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What Is It Worth?
- Taylor Rioux
- 16 minutes ago
- 7 min read
On Reviews as Price Evaluations
Gaming is expensive, and it’s getting ever more so by the day. Thanks to massive data centers across the United States monopolizing computing hardware, components that would otherwise head to consumers — like RAM sticks and solid-state drives — are instead being diverted to AI projects spearheaded by Tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
Of course, the effects of these price increases are not contained solely within the realm of PC gaming. As gaming consoles need much of the same technology, the companies that make them have increased the costs associated with play, with consoles like the Xbox Series X|S getting multiple price increases over the last year alone. The Xbox Series X, initially priced at $499.99, climbed to $599.99 and now sits at $749.99, following several incremental increases.
Meanwhile, Valve, the corporation behind PC gaming juggernaut Steam, had hoped to capitalize on its position as the de facto PC gaming platform and release a dedicated PC for gaming. Before the actual product’s release, speculation surrounding the newest iteration of the “Steam Machine” positioned it as likely an entry-level piece of hardware, rather than an enthusiast powerhouse.
At the time of its initial announcement, such a machine would cost somewhere in the realm of $600-800 if a person built it themselves. While Valve was able to put together a machine comparable in power to the PS5, the prices for each model are all over the $1000 mark, with the top-end version being a hefty $1,430.
The Steam Machine is a capable piece of hardware, but PC component prices have driven its price up.
Alongside these price announcements came reviews for the Steam Machine, with evaluations on its capabilities, shape, and even its operating system landing on the pages and pages of words sent out upon the media embargo. While the listed price points are certainly worthy of talking about within these reviews and beyond them, assessments on whether or not the Steam Machine was “worth” the price were peppered throughout much of the prose.
Discussion on the Steam Machine’s “worth” is impossible to avoid. In Jacqueline Thomas’s review at IGN, they state, “At $1049 (and $1349 for the 2TB model), the Steam Machine seems like it’d be hard to recommend to most people.” Similar sentiments are echoed by Andy Edser of PC Gamer, who writes, “I just can't square the Steam Machine's performance with any idea of consumer value. I really can't. The first question you need to ask yourself as a hardware reviewer is this: Would I buy one?”
I often feel that the evaluations of what a game or piece of hardware is “worth” come from those least equipped to make it. Price discourse is always a bit peculiar when it so often comes from people who do not actually have to make a buying decision on the thing they're speaking about, seeing as they do not have to pay for them. These products are given to the reviewer or company behind the review as part of the agreement to participate in the marketing blitz surrounding the product.
In Jacqueline Thomas’s review at IGN, they state, “At $1049 (and $1349 for the 2TB model), the Steam Machine seems like it’d be hard to recommend to most people.”
Sure, each reviewer knows the value of a dollar or euro to some extent, couching their perspective in their own lived experience. But there is a fundamental disconnect between a party that gets these products for free and those that do not, and that disconnect is hard to reconcile with the fact that reviews are so often positioned as generalized declarations of a product’s value.
This disconnect births a sort of simulated financial anxiety within this criticism. Because many reviewers feel obligated to act as consumer advocates, they often perform an elaborate pantomime of budgeting. They scowl at the high price tag on behalf of the reader, projecting a hypothetical financial strain that they themselves never actually had to endure. It is a risk-free empathy. In these circumstances, the critic suffers no buyer's remorse if the product fails to deliver, nor do they feel the sting of a bank account drained by a hobby. By trying to calculate a transaction they never participated in, the reviewer ends up speaking over the actual material reality of the consumer class they claim to represent.
These sorts of evaluations are often littered with numerous “ifs” and “buts”; if you are looking for X, this may be for you. It is expensive, but it could maybe, possibly, be worth the cost if you can afford to pay for it and want something that can do X, Y, or Z. It is not based on anything tangible and comes with so many caveats and suppositions that it is rendered meaningless within the text.
Despite some disagreement with the particulars of the wording in these types of product reviews — such as Giant Bomb’s Dan Ryckert titling his review “The Best Beginner's Gaming PC... At an Enthusiast Price” when enthusiast PCs would realistically run you between $2000-5000 today, a price point far beyond that of the Steam Machine — this evaluation is somewhat forgivable when dealing with hardware, as we can do direct price-to-performance comparisons between other sets of machines and parts.
The error occurs when we try to apply this same logic to the art of video games itself. Hardware possesses measurable utility; we can calculate frames per second, thermal efficiency, and gigabytes of storage per dollar. But a video game is an aesthetic and emotional experience, and you cannot run a benchmark on how deeply a narrative resonates or how elegant a game mechanic feels. When a critic treats software like hardware, they equate the canvas to the paintbrush, attempting to quantify an artistic relationship in a way that seems arbitrary.
There is no set dollar-per-hour ratio you can devise for time played that can adequately capture the experience of playing a game, and how each person interacts with a title will vary wildly. Yet, this sort of “price discourse” still seeps its way into reviews for games all the same.
That isn't to say people aren't calculating it, such as this one from https://mgtools.cloud/tools/game-cost-calculator.
Look no further than the recent release of Star Fox on the Nintendo Switch 2. Releasing on June 25, 2026, with a price tag of $49.99, much was made of its status as a shorter game — and a remake to boot.
When Dashiell Wood of TechRadar writes of Star Fox “the experience is still pretty fleeting and doesn’t feel befitting of the $49.99 / £41.99 / AU$84.95 digital (or $59.99 / £44.99 / AU$99.95 physical) asking price”, he is making an estimation based on his play experience and relationship with money, of course, but it is not based on Dash’s material reality. He did not have to pay for the game at any point, so why spend time trying to assert such playtime-to-dollar valuations to a more general audience? Who does this portion of the review serve, specifically?
What makes a game “worth” the price, anyway? I don't hold the view that there are any definable metrics that I would use to evaluate such a thing, and any valuations of a game’s worth could only come after having played a game. Putting a price on games is hard enough, with titles running the gamut from free to $99.99 for just a single copy of GTA VI: Ultimate Edition. How can one quantify the difference in value between any two games?
Everything from financial standing, expertise, and even play experience would come into making such a determination. It is inherently a deeply personal thing. Reviews are personal expressions of the reviewer's thoughts on the games they played, too, so a writer concluding that a game is or isn't worth the cash is not inherently misleading. I do not expect reviewers to account for every possible experience outside of their own to justify the cost, but it does not sit well with me to make these broad assertions if the reviewer never had to make the purchase in the first place.
I'm doubly unsure how useful it is to include price evaluations in a critical analysis of a work, but perhaps that’s not the intent. Many video game reviews exist in this space between critical evaluation and tech product review, where writers list gameplay mechanics like features on a washing machine and compare the prices of two entirely separate titles as if they could be directly equated. From this perspective, the price talk makes a bit more sense — if a potential consumer is choosing between two similar products, the length of use and price point are much more pressing concerns. But this is not the purview of the critic; it is the perspective of a salesman — games as product rather than art and experiences.
Yet, cost has a place in criticism all the same. In Art as Experience by John Dewey, Dewey writes:
“Costliness is, also, as Santayana has pointed out, an element in expression, a costliness that has nothing in common with vulgar display of purchasing power. Rarity counts to intensify expression whether the rarity is that of infrequent occurrence of patient labor, or because it has the glamor of a distant clime and initiates us into hardly known modes of living.”
So how can game critics write about pricing in a way that is more aligned with the task they are performing? After all, if you are so inclined to put your thumb on the scale, pricing is an important determinant in readers making a purchasing decision. First, kill the salesman in your head. While product reviews are more suited for price discussion, and game reviews can certainly be used as buyer’s guides in their own right, pinning down what a game should be valued at for a broad audience is a fool’s errand, and you’re not actually here to make the sale, are you?
If a reader has gone through an entire review, seen how a writer feels about the game top to bottom, and is given the information of a game’s price point, whether or not a reader then buys the game is out of the writer’s hands. Or at least it should be. Why would you need an entire section of your review dedicated to sussing out some sort of content-to-dollar ratio? What were all those other words for?
Frankly, it would be best to leave determinations of a game’s monetary value up to the reader. The critic’s argument is in the substance of the art (or product). Without some sort of comparative analysis or an overview of market conditions (something a few reviews for the Steam Machine actually do), cementing a game’s worth in dollars is a nothing statement, and an ephemeral one at that.
By insisting on pre-calculating this worth, critics trap themselves within a paradox. What is this game doing, how does it make the critic feel, what does the work say, and so on — these are all topics explored in a review, and a game's “worth” can only come as an evaluation of the experience. A product review is meant to guide a purchase decision before it happens; if a writer has produced the review, discussed the game, and provided the pricing information, the reader has all the tools they need to make a buying decision.
After all, a writer doesn’t really need to tell the readers the value of a dollar.