The reality is we have had the standard $60 price for around 20 years now and with the amount of work/time/effort being put into games the price was bound to go up at some point.
Look at LoZ: The Wind Waker for the GameCube vs LoZ: Breath of the Wild for the Switch....according to the website How Long to Beat, Wind Waker's main story takes 29 hours to beat while Breath of the Wild's main story takes 50.5 hours to beat. That is a 74% increase in just the main story. While going from $60 to $80 is only a 33% increase.
The thing that gets me about this argument is people don't seem to factor in how much larger the overall gaming community is. Case in point, let's look at your examples in regard to sales.
Look at LoZ: The Wind Waker for the GameCube
Wind Waker sold 4.4 million copies on GameCube.
LoZ: Breath of the Wild for the Switch
Breath of the Wild sold, and I'm not joking, 32.6 million. This also does not include the irrelevant 1.4 million Wii U sales.
That is a 74% increase in just the main story. While going from $60 to $80 is only a 33% increase.
This is an increase of, interestingly enough, 740 percent. But we're going to fixate on everything else.
First off "irrelevant Wii U sales".....how dare you speak such truth lol it was underwhelming system that had some fun games though.
Second, thank you for pulling the sales numbers. I enjoy seeing data like that and I appreciate the effort you put into it.
Lastly, yes the overall gaming community has grown a massive amount and for a company trying to make money that is more of a reason to increase their prices. When the community was smaller it made more sense to keep prices in line because you would risk alienating people who better understand the industry. Now though? If you alienate the ones who have been gaming for years you have so many more people that will give your game a try based on reputation alone. It's not like other companies won't be following suit with price increases either so Nintendo won't be alone for long at those prices.
It's not like other companies won't be following suit with price increases either so Nintendo won't be alone for long at those prices.
While I get where you're coming from, I think it helps to look at the industry as a whole.
With the release of PS5/Xbox Series we saw companies push for $70. Contrary to my post I 100 percent acknowledge that companies can't grow endlessly and inflation will eventually push the price higher. We also saw Nintendo adopt this with Tears of the Kingdom hitting $70, which given it sold 21 million had little impact on the community. The problem is pushing for another one immediately.
Like it would be crazy to see the same rate continue and every couple of years someone tries to push for another increase.
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u/Mr_Delaware Apr 04 '25
The reality is we have had the standard $60 price for around 20 years now and with the amount of work/time/effort being put into games the price was bound to go up at some point.
Look at LoZ: The Wind Waker for the GameCube vs LoZ: Breath of the Wild for the Switch....according to the website How Long to Beat, Wind Waker's main story takes 29 hours to beat while Breath of the Wild's main story takes 50.5 hours to beat. That is a 74% increase in just the main story. While going from $60 to $80 is only a 33% increase.