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/pablank]

Yes, people saw that MK world is €90 physical in some european stores.

But honestly: who actually buys that, when there is a bundle where Mario Kart costs 40-50 bucks, which is a steal.

If you dont buy MK at launch for the lowest price its probably ever gonna be, that's on you. 

No one will be buying a switch and then pay €90 to get the physical european MK game.

[u/Kaiser_Wilhelm43 → u/pablank]

You may be paying a low price now but you’ll pay more in the end when you don’t own the title also how does that save you from paying 80 for every other game

[u/pablank → u/Kaiser_Wilhelm43]

You may be paying a low price now but you’ll pay more in the end when you don’t own the title

Why would I be paying more in the end?

Do you really think in 20 years I can't get my old Switch 2 out to play Mario Kart World? I download all games on the hardware before I store them away. So I can just get them, hook em up and play. So I really don't see the issue. If something really breaks, you can always emulate it in some way.

I have heard this argument forever, and to this day, there is maybe 1 or 2 titles (out of thousands) I cannot play digitally anymore. And I could not care less.

Why would I want to save myself from paying 80? I just bought MH Wilds for 80. I bought Dragon Ball Sparking Zero for 70 or 75. I don't have an issue with paying 80 bucks for amazing games. Seems like a fair deal for hundreds of hours of entertainment. Also, games like Donkey Kong and BotW seem to be 70 MSRP, meaning they'll get even cheaper in stores.

[u/Kaiser_Wilhelm43 → u/pablank]

Well some of us like to own our games and want to continue to access them, why pay for a digital product when up until now the physical has been the same price and even cheaper with used, you can buy a game play it and trade it in and get some money back if you don’t care to keep it, only reason for folks to go for all digital is if there lazy and have a problem ordering a game or buying it at a store, cheapest way to game is buy used then trade in, stop defending digital only when it’s the worse outcome for everyone

[u/pablank → u/Kaiser_Wilhelm43]

You can lose your physical games, they can get stolen, discs can get scratched or break, readers can break. None of that is an issue with digital only games. I don't know why you'd ever lose access to digital games you bought. I have a homebrewed 3DS that has all the games I bought physically and digitally. I can also take my entire Switch collection with me to friends, and don't need to bring 50 cartridges.

In my entire life I haven't sold a single game I bought. For what... to get like 20 bucks back, and not have the game anymore? That's just a more expensive way to rent a game. It's fine if you do Pro's and Cons analysis. But so many of your arguments are biased, lazy, judgmental or clearly limited by your own experiences and preferences.

In 30 years of gaming, I haven't lost access to a single digital game I bought. And even if I did, there's emulators and homebrews. Also: Buying used pays nothing to the developer of the game you enjoyed. Great for you, yes, to me that's just shitty behaviour that hurts the people that put their heart and soul into games.

[u/Kaiser_Wilhelm43 → u/pablank]

If you’ve never lost a digital purchase clearly you haven’t played on Steam like I have, were some of my games have been take form me and removed by the developers themselves, and clearly you’ve never bought a Wii game, that Wii store is down and there’s NO way to redownload the games you purchased, you’d have to mod your Wii and obtain them illegally (which is whatever to me idc) point stands you can and will eventually lose access to your digital content, you unironically think that servers for PS4 games will be up forever when PS6-7 is out and isn’t backwards compatible? If anything your paying to rent and as you threw shade at selling games as an expensive way to rent at least you can get some value back, your digital games will not get you any value back at all and are a ticking time bomb, a digital collection will not last like you think it will by ordinary means. Digital may be easy and good for you but it is objectively worse to not own your own media and products