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
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.
It’s always corporate greed.
They can afford to sell games for $60 and still turn a profit.
But there’s an excuse to charge $70 because inflation.
And there’s and excuse to charge $90 because tariffs.
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
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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 $80 on a game, especially when I have a gaming PC
PC gaming seems so cheap in comparison at this point doesn’t it. I guess we have better options which means there is more competition in price. Why would I spend £90 for something EA shat out when I can just not do that.
It really is. It’s a big cost upfront but the amount of games you can buy or emulate for such a low price makes up for it plus your PC can just be upgraded with parts and last years and years versus the death of consoles every five years give or take. Triple A games are still expensive to buy but the sales on steam make it so much easier cos those really expensive games will be like 50% off sometimes
It doesn’t even have to be a big upfront cost, it would only be expensive if you want moderately high end games. You could play pretty much anything over 10 years old on very cheap hardware, and it would also be able to run a fair few more modern games too. Obviously more modern games its going to vary more. Some that require high specs even for minimum settings obviously won’t run.
The increased price is not the result of tariffs, neither for the games nor console. That’s pretty much confirmed by them costing the same amount (converted + sales tax) in Europe. The console is (was, before tariffs) fairly priced imo, it is comparable to the steam deck + dock.
Is 80$ 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.
Nintendo just greedy, always have been, always will be. Don’t buy their trash, just emulate it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
pokemon was literally more expensive with the DLCS, and half-assed developed game too.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Either way it’s still caused by the tariffs
