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 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
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.
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.
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:
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”.
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.
$80 was before the tariffs…
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Buy a steam deck
Buy a Steam deck OLED and play Holo Knight.
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.
I wish the steam deck is smaller NGL.
Or even offered officially to purchase in my country.
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 $1.5 billion last year. Still a lot, don’t get me wrong.
I don’t care for them because of the way they gatekeep games they don’t even produce anymore, like old NES/SNES games. their anti emulation stance is pure garbage, either sell the game or fuck off when people emulate it, you don’t get it both ways.
The increased price is not the result of tariffs, neither for the games nor console. That’s pretty much confirmed by them costing the same amount (converted + sales tax) in Europe. The console is (was, before tariffs) fairly priced imo, it is comparable to the steam deck + dock.
Is 80$ 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.
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.
