Received complaint from [email protected]

[Blood Fetish]

Higher-end SNES games such as Chrono Trigger went for up to $80. Hell, the standard price for most NES games was around $40 to $60, and that was over 20 years ago!

 

[mechagouki]

Higher-end SNES games such as Chrono Trigger went for up to $80. Hell, the standard price for most NES games was around $40 to $60, and that was over 20 years ago!

On a purely financial basis that is true, (NES Zelda and SNES Street Fighter II Turbo were insanely expensive at launch) but you have to look a little deeper. 8 and 16 bit cartridges were very expensive to produce due to the price of memory chips at the time. Software companies' profits skyrocketed with the move to optical media - Nintendo were saved from real hurt in the N64 generation only by the success of Pokemon. These days it's either optical disc or flash memory - both of which are laughably cheap to produce. In Nintendo's case they keep game dev. costs down by updating older platforms N64-DS, Gamecube-Wii.

I'm not justifying piracy, I'm just saying the games comapnies ain't doing too bad thank-you-very-much. (except Sony of course - LOL).