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
Either way it’s still caused by the tariffs
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Can always play super tux kart instead
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.
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.
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.
No, not all. It’s a an option. Basically yubikey DRM
Like even the game carts have a few choices for storage. For example, Pokemon pearl and diamond remake were notorious to go with the smaller storage carts where half the game is only downloadable
The other thing about this price point is that it’s a headline grabber - and then once people find out more, they will spot that if you buy a Switch with MK preinstalled, the game costs half that.
So suddenly it feels like, “oh hey, that’s a great deal, and I was obviously going to buy a Switch 2 anyway” - and Nintendo get the sales and the decreased cost of manufacturing the physical game.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
I believe they will cost the same amount in europe and japan
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 anywayThis 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.
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.
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
luckily, this is the one industry you can boycott them AND still get the product anyway 🏴☠️
Or be a patient gamer and get it on a sale.
only when the companies i’m paying money to are not as horrible as nintendo.
theres plenty of games out there you can buy day 1 without being extorted these days.
The price was announced first… So it’s not related.
Adjusted for inflation though, and $80 is the normal price it’s been for 40 years.
I just don’t know why people are shocked Nintendo is doing this, they’ve always been one of the first companies to increase prices.
40 years ago they didn’t sell them by millions with each copy cost being a few cents. It’s price gouging simple as.
I mean, this just isn’t true, though. You’re not wrong in pointing out that the scope of sales has changed, but so has the scope of development, as well as consumer expectation. I suspect if you compare the number of man hours spent on a title today vs an NES game, it’s not even a comparable discussion. And then there’s the matter of post-release support.
To be clear, I don’t think a $30 price hike for physical copies is at all sensible, but the arguments being presented both for and against it are incredibly poorly thought out. Everyone presents a single facet of videogame development today compared to years ago and then acts like it’s a “gotcha” that proves their point. The entire ecosystem of game development and consumption has changed so drastically, that any discussion comparing the adjusted for inflation price of games then vs now is just pointless. Art and entertainment are art and entertainment, and it’s impossible to create a de-facto value statement for them, because consumer subjectivity, bias, and valuation is too wide to make objective statements about.
Imo, the real criticism of the matter is that +50% cost during a time of economic upheaval, when the buying power of the middle class is approaching the weakest it’s been in a long time, is going to be received poorly, and probably result in a loss of Western sales. It’s a massive leap, in a single generation, at the worst possible time, regardless of what inflation adjustments tell us.
Game development now is cheaper and more accessible than ever before, blockbuster games with budgets in hundreds of millions should flop and never recoup money invested in them. Graphically games made last year and games made ten years ago are comparable, and on nintendo switch both would look horrible so graphics is out, games from nintendo often are entertaining, but simple-ish and not all that engaging to play them for months at a time (there are exceptions but they are extremely rare). Third party games can be bought two-three-four times cheaper while being better games. So unless you are very financially stable and $100 for a game is like a cup of coffee to you arguing for increase of price goes counter to your interest as a player.
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.
