Not defending Dementia Donny and either way I’m not shelling out $80 for a game ever, just wondering if this is really a result of the tariffs. I understand the console price being high due to them but I don’t see how it would affect the price of games that are essentially going to be 100% digital
Vote with your wallet, and don’t let the FOMO pull you in.
Nintendo is just a small slice of the gaming industry. If you don’t like what you see there are other platforms and game developers.
For 80 usd you can buy a handful of bigger titles during a Steam sale. Just saying.
I inherited a switch from someone who wasn’t using it and was blown away by the prices for the majority of games on it. They were charging AAA prices for Mario titles. If they had priced their Mario. Zelda titles at half the price, those things would have dominated before the SteamDeck’s came out. The switch is barely used.
The increased price is not the result of tariffs, neither for the games nor console. That’s pretty much confirmed by them costing the same amount (converted + sales tax) in Europe. The console is (was, before tariffs) fairly priced imo, it is comparable to the steam deck + dock.
Is 80$ 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.
Kinda sorta. Remember the pandemic? Prices went up but never came back down. I suspect the tariffs will do this as well
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
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
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.
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
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.
Stage 2 greedflation
I’m always a few years behind on consoles and enjoy the robust secondary market, so to me, it doesn’t matter much.
Outside of Zelda and Mario Kart, there isn’t much these days that’s exclusive to Nintendo that I give a damn about anyway.
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.
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 $60 to turn a very very good profit.
Games are also a billion dollars to produce and market nowadays. Back on SNES they were like 500k.
I’d like to know more specifics on those numbers. Because I Found that, for example, GTAV had a marketing budget of 70-110 million, so nowhere near the billion range even for large games. With a lot of popular games like BOTW selling over 35 million copies… I don’t think the marketing cost is an issue.
Here’s one source. Just Google game development costs. This source is backed by others, it’s just the first in my search that I saw and clicked on. Games are fucking expensive to build and market. GTAV is 250m according to this article.
Edit: does this work? I saw Genshin, which I’ve never played, is actually almost a billion rn which is insane for a F2P anime game. Wild.
Games don’t cost 90$ today for other platforms tho… even Nintendo that are a few years old still cost basically the same as at launch
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.
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
Well I’ve had essentially every console Nintendo has ever produced, but at least for now I’m not excited about the switch 2 for this very reason, I’m fairly put off about it.
I’m either going to buy a steamdeck or wait for the cost to go down (Nintendo is usually firm with their pricing though) on the Switch 2 before I’ll ever buy it or any games.
Especially while the US languishes under trump for the next nearly four years. I’m not going to have a lot of extra space for added expenses and price gouging.
Steamdeck. I have both the og and oled both work fantastic. I have emulators setup to play old games too.
If you don’t play on PC at all, a steamdeck will open you up to a whole new world of opportunity with games that are really cheap.
Buy a Steam deck OLED and play Holo Knight.
Buy a steam deck
Considering they are delaying pre orders due to the tariffs I do not think tariffs are the reason the price is so high. I think Nintendo is trying to set a new standard for game prices. If these games still sell at $80 then I wouldn’t be surprised to see GTA 6 release for $100. The whole gaming market will likely follow.
luckily, this is the one industry you can boycott them AND still get the product anyway 🏴☠️
The whole AAAAAAAA gaming market… I still see the Indy devs not caving to this bullshit. I only support indy devs now. The AAAAAAAAA pricks are useless, overpriced failures imo
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.
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:
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
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.
Yes CDPR is going to put an understandably storage optimized version of Cyberpunk and Phantom Liberty on a 64GB cart
Interesting. I know that one is 70GB minimum on Steam.
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”.
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.
Which is why they’re upping the prices.
80? More like 90 if it’s the physical version.
No this isn’t because of tariffs. If anything tariffs will make it even worse (which will be painful.for americana to watch). This is just good ol’ Nintendo greed.
There’s zero justification for a Mario Kart game costing 80/90 dollars/euros. It’s simply not a game with the kind of investment behind it to justify such a price home. IMO only GTA6 has a somewhat reasonable argument to get away with that. Yes they will make a ton of money but they also spent quite a lot making it.
Aren’t the physical versions just a key you plug in that let’s you download the game? Seems to me like that’s just easing people into going full digital.
And subsequently kill off the second hand market, perfect for a company that famously never discounts their games.
My understanding is that only some games are a “key in a cartridge” and they are able to be resold second hand.
From what I read, some are like that, but not all. That would be a fucking travesti.
Someone corrected me the other day on here that it’s not all games that are doing that but only some will be a game key and others will be the full game. I’m assuming that all first party titles will be the game key since this is largely about piracy and not allowing people to easily dump the game from the cartridge like people did for the Switch.
