Are Nintendo's $80 online game prices a result of tariffs or is Nintendo just using them as an excuse to price gouge as corporations do?

Considering they are delaying pre orders due to the tariffs I do not think tariffs are the reason the price is so high. I think Nintendo is trying to set a new standard for game prices. If these games still sell at $80 then I wouldn’t be surprised to see GTA 6 release for $100. The whole gaming market will likely follow.
- The whole AAAAAAAA gaming market... I still see the Indy devs not caving to this bullshit. I only support indy devs now. The AAAAAAAAA pricks are useless, overpriced failures imo
- luckily, this is the one industry you can boycott them AND still get the product anyway 🏴‍☠️
  
  Or be a patient gamer and get it on a sale.

Just gouging us. Even on the 3DS before they shut the shop down, digital download games were the same price as buying them on a cart.
- The new Switch 2 cartridges supposedly won't have the games on them... just the license to download and play them.
  
  If that’s the case why would they bother giving game cards a higher speed interface?
  
  Not all games will be like that. Some will have the game on them. Street Fighter, Elden Ring, and Bravely Default are examples of a few that will be key cards. Oddly, I heard that Cyperpunk will be entirely on the cartridge.
  
  The sheet was describing the new box art spec for games like this one, not saying that that their new games would do that. It will probably be the same situation as with the Switch 1 where only a tiny fraction of games are like that.
  
  Wow, if the games are not on the cart then I’m not buying Nintendo.

80? More like 90 if it's the physical version.
No this isn't because of tariffs. If anything tariffs will make it even worse (which will be painful.for americana to watch). This is just good ol' Nintendo greed.
There's zero justification for a Mario Kart game costing 80/90 dollars/euros. It's simply not a game with the kind of investment behind it to justify such a price home. IMO only GTA6 has a somewhat reasonable argument to get away with that. Yes they will make a ton of money but they also spent quite a lot making it.
- Aren't the physical versions just a key you plug in that let's you download the game? Seems to me like that's just easing people into going full digital.
  
  And subsequently kill off the second hand market, perfect for a company that famously never discounts their games.
  
  From what I read, some are like that, but not all. That would be a fucking travesti.
  
  No, not all. It's a an option. Basically yubikey DRM
  Like even the game carts have a few choices for storage. For example, Pokemon pearl and diamond remake were notorious to go with the smaller storage carts where half the game is only downloadable
  
  Someone corrected me the other day on here that it’s not all games that are doing that but only some will be a game key and others will be the full game. I’m assuming that all first party titles will be the game key since this is largely about piracy and not allowing people to easily dump the game from the cartridge like people did for the Switch.

Unpopular opinion:
They could probably charge $100 and people would still buy them, despite knowing the games aren’t worth that much. Consumers don’t really care; they just want their dopamine fixes. Nintendo could wrap a literal turd up and label it the next Zelda game, and people would bum rush stores with fistfuls of money to buy it; just because.
- I don't think it's as much of an unpopular opinion as it is just a thing that happens. If the Sims community has taught me anything, diehard fans of a franchise will keep shelling out hundreds of dollars for new content even if it's overpriced dogshit
  
  And unfortunately until the community puts their collective foot down, these game developers (Nintendo, EA, etc) will continue churning out dog shit.
- Which is why they're upping the prices.
- I got flack in a group chat for being highly cynical that the games industry, at least the "AAA" publishers, will adopt the new pricing standard.
  Nintendo is doing it. They can use a flimsy excuse that they are using a stupid proprietary cart. Gamefreak was already doing it to save cost on higher storage carts. Even then they ship unoptimized shit and people lap it up like swines
  GTA 6 will definitely be $100 and have no flimsy excuse
  Ubitencent will get to it eventually I reckon after they finish fucking each other
  
  They probably will. It is kinda amusing to watch tbh
- The opinion of someone who didn’t care for the new Zelda games (BoTW & the other one), is that they already wrapped a turd & called it the next Zelda game, twice.

This is the problem with tariffs, it's an opportunity for greedy corporations to increase prices MORE than the tariffs or on products not covered by the tariffs and no one will be the wiser.
- Stage 2 greedflation
- I doubt this is because of the recent tariffs. Nintendo is a cold calculating bastard of an old corpo they must have planned this for years.
  So my assumption this isn't caused by that but just pure greed.
  No doubt they'll jack up the price more because of orange fuckhead pissing to the wind
  
  Well that was my point. Tariffs give greed the opportunity to metastasize in the darkness, because people expect the price to go up anyway.

As someone who's bought games for the last 30+ years, the fact that, relative to inflation, they got cheaper surprised me (for physical games, in any case). For those physical games, one might think of it as a correction. Yeah, the number of buyers is up, but so are production costs. Now, is some of that greed with the top taking those profits? Absolutely and I hate it. Still, I'm surprised it took this long
- Yup. I remember the first game I bought with my own money was Street Fighter 2 Turbo for 60usd in 1993. I had to run and beg my dad for more money because I was a dumb kid and didn't bring enough to cover tax. Calculated for inflation that would be around 120usd today.
  And yeah, $60 was steep for a game back then, but I got it at Suncoast which was always a ripoff. Everywhere else in the mall was sold out and I NEEDED it TODAY.

Well I've had essentially every console Nintendo has ever produced, but at least for now I'm not excited about the switch 2 for this very reason, I'm fairly put off about it.
I'm either going to buy a steamdeck or wait for the cost to go down (Nintendo is usually firm with their pricing though) on the Switch 2 before I'll ever buy it or any games.
Especially while the US languishes under trump for the next nearly four years. I'm not going to have a lot of extra space for added expenses and price gouging.
- Buy a steam deck
- Buy a Steam deck OLED and play Holo Knight.
- If you don't play on PC at all, a steamdeck will open you up to a whole new world of opportunity with games that are really cheap.
- Steamdeck. I have both the og and oled both work fantastic. I have emulators setup to play old games too.
- I wish the steam deck is smaller NGL.
  Or even offered officially to purchase in my country.

Vote with your wallet, and don't let the FOMO pull you in.
Nintendo is just a small slice of the gaming industry. If you don't like what you see there are other platforms and game developers.
For 80 usd you can buy a handful of bigger titles during a Steam sale. Just saying.

The prices are still calculated pre-tariffs, thats why they stopped preorders because the price will go up most likely.
I think asking for high prices for both the console and the games is a big mistake.

Okay, here's a slightly hot take.
I'd rather the price go up and the games remain ad free and high quality (not you, pokemon, you can get fucked) than become enshittified with micro transactions, ads, etc
I don't like it. But it's much more acceptable to me
- Okay, here’s a slightly hot take.
  I’d rather the price go up and the games remain ad free and high quality (not you, pokemon, you can get fucked) than become enshittified with micro transactions, ads, etc
  I don’t like it. But it’s much more acceptable to me
  That's absolutely a false dichotomy. In a world where games exist that are ad-free, high-quality and affordable, there's absolutely no reason to believe any notion of high prices or in-game ads being a requirement for development. It's just not true. Don't fall for it.
  
  Okay, fair enough. Just appreciating the lack of shit and (for something like an Animal Crossing or a BoTW quality Zelda game) I'm super happy to pay that much for a game I'll sink hundreds of hours into, and I'd rather reward that price hike than any other form of monetization by them.
  I'm real enraged by like 99% of things on the internet and in the world these days, but this pales in comparison to the rapid pace of enshittification I feel like I've had in virtually every other place in my life.
  Still don't love it.
- But you don't need either. Plenty of great games are cheaper and have none of that bullshit. Rimworld, Factorio?
- Sorry bro, you get all of the above. Price go up, micro-transactions increase, more ads, and games get worse. We're already seeing it happen, most games are overpriced and not even finished when they come out these days, and yeah, we are seeing ads in games now, especially sports games, and it seems Every game has to have a battlepass or some shit these days.
  You want good games without ads or micro BS? Buy indie, play old games, and wait for the AAA industry to collapse in on itself.
  
  I do basically only play indie games sans like, 2-3 Nintendo games per console generation. but yeah, sure feels like you get it all in the worst way

Nintendo just greedy, always have been, always will be. Don't buy their trash, just emulate it.
- They don't take in the same amounts of profits as other greedy companies. Only $1.5 billion last year. Still a lot, don't get me wrong.
  I don't care for them because of the way they gatekeep games they don't even produce anymore, like old NES/SNES games. their anti emulation stance is pure garbage, either sell the game or fuck off when people emulate it, you don't get it both ways.
- This!
  I haven't bought a Nintendo product since the Wii. Emulate it for better frames anyway. It's easy, and you can slap it on a steam deck or another portable.

I have a story. About 30 years ago Sonic & Knuckles was launched for Mega Drive. "I" bought that for 17.000$00 (Portuguese escudos). That roughly translates to 85€ without accounting for inflation.
So although the price hike is unfortunate, I'm actually surprised the prices of the games remained stable for so long.
- Similar, I think I paid £65 for Street Fighter II: Champion Edition on MegaDrive. That's US$84 - and that was in 1992.
  I must have been mad. Although, I probably played that game more than any other, at least until some of the huge open world games of recent decades.
- SNES cartridges were 10000 pesetas in Spain (60€). And I don't remember any cheaper one.
  
  SNES cartridges ranged from 80-150DM (German pre-euro currency) here. That's between 40 and 75EUR.
- I grew up mostly playing games that were not the latest release. Like I got Dawn of War for less than £10 around 2008 or so. It released in 2004. Think that was the last game I got the CD for, don't have it anymore.
  Then sometime in the 2010s when it was on sale I got all the expansions to it and got it on steam instead.

Ocarina of Time cost $116.91 at launch, accounting for inflation.
Edit: the original Legend of Zelda cost $144.89 at launch, also after inflation.
- Yes, but only accounting for inflation really doesn't tell the whole story compared to modern games. Games are primarily sold digitally now, meanwhile when OOT released all copies were physical cartridges - and that meant significantly higher cost of manufacturing and shipping. Also, games simply didn't sell nearly as many copies back then as they do now. Being totally real, games don't need to be more than $60 to turn a very very good profit.
  
  Games are also a billion dollars to produce and market nowadays. Back on SNES they were like 500k.
- Games don’t cost 90$ today for other platforms tho.. even Nintendo that are a few years old still cost basically the same as at launch
  
  They do. There are games on the PS5 store (digital ones) for more than 90 dollars. There are a few games I've seen upwards of 100 quid, which is about 130 dollars.
  
  True, sure. I’m just saying the overall price of games has gone down significantly over time. An upward correction makes some sense. I’m not cheering it on, just trying to help frame the circumstances.

Let's put it this way, the market price for the Switch 2 is roughly the same converted price in the UK. Now, to my knowledge, the UK hasn't also introduced these tariffs quietly so I can't, in good conscience, blame ol' Delusional Donald for this one.

IIRC the price was announced first, and it's the same in other countries so I don't think that's the reason. Which means that lets asume they will use Japan's tariffs of 24% on them their base price goes from 80 to 99.2, plus in the USA prices are usually pre-tax so you also add tax on top of that, this varies from state to state, but a quick Google puts it at around 5%, so you will actually be paying $104.16 for them, and $117.18 for physical copies, or $126.63 if they're manufactured in China and you get that tariff instead. This is just one example of what these isolationist policies will cause, be prepared to have that happen to everything.

The increased price is not the result of tariffs, neither for the games nor console. That's pretty much confirmed by them costing the same amount (converted + sales tax) in Europe. The console is (was, before tariffs) fairly priced imo, it is comparable to the steam deck + dock.
Is 80$ Mario Kart price gouging? Eh. The edit maniac in the comments here is right that video games have become cheap, maybe even too cheap, and that a price increase at some point was inevitable. 60$ was set as the AAA price before the smartphone existed, and was not always profitable as we've seen with the recent lay-offs.
My own 2 cents: I'm glad some company broke that unspoken rule (we ignore skull and bones for obvious reasons), so big releases have more options in pricing, too long have we accepted 60$ games with 20$ DLC, I'm glad if this means devs can just charge 80$ for a full game. Oh, and it's good for indie games too. People may actually buy the shorter games with worse graphics they wanted so badly a few months ago.
- too long have we accepted 60$ games with 20$ DLC, I'm glad if this means devs can just charge 80$ for a full game.
  Breath of the Wild was a $60 game with $20 DLC when it launched in 2017. Eight years later, its Switch 2 Edition is now a $70 game that (seemingly but not yet 100% confirmed) still has the same $20 DLC sold separately. This is a game that already sold enough copies to earn back over 16 times its development cost.
  As for Mario Kart World, I'll be surprised if Nintendo doesn't announce DLC plans in its upcoming presentation two weeks from now, but that remains to be seen.

It's always corporate greed.
They can afford to sell games for $60 and still turn a profit.
But there's an excuse to charge $70 because inflation.
And there's and excuse to charge $90 because tariffs.

Not to be THAT GUY, but games haven't kept up with inflation or increasing development costs. Someone in these convos usually point out that, adjusted for inflation, that 80's Donkey Kong game actually costs more in today's money than $60-80. So I guess that's me today lol
Do I agree that they're worth that much? Ehhhh
But have we gotten massive improvements, longer games, more physics, graphics, etc? Yeah.
Games like GTA take half a decade or more to be made. If you want that kind of game development to continue, consessions need to be made somewhere. Now, maybe there's a better place to do it, but asking more for these games isn't completely unreasonable.
Edit: That Guy is back with some facts for y'all. In the 80's Nintendo charged $30-50 USD for a game. So let's take the middle of both(1985 and $40) and plug it into an inflation calculator. I did a few(two government websites and a random other one) and I got $116.93, $118.09, and $120.44 for today's dollar value.
That's how much Donkey Kong(the OG) would cost TODAY. Not Cyberpunk, not GTA, not Stardew Valley, but OG 16 bit Donkey Kong.
You really think prices shouldn't increase? Please explain then in a way that isn't just "but I want it cheap!". If that's your only argument, just pirate ffs. No one's stopping you.
Also, INDIE GAMES. THEY EXIST. THEYRE AWESOME. THEYRE CHEAP.
Honestly this discussion just feels like entitlement from a lot of people.
Edit again: Still waiting for someone to articulate why modern games should cost less than a 16-bit relic from the 80s when adjusting for inflation. Seeing a lot of downvotes poping in, but not much writing. Some actual facts would be nice instead of "but I can't afford it!". Should I do console prices next? Wanna see how much an NES should cost in today's money?
Edit again: oh look, here's console prices adjusted for inflation.... An original NES launched for $199 in 1985. In today's dollars.... $581.57. Hmm.... You could buy a Steam Deck for that price today.... It's almost like things have gotten really good for us compared to then. Woooooow. And that's not even mentioning that consoles used to be sold at a loss. Nintendo stopped selling consoles at a loss around the time of the Wii. So modern consoles actually cost what they take to make. Previous consoles were subsidized by the games and should have been more expensive. Y'all are also probably too young to remember when having a game console was a HUGE DEAL. It meant you were well off. Now everyone has 2 or 3.
Another edit for shits and giggles: if you're gonna bring up indie games, I'm gonna tell you to just go play them then. If you know you can play a better, cheaper game.... then do it. What are you here removed about? "Oh no, I have so many options but one of them is too expensive so I can't have it and everything else too. Woe is me"
Like seriously "we have so many games now it's hard to afford all of the ones I want to play". Ummm yay? Videogames advanced as an art form so much that the choices are near endless and no one can really afford them all? GREAT!! WE DID IT! We made games so mainstream that everyone has access now!
I'm about done with this, but seriously, y'all need to chill a bit. I'm against the price increase too for the simple "I like having money" reason. But I don't think Nintendo or anyone else are monsters for raising their prices. It's been a long time coming and honestly surpising it didn't happen soon. Talks of it have been rumbling for years. Anyone shocked is either too young to remember or had their head in the sand.
Calling it now, GTAVI will be EXPENSIVE. Willing to bet base $80 and at least one $200+ Shark Card/in game assets bundle. And when Rockstar does it, you bet your ass the rest will follow. If anything Nintendo is just prepping for that inevitably themselves.
I can't help myself edit: someone said the 80s are a bad time to compare. Sure video game crash, electronics still being relatively new.... Ok.
So the PS1 released in 1994 for US $299, equivalent to $621.53 today. I can get a PS5 today, depending on version, for $499-$699, with objectively better everything. So again, cheaper than it was.
Just to be clear: they're asking for a $20 raise in prices. Inflation says it's should be a $60 increase. How are they monsters?
- You know what else hasn’t kept up with inflation? Wages.
  So before you go espousing raising prices, let’s first make it so people can afford the higher costs.
  
  Lmao that's a completely seperate issue between you and your employer. Has nothing to do with the value of the dollar.
  Has inflation kept up with wages? No. Have prices gone up anyways? Hell yes. Only thing you can find under $1 anymore is Arizona Tea, and even that isn't a guarantee.
  But yes, complain that a luxury item has gone up in cost. You know, something not necessary. So no one needs to make sure "everyone can afford it". The ones who can buy, will buy, and the numbers show overwhelmingly that they do.
  All you're literally arguing is that wages should increase. Agreed. It should increase to match the new prices that are inflating as well. Wouldn't change the fact that games cost the same "spending value" as before with the new pricetag.
- If indie devs can make a game and sell it for less than Nintendo games sold for in the 90s then maybe it isn't actually more expensive to develop and distribute games that are somewhat comparable to games from the 80s. A lot of games sell for $40 or less and are making profits.
  Nintendo games are more expensive partially because they are limited to Nintendo hardware. Like Apple, this requires more costs for software because their target audience is smaller than something through a digital platform like steam, and distribution is a pretty significant cost and physical distribution has a lot of risk and waste compared to digital if something doesn't sell as many as expected.
  
  Ummm Nintendo has a digital platform, so not sure what you're on about that one.
  And in regards to indie studios: then buy their games and stop complaining, duh. Like, if you know there's all these amazing and cheap alternatives, why are you removed about what Nintendo charges? No one's forcing you. Go play something else. It's really that easy.
  Nintendo, love em or hate them, is like Disney. They want to curate a very specific image. Look up the invention of the Nintendo Seal of Approval and why that was such a big thing. Nintendo wants to be very specific thing and frankly doesn't give a shit if you like it. If you dont, then you're not their target audience. It's really that simple. Their not catering to everyone, they're catering to a specific group. If they want to charge a certain amount but you know it'll be quality cus it's Nintendo, then what's the harm?
- Yes but back then most people only bought maybe 2-3 games the entire generation and traded with their friends. There was also a lot of local coop games.
  Now people would like to play dozens of games and it's difficult to share, often you even need to buy two copies of a game to even play with your family in the same house.
  
  Exactly, games back then were EXPENSIVE. Currently we live in luxury where you have hundreds of options. How does that not justify it costing more?
- Be that guy. Games are too cheap.
  I think Nintendo made a mistake pricing Mario Kart that way, since they're selling it for half that price in a bundle anyway. Had it been 70 like DK with a bump of 10 for physical it'd be a different conversation.

$80 was before the tariffs....

I’d love to blame him but that seems like Nintendo’s choice. Yeah, I’m not fucking spending $80 on a game, especially when I have a gaming PC
- PC gaming seems so cheap in comparison at this point doesn't it. I guess we have better options which means there is more competition in price. Why would I spend £90 for something EA shat out when I can just not do that.
  
  It really is. It’s a big cost upfront but the amount of games you can buy or emulate for such a low price makes up for it plus your PC can just be upgraded with parts and last years and years versus the death of consoles every five years give or take. Triple A games are still expensive to buy but the sales on steam make it so much easier cos those really expensive games will be like 50% off sometimes

Kinda sorta. Remember the pandemic? Prices went up but never came back down. I suspect the tariffs will do this as well
- It's all excuses, every greedy company does it. Take Games Workshop for example, when they switched from metal to plastic minis they said they were "forced" to increase prices "temporarily" to recover the cost of the new molds, but then Never decreased the price again, and instead just kept increasing it over time for fewer models.

They're holding pre-orders due to tariffs so expect prices to increase further.
I know y'all love Nintendo, but they're no different than any other giant corporation; greed is the reason prices go up.

They test out the water how much will the consumer spend.
If you don't like the price wait for a sale or coupons.
- Nintendo doesn't really do sales
- With the way they're handling physical copies now I won't be buying them at all, I prefer to own the games I pay for

The price was announced first... So it's not related.
Adjusted for inflation though, and $80 is the normal price it's been for 40 years.
I just don't know why people are shocked Nintendo is doing this, they've always been one of the first companies to increase prices.
- 40 years ago they didn't sell them by millions with each copy cost being a few cents. It's price gouging simple as.
  
  I mean, this just isn't true, though. You're not wrong in pointing out that the scope of sales has changed, but so has the scope of development, as well as consumer expectation. I suspect if you compare the number of man hours spent on a title today vs an NES game, it's not even a comparable discussion. And then there's the matter of post-release support.
  To be clear, I don't think a $30 price hike for physical copies is at all sensible, but the arguments being presented both for and against it are incredibly poorly thought out. Everyone presents a single facet of videogame development today compared to years ago and then acts like it's a "gotcha" that proves their point. The entire ecosystem of game development and consumption has changed so drastically, that any discussion comparing the adjusted for inflation price of games then vs now is just pointless. Art and entertainment are art and entertainment, and it's impossible to create a de-facto value statement for them, because consumer subjectivity, bias, and valuation is too wide to make objective statements about.
  Imo, the real criticism of the matter is that +50% cost during a time of economic upheaval, when the buying power of the middle class is approaching the weakest it's been in a long time, is going to be received poorly, and probably result in a loss of Western sales. It's a massive leap, in a single generation, at the worst possible time, regardless of what inflation adjustments tell us.

The other thing about this price point is that it's a headline grabber - and then once people find out more, they will spot that if you buy a Switch with MK preinstalled, the game costs half that.
So suddenly it feels like, "oh hey, that's a great deal, and I was obviously going to buy a Switch 2 anyway" - and Nintendo get the sales and the decreased cost of manufacturing the physical game.

Games have been around the $50-$70 mark my entire life.
It's a sad reality, but I expect prices of major mainstream games to go up, regardless of tariffs.
- Distribution cost of games has gone down to almost zero since then.
- Frankly, I don't even really mind as long as they're not riddled with micro transactions, and there's a solid selection of indie and older games that cost less to choose from. Part of the problem is Nintendo never lowers their prices on old games.

Price gouging. Mk8 has been a best seller for 8 years. If you can raise default price and sale down to 60, you're going to make a lot more over years.
- Haha, don't be silly, Nintendo don't do sales. They just grift their entire player base. But you know what you are getting into when buying into a closed ecosystem.

I believe they will cost the same amount in europe and japan

According to a post I found on that shitty alien site, An AAA game has to sell 10 million copies to break even around 6 months ago. That means at $70 dollars each. They can cost $700 million to make, market and distribute. The money has to typically be recouped within a certain time frame to keep the lights on and invest in the next 700 mil project. The successful games also have to carry the weight of the failures too, so you probably aren't getting that bad a deal.
I'm not saying the price isn't inflated, just that it can cost a lot more than you might think to make this stuff, and it's all on a gamble that it will sell.
I remember buying mortal kombat ii on the megadrive/genesis with saved up pocket money for £45 ($58). That was in 1994, I think I maxed out at about 10 games. I'm seeing assassins creed shadows on the xbox at £56.99 ($74) today (ignoring online digital shops because they didn't exist in 1994.) So in 31 years inflation on the price of a premium video game has been 0.75% annually vs 2.5% for all goods and that has resulted in a small 20% increase in the price over 30 years.
Closest link I could find to back up the inflation rate. If games increased in price Inline with inflation, they'd cost about £96 ($123) today.
Games have always been expensive, but less so now than 30 years ago.
P.s. If I don't ignore online digital shops, I can actually get it cheaper the that 1994 price. Only £40 ($51). I mean come on its not like suddenly we have a bad deal on video games. Also if it really bothers you stop buying games at launch. I rarely spend more than a third of those prices now just by waiting a year or two.

I'm always a few years behind on consoles and enjoy the robust secondary market, so to me, it doesn't matter much.
Outside of Zelda and Mario Kart, there isn't much these days that's exclusive to Nintendo that I give a damn about anyway.
- Can always play super tux kart instead

I inherited a switch from someone who wasn't using it and was blown away by the prices for the majority of games on it. They were charging AAA prices for Mario titles. If they had priced their Mario. Zelda titles at half the price, those things would have dominated before the SteamDeck's came out. The switch is barely used.
- pokemon was literally more expensive with the DLCS, and half-assed developed game too.

Honest question because I'm OOTL, but haven't games been this price for a long time now and weren't Switch games even more expensive than this?
I'm a bit confused.
- AAA games have been 70 bucks for a while, but I'm not sure of any base switch games that were 80 bucks. Could be wrong tho...

Considering Nintendo has an eShop, I doubt it is tariffs. Hopefully they don't try to tax digital goods next as it appears they have everything else.

The Taxer-in-Cheif can be a moron at the same time that corporations rape our wallets without either of them excusing the other.
Prices are set by graphing a demand schedule and the supply. You graph how many sales you will get at each price point (sales go up as price goes down). Then you graph how many a company will produce at each price point (the more it costs, the less they will be willing to make/risk). The point where those two graphs intersect is the equilibrium. Which is the best price to charge. Taxes shift the cost, increase the price where they intersect.
Digital is weird. Iirc, the risk is more in pirating. The more copies that exist, or the easier they are to access, the more pirated content will be out there. Don't forget to include shareholder profits in cost, and the cost of other parts of the business (like a beloved endeavor that doesn't turn a profit, Costco hot dogs for example).
I'm not an economist and welcome any better explanations or corrections to this. It's been a while since I took that class. But I love the topic.

Based on what little I know that goes into video game development, $80 seems cheap - assuming no mtx.
But if it's $80 + mtx? Fuck that.
- I'm 100% sure that the next ~~Fifa~~ EA FC will cost €80 AND will have micro transactions AND people will buy it in millions of copies anyway
- This is Nintendo, they make games cheap and sell for way more than it is worth. Also, with the massive increase in how Many people buy games these days, even $60 is more than enough to cover costs and have enough left over for the next game. The biggest "cost" in making games is paying the dozens of execs who do nothing all day billions of dollars.

Either way it's still caused by the tariffs

Nothing to do with tariffs, just a reflection of higher development cost and, and that's perfectly fine to an extent, the very core principle of capitalism.
Let's please not discuss if capitalism is good. It's just the way it is.
- That would only be true if you ignore every other part of the price calculation. For example because the numbers of sold consoles are much higher than in the past, more people are buying the games, leading to more income for the game development cost, leading to the same prize.
  See? By ignoring every other influencing factor I can also argue the complete opposite of you.
  
  We all know that defining a price for a product across markets, regions, continents is more complex than "development cost", "inflation", "greed", or "NiNtEnDo".
  Factually, it has nothing to do with tariffs, and definitely has to do with cost and capitalism. Feel free to add what's missing, but please be complete, as someone will likely argue differently because of something you forgot.
  
  Yeah, that's a basic supply and demand curve.... Guess what happens when demand is high? There's no reason to lower prices if you have high enough supply(digital copies are infinite). Your argument is completely invalid. If anything, it's proof to them that they CAN charge more and SHOULD.
- Let's please not discuss if capitalism is good.
  Brings up the “merits” of capitalism, but refuses to discuss the “merits” of capitalism.
  It's just the way it is.
  Yeah, it’s because have this mentality that it’s this way.
  Btw: capitalism is a plague on society and has done nothing but ruin the things we (consumers) hold dear, because capitalism stifles innovation and wrings whatever blood from a turnip it can.
  
  We are here to discuss Nintendo's prices, not the economical system itself. This would derail the conversation too much.
  If you want to go down the rabbit hole, I suggest you open a new thread. However, keep in mind that the majority of Lemmy users will likely agree, given that this is a bit of a leftist echo chamber. And to make sure we're on the same page: we ARE on the same page. Capitalism isn't what we want, yet, it is what we currently have (and will have when Mario Cart will release for Switch 2).