Mario Kart $80 price isn't that high, historically | Hacker News Reader

Mario Kart $80 price isn't that high, historically

arstechnica.com

9 pointsMBCook14 comments

Worth mentioning that games are still among the cheapest forms of entertainment when you look at dollars per hour.

Lets say Mario Kart had a cost of 40 dollars. If you played that version of Mario Kart 20 hours over your lifetime that is 2 dollars per hour of entertainment. If you played it 40 hours over your lifetime that is 1 dollar per hour of entertainment.

This new Mario Kart costs 80 bucks. So now the cost per hour has gone to maybe 4 dollars an hour or 2 dollars an hour.

Ultimately this is still one of the cheapest forms of entertainment. The only thing cheaper would be watching free videos on YouTube or Tik Tok. Or maybe Netflix streaming (but even this depends on how many hours a month you spend watching Netflix stuff).

Of course the best form of entertainment is still reading books. It's the form that is the best for you as a person and it is still the cheapest considering the price of books and how many hours it takes to read a good book. And books are free at your local public library so that's even better.

If we're only in the realm of video games, Nintendo has some of the highest prices for their games, and rarely drop below half price. This does factor in somewhat, since their games (assuming you get a physical version) maintain their value better.

I think Nintendo should include a few months of free online play for their flagship titles with Nintendo Online service. The fact that all online activity is basically gated to a monthly subscription is one of the few things I dislike as a consumer about Nintendo's product strategy.

If we're going across different "entertainment" forms, I would argue the cheapest form of entertainment is probably football, aka soccer, or something similar as that just requires a ball.

This seems so far from the truth IMO.

I go and play pickleball outside at the park with friends for several hours a week.

All I spent was $50 on a paddle and $70 shoes and a $2 ball, and I could have spent less...

I play about 3 times a week for 2-3 hours at a time, so about 6-9 hours a week.

The paddle will last years, not exactly sure about the shoes, but still, you can play with your street shoes and it would be fine...

Anyways, even for a single 5 month stretch of warm weather for me way up in Wisconsin, this is less than $1 per hour. I spent $122 and I will play 120-180 hours easily from May-Sept outside for free.

This is the same for playing tennis, or basketball or soccer or frisbee golf, etc etc at the park with friends, or even with meetup groups if you don't have friends to play with.

This is so much cheaper entertainment than video gaming.

What about meetup groups that I go to play board games with people? I do this several hours a month too and it costs me nothing but the gas to get there. The meetup group often provides all the board games for free and there a dozens to choose from.

I can come up with tons of more examples of basically free or very cheap entertainment.

Sonic 2 cost about £40 when released.

Forty quid in '92, plus inflation, takes us to about... £80.

I wrote about this a few years ago - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/02/why-are-video-games-so-expe... - people have a terrible memory for what things used to cost.

I'm glad to see this type of explanation of inflation that uses examples familiar to different audiences.

We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that Mario Kart is a whole lot of fun (many video game producers have totally lost the plot on this). Mario Kart would probably be a value at $120, while other AAA games are a waste of money (and time) even at $10.

We keep saying this and forget that videogames started being sold digital, which saves about 30% on their retail cost, and avoids second market entirely, removing that "cost" too. So of course videogames haven't gone up in price, companies started saving an enormous amount of money on videogames.

The value of entertainment has gone down since the 90s. Inflation isn’t the only consideration. I don’t pay $15 for a movie ticket or CD anymore because 2 hours of video entertainment is basically free now and artists upload their tracks online.

That said, it’s Mario Kart and decades of price history of Sega Genesis games doesn’t matter. People will still pay whatever for Mario Kart.

If you wanted to go skiing at Heavenly in Lake Tahoe in 1997 or 1998 you would pay about $98 in March 2025 dollars, according to the US BLS CPI calculator. This season a lift ticket is $232. Incline/DiamondMountain was $58 in 82-83, now $165.

Likewise when I looked at concert ticket stubs for the 1970's - 2000 the prices were consistently about $40-50 in todays dollars for top acts in big venues.

I don’t think articles like this are useful. Buyers always compare prices to current competitive offerings. In that respect, it is that high and that’s all that matters to the would-be consumer.

The history makes for a fun analysis but has little relevance to the current market.

It is when you factor in the potential customer base for it. Yeah sure it costs a bit more to make games these days, people expect more, but the amount of people who game is absolutely massive now.

It's high relative to the price of the hardware

Is it?

Christmas ‘88 a NES was $99 at Sears.

https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1988-Sea...

That makes math trivial. What did games cost?

Mario 2 was 45% of that. Kid Icarus 40%. Punchout was 35%. Cheapest game was 10 Yard Fight at 30%.

Switch 2 is $400. Mario Kart World is $80.

That’s only 20%. HALF the price of Kid Icarus in relative dollars.

Games are not more expensive in inflation adjusted dollars. They’re not more expensive relative to the console.

Games have gotten cheaper.

Relatively, games and consoles have gotten cheaper. This is undeniable. But the wages have shrunk and the debts have grown for the average family compared to where they were in the 80's. $80 can feel worse today than $45 in '88 even though inflation-adjusted it's better.

It's also worth mentioning that the market is WAY bigger today than it was in the 80's. Successful games fly through millions of copies like it's nothing. Even if the margins are lower, the volume is way higher. (And each copy sold has no real additional cost)

Small correction - Switch 2 MSRP is $449.99. 80/450 = 17.77%

Also, the SNES and N64 both cost $200 on launch. SNES and N64 games cost $60 on launch. 60/200 = 30%.

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