Not defending Dementia Donny and either way I’m not shelling out $80 for a game ever, just wondering if this is really a result of the tariffs. I understand the console price being high due to them but I don’t see how it would affect the price of games that are essentially going to be 100% digital
Unpopular opinion:
They could probably charge $100 and people would still buy them, despite knowing the games aren’t worth that much. Consumers don’t really care; they just want their dopamine fixes. Nintendo could wrap a literal turd up and label it the next Zelda game, and people would bum rush stores with fistfuls of money to buy it; just because.
I don’t think it’s as much of an unpopular opinion as it is just a thing that happens. If the Sims community has taught me anything, diehard fans of a franchise will keep shelling out hundreds of dollars for new content even if it’s overpriced dogshit
And unfortunately until the community puts their collective foot down, these game developers (Nintendo, EA, etc) will continue churning out dog shit.
I got flack in a group chat for being highly cynical that the games industry, at least the “AAA” publishers, will adopt the new pricing standard.
Nintendo is doing it. They can use a flimsy excuse that they are using a stupid proprietary cart. Gamefreak was already doing it to save cost on higher storage carts. Even then they ship unoptimized shit and people lap it up like swines
GTA 6 will definitely be $100 and have no flimsy excuse
Ubitencent will get to it eventually I reckon after they finish fucking each other
They probably will. It is kinda amusing to watch tbh
The opinion of someone who didn’t care for the new Zelda games (BoTW & the other one), is that they already wrapped a turd & called it the next Zelda game, twice.
Which is why they’re upping the prices.
Not to be THAT GUY, but games haven’t kept up with inflation or increasing development costs. Someone in these convos usually point out that, adjusted for inflation, that 80’s Donkey Kong game actually costs more in today’s money than $60-80. So I guess that’s me today lol
Do I agree that they’re worth that much? Ehhhh
But have we gotten massive improvements, longer games, more physics, graphics, etc? Yeah.
Games like GTA take half a decade or more to be made. If you want that kind of game development to continue, consessions need to be made somewhere. Now, maybe there’s a better place to do it, but asking more for these games isn’t completely unreasonable.
Edit: That Guy is back with some facts for y’all. In the 80’s Nintendo charged $30-50 USD for a game. So let’s take the middle of both(1985 and $40) and plug it into an inflation calculator. I did a few(two government websites and a random other one) and I got $116.93, $118.09, and $120.44 for today’s dollar value.
That’s how much Donkey Kong(the OG) would cost TODAY. Not Cyberpunk, not GTA, not Stardew Valley, but OG 16 bit Donkey Kong.
You really think prices shouldn’t increase? Please explain then in a way that isn’t just “but I want it cheap!”. If that’s your only argument, just pirate ffs. No one’s stopping you.
Also, INDIE GAMES. THEY EXIST. THEYRE AWESOME. THEYRE CHEAP.
Honestly this discussion just feels like entitlement from a lot of people.
Edit again: Still waiting for someone to articulate why modern games should cost less than a 16-bit relic from the 80s when adjusting for inflation. Seeing a lot of downvotes poping in, but not much writing. Some actual facts would be nice instead of “but I can’t afford it!”. Should I do console prices next? Wanna see how much an NES should cost in today’s money?
Edit again: oh look, here’s console prices adjusted for inflation… An original NES launched for $199 in 1985. In today’s dollars… $581.57. Hmm… You could buy a Steam Deck for that price today… It’s almost like things have gotten really good for us compared to then. Woooooow. And that’s not even mentioning that consoles used to be sold at a loss. Nintendo stopped selling consoles at a loss around the time of the Wii. So modern consoles actually cost what they take to make. Previous consoles were subsidized by the games and should have been more expensive. Y’all are also probably too young to remember when having a game console was a HUGE DEAL. It meant you were well off. Now everyone has 2 or 3.
Another edit for shits and giggles: if you’re gonna bring up indie games, I’m gonna tell you to just go play them then. If you know you can play a better, cheaper game… then do it. What are you here bitching about? “Oh no, I have so many options but one of them is too expensive so I can’t have it and everything else too. Woe is me”
Like seriously “we have so many games now it’s hard to afford all of the ones I want to play”. Ummm yay? Videogames advanced as an art form so much that the choices are near endless and no one can really afford them all? GREAT!! WE DID IT! We made games so mainstream that everyone has access now!
I’m about done with this, but seriously, y’all need to chill a bit. I’m against the price increase too for the simple “I like having money” reason. But I don’t think Nintendo or anyone else are monsters for raising their prices. It’s been a long time coming and honestly surpising it didn’t happen soon. Talks of it have been rumbling for years. Anyone shocked is either too young to remember or had their head in the sand.
Calling it now, GTAVI will be EXPENSIVE. Willing to bet base $80 and at least one $200+ Shark Card/in game assets bundle. And when Rockstar does it, you bet your ass the rest will follow. If anything Nintendo is just prepping for that inevitably themselves.
I can’t help myself edit: someone said the 80s are a bad time to compare. Sure video game crash, electronics still being relatively new… Ok.
So the PS1 released in 1994 for US $299, equivalent to $621.53 today. I can get a PS5 today, depending on version, for $499-$699, with objectively better everything. So again, cheaper than it was.
Just to be clear: they’re asking for a $20 raise in prices. Inflation says it’s should be a $60 increase. How are they monsters?
You know what else hasn’t kept up with inflation? Wages.
So before you go espousing raising prices, let’s first make it so people can afford the higher costs.
Lmao that’s a completely seperate issue between you and your employer. Has nothing to do with the value of the dollar.
Has inflation kept up with wages? No. Have prices gone up anyways? Hell yes. Only thing you can find under $1 anymore is Arizona Tea, and even that isn’t a guarantee.
But yes, complain that a luxury item has gone up in cost. You know, something not necessary. So no one needs to make sure “everyone can afford it”. The ones who can buy, will buy, and the numbers show overwhelmingly that they do.
All you’re literally arguing is that wages should increase. Agreed. It should increase to match the new prices that are inflating as well. Wouldn’t change the fact that games cost the same “spending value” as before with the new pricetag.
I mean tbf complaining that less people can afford it now because prices have increased but wages haven’t is fair. Everything needs to be looked at relative to all the other values. If you wanna go even more in depth I guess you would need to add popularity of games, reputation of a brand or game series, value of the currency, and other factors.
I generally agree with you that prices for video games haven’t kept up that well, although I would also point out that due to multiple factors anchoring the video game price at 1980 might not be the best if you want a fitting picture. Games were much more rare baack then, the market was smaller, small production volume meant physical costs per unit increase, there’s things like way higher shipping costs to think about because globalization is a more modern phenomenon and a lot more stuff. Imo using the 2000s as an anchor to extrapolate from would be more fitting, as the market was well established at that point and thus prices would appear more stable.
I’m not doing that because I am literally a little gremlin who can’t be arsed to put the time in rn but these are my two cents of criticism against your methodology.
Yes, but you can make the wages claim about EVEYTHING. House, cars, food haven’t gone down. Everything else went up. So why is this one luxury exempt?
And yes, because of globalization, a Steam Deck is cheaper than a NES was. That’s great! So why are you complaining when prices are objectively better than 1980? Like yeah, we made things better! And even with inflation, they’re cheaper!
So why are you complaining about a $20-30 increase when the math says you should have a $60 increase? That’s what I’m calling entitlement. We have it objectively better by every metric in video games, including cost, and people are throwing a fit over an increase that’s still below inflation.
It sounds like you might have missed some parts of my comment.
Wages: yes you can claim everything is affected by the relatively low wages. That includes video games. But if you need to save up because of that, video games will be one of the things you need to skip, because it is a luxury good. And that’s sad. That’s why this sticks out.
Price dip from 1980: I made a case for why the costs for video games in 1980 were very high, and probably for a variety of reasons. now quite a lot of those reasons disappeared over the next centuries. So the price increases do not correlate with that, and that’s why using the prices from 1980 might not be a great comparison.
Complaining about a 20$ increase: because everyone has the absolute right to complain about everything. We are the consumer - judging prices is one of our ultimate rights, because we need to make sure it’s worth buying something. Now I don’t think it’s entitlement given all the things I listed before, but if you wanna call it that, go ahead, although I think trying to understand my perspective would decrease your presumptions about people like me.
We have it objectively better by every metric: and this is precisely where I disagree, respectfully. You do not have to understand why, but I feel like painting crowds of people in broad strokes is always unhelpful for perspective and learning. But I guess in the end you do you, I can’t force people to understand someone else and why they’re saying what they’re saying.
Ok, disagree. Show me that games aren’t better. Show me that they aren’t bigger with better graphics, more features, longer stories. Oh yeah, you can’t. So disagree all you want lol.
Also, I’ll just point out again with wages: ok, so cars, houses, everything else has gone up. So explain in economic terms why a luxury good shouldn’t too? I’ll wait. You’re arguing economics of society. That’s a much bigger issue. But please, explain. I’ll wait. I expect more than a few paragraphs, by the way.
If indie devs can make a game and sell it for less than Nintendo games sold for in the 90s then maybe it isn’t actually more expensive to develop and distribute games that are somewhat comparable to games from the 80s. A lot of games sell for $40 or less and are making profits.
Nintendo games are more expensive partially because they are limited to Nintendo hardware. Like Apple, this requires more costs for software because their target audience is smaller than something through a digital platform like steam, and distribution is a pretty significant cost and physical distribution has a lot of risk and waste compared to digital if something doesn’t sell as many as expected.
Ummm Nintendo has a digital platform, so not sure what you’re on about that one.
And in regards to indie studios: then buy their games and stop complaining, duh. Like, if you know there’s all these amazing and cheap alternatives, why are you bitching about what Nintendo charges? No one’s forcing you. Go play something else. It’s really that easy.
Nintendo, love em or hate them, is like Disney. They want to curate a very specific image. Look up the invention of the Nintendo Seal of Approval and why that was such a big thing. Nintendo wants to be very specific thing and frankly doesn’t give a shit if you like it. If you dont, then you’re not their target audience. It’s really that simple. Their not catering to everyone, they’re catering to a specific group. If they want to charge a certain amount but you know it’ll be quality cus it’s Nintendo, then what’s the harm?
A digital platform limited to their hardware.
And in regards to indie studios: then buy their games and stop complaining, duh. Like, if you know there’s all these amazing and cheap alternatives, why are you bitching about what Nintendo charges? No one’s forcing you. Go play something else. It’s really that easy.
It is easy enough that I am doing that and not complaining about Nintendo’s pricing, just discussing why it is so high. Is discussion automatically complaining?
Again, what’s it matter? A PS store game is limited to their platform. An Xbox store game is limited to their platform. A Steam game is…
Seeing a pattern? It’s irrelevant. Console exclusivity has always been a thing until modern times. But now we have cross play, something that never existed. So again, objectively better. Are some games still stuck to certain consoles? Yeah. And that’s their prerogative and frankly is the norm. So what? What reason do you have that you deserve it? You don’t. You just want it.
Xbox game store is also on PC, and they share titles on steam. A lot of Playstation games are also released on steam. In fact, being exclusives to those consoles is becoming far less common than cross platform with PC. Nintendo is the only one that doesn’t do any cross platform releases and doesn’t do sales.
What reason do you have that you deserve it?
You clearly just want to be right and are projecting because not everyone agrees with you.
So you have no reason to deserve it but entitlement. Gotcha. Thanks for articulating. Companies don’t owe you shit. As soon as you get that through your head a lot more will make sense. If companies owed you anything, we wouldn’t have micro transactions and season passes and all of that money grubbing bullshit. But did your outrage stop that? Nope. So go ahead and yell and scream and see what it does now.
Yes but back then most people only bought maybe 2-3 games the entire generation and traded with their friends. There was also a lot of local coop games.
Now people would like to play dozens of games and it’s difficult to share, often you even need to buy two copies of a game to even play with your family in the same house.
Exactly, games back then were EXPENSIVE. Currently we live in luxury where you have hundreds of options. How does that not justify it costing more?
Be that guy. Games are too cheap.
I think Nintendo made a mistake pricing Mario Kart that way, since they’re selling it for half that price in a bundle anyway. Had it been 70 like DK with a bump of 10 for physical it’d be a different conversation.
Just gouging us. Even on the 3DS before they shut the shop down, digital download games were the same price as buying them on a cart.
The new Switch 2 cartridges supposedly won’t have the games on them… just the license to download and play them.
Not all games will be like that. Some will have the game on them. Street Fighter, Elden Ring, and Bravely Default are examples of a few that will be key cards. Oddly, I heard that Cyperpunk will be entirely on the cartridge.
Interesting. I know that one is 70GB minimum on Steam.
Yes CDPR is going to put an understandably storage optimized version of Cyberpunk and Phantom Liberty on a 64GB cart
If that’s the case why would they bother giving game cards a higher speed interface?
I guess it’s not all games, but only some will be license only.
Pretty much the same as Switch 1 then
Wow, if the games are not on the cart then I’m not buying Nintendo.
Same here. Unless it’s a game that I absolutely can’t get anywhere else, I’m probably just gonna use the Deck for those “key cart” “games”.
The sheet was describing the new box art spec for games like this one, not saying that that their new games would do that. It will probably be the same situation as with the Switch 1 where only a tiny fraction of games are like that.
Yeah, doesn’t seem to be all… but probably more will be like that than Switch 1 if chips become too expensive especially with tariffs.
At least, they’ll be marked:
Nintendo just greedy, always have been, always will be. Don’t buy their trash, just emulate it.
They don’t take in the same amounts of profits as other greedy companies. Only $1.5 billion last year. Still a lot, don’t get me wrong.
I don’t care for them because of the way they gatekeep games they don’t even produce anymore, like old NES/SNES games. their anti emulation stance is pure garbage, either sell the game or fuck off when people emulate it, you don’t get it both ways.
This!
I haven’t bought a Nintendo product since the Wii. Emulate it for better frames anyway. It’s easy, and you can slap it on a steam deck or another portable.
$80 was before the tariffs…
I’d love to blame him but that seems like Nintendo’s choice. Yeah, I’m not fucking spending $80 on a game, especially when I have a gaming PC
PC gaming seems so cheap in comparison at this point doesn’t it. I guess we have better options which means there is more competition in price. Why would I spend £90 for something EA shat out when I can just not do that.
It really is. It’s a big cost upfront but the amount of games you can buy or emulate for such a low price makes up for it plus your PC can just be upgraded with parts and last years and years versus the death of consoles every five years give or take. Triple A games are still expensive to buy but the sales on steam make it so much easier cos those really expensive games will be like 50% off sometimes
It doesn’t even have to be a big upfront cost, it would only be expensive if you want moderately high end games. You could play pretty much anything over 10 years old on very cheap hardware, and it would also be able to run a fair few more modern games too. Obviously more modern games its going to vary more. Some that require high specs even for minimum settings obviously won’t run.
Okay, here’s a slightly hot take.
I’d rather the price go up and the games remain ad free and high quality (not you, pokemon, you can get fucked) than become enshittified with micro transactions, ads, etc
I don’t like it. But it’s much more acceptable to me
Okay, here’s a slightly hot take.
I’d rather the price go up and the games remain ad free and high quality (not you, pokemon, you can get fucked) than become enshittified with micro transactions, ads, etc
I don’t like it. But it’s much more acceptable to me
That’s absolutely a false dichotomy. In a world where games exist that are ad-free, high-quality and affordable, there’s absolutely no reason to believe any notion of high prices or in-game ads being a requirement for development. It’s just not true. Don’t fall for it.
Okay, fair enough. Just appreciating the lack of shit and (for something like an Animal Crossing or a BoTW quality Zelda game) I’m super happy to pay that much for a game I’ll sink hundreds of hours into, and I’d rather reward that price hike than any other form of monetization by them.
I’m real enraged by like 99% of things on the internet and in the world these days, but this pales in comparison to the rapid pace of enshittification I feel like I’ve had in virtually every other place in my life.
Still don’t love it.
Sorry bro, you get all of the above. Price go up, micro-transactions increase, more ads, and games get worse. We’re already seeing it happen, most games are overpriced and not even finished when they come out these days, and yeah, we are seeing ads in games now, especially sports games, and it seems Every game has to have a battlepass or some shit these days.
You want good games without ads or micro BS? Buy indie, play old games, and wait for the AAA industry to collapse in on itself.
I do basically only play indie games sans like, 2-3 Nintendo games per console generation. but yeah, sure feels like you get it all in the worst way
But you don’t need either. Plenty of great games are cheaper and have none of that bullshit. Rimworld, Factorio?
The increased price is not the result of tariffs, neither for the games nor console. That’s pretty much confirmed by them costing the same amount (converted + sales tax) in Europe. The console is (was, before tariffs) fairly priced imo, it is comparable to the steam deck + dock.
Is 80$ Mario Kart price gouging? Eh. The edit maniac in the comments here is right that video games have become cheap, maybe even too cheap, and that a price increase at some point was inevitable. 60$ was set as the AAA price before the smartphone existed, and was not always profitable as we’ve seen with the recent lay-offs.
My own 2 cents: I’m glad some company broke that unspoken rule (we ignore skull and bones for obvious reasons), so big releases have more options in pricing, too long have we accepted 60$ games with 20$ DLC, I’m glad if this means devs can just charge 80$ for a full game. Oh, and it’s good for indie games too. People may actually buy the shorter games with worse graphics they wanted so badly a few months ago.
too long have we accepted 60$ games with 20$ DLC, I’m glad if this means devs can just charge 80$ for a full game.
Breath of the Wild was a $60 game with $20 DLC when it launched in 2017. Eight years later, its Switch 2 Edition is now a $70 game that (seemingly but not yet 100% confirmed) still has the same $20 DLC sold separately. This is a game that already sold enough copies to earn back over 16 times its development cost.
As for Mario Kart World, I’ll be surprised if Nintendo doesn’t announce DLC plans in its upcoming presentation two weeks from now, but that remains to be seen.
Let’s put it this way, the market price for the Switch 2 is roughly the same converted price in the UK. Now, to my knowledge, the UK hasn’t also introduced these tariffs quietly so I can’t, in good conscience, blame ol’ Delusional Donald for this one.
Vote with your wallet, and don’t let the FOMO pull you in.
Nintendo is just a small slice of the gaming industry. If you don’t like what you see there are other platforms and game developers.
For 80 usd you can buy a handful of bigger titles during a Steam sale. Just saying.
Ocarina of Time cost $116.91 at launch, accounting for inflation.
Edit: the original Legend of Zelda cost $144.89 at launch, also after inflation.
Games don’t cost 90$ today for other platforms tho… even Nintendo that are a few years old still cost basically the same as at launch
True, sure. I’m just saying the overall price of games has gone down significantly over time. An upward correction makes some sense. I’m not cheering it on, just trying to help frame the circumstances.
Competition for entertainment is higher than ever. You even have extremely good free games
An upward increase makes sense only because corporations will try to squeeze every possible cent from consumer. That’s the only justification that they need
They will only change if they start losing a lot of money. With any luck we are starting to see that a bit from some of the big publishers.
They do. There are games on the PS5 store (digital ones) for more than 90 dollars. There are a few games I’ve seen upwards of 100 quid, which is about 130 dollars.
I can’t remember how many thousand dollars the latest sims costs for all the dlc.
Yes, but only accounting for inflation really doesn’t tell the whole story compared to modern games. Games are primarily sold digitally now, meanwhile when OOT released all copies were physical cartridges - and that meant significantly higher cost of manufacturing and shipping. Also, games simply didn’t sell nearly as many copies back then as they do now. Being totally real, games don’t need to be more than $60 to turn a very very good profit.
Games are also a billion dollars to produce and market nowadays. Back on SNES they were like 500k.
I’d like to know more specifics on those numbers. Because I Found that, for example, GTAV had a marketing budget of 70-110 million, so nowhere near the billion range even for large games. With a lot of popular games like BOTW selling over 35 million copies… I don’t think the marketing cost is an issue.
Here’s one source. Just Google game development costs. This source is backed by others, it’s just the first in my search that I saw and clicked on. Games are fucking expensive to build and market. GTAV is 250m according to this article.
Edit: does this work? I saw Genshin, which I’ve never played, is actually almost a billion rn which is insane for a F2P anime game. Wild.
Cartridges cost a shitton more to make than discs, too.
Skill issue
I have a story. About 30 years ago Sonic & Knuckles was launched for Mega Drive. “I” bought that for 17.000$00 (Portuguese escudos). That roughly translates to 85€ without accounting for inflation.
So although the price hike is unfortunate, I’m actually surprised the prices of the games remained stable for so long.
SNES cartridges were 10000 pesetas in Spain (60€). And I don’t remember any cheaper one.
SNES cartridges ranged from 80-150DM (German pre-euro currency) here. That’s between 40 and 75EUR.
Similar, I think I paid £65 for Street Fighter II: Champion Edition on MegaDrive. That’s US$84 - and that was in 1992.
I must have been mad. Although, I probably played that game more than any other, at least until some of the huge open world games of recent decades.
I grew up mostly playing games that were not the latest release. Like I got Dawn of War for less than £10 around 2008 or so. It released in 2004. Think that was the last game I got the CD for, don’t have it anymore.
Then sometime in the 2010s when it was on sale I got all the expansions to it and got it on steam instead.
They’re holding pre-orders due to tariffs so expect prices to increase further.
I know y’all love Nintendo, but they’re no different than any other giant corporation; greed is the reason prices go up.
As someone who’s bought games for the last 30+ years, the fact that, relative to inflation, they got cheaper surprised me (for physical games, in any case). For those physical games, one might think of it as a correction. Yeah, the number of buyers is up, but so are production costs. Now, is some of that greed with the top taking those profits? Absolutely and I hate it. Still, I’m surprised it took this long
Yup. I remember the first game I bought with my own money was Street Fighter 2 Turbo for 60usd in 1993. I had to run and beg my dad for more money because I was a dumb kid and didn’t bring enough to cover tax. Calculated for inflation that would be around 120usd today.
And yeah, $60 was steep for a game back then, but I got it at Suncoast which was always a ripoff. Everywhere else in the mall was sold out and I NEEDED it TODAY.
IIRC the price was announced first, and it’s the same in other countries so I don’t think that’s the reason. Which means that lets asume they will use Japan’s tariffs of 24% on them their base price goes from 80 to 99.2, plus in the USA prices are usually pre-tax so you also add tax on top of that, this varies from state to state, but a quick Google puts it at around 5%, so you will actually be paying $104.16 for them, and $117.18 for physical copies, or $126.63 if they’re manufactured in China and you get that tariff instead. This is just one example of what these isolationist policies will cause, be prepared to have that happen to everything.
