Hello there, fellow Destructoid readers, and welcome to Real Talk, a short discussion series where I ask questions about things people are discussing (or likely mad about) to see if anyone really cares about them, or if they’re just joining the larger voices at work.
For this one, I wanted to bring back something that had a lot of hatred at the start of the year but feels to have fizzled out slightly over the past few months. That being the discourse of $80 games that heralded the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 back in June, with Mario Kart World.
Now, to be fair, there are still some vocal voices that appear on social media whenever an announcement has been made, especially recently, following the re-release of an updated version of Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 for Switch priced at $70, but the overall mass outrage doesn’t appear to be quite there like it was before. So what on earth happened?
Have the masses just quietly accepted that $80 games are the new norm? Have people given up hope that Nintendo and other companies will listen? Or is the same heated debate and discussion still ongoing, but just isn’t being given the attention to draw criticism? It’s hard to tell, and while it’s obvious there are still members of the gaming community trying to keep the discourse alive, I feel like it’s hard to pinpoint why the conversation has become a bit more muted in recent months.
There are some caveats. For example, since Mario Kart World, Microsoft tried and failed to make The Outer Worlds 2 an $80 game before discourse forced Microsoft to drop its plans and price it at $70 instead. We also haven’t seen any Nintendo game priced at $80 since the first reveal of Mario Kart World, with most new games being priced at or below $70. Sony has yet to show off a game that it has tried to price higher than its norm.
It feels like companies are unwilling to try to price their games at $80 following what happened the past few years, but it feels like it is only a matter of time until someone tries to test the waters again. And it feels like GTA 6 could be the one to test that price point, or even go beyond it, come next year when it finally releases.
But what do you think of the whole discussion? Let me know in the comments below!
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