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
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 their 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 pace to do it, but asking more for these games isn’t completely unreasonable.
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.
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.
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?
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.
They test out the water how much will the consumer spend.
If you don’t like the price wait for a sale or coupons.
With the way they’re handling physical copies now I won’t be buying them at all, I prefer to own the games I pay for
Nintendo doesn’t really do sales
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.
Honest question because I’m OOTL, but haven’t games been this price for a long time now and weren’t Switch games even more expensive than this?
I’m a bit confused.
AAA games have been 70 bucks for a while, but I’m not sure of any base switch games that were 80 bucks. Could be wrong tho…
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.
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.
Considering Nintendo has an eShop, I doubt it is tariffs. Hopefully they don’t try to tax digital goods next as it appears they have everything else.
Price gouging. Mk8 has been a best seller for 8 years. If you can raise default price and sale down to 60, you’re going to make a lot more over years.
Haha, don’t be silly, Nintendo don’t do sales. They just grift their entire player base. But you know what you are getting into when buying into a closed ecosystem.
This is the problem with tariffs, it’s an opportunity for greedy corporations to increase prices MORE than the tariffs or on products not covered by the tariffs and no one will be the wiser.
I doubt this is because of the recent tariffs. Nintendo is a cold calculating bastard of an old corpo they must have planned this for years.
So my assumption this isn’t caused by that but just pure greed.
No doubt they’ll jack up the price more because of orange fuckhead pissing to the wind
Well that was my point. Tariffs give greed the opportunity to metastasize in the darkness, because people expect the price to go up anyway.
After rereading your comment, I see it. My bad.
Stage 2 greedflation
Kinda sorta. Remember the pandemic? Prices went up but never came back down. I suspect the tariffs will do this as well
It’s all excuses, every greedy company does it. Take Games Workshop for example, when they switched from metal to plastic minis they said they were “forced” to increase prices “temporarily” to recover the cost of the new molds, but then Never decreased the price again, and instead just kept increasing it over time for fewer models.
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
According to a post I found on that shitty alien site, An AAA game has to sell 10 million copies to break even around 6 months ago. That means at $70 dollars each. They can cost $700 million to make, market and distribute. The money has to typically be recouped within a certain time frame to keep the lights on and invest in the next 700 mil project. The successful games also have to carry the weight of the failures too, so you probably aren’t getting that bad a deal.
I’m not saying the price isn’t inflated, just that it can cost a lot more than you might think to make this stuff, and it’s all on a gamble that it will sell.
I remember buying mortal kombat ii on the megadrive/genesis with saved up pocket money for £45 ($58). That was in 1994, I think I maxed out at about 10 games. I’m seeing assassins creed shadows on the xbox at £56.99 ($74) today (ignoring online digital shops because they didn’t exist in 1994.) So in 31 years inflation on the price of a premium video game has been 0.75% annually vs 2.5% for all goods and that has resulted in a small 20% increase in the price over 30 years.
Closest link I could find to back up the inflation rate. If games increased in price Inline with inflation, they’d cost about £96 ($123) today.
Games have always been expensive, but less so now than 30 years ago.
P.s. If I don’t ignore online digital shops, I can actually get it cheaper the that 1994 price. Only £40 ($51). I mean come on its not like suddenly we have a bad deal on video games. Also if it really bothers you stop buying games at launch. I rarely spend more than a third of those prices now just by waiting a year or two.
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.
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
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
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.
But you don’t need either. Plenty of great games are cheaper and have none of that bullshit. Rimworld, Factorio?
Based on what little I know that goes into video game development, $80 seems cheap - assuming no mtx.
But if it’s $80 + mtx? Fuck that.
This is Nintendo, they make games cheap and sell for way more than it is worth. Also, with the massive increase in how Many people buy games these days, even $60 is more than enough to cover costs and have enough left over for the next game. The biggest “cost” in making games is paying the dozens of execs who do nothing all day billions of dollars.
I’m 100% sure that the next
FifaEA FC will cost €80 AND will have micro transactions AND people will buy it in millions of copies anyway
