The $80 price tag for premium games on the shiny new hardware does not have folks feeling delighted.

Nintendo today revealed a lot of the most pertinent details about its upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 console and a few launch games. One thing it didn’t touch on was the price for the hardware and its first games, which launch on June 5. However, respected game influencer Geoff Keighley quickly tweeted on X to let fans know they should expect to pay $449 for the hardware itself, and $80 for digital games. That sounds like a lot, especially for the games, but shouldn’t we have seen this coming?

In early 1989 or so, I paid $65 for Super Mario Bros. 3. I believe it was a year or two later I paid that much for Mega Man 4. I didn’t have a lot of options, so I had to order my games through Radio Shack. At the time, the MSRP for games was pretty fluid. Around a similar time, I would look through Electronic Boutique catalogs and see games like Phantasy Star IV offered for $80 before shipping. Games used to cost a lot. People who may have come to the medium in the last 10 or 20 years have no idea how ridiculous things could get.

They might also not recognize how far $65 to $80 would typically go in 1990. When we consider concepts like inflation and purchasing power, the numbers get pretty extreme. $80 in 1990 might have paid for a full grocery trip for a small family, or a hefty electric bill. 10 gallons of gas cost $15 to $20, even in some areas where prices were higher than normal (like Oregon, where we still had fuel attendants everywhere). In 2025, $80 will once again buy you a hot new video game. Or, it might buy you 20 gallons of gas. At the grocery store, it might fill most of one bag. Or less, if you like name brand.

[Edit: I was curious after posting this, so I checked around for more math that I consider relevant. $60 in 2020 had roughly the spending power that $75 to $77 does in 2025. So, in terms of pure spending power, we're seeing only a tiny bump in 2025 that will soon disappear if current trends continue. And the spending power of $60 in 2017, compared to $80 now, is roughly equivalent. That's how quickly things have changed.]

Essentially, $80 in 1990 was a significant splurge. Today, it’s twice what a couple of adults might spend going to a movie. The value is definitely there. So, why do people care so much if video games cost that much to purchase?

I’ll be honest: I’m not looking forward to spending $80 on new video games. I probably won’t buy as many games at that price as I would have if they stuck at $60 or $70, as they mostly have for the last several years. I will be happy every time I can buy that game I’ve been obsessing over for $60 or less. But I’m not going to vilify companies for charging more. Since 2020 or so, my costs for groceries have gone up by something like 30 percent. So have my costs for fuel. So has my rent. The only thing that doesn’t seem to be rising is my wage. At least someone’s getting a bargain, right?

We can’t really expect the companies that make and publish games to keep costs down. They invest a lot and they need to have the dangling carrot of a big return in order to fund future development. Games cost more and more to make these days, in order to satisfy people who scream “bloody murder” if the latest shooter doesn’t run at 120 FPS or feature ray tracing. All of the required development resources cost money, at a time when the industry is trimming costs everywhere it can.

Put another way: games are going to start costing more because money doesn’t go as far.

We’ve actually been riding a long, happy wave that for a good long while has made it easier and easier to afford video games. Relative to the cost of so much else, the pricing has stayed low. A bump to $80, though unwelcome, was fairly predictable. Along those lines, people have for some time been predicting that when Grand Theft Auto VI arrives later this year, it will do so with a $100 price tag. That’s far from verified, but it’s also irritatingly credible, wouldn’t you say?

Nintendo’s platform is the first one launching since the dramatic decrease in spending power that our money went through during the pandemic. I seriously doubt that when the next Xbox platform arrives, or the next PlayStation, those games will be priced at $80. Nintendo will compete with those platforms at some point within the next few years, and game publishers are probably already pressing for the $80 price. I can’t see them saying, “Okay, we’ll charge $70 for the Switch 2 version and $80 for the others because we like Nintendo a lot.” That’s not how these things tend to work.

Some people have blamed recent talk of huge tariffs for the updated pricing. I don’t think that’s true at all. The way I see it, Nintendo, its partners, and the game industry in general don’t need any more incentive to bump up their prices. They have plenty based on the horrible state of the economy, and based on how far the dollar no longer stretches. It would be nice to see games retain their unsustainably low price at launch for another decade or so, at this time when we’re all strapped for cash. But I understand why the price is going up and I won’t pretend otherwise.

Does that boot I’m licking taste good? Nah. It tastes terrible! But I understand it.

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