Switch 2 and the Issue With Rising Game Prices

Last month, the Switch 2 got announced, and the best way I can sum up the reaction is that it was a simultaneous wave of excitement, and a thunderous fall off a cliff. The system and games look great, and it overall feels like a genuine and deserved upgrade. However, it’s the price tag that has gotten most people wary. Not just raising the base price of the regular games to 70 dollars as the rest of the industry has, but also introducing an 80-dollar price tag with Mario Kart World. This also confirmed that higher pricing will be implemented for games Nintendo believes to be worth the cost. Not to mention how the controllers and the new system camera range from 60 to 90. While I am excited for the system, I feel that the new price points here are setting a bad precedent for not just Nintendo but the gaming industry as a whole.

Gaming in general has focused on raising its prices as of late. As I mentioned before, the base MSRP has been raised to around 70 for games from big publishers. The widespread justification for it has been that games have remained at 60 for a long time and haven’t risen in line with inflation. While this argument has weight to it and makes sense from the logic presented, I believe that it is one done without recognizing the current context of gaming as a whole. There are two elements that I feel push back against this discussion point: the audience for games and other forms of monetization. Games are more financially successful than they have ever been. Billions are pouring into the industry year in and year out, and that hasn’t been on the back of game sales, but monetization in other areas. Downloadable content, season passes, microtransactions, loot boxes, and other merch and tie-in deals have made the game industry far wealthier than it has ever been before. While games had a commercial reach back in the 90s and 2000s, they aren’t as huge as they are now, both in terms of audience and what areas are monetized beyond the entry price tag. Heck, some games are built to be continual money makers in the form of live services that ask for more time and money out of a player than a regular game.

Audience-wise, gaming has simultaneously become a large subculture and a mainstay element of basic culture. Support either comes from devoted fans who are passionately connected to the types of games or systems they play, or kids and general audience members who simply enjoy playing games casually. Like with the areas of monetization, the audience for games has grown far beyond the initial scope. More people are buying games than ever and are either spending the extra money on other areas of monetization or buying merch. With that in mind, though, I also feel that gaming is something that is very much carried by a casual following or a younger demographic. There are always going to be a hardcore following of older people, but most of the audience is more casual. I feel that this element is why raising the prices of games and general gaming experiences might not end well.

There is one thing that these companies are forgetting in their quest to reach higher profits and investor expectations: what’s going to happen when you price out the middleman? As I said before, gaming has become a much wider element of general culture, and more casual people play games than ever. However, if companies want to start charging 80 and above for individual games, more might balk at that fee. Sure, you can argue that many do spend a lot on other elements of gaming, and microtransactions are practically designed to get more out of players over time. But that’s the thing, those purchases are designed to be smaller, not to tip off the players on how much they are spending. Dropping all the pretense and asking for even more upfront is a much harder sell. Not to mention how most people only have so much to spend leisure-wise. Ask me this: if a kid asks their parents for a 450-dollar game console, an 80-dollar pro controller, and two 70-dollar games, will they get any of that for their birthday or Christmas? Maybe one or two of those, but not all of it at once.

Plus, with how games have been made, it just feels like more is being charged for less. More games come out with not much in the package at the start, and companies either ask customers to wait for DLC and expansions, or gate additional content in downloads and microtransactions for additional fees. Games in general feel less expansive and are more driven to ask for more out of the customer. While I do believe many games offer a lot, they get drowned by games made by EA, Activision, and Ubisoft with overpriced special editions and in-game economies. This has been an issue with a lot of games over the past decade, and while I do feel Nintendo has made quality games, they are basically giving a free pass to other companies who try far less. I absolutely do not think the industry will stop asking for more money, either with post-launch content or smaller in-game purchases. A game like the recent Call of Duty asking for 80, which already asks for a lot of money for DLC and other content, feels unjustified since you are simply paying more money as a shell price to then spend more when you play the game.

I understand from a business standpoint of costs and profit that gaming is an inherently expensive prospect, both in development and pricing. I am not trying to say it isn’t easy or cheap to make games or consoles, or that allowing other areas of monetization isn’t unnecessary. However, considering that the game industry is already making a lot of money in the long run with other avenues of revenue, raising the prices of games continually feels like an unnecessary step. If individual games get more expensive, people will be more wary of a larger price tag and balk at purchasing something upfront. Not only that, but a large chunk of gaming audiences is casual and are more likely to use that money somewhere else if they don’t think the cost is worth it. And if gaming companies are making a lot of money in other areas, wouldn’t that be enough, and if not, is the issue that the industry has made too much in too short a time to sustainably keep pace with financial expectations?

The price rise feels less like a necessary choice and more done for the sake of it. Gaming companies have spent the last decade trying to make more and more money year in and year out, and while it’s been lucrative in the present, the issue is that they didn’t think about how they would be able to maintain that long-term. It has resulted in many games trying to cram in more monetization or chasing trends that are long over once said games come out (hello Concord). The price changes with gaming feel like another step in that direction, and I believe it will not solve the long-term issues the industry is facing. The rumors of GTA IV being 100 may come to pass and will incentivize even more price raising, but companies will likely still make games that have had the same issues of lacking content or being rushed out, and ask for even more money than they did before. Instead of finding a proper solution to the rising costs of gaming or how to address the ever-increasing financial expectations, it feels like game companies are kicking the can down the road and expecting their audience to take the brunt of things. Even if the Switch 2 does sell, I’m not so sure it will either sell as much as the first or maintain the same level of consistent financial success, given the high entry fee. Plus, if other companies that offer much less also ask for more, they might be in for a rude awakening when they aren’t able to meet their goals, even if a lot of people still buy.

I sincerely don’t have the answer for the state of gaming. It’s a young medium, and a lot of changes have happened even over the past few years. However, I do feel that more caution and care should be taken since games are still simply entertainment, and companies should realize that not everyone will be willing to shell out as much as possible all the time. Entertainment is something a lot of people enjoy, but it’s also an expendable expense, and I expect a lot of people to stick with older stuff if the new stuff costs this much across the board.