currencies all over the world have experienced similar inflations, and wages have basically kept pace, so unless you think it's important for some arbitrary value to be pegged to the dollar, then it's meaningless. In which case, it's a self-referential maxim anyway -- the dollar must stay at X because if it doesn't, it's no longer at X! The horror of it all!

It's funny that you think the dollar was stable in value prior to the 1910s. It actually fluctuated a very large amount. For example -- inflation from 1900 to 1910 was about 13%. Furthermore, the variance in the wage-to-purchasing power was higher than today, which was a huge problem. The difference is that the delfationary cycles have been much smaller, so the net is an inflated currency -- and the collapse of the economy is forestalled due to proper attention to the money supply.

I don't know why anyone respects your economic misinformation. You consistently use terms improper