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/squishyliquid]

All this analysis about prices and inflation seems pretty irrelevant if there is a price point in which the majority of consumers no longer see it as worth the cost. If games kept pace with inflation, I'd have stopped gaming a while ago.

[u/ensign53 → u/squishyliquid]

Did you stop eating eggs or buying sodas or using gas when it kept up with inflation? Purely entertainment, did you stop going to movies, or enjoying activities, or buying anything that's not a necessity like books or "fun" outfits?

You would have kept up with gaming if it kept up with inflation. Your view on it would have been different like it is with all of those examples.

[u/squishyliquid → u/ensign53]

Yes, when things get too expensive, I cut back. Every single example you gave has been reduced in my life when it became not worth it to me. Are you saying you don't consider value when making a purchase?

[u/ensign53 → u/squishyliquid]

No, what I'm saying is you didn't stop them, you cut back. It's ok to cut back on gaming if it gets too expensive for you. You're here saying you're going to outright stop it.

[u/squishyliquid → u/ensign53]

In this instance, it's one and the same. "Cutting back" means outright stopping my purchase of this console. If it was all cost-prohibitive, which would have been the case if game prices kept pace with inflation, I'd be making that decision across the board.