PSA: Mario Kart World is $50 bundled with a Switch 2, but $80 by itself

Early first-party games are getting bumped up to the $70-to-$80 range.

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[analogy_toxics_01]

I said $80 but some sources say $90.

The source doesn't actually say they will be $90. They're looking at the tiered prices in Europe and saying it implies a price of $90 in the US, but we already know (from both Nintendo and retailers) that's not the case.

 

[YetAnotherPoster]

Ok boomer.

Super Mario came out in 1995 with an MSRP of $25. Adjusted for inflation that's $75. A lot of Atari 2600 titles in 1978/79 were $35-$40. A $35 game in 1979 is $155 in today's dollars.

I'm 56 and paid those prices in those years.

Joke's on you, I pirated^Wacquired Spectrum and Amiga games.

 

[YetAnotherPoster]

The source doesn't actually say they will be $90. They're looking at the tiered prices in Europe and saying it implies a price of $90 in the US, but we already know (from both Nintendo and retailers) that's not the case.

Spanish prices are officially listed as €80 for digital copies and a €90 for physical editions. Perhaps it's just the eurozone which is getting fleeced. But US prices are caveated with "actual price may vary".

 

[analogy_toxics_01]

Spanish prices are officially listed as €80 for digital copies and a €90 for physical editions. Perhaps it's just the eurozone which is getting fleeced. But US prices are caveated with "actual price may vary".

The full disclaimer is:
"Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price. Actual price may vary"

But that's been true and standard language for probably as long as there has been retail.

As long as Nintendo is setting the price at a certain point, pretty much every major, reputable retailer is going to sell it no higher than that price

 

[Maarc]

I truly get that games cost more, inflation exists, and people deserve to be paid.

The problem is, adjusting for currency conversion, this will breach $100 quite comfortably in Australia. On today's prices, that's $128 AUD.

Triple figures is hard to justify for most games.

Honestly - I think I'm weaning out of the Nintendo ecosystem now. I got very little for the first Switch (almost entirely first party) and the 3rd party exclusives just weren't worth it for me.

I wish them luck!

 

[Kazper]

While the console price (and likely the game prices) won't deter die-hard Nintendo fans, the problem I foresee is the loss of more "casual" fans. I've owned various Nintendo consoles on-and-off over the years, and got the Switch because it was cheap enough to get as a second (portable) console and to let my kids use. At a 50% premium for the console the Switch 2 is definitely not any of those things.

That means a lot more hard choices need to be considered before buying, and the cratering economy means a lot of people will be careful about spending big. If we were to get this it would be instead of a PS6 - and not until a comparison could be made to reach a decision. And I have a sneaking suspicion that by then the PS6 would win out.

 

[Deleted member 567875]

You can tell a beancounter is in charge now. Nintendo are still sticking with withered technology but are charging more than ever for it. Iwata wouldn't have allowed $80 games.

Their hardware performance strategy has been consistent for 20 years at this point.

 

[icypioneer]

It was one thing when I was a child receiving Nintendo products and games as gifts on my birthday or xmas. Once I got into PC games and paying for my own way, I found myself sinking hundreds of hours into discounted Civilization 5/6 compared to much more expensive Nintendo titles that were already 4 years old.

I got the Switch late, for the release of Pokemon Scarlet. Regretted the purchase pretty quickly. I did finally get Animal Crossing, which felt worth it. Irritably buying it used was still nearly the full price. Maybe discounted and moddable PC games have spoiled me from enjoying the premium cost of Nintendo's locked down games.

 

[Golgatha]

I think I'm good until I can replace my hall effect JoyCons I have with my OG Switch. Now if Nintendo wants to give me hall effect JoyCon 2s and an OLED screen, I'll gladly upgrade and I'm not really price conscious on this purchase since all the games are backwards compatible.

 

[ChefJeff789]

Anecdotally, I'm already seeing a lot of backlash to the game pricing. Console pricing is a one-time hit and easier to swallow, but Nintendo doesn't have to subsidize their console like Sony and MS do, so this just reads as "we're charging this because we CAN, deal with it" behavior. I personally will not be picking up a Switch 2 for the family just for this reason. I mean, they're even charging for the interactive user manual...? Go fuck yourself Nintendo. We'll pivot to affordable indies on Steam Decks until you've found your sanity.

 

[Marlor_AU]

I wonder how the (just announced) 24% tariff on goods from Japan will affect the US list price of first-party Nintendo games.

 

[Exnor]

Hmmm Nintendo is being greedy again.

Those prices for the games are ridiculous. Specially the "upgrades", that so many publishers did for free on Xbox series and PS5 games.

Before this announcements i was almost certain that the system old be a success, but now, and specially in this uncertain economy we live in Europe and i assume the USA, i am no so sure.

This presentation (Nintendo direct) was disappointing imo. Sure better graphics and all, but the console does not bring anything new to the table (120hz screen that is no Oled, i'm sorry but its a downgrade from my Oled Switch screen).
Voice chat? We have that since the 360 (plus the forgotten 360 camera).
Video chat and kinect like gimmicks? Again 360 era.

Ok the video screen share is a nice feature i give them that

oh and one game cart share was done by nintendo themselves on the DS and 3DS consoles, so nothing really new here.

I hope that they do a price drop on the games.
For me, its a pass, at least until some years in the console life cycle .

 

[ChefJeff789]

Crazy is complaining about 70 dollar games in 2025 when we were paying 70 dollars for games when the N64 launched.

I see this said a lot, and it's fair. But several differences are very important:

• N64 cartridges were quite expensive to manufacture. Nearly all of these sales will be digital
• Gaming in general has an absolutely enormous audience by the standards of the 90s and these companies sell far more copies of a single title than they ever did then
• Nintendo already has a "Nintendo tax" on basically everything, by which I mean they essentially never drop the price of first party games. There will be no half-off sale, in the entire life of the console

For all of these reasons, it's not such a simple comparison.

 

[atomicpowerrobot]

Charging for resolution and framerate increases for Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is really distasteful for me. Those games couldn't even hit 20 fps in some areas of the world, so now Nintendo is saying "buy our new US$450 console and then pay an additional fee to unlock the performance you paid for"? No thanks.

These upgrades were about the worst way they could have done them. If they had included texture or rendering pipeline updates (things that require real work to implement), then paying for the updates would have been justified.

My understanding is that BOTW and TOTK are getting HDR and higher res textures to complement the better resolution and draw distance. Additionally you get the awkward phone app and QR build codes for TOTK.

 

[billybeer]

Or shooting yourself in the foot: will the higher prices compensate for the lost sells? Because inflation isn't in my payslip: at this price I'll buy fewer games, and now I wonder if the Switch 2 is worth buying for the so few games I'll play.

As a result, instead of paying several hundred USD over the years, I may pay zero. Which is smaller (even before inflation).

There's definitely price elasticity there somewhere, where at some higher price it can't make up for lost sales. But again, why is gaming the one industry where they can never raise prices? Everything costs more in the last four years, let alone the last forty.

I know it isn't fun to pay more, but when games from established developers come out, and do okay, but don't knock it out of the park and then that studio has to straight up shut down, something is broken in the industry. We can't have a world where every studio HAS to have a blockbuster or they get laid off or shut down.

We are selling hardware at a loss and our most played titles are free to play. It just doesn't work and the inflation post-covid has finally pushed it all to the breaking point. We are out of user growth to sustain things.

As far as hardware costs...the days of $500 consoles are gone. When a mid-level video card costs $1000, look for game consoles to be closer to that next gen. Literally everything simply costs more now, from the plastics to the chip itself, to the manufacturing.

 

[jarvis]

In the late 80's, Dragon Warrior (Quest) II for the original NES cost $80 off the shelf in the U.S.

With inflation, that would make it about, let's say... $200 dollars in today's money?

Granted, we are just starting to adjust to $70. Nintendo shouldn't be attempting to push this up even further right now. Or what is going to end up happening is smaller/indie games that are cheaper are going to sell better. I wonder if they are "building in" some of this cost based on the fact that one person can share a single game with 3 other Switch 2's (locally).

Perhaps the price has to due with the size of the game and the physical card it ships on if you go this route? Still sucks either way. And yeah, even the console costs more then I thought. And those Joy-Con 2's better not have stick drift, cause they cost like 80 or 90 bucks to replace. Want another dock? $110. I'm kind of shocked Nintendo would release stuff at these prices. Imagine being a parent at Christmas and you have two kids who want their own. Oh and an NSO + Enhanced subscription. They are quickly pricing themselves to the point where only the top 25% of Americans could likely afford all of this. Don't forget the camera ($50)! Oh and you probably want a fancy new Mario Kart World "wheel" (piece of plastic to plug your JoyCon's into to) for $40. Don't really like the Joy Con's? They will sell you a Pro Controller for like $90. And hey, if you really like the [most likely well below Dolphin quality GameCube emulation] you can by a GameCube controller for another $70!

 

[Soothsayer786]

Sorry little Timmy, no video games this year. Nintendo got greedy.

 

[atomicpowerrobot]

So I work in the gaming industry. I know this may be an unpopular take, but higher prices have long been needed and it was going to take someone like Nintendo or Sony (or GTA6) leading the way.

There is a reason you guys have been reading about so many layoffs in the gaming industry recently (34k+ reported layoffs and counting since 2022). Revenue is down since 2020 and it is unique to gaming. Books? Streaming? Music? Revenue all up since 2020.

Game prices have literally never been lower in real dollar terms (that is, inflation adjusted) than right now. But It's not like the games are any cheaper to make now. In fact they are far more expensive and take far longer than ever before. Not a good combo when you have shrinking player growth.

The reasons for the shrinking of the industry are numerous: COVID hangover, casual gamers moving to social media like TikTok, Free-to-Play and "Games as a service" keeping pricing expectations low, a 30 year back-catalog for gamers to play with, execs expecting every game to be a Destiny or GTAV that lasts a decade and makes billions, games being rushed and shipped with numerous bugs, the list goes on.

But one of the few ways out is to finally start charging more for games. Why is gaming the one industry that has product pricing go down over decades? Movie tickets, concert tickets, even streaming service prices are up over the last decade or two. Even movie tickets are simply flat when adjusted for inflation all the way back to 1980, while concerts and streaming are above the inflation rate over the last decade. Video games? Down over 50% in real prices since the 80s! Were you guys buying $50 games in the late 2000s? Congrats, those would be $100 today if they just kept up with inflation. Did you buy Mario 3 for NES at launch? It would be $120 today. The pricing is literally harming the industry.

Obligatory disclaimer that not all games are worth those high prices and much of this is self-inflicted. But raising prices is one of the few clear ways back to some sort of stability for the industry.

Yes, but lots of the earlier games didn't sell nearly as many copies as the bi-annual $60 base edition / $99 complete with season pass AAA title that studios blow 8-9 figure marketing budgets on. They were a one time purchase with no data-slurping code to be able to sell off user-data as a secondary source of income. No releasing a broken build and then fixing it in Day One patch. They also had WAY fewer devs working on them (and ironically usually more QA people). Those games also didn't have the luxury of commodity tooling and game engines that handle much of the development work that use to be on a per-game basis. Sure there were some engines and stuff got re-sprited - hello SMB2 - but it was more basic than what's available now. The wheel basically had to be reinvented every generation and due to console limitations, the games themselves often had to be heavily optimized with lots of thought into the mechanics of how it actually runs on a system. Games themselves also varied in quality and gameplay even across the consoles of the same generation (Mortal Kombat and Jurassic Park as 2 examples). Also, developer hardware has gotten faster, more powerful, comparatively cheaper, and has way more storage (not you Apple).

So yeah, the price hasn't moved much if you ignore microtransactions, multiple editions, season passes, remasters, subscription models, and releasing on multiple console simultaneously as enabled by modern development environments.

All that to say, it's not apples to apples. Lots of things are way better in the industry. Some things are way worse.

That said, I was one of those people who thought $70 was a reasonable step up in price given the last few years of economic data. But all of a sudden we're looking at up to +$20 per game with +$30 in the case of physical carts. And what that means for Nintendo fans is that since the big N very rarely does more than 30% off during a digital sale on their titles, we are looking at a situation where on sale Switch 2 games are $56 dollars - $4 cheaper than MSRP for Switch 1 games. Now couple that with the fact that a $10 premium on physical games is going to cause a lot of retailers to back off stocking as many, people are going to be pushed to digital - causing a simultaneous drop in the resale availability and rise in resale value. Any remaining Diamond Hands may want to reconsider.

So yeah, it chafes a bit.

 

[atomicpowerrobot]

Was willing to consider a unit at the $499 launch price. $70-80 a game? GTFO.

I'm on record about complaining about the prices, too, but is this the first Nintendo system to fully utilize all previous systems controllers?
I just found out Joycons and Pro controllers will still work with the SW2. That takes quite a bit of sting off of it.

 

[atomicpowerrobot]

3) You've forgotten about Playstation Greatest Hits and Nintendo Player's Choice. $50 prices were offset by discounted $20 games later on. Nintendo now gives only comparitively paltry 30% discounts 2 or 3 times a year and it's usually only on the titles which have either sold poorly, reviewed poorly (or both), or games which are already several years old.

Oh man I forgot about Player's Choice. Maybe with such a drastic hike they can afford to bring that back? Surely the first 2 Switch Mario Party games didn't bring in much at full MSRP after Jamboree came out? Maybe this would give them the breathing room to bring that back.

 

[Maarc]

But one of the few ways out is to finally start charging more for games. Why is gaming the one industry that has product pricing go down over decades? Movie tickets, concert tickets, even streaming service prices are up over the last decade or two. Even movie tickets are simply flat when adjusted for inflation all the way back to 1980, while concerts and streaming are above the inflation rate over the last decade. Video games? Down over 50% in real prices since the 80s! Were you guys buying $50 games in the late 2000s? Congrats, those would be $100 today if they just kept up with inflation. Did you buy Mario 3 for NES at launch? It would be $120 today. The pricing is literally harming the industry.

So, you made lots of good points which I have ommitted from the quote. But I did want to respond to this portion of it.

Movie tickets? I used to go weekly as a broke ass uni student with the pricing of it. Now? I go maybe once a quarter, and that's because something my daughter really wants to see is out, and it's a reward for good work at school.

Concert tickets? I was thinking of seeing the Offspring recently, and for me and my daughter to go on the "cheap seats" was going to be $300+. Nope. I stopped going years ago.

Streaming services? Yup, they're going up - so I look at cheaper annual plans, bundle options, or just plain chopping them off. Used to have a few, now only have 2.

These things have been going up in price, but surely I'm not the only one that has looked at those and gone "Nup!".

Now, whether the increased prices outdo the lost customers, I don't know - if overall revenue is up, then I guess it is working for them. For me, as a customer, I just restrain myself further.

 

[DrewW]

My kid just texted me that they're going to buy one day 1, so it looks like my route to playing Mario Kart is having kids lol

Of course overall that's cost me slightly more than $449!

Kids are the most expensive DLC.

I think parents just pay what Mario Kart costs. The upgrades are a quiet minivan tax.

 

[enlightened.doggo]

They crushed the emulators, they learned that their fans are loyal consumers, so now comes the gouging.

 

[Hichung]

I also take issue with the claim that games are far cheaper. When people make this argument, they practically always compare MSRP of first party Switch games against sale prices of years old PC games.

People compare the MSRP on (first party) switch games, because that's what people usually see when they do the comparison, regardless of how old the game is. It's rare to find any significant discount (more than 50%) on a first party switch game unless the game just absolutely sucked ass.

Whereas with steam games, I can just wait a year or 2 and usually get a pretty nice chunk knocked off (more than 50%) during one of their spring/summer/fall/winter/other sales. Wait another year or so, and I might even get lucky with 75% or more knocked off.

edit: Anyways, I'm out this generation I guess. I'll just keep playing my OG switch for my Nintendo fix, and my steam deck and gaming pc for everything else.

 

[TMilligan]

I don’t quite buy the inflation argument for game prices because each copy costs close to zero to make. The gaming industry and the number of copies sold keeps going up over time. For example, Galaxy sold 13M copies while Odyssey sold 20M+. The total sold keeps getting higher while the cost to produce the copy is still very low. As long as the market keeps expanding, I see no reason for the per copy to increase other than to see what the market will take.

I would see the need to price the per copy price higher if the market was stagnant and sold the same amount but that’s not the case.

 

[Chuktuds]

This pricing model has convinced me to dive back in to my Switch backlog rather than take the plunge on the Switch 2. I'll see how things look in a couple years.

 

[Fred Duck]

It's almost precisely in line with inflation and the prices Nintendo have charged for all previous generation first party games.

I personally feel that Nintendo first party titles tend to be worth the premium over other publishers. I'm still putting hours into MK8 for example, a title which is, at this point, about to go into 8th grade.

So you feel it's still worth the same price for this Wii U port this many years along? Really?

What of the exchange rate? Rumour has it that's behind the bizarre dual "Japanese language-only" system launch in Japan.

 

[emag]

IMO, they should've applied the PS4->PS5 upgrade model -- if you have the original cart, they grant you the Switch 2 copy with improved graphics and performance at no cost.

Sony charged $10 for some PS4->PS5 game upgrades (GoW Ragnarok, Spider Man, Ghost of Tsushima, etc.), while others were free.

 

[tiz^]

I will need to see some evidence that these joycons won't be a con. My family spent just as much on controllers as we did games.

 

[enlightened.doggo]

While the console price (and likely the game prices) won't deter die-hard Nintendo fans, the problem I foresee is the loss of more "casual" fans. I've owned various Nintendo consoles on-and-off over the years, and got the Switch because it was cheap enough to get as a second (portable) console and to let my kids use. At a 50% premium for the console the Switch 2 is definitely not any of those things.

That means a lot more hard choices need to be considered before buying, and the cratering economy means a lot of people will be careful about spending big. If we were to get this it would be instead of a PS6 - and not until a comparison could be made to reach a decision. And I have a sneaking suspicion that by then the PS6 would win out.

Nintendo has shoveled junk hardware to the casuals for the last three generations of consoles. Yes, the game cost is gouging. But man have you seen how games struggle on Switch? They need a significant hardware update just to support existing titles. You can only have so many big name releases that are unplayable for performance reasons. And $450 is not expensive if it actually ends up delivering on 1080p 120hz.

 

[dEvErGEN]

Not a chance this works out, Nintendo. I was the pessimist in my group guessing at most $375 at most base console and $500 “family bundle with a 2-game pack, year of NSO, and extra controller” but $450 and $80 games!?

$500 gets an an Xbox Series X. $550 is an OLED Steam Deck 512GB. AAA games for those are often $40 or less on sale.

Come back when you’re serious.

 

[RedSox]

These game prices are outrageous in the present day. However, games on the Super Nintendo were $70- $80 over 30 years ago and it was a relief when the N64 games were usually "only" $60-$70. Adjusted for inflation those prices were much worse.

 

[BobbyBobberson]

They did this with the N64 too but at that time, it was the actual cost of the cartridge hardware.

 

[jarvis]

They crushed the emulators, they learned that their fans are loyal consumers, so now comes the gouging.

They didn't crush the emulators, they are open source. Both Switch emulators are still being carried forward, just not as well and at the pace as the original dedicated team.

I can't freakin' wait for this console to be hacked and a Switch 2 emulator to show up. It is going to be a glorious day. Nintendo made a lot of people angry and painted a giant bullseye on their backs. Do they really think folks in third world countries can afford these prices? Hell no. There is going to be an army of people working together diligently, for free, working to free these games/console. Being a Nintendo customer is like staying in an abusive relationship.

 

[sonicmerlin]

Can you play older switch games on the switch 2 or do you have to get the upgrade pack? maybe the older games could at least be sped up to 30 fps or whatever was the original target.

 

[Geebs]

It’s hard to work out what the real value proposition will be without knowing whether Nintendo plans to continue selling Game Vouchers and how much they plan to charge.

Almost all of the games actually worth getting for the Switch 1 (and the Switch 2 seems to continue the trend of “any title that isn’t exclusive will be much cheaper and run much better on any other platform including your phone”) were pretty steeply discounted under the Game Vouchers scheme, with an even bigger discount on the more expensive titles.

 

[DreadLordNerd]

The entire handheld gaming PC market - of which SteamDeck is about 60% - totals 6 million units shipped after three years. The Switch 1 did that in the last six months of last year alone. Steam Deck simply is not a competitor on the same scale.

I also take issue with the claim that games are far cheaper. When people make this argument, they practically always compare MSRP of first party Switch games against sale prices of years old PC games.

Most of the third party titles that are on both Steam and Switch have similar lowest sale prices. As one example, Hogwarts Legacy has a $14.99 ATL on both systems. Hades has gone below $10 on both, etc.

Steam Deck has the advantage of being able to play a number of games that Switch could not. Switch has the advantage of playing Nintendo games that you can only get on PC if you steal them.

Not disputing the overall message here but I think it's important to clarify the last sentence is not true. As a similar example, I own a huge library of WiiU games - that I play on my Steam Deck via emulation because the portability and single-device-convenience is the only way I'm ever going to be able to play them. I haven't stolen a single one of them - I backed up copies of the games I already own (digitally or on disc) and play them on different hardware.

 

[Mean Disposition]

Oh man I forgot about Player's Choice. Maybe with such a drastic hike they can afford to bring that back? Surely the first 2 Switch Mario Party games didn't bring in much at full MSRP after Jamboree came out? Maybe this would give them the breathing room to bring that back.

Here's the problem I have with that particular idea. Sony and Nintendo had actual good games in their Greatest Hits/Player's Choice lines. They were classic games with permanent price cuts. I personally have no interest in discounts on games like the aforementioned Party games which are only a grade or two above licensed shovelware. That really helps no one.

Playstation Greatest Hits Titles

Gamecube Player's Choice Titles

That Gamecube list alone has so many classics from that era. Smash Melee and Wind Waker are on it along with other third party gems like Viewtiful Joe and NBA Street.

I can't imagine a company like Nintendo would put a title like Breath of the Wild on discount like that today. They ain't no charity. They only compete on price when their back is against the wall as it was during the Gamecube and WiiU eras as they were lagging badly behind their competitors in market share.

 

[remytron83]

It’s even more disappointing when you realize that there are no games on the cards. You’re paying $80 for a key.

 

[Geebs]

There's definitely price elasticity there somewhere, where at some higher price it can't make up for lost sales. But again, why is gaming the one industry where they can never raise prices? Everything costs more in the last four years, let alone the last forty.

Because gaming is entertainment, and when you’ve spent all your money on bread, there isn’t enough left to go to the circus?