Alright… Let’s Talk $80 Games

At the time of writing, the Nintendo Switch 2’s launch draws ever nearer, and so, too, does the horrible reality: the arrival of Mario Kart World and its $80 price tag. Quietly announced outside of the Nintendo Direct, this title — alongside a fair few others — has pushed the envelope the industry was initially trying to set with $70 games, which was already diverging from the current standard of $60 that we know (and hate).

Nintendo and Mario Kart World are setting a precedent that many aren’t entirely happy with, and their decision, alongside the industry-wide reaction, will decide the pricing of future titles. As we bid farewell to the comfortable days of $60 prices and forcefully accept $70, it is possible that Nintendo’s decision will force a new reality that many are unwilling to accept.

…or is it?

The videogame industry is no stranger to anti-consumer decisions across the board. Most of the time, what begins as a harmless practice turns into an abuse from the most well-established companies in the world, and we see what was once a neat idea turn into an unrecognisable beast meant to extort every last bit of money from its audience.

Pre-orders are a prime example of this: started in an era when these were a necessity, their main purpose used to be to secure a copy of your title, a physical disk at the time, to ensure that you could claim yours and play it day one without stock issues getting in the way. The rise of digital media was meant to lower game prices due to the lowered costs of shipping and manufacturing (hah), and this should’ve seen the abolishment of the pre-order structure as a whole (hah).

Instead, this gave rise to pre-order bonuses. Show your loyalty to any given title, buy it early, and you’ll get neat bonuses: exclusive content, discounted prices, DLC that would’ve otherwise been made available at a later time, gear or items to get you ahead and let you finish the game faster (this still baffles me, by the way). Sure, there may no longer be a reason to pre-order titles to secure your day-one copy and not miss out on the hype, but its change has ensured that it remains prevalent in the minds of diehard fans — or those most easily manipulated by FOMO.

The latest evolution in the long line of malpractice surrounding the pre-order ideology was the Advanced Access mechanism. Buy it early, and you can play it before its day-one release… of course, that’s if you’re willing to fork over not only your hard-earned cash, but also a bit extra to buy the edition that actually offers it to you.

To blame Nintendo for the move into $80 games is a fool’s gambit, as evidenced by the massive amounts of anti-consumer practices shown by other companies. Ubisoft has vouched for higher-priced games, Bethesda offered Advanced Access if you’re willing to pay $100, The Sims 4 is already on its 98th DLC, the whole "you don’t own your games" issue we’ve been facing… every which way you look, there’s something you can find that turns heads. Gacha, subscription-based models, DLC, and pre-order bonuses are but a cog in a giant corporate machine, and the recent surge of live-service titles only doubles down on this ideology (Concord, anyone?).

The main argument for this whole debacle is front and centre, as videogame companies are the first to cry out at every opportunity they can to mention why a higher price is important: production costs. Interestingly, it’s not an insane ideology, as the rumoured budget for Grand Theft Auto VI is an eye-watering one to two billion dollars, and while gamers worry about frames per second, life-like graphics, and realistic hair movement (why?), it pushes these budgets higher.

It’s not an insane ideology and nowhere near as downright insulting as it is if it weren’t for the practices surrounding the very companies that are demanding these prices. Ubisoft hit the nail on the head with the Assassin’s Creed Shadows delays, as it’s the first time an open-world title was released and the Internet didn’t flood with complaints of bugs, errors, crashes, performance woes… and that last one, in particular, is a highlight of 2025.

Monster Hunter Wilds’ origami people, Rise of the Ronin’s PowerPoint presentation FPS, among others, are just a few in the long list of titles that are demanding more and more powerful machines to run them… when sometimes, not even they can handle it. Performance issues and bugs are the limelight of some of the most prominently negative titles, as evidenced by my recent endeavours into Arkane Austin’s notorious "live-service" title Redfall, which my RTX 4080 can just barely run without lagging, and my wife’s can run for about an hour before it crashes and demands a restart.

But with a higher price comes higher expectation, and though I’d love to say that we’ll stand by this ideology industry-wide, the stark reality is that $80 games are here to stay… alongside performance issues and bugs on day one, with patches meant to fix "as many" as possible. It’s divided the industry into those willing to pay the $80 price (the same people who love Deluxe, Ultimate, and Definitive editions), and those who won’t; yet, this division has existed for a very long time, and it’ll only serve to make an exodus from some in the former category to the latter.

I’m not going to play gatekeeper and say either is correct in their arguments — the industry sees enough of that — but it’s a reality that we’re facing currently. The self-dubbed "patient" gamers are an ever-growing list of players who are willing to wait, whatever it takes, to get a game at their desired price point, whatever that may be. This group is comprised of what you’d call "smart" consumers, who know what they value games at and will follow their ideology tooth and nail (pound and pence?). Then, you have collectors and Deluxe Edition owners, diehard fans who will go to any length to pay to play the latest entry into Call of Duty or what-have-yous of yearly launches that we see, or the whales in free-to-play titles that single-handedly pay to keep the lights on in servers via gachas or microtransactions.

To call either "wrong" is pointing fingers at other consumers trying to enjoy the hobby in the way they want to, even if it doesn’t entirely reflect your ideology, pointing fingers at your fellow gamer just trying to get by with playing their favourite franchise. And though the real culprit lies in the companies that charge more and more for smaller, less meaningful experiences, it’s worth noting the rise of hyper-realistic graphics, 120FPS+ monitors in gaming, and realistic hairstyles that have been praised so heavily (again, why?!). From open-world titles with no loading screens to render distances that make you feel like you’re living in the game, the expectation of AAA games has become colossal, while their pricing has been kept the same for years.

This isn’t to defend the bad consumer practices that have plagued the industry but to pose a different perspective on them: the harm that higher-grade titles, and the praise they attained, have caused. But there’s one sentiment that’s easy to forget, and I feel applies in this case, even for $80 games, "Something made for everyone is made for no one".

I’m not a personal advocate of the $80 price tag — it put me off from DOOM: The Dark Ages and Avowed, though that was primarily because of regional pricing. Being a person who owns close to 2,500 games, I try to buy intelligently: I’m trying to be realistic with myself about what I’ll play, what I’ll enjoy, and what I’m willing to pay for it. But at the same time, I’m highly appreciative of cinematic experiences, and God of War (2018) is something I’d easily — guiltlessly — have paid $80 for and not batted an eye. Yet, I’d never pay $60, let alone $80, for Pokémon, and that’s my reality, which won’t reflect yours.

Likewise, the industry offers many amazing indie or AA titles at different prices. In a world where Baldur’s Gate 3 costs $59.99, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 costs $49.99, Hades costs $24.99, Hollow Knight costs $14.99, and Vampire Survivors costs $4.99, it’s easy to find things at many varying entry fees that are sure to suit everyone’s needs.

They may not be a cinematic masterpiece, a loading-screen-free open world filled with mo-cap, voice acting, and intricate narratives, but this is where I reiterate: not everything is made for everyone. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice put that into question in 2019 when it launched, where whole companies — developers and publishers alike — challenged FromSoftware’s soulslike formula for being exclusionary, yet it spawned many titles in the genre trying to replicate its success.

Was it for everyone? No. Our Editor, Andrew Duncan, notoriously hates soulslikes. I notoriously love them. The very essence of them — their difficulty, setting, gameplay — is antithetical to "accessibility" and "for everyone", but in that same core lies diehard fans and haters alike.

$80 games have a lot to answer for: buggy launches, performance issues, undercooked gameplay or narratives. But if the pricing increases the quality of these games, then it doesn’t have to be for everyone. And while I will be relying on my egregious backlog of titles to enjoy old classics (even AAA ones) I can nab at discounts as high as 90%, it’s undeniable to say that if the quality is there, it’ll be worth its price.

And if not? Then that’s okay, too, and it doesn’t have to be for everyone, so long as it’s for someone. Just like no gamer needs to love every genre — soulslike lovers versus wholesome cosy gamers — not every gamer needs to love every price point.

If all else fails, we can at least hope for a second videogame crash akin to 1983's.