Exactly this. Even to this day, Nintendo is very smart about almost never discounting their flagship games - and when they do, it’s by a small percent, sometimes with strings attached, not the crazy “90% off” tactics many other developers/publishers follow.
Playstation games being in the $15 bin while desirable N64 games never seemed to go on sale was a big reason kid me had a ton of games compared to my friends with N64s.
I still see this with my kids and their Switch. PS2 and GameCube seemed to follow the same pattern.
Yes. And it teaches the consumers that there's no point in waiting. When you want their game, you just buy it at full price on launch date, because you know that waiting for discount would take years and even then it would be 20-30% off at best.
Although to continue the argument from GP: copious 90% off steam sales haven't killed PC gaming, enough people still preorder PC games at full price. It's literally a meme that people have more games than they can ever play but they still keep buying new ones.
In the '80s the games were mostly being purchased by adults for children, while today PC games are mostly purchased by adults for themselves. (I also remember being encouraged to spend my allowance on clearance-bin games when my parents wouldn't buy them new.)
