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
$80 was before the tariffs…
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…
The prices are still calculated pre-tariffs, thats why they stopped preorders because the price will go up most likely.
I think asking for high prices for both the console and the games is a big mistake.
I believe they will cost the same amount in europe and japan
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 $1.5 billion last year. Still a lot, don’t get me wrong.
I don’t care for them because of the way they gatekeep games they don’t even produce anymore, like old NES/SNES games. their anti emulation stance is pure garbage, either sell the game or fuck off when people emulate it, you don’t get it both ways.
This!
I haven’t bought a Nintendo product since the Wii. Emulate it for better frames anyway. It’s easy, and you can slap it on a steam deck or another portable.
I inherited a switch from someone who wasn’t using it and was blown away by the prices for the majority of games on it. They were charging AAA prices for Mario titles. If they had priced their Mario. Zelda titles at half the price, those things would have dominated before the SteamDeck’s came out. The switch is barely used.
Vote with your wallet, and don’t let the FOMO pull you in.
Nintendo is just a small slice of the gaming industry. If you don’t like what you see there are other platforms and game developers.
For 80 usd you can buy a handful of bigger titles during a Steam sale. Just saying.
The increased price is not the result of tariffs, neither for the games nor console. That’s pretty much confirmed by them costing the same amount (converted + sales tax) in Europe. The console is (was, before tariffs) fairly priced imo, it is comparable to the steam deck + dock.
Is 80$ 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.
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
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
But you don’t need either. Plenty of great games are cheaper and have none of that bullshit. Rimworld, Factorio?
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.
