Video games have always been a costly hobby, but recently the prices have gotten more and more prohibitively expensive. The average price of first-party video games has increased dramatically from $60 to $80 within the last year.
This began when Nintendo announced the price of its new game, “Mario Kart World,” would be $80. The rise in prices for digital downloads of games is particularly irksome due to the fact that it’s not even a physical product you can own, which makes any justification for such a purchase feel flimsy at best.
From Nintendo’s end, the reason given for these price increases is the tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump. Nintendo is undoubtedly affected by the tariffs; however, the company’s decision to raise prices feels like it runs counter to its main demographic of casual players and families.
Since the Wii era, Nintendo has mainly marketed its games and consoles toward a more casual crowd that wouldn’t necessarily claim gaming to be their main hobby, yet Nintendo still prices their products at the same or even more expensive rate than other gaming companies. Nintendo is also raising the prices of all the Switch family of consoles and games, not just the new releases, according to CNBC. This means that one will have to pay more money for a seven-year-old console.
Nintendo is also rather infamous for never lowering the prices of its games, which makes it even harder for the average person to pick up its games. Most families likely cannot afford new games at such prices, so it feels particularly scummy that older games will remain at such a high cost.
Additionally, since Nintendo has raised its prices for new games going forward, Microsoft has felt emboldened to do the same with its games despite not being affected by the tariffs. This will, unfortunately, likely be the case across the game industry as more companies realize that they can get away with it. One argument that crops up is that video games have also been getting more expensive to produce and therefore should be more expensive to buy, yet there has been little pushback from most gamers.
However, it is also true that a lot of big-budget games are released at full price with plenty of bugs and glitches due to the insane crunch time the developers are forced to go under. Additionally, many ports – older games adapted to run on newer consoles – are released at more expensive prices and few changes, as was the case with the $60 Switch port of “Skyward Sword,” a 14-year-old game.
Essentially, these price increases will do nothing but have a negative impact on those who wish to play video games casually and will be another one of the many things that continue to get more prohibitive and exclusive as it gets more expensive.
Alice Breisch can be contacted at
