For those complaining about prices, it's important to look at inflation
Source: https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/cost-of-gaming-since-1970s
In 1990 average game cost was $60. If you adjust for inflation that would be $121.60.
Super Metroid sold roughly 1.42 million copies at a value of $121.60 a piece, by today's standards. That would be a total of $172,672,000 revenue adjusting for inflation. We can't know profit as Nintendo isn't that specific with reporting data, so all we are left with to look at is revenue. To generate that same level of revenue now, at $60 each, they would need to sell 2,877,866 copies. They would basically have to sell twice as much as they did in 1994 with Super Metroid to generate the same level of revenue at $60 each, which is absurd by itself. Now, for those of you wanting the game to be priced at $40 each (a whopping $81.60 less in value than they sold Super Metroid for in 1994), they would have to sell 4,316,800 games just to have the same revenue generated as Super Metroid did. Now, what about development? Some estimates are that cost of development has gone up 200-300% since the early days of gaming, all while the price hasn't gone up hardly any. More digital sales offset costs that would have otherwise been spent on boxing/shipping/manufacturing, but that doesn't put much of a dent in the loss in revenue companies are making now by selling the same amounts as they did decades ago.







