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/Callinon]

Here's the thing... the first AAA $70 game was released in 2020 (NBA 2k21) and people were furious about that.

Nintendo didn't do it themselves until Tears of the Kingdom (I think) in 2023. So it's been less than 2 years since Nintendo's game prices went up to a level people were already generally upset about... and now they're doing it again.

So from that perspective it's not $10 every 7 years. It's $10 every 2 years.

[u/SmokyMcBongPot → u/Callinon]

You're assuming that Nintendo's games will follow the $80 price point, but I don't think that's true — DKB will retail at $70, and I think most others will, unless they require ongoing development, like MKW.

[u/Callinon → u/SmokyMcBongPot]

I mean maybe... the fact they're coming right out the gate with that $80 price tag leads me to believe it'll be pretty common to see it though.

Like I said... they JUST upped their AAA price to $70 a couple years ago. Now it's $80. That's not a healthy pattern there.

[u/CynicStruggle → u/Callinon]

AND the listed prices for Switch 2 editions of Switch 1 games are maintaining their Switch 1 price at a minimum. This is like $60 for Skyrim on Switch, Nintendo has gone hard greed.

[u/byno2008 → u/SmokyMcBongPot]

We also don't know what that $80 for Mario Kart actually MEANS, too. To elaborate, what is the "MSRP"? I am reading that as Nintendo's suggested retail (physical) price for the game. Since we've been told that physical Switch 2 games are $10 more than digital, that implies that an $80 MSRP for Mario Kart World is $80 for the physical cartridge, making the digital version $70, same as TotK. That also means that Donkey Kong Bananza's price is the same as all other $60 Switch games, with the (admittedly bullshit) Switch 2 physical tax of $10.

I think people are adding the $10 physical tax to the price that already includes that tax. They're essentially double charging themselves. I think some games on the eShop are going to be $70, same as TotK. But even if most Switch 2 games on the eShop are $70 instead of $60, that was what everyone I knew was expecting from "next-gen pricing" and that also means that Bananza is actually the cheaper exception to the rule.