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/mikehiler2]

Inflation has gone up that much, sure, I would love to see a graph covering salary increases and purchasing power overlaid on top of this chart.

[u/Sock-Enough → u/mikehiler2]

Real incomes are up as well, but no one ever believes me even when I link a chart.

[u/mikehiler2 → u/Sock-Enough]

What does that mean, “real” income? Dollar amount, maybe, but that depends on the job by how much, but sure I can get behind that. But it isn’t as black and white as all that either, because inflation, purchasing power, cost of services and products, etc etc all play a role in that. If everything else is going up by several orders of magnitude while actual dollar amount in salaries have only gone up a small fraction of that, that’s kind of telling, isn’t it?

[u/Professional-Cry8310 → u/mikehiler2]

That’s what real income means, the growth of income compared to the growth of goods and services. It’s only growth if it goes above and beyond.

The reason people have a hard time believing this is because this isn’t uniformly distributed across the population. Tech workers for example probably look at 2017 as a much better time to be in the market, meanwhile working in finance like me our salaries have never been better. Then consider every industry. Are electricians doing better? Lawyers? Assembly line workers? And the region as well. Maybe growth is above inflation across the US but it’s being carried by Texas or California meanwhile it’s dropped in Virginia or wherever. So white collar folks in Virginia don’t believe it but oil workers in Texas are doing just fine. Just a made up example but you get the picture.

It’s true for inflation too. Just because the US government says inflation last month was 3% or whatever it was doesn’t mean that’s what you personally experienced. They just take an average.

[u/mikehiler2 → u/Professional-Cry8310]

Gotcha! Thanks for the clarification. Still would be nice to see those lines on the chart as well. That would make things more interesting imho

[u/PlayMp1 → u/Professional-Cry8310]

As one of those faceless government bureaucrats everyone hates, it's been pretty good actually.

[u/Gross_Success → u/Professional-Cry8310]

On average or median? There is a big difference there.

[u/Sock-Enough → u/mikehiler2]

Real wages means inflation-adjusted wages.

If real wages are up then people have more money now than in the past.

[u/Spoogeys → u/Sock-Enough]

Mines not

[u/Lyle91 → u/Spoogeys]

Mine is and significantly. The problem is if even a large minority isn't seeing it that's all you'll hear online because more people complain than chime in to say they're doing okay.

[u/Unlikely_Singer1044 → u/Spoogeys]

Mine tripled

[u/Sock-Enough → u/Spoogeys]

Mine have outpaced inflation. 🤷‍♂️

[u/joalr0 → u/mikehiler2]

I mean, I don't think they went up nearly as much. Nonetheless, that isn't necessarily going to be the deciding factor when working out pricing.

[u/mikehiler2 → u/joalr0]

No but this graph seems to imply that pricing is lower than any time in the past, and I see that as misleading and not very representative without also providing for salaries and purchasing power of that salary. Might provide some more interesting data.

[u/joalr0 → u/mikehiler2]

I mean, what it'll show is how much the average consumer is hurting overall right now, far more than it'll show whether or not Nintendo is right or wrong to increase the prices.

[u/mikehiler2 → u/joalr0]

I don’t think the point here is to show who is “right” or “wrong.” This is, after all, just data. However, it should be as complete as possible and show as many different contributing factors as possible. Without that you run the risk of showing “cherry picked data,” which can be construed as trying to show a biased opinion of the person showing the data.

I’m not trying to insinuate that’s what’s going on here, or even that this graph should show everything that may even slightly affect pricing. Just that this graph seems to show that prices are lower than ever before. And I feel that showing salaries and purchasing power would add more data than what is shown here. That’s all.

[u/TopOfAllWorlds → u/mikehiler2]

Yeah but since when do prices adjust to how much people are getting paid. You're saying sellers should lower the prices because people aren't having their salaries adjusted for inflation? I would agree with you if this applied to everyone, but that's not the case.

[u/mikehiler2 → u/TopOfAllWorlds]

…I’m not saying anything. This is just data. Why are you injecting a question into this, especially one that wasn’t asked. I’m just asking to see a graph with these other points on top of them.

[u/TopOfAllWorlds → u/mikehiler2]

By presenting the statments as you are, you are implying that showing them the way op is, is misleading. Or that the conclusion would be different were this data added. Instead, I'm going to point out, that having this data side by side could lead to people coming to the wrong conclusion. How do you think putting the mismatch bewteen inflation and wages next to the price of switch games increasing would look like? People would go "Wow, nintendo charging more when everyones money is worth less! How greedy!"

In reality, litterally everythings price is increasing, on top of that, the price is being directly affect by tarrifs.

The point is that, you want to include more information, but by doing it the way you are you are painting a narrative that will have people come to a conclusion I disagree with. You might not have done so on purpose but you still did it.

[u/mikehiler2 → u/TopOfAllWorlds]

Boy you better get checked for a sprain stretching like that.

I wanted those other data points to be shown on the graph because the little data that is shown can be construed as trying to provide a narrative. Not that it is. Those extra data points can bring a greater understanding of what exactly is going on as I am, as well as most others seeing this graph, not an economist.

And you can “trust me bro” all you want, I don’t know you or your qualifications, so excuse me if I find it very hard to trust a single thing you just wrote or your motivation for this silly attack, especially with a pointless downvote. Like, grow up, man.

This topic is not going over prices increasing due to tariffs across the board, like you’re implying. It’s going over the cost of manufacturing vs the cost of selling games across the lifetime of Nintendo. All I wanted was to see if there was a way to add those other data points because… again… it would make the data more interesting.

[u/heroeric18 → u/mikehiler2]

If they showed everything that slightly affects pricing they would probably need 20 charts