Money money money is all you need Mario Kart World’s $80 price isn’t that high, historically Adjusting for inflation shows console game prices have been higher in the recent past. Kyle Orland – Apr 8, 2025 5:26 pm | 49 Mario Kart World's $80 price tag increase is a significant bump from the current Switch. Credit: Nintendo Mario Kart World's $80 price tag increase is a significant bump from the current Switch. Credit: Nintendo Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Last week, Nintendo made waves across the game industry by announcing that Mario Kart World would sell for a suggested price of $80 in the US. That nominal price represents a new high-water mark both for Nintendo and for the game industry at large, which has generally reserved prices above $70 for fancy, trinket-laden collectors' editions or Digital Deluxe Editions that include all variety of downloadable bonuses. Console gaming's nominal price ceiling has gone up pretty consistently in the last 40+ years. Kyle Orland / Ars Technica Console gaming's nominal price ceiling has gone up pretty consistently in the last 40+ years. Kyle Orland / Ars Technica After adjusting for inflation, an $80 price level doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary. Kyle Orland / Ars Technica After adjusting for inflation, an $80 price level doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary. Kyle Orland / Ars Technica Console gaming's nominal price ceiling has gone up pretty consistently in the last 40+ years. Kyle Orland / Ars Technica After adjusting for inflation, an $80 price level doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary. Kyle Orland / Ars Technica When you adjust historical game prices for inflation, though, you find that asking $80 for a baseline game in 2025 is broadly in line with the prices big games were commanding 10 to 15 years ago. And given the faster-than-normal inflation rates of the last five years, even the $70 nominal game prices that set a new standard in 2020 don't have the same purchasing oomph they once did. The data $34.99 for Centipede on the Atari 2600 might sound cheap, but that 1983 price is the equivalent of roughly $90 today. Retro Waste $34.99 for Centipede on the Atari 2600 might sound cheap, but that 1983 price is the equivalent of roughly $90 today. Retro Waste Check out the premium pricing for Zelda titles above other NES games in the 1988 Sears catalog. Hughes Johnson Check out the premium pricing for Zelda titles above other NES games in the 1988 Sears catalog. Hughes Johnson If you wanted Streets of Rage 2 from Electronics Boutique in 1993, you'd better have been ready to pay extra. Hughes Johnson If you wanted Streets of Rage 2 from Electronics Boutique in 1993, you'd better have been ready to pay extra. Hughes Johnson Check out the premium pricing for Zelda titles above other NES games in the 1988 Sears catalog. Hughes Johnson If you wanted Streets of Rage 2 from Electronics Boutique in 1993, you'd better have been ready to pay extra. Hughes Johnson To judge Mario Kart World's $80 price against historical trends, we first needed to figure out how much games cost in the past. To do that, we built off of our similar 2020 analysis, which relied on scanned catalogs and retail advertising fliers for real examples of nominal console game pricing going back to the Atari era. For more recent years, we relied more on press reports and archived digital storefronts to show what prices new games were actually selling for at the time. To avoid the influence of low-priced bargain bin games or retailer discounts, we focused on the highest asking prices for individual games we could find in each year (excluding "Deluxe" collector's editions and the like). But to avoid undue skewing from outliers like the $100 Genesis version of Virtua Racing, we averaged the highest top-level asking price we could find in each of eight different genres, building a representative "basket" of big-budget games for the year. In 2020, for instance, that means the new high-water price of $70 for NBA 2K21 in the "Sports" slot was balanced by the $60 price for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in the "Action" slot that same year. $70 was a common price for N64 software, and that was in 1997 dollars! Hughes Johnson $70 was a common price for N64 software, and that was in 1997 dollars! Hughes Johnson By 2008, top-end disc-based prices had settled to the current standard of $59.99. Beyond Media Online By 2008, top-end disc-based prices had settled to the current standard of $59.99. Beyond Media Online $70 was a common price for N64 software, and that was in 1997 dollars! Hughes Johnson By 2008, top-end disc-based prices had settled to the current standard of $59.99. Beyond Media Online We assembled data for those game baskets across 21 non-consecutive years, going back to 1982, then normalized the nominal prices to consistent February 2025 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI calculator. You can view all our data and sources in this Google Sheet. The bad old days In purely nominal terms, the $30 to $40 retailers routinely charged for game cartridges in the 1980s seems like a relative bargain. Looking at the inflation-adjusted data, though, it's easy to see how even an $80 game today would seem like a bargain to console gamers in the cartridge era. Video game cartridges were just historically expensive, even compared to today's top-end games. Credit: Kyle Orland / Ars Technica Video game cartridges were just historically expensive, even compared to today's top-end games. Credit: Kyle Orland / Ars Technica New cartridge games in the 20th century routinely retailed for well over $100 in 2025 money, thanks to a combination of relatively high manufacturing costs and relatively low competition in the market. While you could often get older and/or used cartridges for much less than that in practice, must-have new games at the time often cost the equivalent of $140 or more in today's money. Pricing took a while to calm down once CD-based consoles were introduced in the late '90s. By the beginning of the '00s, though, nominal top-end game pricing had fallen to about $50, and only rose back to $60 by the end of the decade. Adjusting for inflation, however, those early 21st century games were still demanding prices approaching $90 in 2025 dollars, well above the new $80 nominal price ceiling Mario Kart World is trying to establish. Those $50 discs you remember from the early 21st century were worth a lot more after you adjust for inflation. Credit: Kyle Orland / Ars Technica Those $50 discs you remember from the early 21st century were worth a lot more after you adjust for inflation. Credit: Kyle Orland / Ars Technica In the 2010s, inflation started eating into the value of gaming's de facto $60 price ceiling, which remained remarkably consistent throughout the decade. Adjusted for inflation, the nominal average pricing we found for our game "baskets" in 2013, 2017, and 2020 ended up almost precisely equivalent to $80 in constant 2025 dollars. Is this just what things cost now? While the jump to an $80 price might seem sudden, the post-COVID jump in inflation makes it almost inevitable. After decades of annual inflation rates in the 2 to 3 percent range, the Consumer Price Index jumped 4.7 percent in 2021 and a whopping 8 percent in 2022. In the years since, annual price increases still haven't gotten below the 3 percent level that was once seen as "high." That means $80 spent on a game today has the same value as about $65 spent on a game in 2020, as hard as that might be to believe. That also mean the $60 Nintendo charged for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in 2017 is worth about $78 in today's money; and that game went on to sell a franchise record 67 million units at that price. You can make a similar historical argument for Mario Kart Wii, which sold 37 million units after launching at $50 in 2008; the equivalent of about $74 in today's money. While many gamers' incomes and/or wealth haven't kept up with that level of price increase in recent years, the cold logic of the money supply and monetary policy means "we're unfortunately living in an era where I think inflation is affecting everything," as Nintendo Vice President of Player & Product Experience Bill Trinen recently told Polygon. Artist's conception of consumer reactions to NBA 2K21's $70 asking price in 2020. Artist's conception of consumer reactions to NBA 2K21's $70 asking price in 2020. It's important to remember, too, that Nintendo is offering a $499 bundle with the Switch 2 and Mario Kart World packaged together. That bundle values the game at just $50 (compared to the $449 a la carte hardware), providing a bit of a relief valve for gamers that might balk at paying $80 for the game on its own. We may have to see at least one other example to judge whether the gaming market is ready to pay $80 for a baseline game. In a recent interview with CNBC, Nintendo of America President Doug Bowser said Nintendo is "not really looking to establish a [new] benchmark for pricing" with Mario Kart World's $80 price tag. Given historical pricing trends, though, we wouldn't be surprised if multiple major publishers follow Nintendo's lead in the coming months and years and raise their baseline price for big-budget games in well-known, fan-driven franchises. Five years ago, NBA 2K21 was the vanguard of a $70 video game price point that is now an accepted pricing standard for big-budget games across the industry. Five years from now, Mario Kart World may be remembered the same way for establishing a new $80 pricing tier that is increasingly seen as the new normal. Kyle Orland Senior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland Senior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper. 49 Comments