As a gamer who has started his collecting from the first home consoles to the most recent I can tell you now that prices were always high for the time they were released. It's why you saw kids begging their parents for games and game hardware when you were a kid. Gaming, itself, is not a cheap hobby by any means. It is not a poor man's hobby for certain. Even if you manage to find sales or thrift store items more often than not you'll either have to pay the day one premium or wait on a discount later on if you don't want to miss out, and even discounts can be pricey for hobby standards.
I remember back in the 80's when the NES was the hot ticket item, and the latest NES games were all the rage. If you were a kid without you wanted hard to have what everyone else had. Gamer envy was real, but if you had friends who were fortunate enough to afford the latest releases you could, at the very least, play them while visiting assuming your friend wasn't a gaming hog, and wanted to show you the ropes instead of letting you actually experience the games for yourself.
When it came to the price of NES cartridge based games in it's height of popularity you were looking at upwards of $75 if not more depending upon the title. These were not cheap by any means. As a certain Youtube streamer pointed out if you were to account for modern inflation those games in today's market would set you back over $140 each. It shows that despite us reaching that $100+ threshold once again we are pretty much on par with the prices of yesteryear. Even with the convenience of digital distribution accounted for.
Where things get iffy are with digital releases, and them maintaining the price of what a physically distributed product costs. This should not be the case, but it is. One could definitely put up an argument for games being overpriced in that regard, but in the physical realm the games are still fair considering the advance in tech, and the development costs to that end. There's a lot more that goes into gaming from a technical standpoint in modern gaming, and coding is certainly not any easier.
I think if anything we should be thankful for the sales prices that we can wait on to save ridiculous amounts of money. That being said you will miss out on the early hype, and are subject to spoilers if you choose to delay your purchase. At the end of the day gaming is one of the more expensive hobbies to keep up with, and one that's not in everyone's budget. You will need the petty cash to stay on top of the growing collection. Both in the hardware, and software sense.
Don't ever feel bad about missing out on that early purchase though. As time has shown hardware evolves, becomes more affordable, and gets more of a library. Not only that, but with modern consoles all the hardware issues early adopters face are ironed out, and newer more trustworthy console variants are released. There's no real reason to try and keep up with the Jones.
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