You forget that in 1996 the gaming pool was also magnitudes smaller compared to today and despite all of the whining about increased development costs, which I also think is bullshit but that’s a different conversation, profits have increased to keep up.
So my opinion, no there’s absolutely no justification for a 80 dollar price point when you look at the over all picture.
And let’s take this outside of the myopic view of only looking at inflation.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/video-game-industry-revenues-by-platform/
Console gaming revenue: 1996 - 7 billion, 2022 - 30 billion
Let’s look at specifically Nintendo here since we’re talking about Super Mario 64
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2001/011121e.pdf
2001, 664 million in profit, adjusted for inflation in 2022 dollars, 1 billion.
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/84668/nintendo-made-6-billion-net-sales-1-7-profits-in-q322/index.html
2022, 1.7 billion dollars in profit.
You forget that in 1996 the gaming pool was also magnitudes smaller compared to today and despite all of the whining about increased development costs, which I also think is bullshit but that’s a different conversation, profits have increased to keep up.
So my opinion, no there’s absolutely no justification for a 80 dollar price point when you look at the over all picture.