US Sales: November 2025 (Circana)

[Sephiran]

IcaroRibeiro said:

Sephiran said:

According to Circana's Piscatella, most console gamers in the US buy 1-2 new games every year, which means it makes no difference for the average console gamer if a game cost 70 instead of 60 because they don't reguarly buy any games. Its mostly core gamers that buy new games every month that gets a bigger impact from games costing 70 instead of 60, which is why its a topic that reguarly comes up in gaming forums, because those forums consist of people that buy new games all the time.

For the average gamer, games costing 70 instead of 60 take their yearly game expenses budget up from 120 to 140.

When every major third party publisher price their games at 70, its ludicrous to think Nintendo should be the odd one out with permanent 60 priced games, does anyone really believe Sega, Atlus, Capcom etc should price their games at 70 and the much bigger Nintendo should go permanently below them in price? When Nintendo is a vastly bigger publisher than them? Sure, give us 60 games, but why single out Nintendo? Shouldn't the argument be that everyone should price their games at 60 instead of only complaining about Nintendo while everyone else are free to price their games at 70 with no criticism?

Paying 70 USD for most of publishers is optional. For Nintendo is mandatory since their games almost never go on sale. I wouldn't mind Nintendo games prices if they decreased over time like any other publisher. Even the re-releases of their Wii U games released originally ~13 years ago are still 60 USD

Edit: You're also misunderstanding the statistics, because they are inflated by people who mostly play GaaS like Fortnite and spend all their money of them. Push for live services free to play games has a correlation with high entry prices for games. There are subscriptions like Game Pass and PS Plus to give away free games for a monthly fee

There are no similar option on Nintendo systems, hence pricing for gaming purchases are even more important for Nintendo than other consoles 

That is also just a myth, Nintendo games go on sell both digitally, but have bigger sales at retail 1-2 years after release. Sure, Nintendo games never go down to Steam or Ubisoft prices, but if you don't want to buy Nintendo games at 60-70, you can find retail deals that take the price down to 30 for Nintendo games. But core gamers generally lack the patience to wait for price drops, which is why they instead complain about 70 priced games because they can't wait to buy the game later down the line when the good retail deals start to happen.