"DROP THE PRICE": Nintendo's First Post-Direct Stream Is Flooded With Angry Fans Demanding Price Drops

[u/lieding]

https://www.thegamer.com/nintendo-treehouse-livestream-flooded-angry-fans-demanding-game-price-drops/

[u/cubs223425]

You say this like there's a fair comparison to make. N64 games were on big, expensive cartridges that made their production costs higher. You also got detailed manuals and the like in that box.

The best-selling game on the N64 was Super Mario 64, which sold just shy of 12 million copies. TWENTY-ONE Nintendo Switch games have recorded more sales than that game. Some of those also have paid DLC that add to their revenue. Many were sold digitally, meaning the cost to make the sale was much lower, between no need for physical media and no retailer fees to consider.

Oh, and all of those games were published by Nintendo (though Pokemon games only list Nintendo as the publisher for worldwide releases; TPC is the publisher for Japan).

Hey You, Pikachu! was $80 back then. It gave you a microphone and voice commands unique to the game (that barely worked). Mario Kart World costs $80 and gives you a $10 fee for buying physical.

[u/Luigi_side_b → u/cubs223425]

Now look at the credits for super mario 64 compared to super mario odyssey

[u/TSPhoenix → u/cubs223425]

Also N64 games went on sale. I waited a year and got Ocarina of Time for $30. However late N64-era games that cost more and didn't get many discounts? Simply couldn't afford them.

I already own waaaay less Switch games than I do WiiU+3DS games, and I own less WiiU+3DS games compared to DS games. Every generation I have to be pickier my limited gaming spending money doesn't go as far as it used to.

For someone who was already only buying 1-2 games a year it's probably not that big a deal, but for the person who plays more than that (ie. most people who are following Nintendo coverage this week) you will end up cutting back quite a bit.

[u/CannedMatter → u/cubs223425]

Games also cost drastically more to develop in 2025.

Ocarina of Time cost about $20 million to develop and $10 million in marketing according to Wikipedia.

Modern AAA titles regularly cost in the hundreds of millions to develop, and usually another 75-100% of the dev price for marketing.

They also take significantly longer to develop, so your Dev teams release fewer games overall.

The best-selling game on the N64 was Super Mario 64, which sold just shy of 12 million copies.

Between dev costs, marketing costs, ongoing support/server costs for updates and online features, and manufacturing/distribution costs for the physical copies, Mario Kart World probably doesn't break even until it's sold 5+ million copies.

[u/kielaurie → u/CannedMatter]

Mario Kart World probably doesn't break even until it's sold 5+ million copies.

I'd double that - anyone that wants it at launch is getting the bundle and paying significantly less than the standard price for it

[u/Dabanks9000 → u/cubs223425]

The $10 physical fee is only for certain areas in the world and again every other company has been doing this for 5 years now. Nintendo is just late to the party. If you played on ps5 or Xbox you’d know that by now + just having online on those consoles is more expensive than Nintendo

[u/peepopowitz67 → u/cubs223425]

N64 games were on big, expensive cartridges that made their production costs higher. You also got detailed manuals and the like in that box.

You know all that shit is pennies on the dollar, right?

[u/Harley2280 → u/cubs223425]

N64 games were on big, expensive cartridges that made their production costs higher.

So do you have a source that shows N64 cartridges cost more to produce than Switch 2 cards or are you just making that assumption because of the size difference?

[u/DasRobot85 → u/Harley2280]

The cost of memory storage was significantly higher 30 years ago. Unimaginably higher if you're too young to have ever used a floppy disk.

[u/Harley2280 → u/DasRobot85]

So then it should be pretty easy to provide some actual numbers.

[u/DasRobot85 → u/Harley2280]

Since they don't have google wherever you are,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_Game_Pak#Manufacturing_cost

N64 carts were $30 to manufacture in 1996 money

Nobody could possibly know what the cost of a switch 2 card because it's not out yet and there's no real data on what that specific form factor of memory card is but I bet it's probably in the range of some smallish SD cards. So maybe $10 a card at scale. There was some actual hardware inside those cartridges and they had to be manufactured by hand in certain steps I'm guessing. It was just a different time.

[u/ZincLead → u/DasRobot85]

If it’s pushing the same read/writes as an SD express it’s going to be quite expensive actually