Diablo 4’s horse armour costs four times the price of Oblivion’s controversial horse armour

In 2006, Bethesda, developer of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, did what many thought at the time was unthinkable. The company put an in-game item up for sale for real-world money, in a full-price game. It was a set of cosmetic horse armor for $2.50.

Oblivion’s controversial horse armor is widely regarded as the first microtransaction in a premium AAA game. Today, horse armor is one of the many items you can buy in many games, including the recently released Diablo 4. But while the idea isn’t new, these prices certainly are.

Along with Diablo 4’s early access release on Friday, the in-game store launched with a variety of bundles. The store has a structure similar to that seen in most modern games (including Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty). It offers packs of character skins, horses, and horse armor.

All of them can be purchased with Platinum, the payment currency that can only be purchased in certain denominations. Horse armor packs are usually the cheapest at 800 platinum. That’s the equivalent of $8, which is more than three times that of Oblivion.

There’s no way to directly buy 800 Platinum, so you can either get the 1,000 pack for $10 and have some to spare, or get four 200 packs for $8 total. Diablo 4 would be even more expensive than Oblivion, at four times the price.

There are more expensive packs, of course, which can go as high as 1,500 platinum for horses and 2,800 for character packs. The 1,500 horse packs include a mount and armor, which seems a bit silly considering that most armor will cover the entirety of the horse.

All of that seems even sillier when you consider, well, how much of your purchase you’re going to see and appreciate. Oblivion is a third/first person game, so the $2.50 horse armor will be visible quite often. In Diablo, you’re looking at your character from a bird’s eye view most of the time, so the effect is much less pronounced.

According the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.inflation calculator, $2.50 in 2006 has the same purchasing power as $3.77 today. Which means that even at $8, it’s more than double what the inflated price would suggest.

In fact, the business model for games in 2006 compared to 2023 makes the situation even more unfortunate. Diablo 4 is a $70 (minimum) game, with a day one store and a season pass later on. There are considerably more opportunities for ongoing spending on modern games compared to the Xbox 360 era, at more expensive prices to boot.