this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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You do realize that video game prices haven't increased with inflation in years, right? A $60 game in 2008 would be $88 today just from inflation. This isn't price gouging, it's inflation correction.
It doesn't matter if a $60 game in 2008 is worth $88 now if wages haven't gone up to match that. Did you know that (at least in the US) food prices usually aren't included in inflation calculations because they fluctuate too much? People have other things to pay for with their wages that aren't video games, and those costs aren't going down either.
Literally nothing ever has stayed in lockstep with wages, that's not even relevant to the discussion at hand. Not sure why you think video games would be special, especially video games by Nintendo, solijce they're literally the last ones on the "raise video game prices" train.
Entertainment is not a necessity, it's not like people need it to survive. When it doesn't move with wages people find ways to make it affordable (e.g. piracy, 2nd hand markets, or sharing physical copies with friends), or they find something else (steam, indie games, etc.). Wages are directly responsible for game prices in a lot of ways, and there are pretty good Steam statistics on this as well (which is why a lot of Steam games aren't priced with 1:1 conversions in different regions, because doing so would basically price entire regions out of buying games).
Pricing fans out of games is exactly how AAA studios go under. A big AAA game flopping is basically a death sentence for a studio in the current landscape, and if Microsoft isn't immune to that then Nintendo definitely isn't.