Last week, Nintendo made headlines in the gaming industry by announcing that Mario Kart World would retail for a suggested price of $80 in the United States. This nominal price marks a significant milestone not only for Nintendo but also for the gaming industry as a whole, which has typically reserved prices above $70 for elaborate collectors' editions or Digital Deluxe Editions that come with an array of downloadable bonuses.
When considering historical game prices adjusted for inflation, the $80 asking price for a standard game in 2025 aligns closely with the prices that major games commanded 10 to 15 years ago. The rapid inflation rates observed over the past five years also mean that the $70 price point, which emerged as a new standard in 2020, does not hold the same purchasing power it once did.
To assess the $80 price of Mario Kart World against historical trends, we first needed to gather data on past game prices. Our analysis built upon a similar study from 2020, utilizing scanned catalogs and retail advertisements to collect real examples of nominal console game pricing dating back to the Atari era. For more recent years, we referred to press reports and archived digital storefronts to illustrate the actual prices of new games during those times.
To ensure a fair comparison, we focused on the highest asking prices for individual games each year, excluding deluxe collector's editions. To minimize skewing from outliers—such as the $100 Genesis version of Virtua Racing—we averaged the top prices across eight different genres, creating a representative basket of big-budget games for each year. For instance, in 2020, the new high price of $70 for NBA 2K21 in the Sports category was balanced by the $60 price for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in the Action category.
We compiled data for these game baskets over 21 non-consecutive years, starting in 1982, and normalized the nominal prices to February 2025 dollars using the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI calculator. All our data and sources are available in a dedicated Google Sheet.
In nominal terms, the $30 to $40 that retailers often charged for game cartridges in the 1980s appears to be a bargain. However, when analyzing inflation-adjusted data, it's clear that even an $80 game today would seem like a steal for gamers from the cartridge era. New cartridge games during the 20th century routinely sold for over $100 in 2025 dollars, driven by high manufacturing costs and limited market competition. Must-have new titles often cost the equivalent of $140 or more in today’s currency.
The introduction of CD-based consoles in the late '90s eventually led to a stabilization in pricing. By the early 2000s, the top-end prices for games had dropped to about $50, rising to $60 by the end of the decade. However, adjusted for inflation, these early 21st-century games still demanded prices nearing $90 in 2025 dollars, well above the new $80 price point that Mario Kart World is attempting to set.
Throughout the 2010s, inflation began to erode the value of gaming's de facto $60 price ceiling, which remained consistent for most of the decade. The nominal average prices for our game baskets in 2013, 2017, and 2020 were all roughly equivalent to $80 in constant 2025 dollars.
The transition to an $80 price point may seem abrupt, but the surge in post-COVID inflation has made it almost unavoidable. After decades of annual inflation rates hovering around 2 to 3 percent, the Consumer Price Index experienced a spike of 4.7 percent in 2021, followed by an astonishing 8 percent increase in 2022. These annual price hikes have remained above the previously accepted 3 percent threshold.
Consequently, spending $80 on a game today holds the equivalent value of approximately $65 spent on a game in 2020. This means that the $60 that Nintendo charged for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in 2017 is roughly valued at around $78 today. This game went on to achieve a franchise record of 67 million units sold at that price. A similar case can be made for Mario Kart Wii, which sold 37 million units after its launch at $50 in 2008, equivalent to about $74 in today's money.
While many gamers' incomes have not kept pace with these price increases, the reality of monetary policy and inflation affects the entire marketplace. As Nintendo Vice President of Player & Product Experience, Bill Trinen, recently stated, we are in an era where inflation impacts everything.
It's also worth noting that Nintendo is offering a $499 bundle that includes the Switch 2 and Mario Kart World, valuing the game at just $50 when purchased with the console. This provides a buffer for gamers who may hesitate to pay $80 for the game alone.
To determine whether the gaming market is ready to embrace an $80 baseline price, we may need to see at least one more example. In a recent interview with CNBC, Doug Bowser, the President of Nintendo of America, stated that Nintendo is not specifically trying to set a new pricing benchmark with the $80 tag on Mario Kart World. However, given historical pricing trends, it wouldn't be surprising if other major publishers follow suit in the coming months and years, raising their baseline prices for big-budget games tied to beloved franchises.
Just as NBA 2K21 led the charge for the $70 price point, which is now a standard across the industry, Mario Kart World may well be remembered as a pivotal moment in establishing a new $80 pricing tier that could soon become the norm.
