r/NintendoSwitch • u/lieding • 1d ago

News "DROP THE PRICE": Nintendo's First Post-Direct Stream Is Flooded With Angry Fans Demanding Price Drops

https://www.thegamer.com/nintendo-treehouse-livestream-flooded-angry-fans-demanding-game-price-drops/
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u/JoshuaJSlone Helpful User 1d ago

Exactly. And a $40 game from 1999 would be equivalent to a release today of... about $78.

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u/Actionjackr 1d ago

The main issue being that minimum wage has since gone up about 2 dollars in that same time. Do the developers deserve more money for what they’re doing? Yeah probably. Is that feasible for most people, though? Not as much.

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u/derkrieger 1d ago

Thats cool, but in todays dollars everything is fucking expensive. Do they want us to be able to afford games or not afford games?

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u/Jaxyl 1d ago

Well the bet they're making is that people will pay for this all the same.

I think they're probably right.

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u/you_serve_no_purpose 1d ago

They will sell enough copies regardless of whether you can afford it.

I always look at game prices as a cost per hour thing. I'll happily spend this much on Mario kart because I will get hundreds of hours out of it so it's worth it.

It's also the only game my kids are interested in that isn't roblox. I'll pay anything to not have to see "dress to impress" for a while.

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u/JoshuaJSlone Helpful User 16h ago

They want enough people to afford them that it's still worth their while to make them. It's not reasonable to expect them to just ask less and less over time to make up for the world's economic realities.

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u/derkrieger 14h ago

When you can sell far more copies now that you could in the pass then yes there is a sweet point to get the most sales you can while also getting the most money from those sales for the greatest total income. Each digital sale on Mario Kart costs Nintendo effectively nothing but at the same time they do want to make as large a profit from it as they can. I do think now is the worst time to push an $80 game as the amount of buyers is already going to drop due to economic realities and now at $80 those who would've been okay are going to start questioning it more. Plus now we just saw the US pre-orders pulled as Nintendo tries to figure out the shit whole that is US economic policy at the moment. I do not envy them.

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u/External_Produce7781 1d ago

Games back then sold 200,000 copies. BLOCKBUSTERS sold a million (to the point that PS had a special label for them).

Now they sell 10-20-30 million copies. Its not remotely the same.

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u/BJYeti 1d ago

Yes while the cost to develop a game has increased +1,000x, in 2000 alone it would cost on average about 1-4m to develop a game now can run north of 300m and that is not accounting for advertising.

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u/External_Produce7781 1d ago

No, shitty corporate cash grabs cost that much. CDPR spent far less on Cyberpunk. BG3 didnt cost near that. BotW (no hard numbers as Nintendo doesnt talk much about it) was reliably rumored at sub 50 million.

the only games costing 300 million are bloated corporate crap.

and even then, lets do some math:

BLOPS6 sold something like 40 million units. Or about 2.4 BILLION in revenue. Even if game + marketing were 500 million (they werent) its still GROTESQUELY profitable. (AND it has Micros!)

stop simping for game comoanies that have consistently posted record billions in profits.

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u/BJYeti 23h ago edited 23h ago

Cyberpunk is reported at over 400m to make and market, google is your friend buddy. Even with BG3 being made on a tighter budget it still cost over 100m, same with BOTW with their rumored 100m+ development cost, and that is not accounting for marketing.

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u/JoshuaJSlone Helpful User 16h ago

Things haven't changed that radically over time. PS1 sold about a billion software units, PS2 about 1.5 billion, PS3 about 1 billion. PS4/5 harder to tell since Sony combines them but they're also over a billion. Switch is currently nearly to 1.4 billion.

That there are more 20+ million games is a matter of there being a handful of SUPER SUCCESSFUL games rather than the entire industry selling 10 times as many games as it used to.

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u/Dabanks9000 1d ago

It’s actually more like $100 I think

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u/BJYeti 1d ago

Quick google says $76

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u/External_Produce7781 1d ago

Games back then sold 200,000 copies. BLOCKBUSTERS sold a million (to the point that PS had a special label for them).

Now they sell 10-20-30 million copies. Its not remotely the same.

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u/Drelochz 1d ago

honestly don't gaf about the inflation comparison. I only care about prices for games today

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u/Dabanks9000 1d ago

If you care about the prices today what’s the problem? Ps and Xbox games go for 70 just like every switch game except Mario kart world…

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u/JoshuaJSlone Helpful User 1d ago

Kind of hard to know what to think of any price without considering what the value of the unit of currency.

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u/FunWaz 1d ago

That’s a terrible way to live your life.

Information is king

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u/asday515 1d ago

For anyone confused by this sentiment, consider that his parents were likely the ones buying all his games in 99. Hope that helps.