Out of print games don't really fit though. And limited print ones, too.

Those are difficult to guage prices, usually depends on how good the game actually is.

To be fair, that is some random and obscure crap you dug up. Also, Amazon is generally much cheaper than retailers.

I bought a brand new copy of NSMBW for $35 with free shipping from Amazon. GameStop sells it for $40 used. And I gotta pay tax!!!

I dunno I'm Canadian and at most retailers new Wii games sell for 49.99CAD, in the US most game stores sell their games for the same 49.99USD. Thats the same price seeing as our dollar is pretty much on par or around par steadily. Now that being said EBGames likes to stamp an extra five bucks on. I paid 54.99$ for Kirby but because I had it pre-ordered and put most of the money down already I couldn't really walk into FutureShop and buy it there for 49.99$.

Now American's get X-Box Live cheaper and they do also have better sales more often. But we get great deals too.

Thats why its so cool to live on the border a good deal comes up and I can simply cross the border and buy it cheaper. I'm so looking forward to BlackFriday its like our boxing day but with better sales.

Also do note not all Nintendo published games hold their price. BattalionWars 2 was only 19.99$ at my local EBGames and I saw it for five bucks used at a local game store. If the game doesn't sell then Nintendo does cut prices or at least retailers do.

Nintendo sells games at a profit at all times , during the GameCube era Nintendo made most of its profits from software sales and now that they are enjoying such good sales they want to make the most of it. Even if a game ins't selling well then Nintendo really wants the game to be sold at a higher cost.

Say a game is so unpopular it only will sell 50K, do you sell the game for 19.99$ and sell an extra 25k. Or do you sell the game full price for 49.99$ and only sell 50k?

Also Nintendo officially addressed this in 2006. Iwata stated hardware  prices would not be slashed in a few months or even a few years. Iwata stated thats how the industry used to run slash prices a few months later to increase demand, he said that model didn't work. So it would appear Nintendo is taking the same approach with software that they did for hardware.

Lastly if you only buy games new and are on a budget their are two times of year you can really stock up on games. If you live in a border town that is.

BlackFriday (USA) - I bought Zelda TP for a friend's Christmas gift for like 29.99$ a couple years ago. I also got Excite Bots for 14.99$ last year. I saw MarioParty8 on sale for like 20$ and other great games. Select Nintendo titles can be found at Best Buy , Target, Walmart. Those are the three I usually hit, I used to hit Circuit City as well but they no longer live.

Boxing Day (Canada) - Boxing day is our Black Friday. I remember launch year 2006. I bought SSX:Blur, FarCry for 9.99$ and Zelda for 19.99$ (Thanks to a typo in the ad) Check FutureShop, BestBuy, Walmart , Zellers and no suprise (Usually avoid EBGames like a hawk).

In all honesty their are also smaller sales all year round. Recently DS hardware was 50$ off at Zellers. I also saw several games on sale at FutureShop and BestBuy.

My advice shop around for sales and you can get most of the big name games within a few months of release really cheap!

only the good nintendo games hold value, smg and smg2 are expensive as is nsmbw and mkw, the rest are pretty cheap

That is a myth. I've bought MP3 for 5€ (retail), brawl for 11€ (online) and today twilight princess for 10€(retail). All new.

And in case someone would be interested in brawl for 11€:

http://www.thehut.com/games/platforms/nintendo-wii/super-smash-bros.-brawl/9980263.html

Oh and there was few copies of SMG for 10€ too.

Nintendo should do a Wii/DS PC line.  Don't include NSMB, or Wii Fit or Mario Kart or whatever, fine, but there's no reason someone shouldn't be able to pick up something less evergreen (and out of print) like Fire Emblem or Kirby or whatever for $20.

Uncharted 2 is well known highest quality too. That doesn't stop Sony from selling it at 15 pounds price one year after release bringing great value for gamers.

The only reason why Nintendo games are still so expensive is Nintendo greed.

Here is an excerpt from a blog I happen to browse on occasion. click the link below for the full article.

"It's likely that these resale rankings will swing wildly from year to year" says Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities. Seven of the top 10 publishers are different from 2008 to 2009. Only Nintendo, MTV Games, and Natsume make the list in both years.

According to Jesse Divinich, "Of all the publishers Nintendo is among the top for preventing price protection (discounts at retailers), which is why they maintain a high resale value on secondary markets such as eBay."

There was no variation at all in the console rankings from 2008 to 2009. Wii and Nintendo DS games were at the top of the list in both reports and Xbox 360 and PS3 games were at the bottom.

In general, Wii and DS games have a longer shelf live and sell over a longer period of time so the resale prices stay higher. There are more people buying the games over a longer period of time.

Conversely, Xbox 360 and PS3 games are very front loaded with a much larger percentage of a game's sales occurring in the first month of sales. In the following months used games flood the market as the hardcore games move onto the next big release, which causes lower resale prices.

http://blog.videogamepricecharts.com/2010/01/2009-game-publisher-resale-value-report.html

I agreed. Nintendo should start selling their new console at a lose.

Basically Nintendo's conservative about their printing runs. The games that sell forever obviously don't drop price because they keep on selling at that price, but even the niche stuff like Wario Land or Fire Emblem find themselves in that position because Nintendo pulls the plug on them somewhat too early, while demand remains roughly flat for those games, the supply dries up entirely, so they hold at normal pricing for a long time to come