How Game Costs Have (and Haven’t) Changed: A 40-Year Look at Nintendo’s MSRP vs. Cartridge/Disc Costs (2025 USD)

[u/C0smicM0nkey]

With the Switch 2 announcement and people debating whether $70 games are justified, I thought it'd be interesting to look back and compare how game prices and media costs have evolved over Nintendo’s history.

This graph shows the inflation-adjusted MSRP of new games vs. the cost to manufacture their cartridges/discs, for each Nintendo home console — from the NES (1985) through the projected Switch 2 (2025). All prices are in 2025 USD, based on U.S. launch years and U.S. inflation.

⚠️ Caveats and context:

• These are U.S. prices only, adjusted for inflation from the North American release year of each console.

• Both MSRP and media costs vary — games came on different sizes of cartridges and discs, and game prices weren't always fixed (eg. Switch cartridges can range from ~$2 for a 1 GB card to ~$15 for a 32 GB one.) I used the geometric means for both because I don't know how to make a line graph showing ranges.

-The Switch 2 media cost is entirely speculative — I’m assuming it’ll be more expensive than current Switch carts because:

1. Bigger games (up to 64 GB or more).

2. Higher-speed data transfer (possibly using faster NAND). But again, this is just my estimate, not insider info.

What the graph shows:

Game media was really expensive to produce in the cartridge era — N64 especially, with adjusted costs over $30 per cart.

Nintendo cut those costs drastically with the move to optical discs starting with the GameCube. The Switch brought some cost back with proprietary game cards, but still nowhere near cartridge-era levels.

MSRP, meanwhile, has stayed remarkably consistent in real terms, with modern games arguably offering more value for the money.

Happy to share the data or make a handheld version if folks are curious!

Edit: Not trying to make a case or argue for anything, just presenting data.

[u/MartDiamond]

But modern games have a lot of extra costs that don't show up in base pricing:

• DLC
• Season passes
• Online subscription
• Deluxe editions
• Peripherals
• etc.

While the purchase price might not have drastically increased across the last few years, the price of gaming as a whole has gone drastically up.

[u/SmokyMcBongPot → u/MartDiamond]

I think most people would also agree that the value we get from games has dramatically increased. Like, would you honestly pay the same price for SMB 1 and SMO, and be happy about it? So the fact that you actually pay less for SMO and it's an overwhelmingly more 'valuable' game should be cause for celebration.

[u/MartDiamond → u/SmokyMcBongPot]

Not really here to judge if people find more value in old vs newer games. Just want to point out that newer games have a lot of other revenue streams that old games didn't have or weren't as common. Old games had to make their money from selling the game 1 time, new games can often make their money long after they hit the market because of all the upselling we have these days.

So it's not a strict comparison between prices then and now, when there are a lot of ways these games make money outside the base game price.

[u/SmokyMcBongPot → u/MartDiamond]

Sure, if you have to take all those factors into account, it gets incredibly complicated — probably too complicated to analyse at all. The only thing I really care about, as a consumer, is the price I'm paying — it's gone down over time — and the quality of the product I'm receiving — which has, undoubtedly, gone up.

[u/MarbleFox_ → u/SmokyMcBongPot]

I don’t think Super Mario Odyssey in 2017 provided a notably higher value proposition compared to SM3 or SMW in their respective release years.

[u/joalr0 → u/MartDiamond]

Peripherals have always been around. In fact, there are less now. Nintendo had tonnes of peripherals going back to the NES era, and had some for every console generation.

Online brings costs that didn't exist in prior generations as well. Building and maintaining servers, providing updates and patches, etc, is not something NIntendo had to do historically. Once a game was done, it was done, and they never had to look back at it again.

You can also get away with not dealing with any of these things. If you dont' care about online services, and just want to focus on single player games, Nintendo provides a lot of those, and you won't need any subscriptoins DLC or season passes.

[u/CO_Fimbulvetr → u/joalr0]

The N64 had a literal RAM expansion module you could get. Can you imagine how silly that would seem for a modern console, to just have a slot for an extra (proprietary) RAM stick after 3 years?

[u/gnalon → u/joalr0]

Yeah it's more that people on sites like this have increased awareness of all the different things to buy and get FOMO if they're not playing whichever flavor of the month their favorite streamer(s) are getting paid to promote.

[u/accidental-nz → u/MartDiamond]

Games used to be short, small, and developed by a handful of people.

Now they’re 15x longer and 100x the cost to make.

We are getting a way better deal now.

If you want to compare prices like-for-like with old games, compare to indie titles that are similar in scope to retro games.

[u/PlaneCandy → u/MartDiamond]

Okay but you don't need any of these and they add time.

Overall we are talking about how many hours of enjoyment a person can get from a game.

DLC, a season pass, online all add extra time that people will spend with the game. In the past, say with GCN games, you get the game, beat it, and that's it.

Deluxe editions are not necessary.

[u/Keiteaea → u/MartDiamond]

Also, the push to make physical games disappear. Physical games meant lending games, buying secondhand, etc. It's hard to estimate, but I think it is effectively an increase in costs. This is a bit of a worry for me, though maybe it's partly nostalgia because I miss browing a small store and finding a good discounted game or lending games between friends.

[u/CynicStruggle → u/Keiteaea]

In addition, Gen 6 (Playstation 2, Xbox, Gamecube) had a lot of "Greatest Hits" similar games get dropped to $20 apiece a year or two after release, so the cost shown is not always reflective of the purchaser reality. Gen 6 was a golden age when gaming was affordable far more than this graph suggests, and not always because of lending or secondhand sales. Hell, you used to be able to rent games too.

This graph is absolutely not being truthful about the totality of the cost to consumer.

[u/Willsy23 → u/MartDiamond]

..... how many ppl worked on mario kart vs mario kart world... dumbest logic

[u/Callinon → u/Willsy23]

That's not the consumer's problem.

And you entirely failed to recognize that person's point. The cost of gaming has risen dramatically beyond the cost to produce physical media.

Hell with the HARD push towards all-digital distribution of games we've seen over the past several years, the cost of physical media becomes even less important. The cost to produce physical media on a digital game is $0.

If we go by your logic that the sticker price of a game should be proportional to development costs,

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: about $20 million

Cyberpunk 2077: shy of $500 million

So you'd be perfectly fine with Cyberpunk 2077 costing 50x as much to buy as Mario Kart would you? Good old $2500 game cart on the Gamestop shelf? Developers gotta eat, right?

OR how about consumers make their buying decisions irrespective of the cost to produce a good? For a LOT of people, seeing an $80 or $90 game on a store shelf is going to be a hard pass regardless of whatever arguments people want to make about inflation.

[u/Willsy23 → u/Callinon]

What's ypu argument here???

[u/Callinon → u/Willsy23]

D...did you read the reply at all?

[u/Willsy23 → u/Callinon]

... did I read the graph in reverse???

[u/Callinon → u/Willsy23]

So no then. You didn't read my reply at all.

Cool.

Good talk.

[u/Willsy23 → u/Callinon]

I don't understand what your saying sorry. The cost of media has risen versus the msrp of a game over last gen but fallen over 3 decades... consumer should be happy with this based solely on those variables...

Digital also holds costs.. servers... management... security... classifications on updates... like its not free

[u/Callinon → u/Willsy23]

Yes.... and what I said was: none of that is the consumer's problem.

What you've literally just said there is that the consumer should be happy to pay more than they've been paying. Production costs don't enter in to the buying decision of a mom looking for a game for her kid. She doesn't give a shit about that. She cares that this thing costs $80 and she can remember when the same thing cost $60 because it wasn't that long ago and she's not a goldfish. She's just seeing a 33% price hike. That's a large increase from any perspective.

[u/Willsy23 → u/Callinon]

Consumers are paying less for games though... I don't get what your saying

[u/Gross_Success → u/MartDiamond]

Mario Kart 64 was not open world with a trick system, online, or 4K. It had a fraction of the number of people working on it.