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In late 2022, Activision pulled PC gaming into the $70-for-triple-A-games era that the consoles were already living in, becoming the first major publisher on Steam to abandon the old $60 standard for its launch of Modern Warfare 2. Two and a half years later, I’m only now starting to accept the reality of being expected to exchange 70 United States dollars for the privilege of pretending I’m a guy who hits lizards with swords.
It’s good that I haven’t gotten too comfortable, because a champion for an $80 standard has already come forward.
Earlier this week, in the wake of its Switch 2 showcase, Nintendo revealed that launch game Mario Kart World will cost $80 as a digital purchase. The $450 price of the console itself is stoking its own discourse, with its MSRP in the US expected to rise even higher now that Nintendo has delayed American preorders following the Trump administration’s sweeping tariff announcements.
The justification for Mario Kart’s price hike is the same that publishers offered for the rise to $70: increasing development costs and inflation. Both of those factors are real and undeniable. It now costs close to a billion dollars to develop a Call of Duty game, and the value of the dollar has fallen by a third in the last decade.
So no, it isn’t surprising that games are continuing to get more expensive. But when wages in the US have remained stagnant compared to the steadily rising cost of living, any additional increase—justifiable or not—becomes harder to stomach. Even if it’s delightful that Nintendo is letting cows drive now.
Videogames have sometimes been called “recession proof” on the basis that people play them even when money is tight, when at-home entertainment is preferable to expensive nights out anyway. But the industry did contract following the early pandemic boom, with big companies laying off thousands as the bets they made during that brief period failed to pay off.
And meanwhile, the word on the street is that most PC gamers are pretty busy playing the games we already have, thank you very much: According to games industry intelligence firm Newzoo, PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games.
If you buy a Switch 2, you’ve effectively committed yourself to buying some new Switch 2 games. But the same can’t be said about a gaming PC or Steam Deck, which offer access to loads of free-to-play games, cheap classics, and out-of-the-blue hits like Schedule 1, the $20 indie game that’s currently Steam’s best seller by revenue.
Even on the higher end, there are options like Baldur’s Gate 3, which has a base price of $60 and is still one of the most-played games on Steam after almost two years.
Activision and the other big publishers may be wise to let Nintendo blaze the $80-per-game trail on its own for now. Rockstar could probably get away with any price it wants to set for GTA 6 (whenever it comes to PC, at least), but it’s a special case, and things are not looking up for the disposable incomes of Americans. Turn that 7 into an 8 at your own peril, triple-As.
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Kurt Indovina
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