No Stupid Questions

$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.

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.

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

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.

Nintendo just greedy, always have been, always will be. Don't buy their trash, just emulate it.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I believe they will cost the same amount in europe and japan

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.

Kinda sorta. Remember the pandemic? Prices went up but never came back down. I suspect the tariffs will do this as well

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

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.

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.

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.

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.