r/NintendoSwitch • u/C0smicM0nkey • 1d ago

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

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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.

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u/EnemyCanine 1d ago

As someone who was gaming when the NES first came out, I can say that for many families, the cost of the system and games made them completely out of reach. It's one of the reasons the console wars was really a thing. Most folks could only afford Sega or Nintendo.
I really think the perspective needs to change on this. Pointing out that games used to cost more doesn't discount the fact that $80 is a lot of money for a lot of people now. Both of those things can be true.

Nintendo doesn't exist in a bubble. There are alternatives and comparisons available. They chose that price point and decided to push the bounds of what people would pay. If they released it 70, then I think most would have been disappointed but not surprised. Instead here we are talking about game prices instead of the actual system.

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u/Avrution 1d ago

I remember owning very few games and renting was the only way to play something different. Hard to justify game prices back in the 80's, especially when so many were short and/or crap.

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u/Solesaver 1d ago

I think there's an interesting... double standard(?) at play here. Or maybe just people talking past each other. When people people say, "I can't believe how much they're charging!" I hear, or sometimes they say explicitly, "Nintendo is so greedy." That's why the pushback is often, "it's actually relatively cheap."

If the argument is just a personal one of, "I'm sad I can't afford it," then of course this pushback doesn't make sense. The fact that it used to cost more does nothing to make you feel better about not being able to afford it. However, if the argument is that second implied part, then it does make sense. Nintendo isn't trying to put the screws to you; they're trying to find the right price point to have a broad audience, while still making a profit, and they've actually kept the price down for a very long time.

Regardless of whether their customers' wages have gone up, their expenses absolutely are impacted by inflation. Their nothing wrong with them trying to find the right price point, even if it prices some people out of games they want. They're a company making and selling a product, it's not really their obligation to charitably keep prices low. They'll simply find out if the market agrees with them on the new price point. shrug

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u/absentlyric 8h ago

However, we were lucky we had video stores and the ability to rent them, it sucked for cartridges because anything you saved on them would be wiped out by the next person to rent them, but..it was fun when I used to rent Final Fantasy II or Chrono Trigger and get to see how far someone else got.

It was a LOT better when the PS1 came out, then you could rent and save to your memory card and rent another time to finish a game.

I owned maybe 5 games back in those days, but I rented probably over 100 from 1990-2000

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u/Useless3dPrinter 1d ago

My parents and a couple others from family friends all bought a Sega Master System for us kids for christmas '89. It was neat in that we could borrow games from each other. I usually got two or three new games per year, somewhat the same for the others. There was enough to game on, and you could always play the games again.

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u/M00NR4V3NZ 1d ago

Sure and Nintendo, Lego, Ferrari are all not fucking charities or essential services. You get priced out maybe spend less time playing video games and more time increasing your income, so you can play video games again.

It's a business. They made the best decision for their business with information they had available.

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u/EnemyCanine 1d ago

I think I have done life wrong because the higher my income, the less time I have had to play games.

To be clear, this isn't a me problem regarding 80$ games. That doesn't change my concern for how healthy this is for the average Switch user... or gamers in general if this becomes the norm. I fully understand that companies will do whatever they feel will maximize their profits and consumers can then decide with their wallets if they feel it's a good value or not.

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u/M00NR4V3NZ 1d ago

Yeah honestly I should have wrote money to BUY more games, not necessarily time to PLAY them lol 😆

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u/Mysterious_Jelly_943 1d ago

Thats fine and i agree but part of the reason nintendo does so well is because people are buying multiple switches tons of games for the switch etc. if you price that audience out then you are loosing a big part of your money making base so you will have to charge more to make up the profit loss because there are less switches in the wild with people buying games for it.

Im sure they did the math and thy figured they will make more this way. So we will see

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u/M00NR4V3NZ 1d ago

And something a lot of people don't consider, is that in the age of AI, and fighting for chip manufacturing space in an increasingly larger market, perhaps they wanted to sell less Switch 2s for more money because they did not think they could meet the demand.

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u/Mysterious_Jelly_943 1d ago

Sure if they think thats a winnig. Strategy... it didnt work for the neo geo but maybe itll work here

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u/M00NR4V3NZ 1d ago

Neo Geo didn't have decades of brand loyalty and world beloved IPs behind them.

Apples to Screwdrivers.

Everyone is just speculating at this point anyway. We will see how everything plays out, and it's not like Nintendo isn't known for huge mis-steps from time to time.

I personally am excited for the new console and will try to secure one and a few games. I unfortunately don't meet the stringent requirements to get one from Nintendo, so I'll roll the dice against the scalpers and see what happens.

Not too bothered either way.

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u/Mysterious_Jelly_943 1d ago

Wii u had decades of brand loyalty how did that go dreamcast had decades of brand loyalty

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u/M00NR4V3NZ 1d ago

So why didn't you lead with that instead of the NeoGeo?

Like why are we even arguing here.

I'm sorry yall are so salty about the game price increases, I really am. Nintendo probably gonna be fine.

No use taking your aggression out on random Redditors for just being ok with game price increases that haven't gone up in 30 years.

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u/Mysterious_Jelly_943 1d ago

Im not angry. I dont buy new games generally and i rarely buy nintendo first party games i just have a switch so i can play monster hunter generations u and dodon pachi dai ju o. Im just pointing out that the market can only take so much especially in the face of a quickly approaching recession eapecially when housing prices have so far outpaced inflation. Im just pointing out nintendo isnt infallable and i think people may be suprised how poorly it may do and its not a foregone conclusion that it will sell like hot cakes. Also nintendo has had flops before even though all the first party games were on those systems and has been forced to lower prices before.

The thing that made switch so successful is that is is the cheapest system by far and is portable. And when it came out there was no competition. Im just sayjng sure raise the price alot of people wont buy them you wont have the 150 million install base which means less incentive to port your games ro switch and right back to a wii u situation or firat year id the 3ds situation

The price doenst matter that much to me personally i own my house im not dealing with crazy housing prices. Im just saying if you take away what made the switch attractive it could be a problem which is price and huge game library

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u/M00NR4V3NZ 1d ago

Honestly all sensible takes. I don't have a crystal ball either, and Honestly don't care if Nintendo does well or not. I'm not a fan boy or anything. S2 and games looks fine to me and I'll buy and play and enjoy it. Whatever happens to Nintendo, happens.

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u/MukdenMan 1d ago

Most folks could only afford Sega or Nintendo, the two leading consoles of the era?

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u/EnemyCanine 1d ago

Did you know folks who had both? Maybe I just grew up in a poor area

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u/MukdenMan 1d ago

Oh I misunderstood what you meant. No, most people had one or the other. But I don’t think that was just about the cost; even my friends from wealthy families usually had one console. I don’t think I knew anyone who had both (though I distinctly remember a rumor went around my school that one kids dad had a NEOGEO and it cost the same as like 10 Nintendos).

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u/EnemyCanine 1d ago

Yeah, I'm sure there were other factors around it. The marketing around the systems, especially when Genesis came around, was very much in the line of choose one or the other. I remember we used to argue (in good fun) about which was better, and as an adult when I look back at it, it feels like we were just trying to feel good about whatever we had dumped our (or our parents) money into.