Cause at this point, I'd buy several clones before I consider $80.
You know, like McDowells. I don't actually care what color my shells are. There are principals involved. Principalities!
Edit: Some salty commenters here. This isn’t my graph, just one I grabbed. Notes aren’t mine.
I’m a huge proponent for inflation adjusted livable minimum wage- which should be close to $30 an hour these days. Also hugely worried about our housing cost trends.
I’m only pointing out that expecting games to cost 40-60 for life is a little silly- yall still paying $.10 for a loaf of bread? I remember when games inched from $40 to $60 and everyone lost their minds- no one complains about it anymore. Don’t wanna pay retail? Wait for sales, bundles, used copies.
Okay, but now do housing and groceries and you'll see why people don't have extra money laying around for another Nintendo and its Mario kart.
Economics is significantly more complicated than a bar graph of inflation-adjusted video game price tags lol. Hell, even just value of each game in their respective release time period is more complicated than that. I doubt there's anything unique to this new game (other racing games have done the open world thing several times starting like 15 years ago), but the kart racer genre itself was new back in the 90s.
Okay, but now do housing and groceries and you'll see why people don't have extra money laying around for another Nintendo and its Mario kart.
Okay. So, they won't buy one then.
Yeah, people don't make enough money, I agree.
Housing and groceries are part of the inflation...
Edit: seems the previous line might not apply to the US because insanity.
The real issue is that inflation only accounts hire much more things cost, but not the trend on salaries. If salaries and costs follow the same slope, you're "even". The problem is when costs increase at a faster rate than income.
In fairness here, it's not Nintendo's fault we let landlords gobble up all our spare money.
Maybe they need to send Luigi to have a word.
Edit: these notes have been addressed in OP's post
Note: Salary growth has outpaced inflation.
You know what else has outpaced inflation? The cost of living. Purchasing power for middle and lower class people is far less than what it used to be. "Inflation" doesn't account for that.
this argument is so fucking dumb
Volume of video game sales has changed monstrously over the years as it moved from a niche hobby to mainstream
SNES Mario kart - 8.76 million copies sold worldwide Switch Mario kart 8 - 67.34 million copies sold world wide.
SNES mario kart (inflation adjusted) earnings - 1,095,000,000 Switch Mario kart earnings - 5,252,520,000
Game dev budgets have obviously exploded in that time and nintendo doesn’t disclose their budgets but on average its estimated snes titles got about 1-2 million and switch/wii u titles got 30ish million. That’s a sizable increase in development that wildly outpaces inflation, for sure, but their earnings obviously did too.
Also, people tend not to account for manufacturing drops. Cost to produce dropped dramatically when things moved from cartridges to optical formats. Dropped somewhat in the move to digital distribution, though not as much as you might think.
Removing significant printed instruction manuals helped, too. Printing has gotten really expensive over the last 30 years. Falcon 4.0 came with a spiral bound book written by an actual F-16 pilot, and it was basically an F-16 flight manual. Nobody expects that to ever happen again. Not with a base game, anyway. That game was about $53 at launch (going by the "Chips and Bits" ad toward the back of this old CGW magazine).
There's a good $20-30 in reduced production costs that were never directly passed on to customers.
Snes carts were $20-60 not including license fees without the game. They also had a 100% markup at retail. Small 8GB switch carts are about $10 with $12, including licensing, and have a 40% markup. The take home for a publisher was $2-5 for snes and should be $18 for a switch game on the small cart on $60 at retail. Digital take home is $40. Comparing the take home price for the consumer is disingenuous. It is especially bad when we are not comparing to Gameboy and includes optical media when it is essentially free with the box.
The publishers are getting a minimum 9x more take home now on the expensive switch carts and licensing. Thr wiiu and ps4 were more like 11-12x with the ps5 and digital switch games even more. Those far outback inflation and even outback the increase in dev costs most of the time.
But isn’t it easier if I just ignore the nuance of economics and just place all the blame for my unhappiness on corporate greed?
I think it’d also be interesting to see the total production cost of each Mario Kart, and a total sales/revenue generated by each game.
Nintendo games never go on sale. And if somebody buys a Switch game, dumps the ROM, and sells it to you, your Nintendo account gets banned because the ID in the header matches the one being distributed over the Internet.
To your edit: Exactly! The only problematic trend I see is that physical copies are getting more scrace.
I don’t see Diddy Kong Racing on there which is really the only one you need anyway.
Diddy Kong Racing is the GOAT
The thing that graph doesn't take into account is barely anyone payed full price for those older games. Games used to lower prices to increase sales volume and those sale prices are significantly less than $80 even accounting for inflation.
This doesn’t mean anything. Something only has as much value as the customer is willing to pay. People don’t want to pay more than $60 for most new games being released today and companies need to accept that.
Fuck what it cost years ago.
Same goes for everything else. You could make the same argument for cars and trucks which are now reaching $50k USD for base features. Still doesn’t matter. Still overpriced.
Let’s talk about what we’ve lost too. Games used to come as a complete edition. Now you get the game and it’s unplayable on the first day without an update and even then still has features broke, waiting for an update weeks or months later. Not to mention DLC.
The Mario part. You can copy the Kart part all day. They've been doing so since at least the 64. See:
Let's not forget SuperTuxKart!
Skunny Kart was my favourite, mostly because it was by a group called "CopySoft"
I'll never fucking forgive y'all for leaving out Dr Robotnik's Ring Racers (FOSS sonic fangame)
The crash racing games are actually amazing, their boost system is the best
No love for Street Racer? I don't blame you.
Also Burger King Pocket Bike Racer
Wacky Wheels!
People who have never played Wacky Weels or Road Rash (PC edition) from the nineties are missing out! Legends of my childhood.
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled: A remaster of the classic
PlayStation kart racer, featuring Crash Bandicoot and his friends.
Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed: Characters from SEGA franchises race in vehicles that transform into boats and planes.
Diddy Kong Racing: Race with Diddy Kong and his friends in karts, planes and hovercraft.
Team Sonic Racing: A kart racer where you work together in teams, using team moves and ultimate abilities.
Nickelodeon Kart Racers Series: Features characters from various Nickelodeon shows.
Disney Speedstorm: A kart racer featuring characters from Disney and Pixar franchises.
KartRider: Drift: A free-to-play kart racer with a focus on drifting.
Lego Racers: Build and race Lego vehicles on various tracks.
Garfield Kart Furious Racing: Race as Garfield and his friends on themed tracks.
Konami Krazy Racers: Race as characters from Konami's popular franchises.
Blur: Combines arcade racing with vehicular combat and power-ups.
ModNation Racers: Features track creation and customization.
LittleBigPlanet Karting: Brings the creativity of LittleBigPlanet into a kart racing experience.
F1 Race Stars: A more arcade-style take on Formula 1 racing.
SuperTuxKart: An open-source kart racing game.
Starlit Kart Racing: A free-to-play kart racer with a variety of game modes.
Konami Krazy Racers
I wonder why they didn't got for something like "Konami Krazy Karting"
They could stack the type then allign it to the left!
Too similar to Kuru Kuru Kururin.
You have the best list here, but you forgot Wipeout series. Futuristic racing with weapons, set to electronic music.
Crash Team Racing PS1 was IMHO better than Mario Kart N64. The wumpa fruit added a neat dimension, and the ability to select weapons for battle mode was great.
It still is. Mario Kart is third best behind CTR and Sonic Transformed.
Make sure you put two line breaks between every new line. Otherwise it kinda comes out as a blob. You can also use a dash and a space before each entry to get a bullet point.
Played a copy of Crash Team Racing a bit ago. Had a real good time with it.
Party animals has an almost 1:1 in terms of gameplay ripoff of Mario kart
There's a third Sonic racing game called Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing.
Out of curiosity: did you partly use AI to make this list? Some of the short descriptions read very oddly for a forum post, e.g. the "various tracks" part on Lego Racers.
Not quite a clone, but Crash Tag Team Racing was a staple of my childhood
Garfield Kart is the shiiiiiiiit
You forgot Forza Horizon, which is the only other racing game series with Open World.
piracy makes for the easiest boycotts ever.
just saying.
Excuse me, it's not piracy if it's Nintendo.
nintendo is one of those companies where ill take pride in STEALING from, even if piracy isn't stealing.
Inb4 Tux Racer
Super Tux Kart
Also, Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart
Or the sequel, Doctor Robotnik's Ring Racers
If I'm not mistaken, a large component of Nintendo's power comes from Japanese copyright laws being far more pro-copyright holder and Nintendo uses it to its full potential. In Japan, this sometimes results in prison sentences and often big fines. it's also applied outside the country against a consortium of universal copyright recognizing countries and so it can affect you regardless of your location although I forget how exactly.
To @AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works 's point, perhaps it is the weak qualifications for Japanese patents which have allowed Nintendo to bully everyone.
Japan’s copyright laws are basically the same as everyone else.
Except since in japan you can patent basically everything, the application is much stricter. See how nintendo has patents for "capturing a monster using a ball" and other general stuff.
IIRC, there was a japanese company (capcom, maybe?) that had a patent on showing shadows of the characters when they weren't visible on screen due to a wall or tree covering them.
How were they able to sue Palworld, then?
Basically every kind of game needs a "MUGEN" for that genre. Then we just put in the content we want and theme it appropriately.
Does SuperTuxKart fit the bill?
It does; you can add karts, racers, and maps
It's crazy this hasn't happened yet. Kart racers are conceptually very simple games and are all very similar. CTGP kinda does this but is limited by Mario Kart's engine.
There is one: SuperTuxKart
It's free and open source. There are plenty of community content, like custom karts and maps. It's even adding game mode from popular game. The last one is from Rocket League.
Right? A series of adjustable physics inputs, a way to import levels and tag areas with terrain info that's defined in a file somewhere... Typing it out? I think it's wild that it happened to fighting games BEFORE it happened to a lot of other genres.
If you wanted to make a Mario Kart clone, copyright is easy enough to avoid. Nearly every other second-rate dev studio has managed to make a half-baked Mario Kart ripoff for whatever Nick Jr show they got the licensing to, so that part's simple.
The real issue is navigating the patent minefield that Nintendo has laid out.
Break out DOSBox and fire up Wacky Wheels from Apogee
...... Not particularly more recently there was a Crash Team Racing remake
Honestly coming up blank for anything else recentish in that genre
Wacky wheels was my jam
Ah, Wacky Wheels. Played that so much with my little brother. Good memories.
Give DOSBox-X a try btw. DOSBox development became pretty stagnant unfortunately.
When I read this I thought about whacky wheels, but could not remember the name, thanks!
Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed is oddly slept on. Great kart racer.
The world needs wacky wheels again
Instantly got the main menu theme in my head.
It was an awesome game, but now I get headache from the fast moving low pixel graphics. I would definitely play it again with a few pixels more.
A low enough amount that Warframe has a mario Kart esque minigame available in game
The Wii is still a good platform
Wii U also. You can download pirated games directly from Nintendo official servers.
Th Wii U didn't sell that many consoles compared to the Wii.
Also there isn't much need for piracy for the Wii as there are tons of games that can be had for cheap.
Modded Wii U playing online on Pretendo Network 😚👌
Haven't seen Dr Robotnik's Ring Racers mentioned yet. Open source game based on the Freedoom engine.
If you haven't tried modded Mario Kart Wii before, you're missing out.
I was going to buy a switch 2 (or attempt to), but at that cost… hell no. Not without dinner first.
Just the Mario part, I think you could make a clone with just different scenarios and characters (even the same track shapes) and be 100% legal.
I actually always really enjoyed supertuxkart but I've never actually played much of mariokart so idk how well they actually compare.
Bought it for €40
Do yourself a favour and play Aero GPX instead
So, like Switch 1 games were/are $80, I don't understand the uproar?! They've always been this expensive, they haven't gone up. Maybe I have it wrong as a Canadian?! I don't get the big deal?
No game for any platform has ever been $80 USD base price.
I think this is the first time base games are $80
This anti Nintendo thing is a bit much. Especially when every other game company out there has games that cost $150+
Base games? No, they do not. This isn't some "special edition" or whatnot where there's a cheaper option available, it's the base version of a game.
Yes they do. I just went on steam and there’s a shit load of games that are that price. Xbox does it, Nintendo does it, PlayStation does it. Yes it sucks, and I can also admit we’ve been lucky, games used to $80 30 years ago, and if they had kept up with the rest of the world they would all be $300+ now
I'm anti-nintendo because of the exclusivity, pricing strategy of their hardware, and prison labor, personally.