Coming on June 5th, Nintendo Switch 2 is ready to shake the gaming sector with several news. Among these, the price of its exclusive: Mario Kart World’s physical cartridge costs 89.99 euros. Kyoto’s house has already reassured by saying that it will not be the norm, yet the trend of the sector makes the opposite the opposite.
Mario Kart World, the new exclusive for Nintendo Switch 2, costs 90 euros. A news that shocked press and gamer. And rightly: the figure requested by Nintendo represents A new standard for video gamesgiven that the average price of the main videogame productions today stands at 79.99 euros. This figure also represents a rather recent increase, inaugurated with the current generation of consoles: before PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S, the average price of triple A games, that is large production for budgets and dimensions of the development study, was 69.99 euros.
Nintendo reassured that the 90 euros will not represent the norm. “We have not established a new benchmark,” he said Doug Bowserpresident of Nintendo of America, al Washington Post. The price of Mario Kart World is just an example of “variable prices” that reflects the “wealth and depth of the gameplay”. To give strength to this statement, the price of another exclusive Nintendo Switch 2, Donkey Kong Bananza, equivalent to the canons 79.99 euros.
Because the price of video games increases
The story of Mario Kart’s 90 euros opens up a reflection on the current state of the game industry, which is in crisis. With the return to normal following the boom in the Pandemic years, The sector had to face mass layoffs, cancellation of projects, closing of studies. Moreover, today’s triple to require exorbitant budgets, equal to the most famous Hollywood productions, with figures that exceed 300 million dollars. Hence the need to return to sales with sales, otherwise it is a ruinous flop, as happened in Ubisoft after the failures of Skull and Bones and Star Wars Outlaws.
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To affect today’s video games are not only narrative assets or marketing campaigns, but also the increasingly pushed technological performance: photojournalist graphics, immense open worlds and complex artificial intelligence systems impose important budgets, longer development times and much larger development team. This explains The noise according to which GTA 6 will cost 100 euros. Moreover, the highly anticipated new chapter of Grand Theft Auto has, on paper, all the potentialities to revolutionize the sector. Or at least, this is the habit of Rockstar Games.
If the rumor proved true, it would mark a further standard for the entire market. The adoption of a “variable price”, already mentioned by figures such as Bowser, could therefore become the norm, reflecting the “depth” of the gameplay and the technological avant -garde as justification for the increases.
The problems of the racing of the games
This rally race risks feeding inequalities in accessing video gamesmaking it difficult for the spread of a medium that in itself is struggling to get out of its niche. A trend that Shawn Layden He had already identified in 2021: in an interview for Gameindustry.bzthe former PlayStation manager, had highlighted how the number of console owners had remained relatively unchanged since the 90s, reaching between 240 and 260 million people. Instead of expanding this basis, the industry has therefore encouraged the same users to spend more, leading to an increase in games development costs. An unsustainable approach, as it limits creative diversity in the sector. In short, a prophecy.
Despite platforms such as steam or subscription services such as PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass allow you to amortize the expenses, video game remains a luxury. The consoles also cost 900 euros (reference to PlayStation 5 Pro), while for computers from performing gaming the figures can be even higher. Looking at the immediate future, Switch 2 will cost 469.99 euros, its games from 80 to 90 euros. The solution to this problem could be The streaming subscription servicessuch as Amazon Luna or Nvidia GeForce Now, which allow you to play on any platform – smartphones, tablets, TV – in cloud, but are not yet ready to spread in a widespread way.
Especially when The historical competition of the sector continues to focus on the exclusive: Companies such as Nintendo and Sony drip the sales of their game consoles through exclusive titles. An example could be Mario Kart World available only on Switch 2, or Death Stranding 2, the video game with Luca Marinelli, playable only on PlayStation 5. True is that Sony in recent times has opened its franchises also to the PC public, however the influence of console gaming icons still remains high.
Finally, the situation is also unstable for independent studieswhich due to the current crisis find greater difficulty in finding funding for their experimental proposals. The danger is therefore that the spectacularization of the product goes to the detriment of creative diversity, focusing attention only on a few blockbusters capable of holding the economic weight of the Hype and the global market.
