Will Games Go Above $70 Eventually?

[Mr EliteL]

Yeah $80 from Nintendo, FIRST?! Hoo boy, suddenly we all don't feel so good...

That's opened the floodgates so now others are looking at that price tag, and perhaps they'll wait and see how well MKW does (which likely will be a no-brainer), they'll get their forks and knives ready as they slap on those equalling prices. Mainly the franchises that are big enough to do this really, unless they fumble hard like Assassin's Creed has, because if that didn't happen/didn't release before MKW that might've been a name to do it. After Shadows though unless they return to their roots, AC won't see the light of day again. Moving on, er...no FIFA couldn't do it could they? Hope not, those games shouldn't cost that much. A mainline Pokémon game after Z-A could, but that's Nintendo again. As big as From Software has become, I doubt Duskbloods will be, probably $70 for that but the game after which'll be on PC/PS5/Xbox Series X could be.

Just throwing out guesses really, some more for sure but hopefully it'll be closer to $70 for now instead of lots gunning for the $80, not sure which'll go higher. GTA 6 but that might not be just standard alone for going over.

[Maniakkid25]

Oh, it gets worse. That 80 dollar price tag is for digital releases only. Physical copies carry a price tag of $90!

Yeah, I'm gonna be looking pretty deeper into the second hand market, now. Fuck paying 90 bucks for a game.

[Moonface]

Oh, it gets worse. That 80 dollar price tag is for digital releases only. Physical copies carry a price tag of $90!

Yeah, I'm gonna be looking pretty deeper into the second hand market, now. Fuck paying 90 bucks for a game.

I've been seeing this yet I've not found anything that actually verifies the $80 price on the Mario Kart World website is for the digital version.

[Maniakkid25]

When you're buying a game on the website, you're buying the digital version. You can't buy games from the manufacturer in physical form anymore. By simple process of elimination, it has to be the digital version.

[Moonface]

When you're buying a game on the website, you're buying the digital version. You can't buy games from the manufacturer in physical form anymore. By simple process of elimination, it has to be the digital version.

We had completely opposite views of that then. My take of the price on the official website was it was physical pricing due to being tagged as MSRP, something I doubt would be a term used for a digital price when Nintendo themselves are the only ones who would sell the game digitally and thus don't need to MSRP themselves.

Regardless, $80 looks to be the physical price because Walmart and other outlets are listing it as such.

[Maniakkid25]

Then why the hell are multiple outlets saying 90? Well, tooling around shows the headline isn't telling the whole story; only SOME games will be 90 dollars. Nice.

Oh, and the physical copy may not even have the actual game. Just a license to it. Cool, Nintendo. Fuck off.

[Mr EliteL]

Oof, $90 for physical and it may not have the game until you download it? Really now.

For UK MKW is going for £66.99 Digital, £74.99 Physical. DK Bananza is £58.99 Digital, £66.99 Physical both taken from the Nintendo Store, so perhaps these two give an idea of how a more standard game vs big title (though Donkey Kong could be considered a big title anyway, it's not as compared to Mario Kart). Also confirms there will be somewhat of a gap between Digital and Physical, so I don't know which way that $80 if there's outlets going for $90 then that's Digital and Physical for US then I guess.

Switch 2 wasn't going to be a early purchase for me anyway, Mario Kart World neither, probably more so now and of course with Nintendo, their price for the game won't be going down.

[Moonface]

Then why the hell are multiple outlets saying 90? Well, tooling around shows the headline isn't telling the whole story; only SOME games will be 90 dollars. Nice.

Oh, and the physical copy may not even have the actual game. Just a license to it. Cool, Nintendo. Fuck off.

Any article I saw claiming $90 physical was from them assuming the $80 price tag on the MKW site was for the digital copy, which has been proven as false and so any outlet claiming $90 prices with zero source for their claim is bullshit IMO.

The second one looks like a different approach to physical Switch cases having a download voucher inside for a digital copy of the game because it can't fit onto the cart. Both are stupid and if the game can't fit on physical media then just don't release it physically.

[Moonface]

Oh, and the physical copy may not even have the actual game. Just a license to it. Cool, Nintendo. Fuck off.

The second one looks like a different approach to physical Switch cases having a download voucher inside for a digital copy of the game because it can't fit onto the cart. Both are stupid and if the game can't fit on physical media then just don't release it physically.

Something I wanted to add to this that I hadn't thought of at the time, but Nintendo taking this approach to games that can't fit on a cart over using download codes like they currently do does mean that you can actually still sell/loan that game to someone else as if it were a regular physical copy. So I'm actually glad they chose to make that change instead of sticking to their current system.


Another thought I had while writing this, is whether or not anyone but Nintendo will adopt the physical costs more than digital model or not. If they do, then every $70 game will end up like Mario Kart World where the physical copy costs $80, and the outcomes to that would be either:

1. More people just move to buying digital because the price doesn't go up for that.
   
2. People just wait for the physical version to go down in price.
   
3. People just buy the $80 physical anyway because they want to support physical and don't want to wait.
   

I think the first outcome is the most likely to happen, and that sucks because it means physical media will struggle more than it already does against digital, and if companies notice an increase in digital sales they'd probably bump up the digital price eventually.

[Moonface]

Microsoft to Raise Price of Xbox Games to $80
Microsoft have announced that the price of all first-party Xbox games will be raised to $80 some time around this coming holiday season. Presumably prices will increase in other regions too, but I couldn't find any details about that.

Alongside these increases, Microsoft also announced that the price of Xbox consoles and accessories will be going up worldwide as of today. The new prices per region can be found here: https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/hard...ng-updates

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The games going up doesn't surprise me, but the price increase of other Xbox stuff alongside it is wild. Almost every console has gone up by $100 in price, so anyone who might consider getting an Xbox console in the holiday season is going to end up paying a significant amount more money.
Although, there is Game Pass and I can see this price increase just pushing more people to that service because why the fuck wouldn't you use it when the alternative is paying $80 per game?

[Mr EliteL]

Even though I'm not surprised it's happening, I thought this would happen later not this soon even if it's just to contend with Switch 2's release. Many are already not pleased with $80 games coming but to increase everything else on top is a bit much. It'll just steer people away from X|S with the price increases and just go to Switch 2 anyway or neither. Sony to follow suit next then?

[Moonface]

Even though I'm not surprised it's happening, I thought this would happen later not this soon even if it's just to contend with Switch 2's release. Many are already not pleased with $80 games coming but to increase everything else on top is a bit much. It'll just steer people away from X|S with the price increases and just go to Switch 2 anyway or neither. Sony to follow suit next then?

I doubt Sony would increase the price of the PS5 again soon only because they've done it already in most regions I think. As for their games, it's unlikely to be this year because Ghost of Yotei is releasing in October already priced at $70 and Sony doesn't have anything else releasing after it this year, although even if they did it would only work if pre-orders weren't open for that game yet (because then it wouldn't have a price attached to it yet).


I haven't read it all yet, but this article makes a good point just from its headline alone: Bloomberg | Players Have Too Many Options to Spend $80 on a Video Game

It doesn't really say a whole lot after reading through it besides just expanding on its key point multiple times, but this part stood out to me.

The three highest-reviewed video games of 2025 so far, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic, are Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Blue Prince and Split Fiction. Those games cost, respectively, $50, $30 and $50.

Back in the days before indie developers, an industry-wide standard of $80 would be a take it or leave it endeavor, but there are so many games that come out below even the old $60 price tag that rival a lot of big budget AAA games. Developers and publishers seem so hell bent on making these multi-hundred-million-dollar games with this weird expectation they can make money back on them like Hollywood does on blockbuster movies, but with a fraction of the audience if you compare the amount of gamers to movie watchers. And then there's the fact people can and will just wait for a price drop on games that start asking for $80.

[Mr EliteL]

Ah yeah that makes sense, Sony shouldn't just yet as there was already an increase hopefully. But who knows they might get over their heads and just go for the $80 anyway, hopefully not but I barely have faith in companies making the correct decision anymore so I won't be surprised. Still generally speaking it shouldn't be loads of games making the jump and there'll be the lower priced games that are still of high quality still obviously.

[Moonface]

VGC: EA suggests it has no plans to raise game prices yet despite others doing so

Our business is very different today than it was even just 10 years ago. In a world where everything we did 10 years was about selling shiny discs in plastic boxes in retail shelves, while that’s still a part of our business it’s a significantly smaller part of our business, and we now have pricing representing everything from free-to-play all the way to Deluxe Editions and beyond.

At the end of the day, whether we’re doing something that costs a dollar, or we’re doing something that costs $10, or we’re doing something that costs $100, our objective is always delivering incredible quality and exponential value to our player base.

And what we’ve discovered over the course of time is whether we can marry quality and value together, our business is strong, resilient and continues to grow.

From a games perspective we put out, we have reflected no changes in our current strategy at this point.

Of all the companies to come out and make a statement against raising their game prices anytime soon, EA is one of the last I expected to be doing it.

[ShiraNoMai]

I think it's funny that the reason for their decision is "we have been nickel and diming elsewhere so we don't need to risk raising base prices"