Exactly, people makes cracks about "$500 for Mario Kart", but with the bundle you're actually paying $50 for Mario Kart and $450 to play the next eight years or so of Nintendo games. (Plus being able to take third party ports on the go)

A console is a long term investment, people don't just buy one for what it has now, but for what it's going to get.

The wait finally paid off for my ps5 purchase!  4 years to get astrobot. I’m not sure over ever been more disapointed with a consoles exclusives. Controllers are fire though. 

I hope Nintendo doesn't take the wrong lesson from this and start nickel amd diming people. Charging $80 for like even lower cost games. I wish I had the money for the console and games but I don't. WWE did this too. They made record sales and started increasing prices for everything just because they could and people were excited. I hate the mentality of record profits meaning companies will squeeze even more from people and old fans who are poorer start getting priced out from what they love.

It can be estimated that around 85% of Mario Kart World owners in America and Europe paid only $50/€40 for the game, so the fear that this initial success could serve as groundwork for $80 to become the standard is completely unfounded.

I feel like the reason PS5 and Xbox Series got a lot of flack for so much their output being crossgen was that historically people are used to new console hardware offering new exclusive experiences that weren't possible on previous machines, so when the bulk of PS5 games were also on PS4, people felt like such games weren't really taking full advantage of what the new hardware could do.

Switch 2 sidesteps this through having plenty of games from day 1 that wouldn't be possible in their current form on Switch 1, such as Mario Kart World, Cyberpunk 2077, Fast Fusion, Split Fiction, etc.

Games like Cyberpunk may be playable and even graphically superior on PS5 or Xbox Series X, but that's the tradeoff many are willing to make for the portability and convenience Switch 2 offers.

I think the reason for that is that we have reached the point now with dedicated home consoles where taking full advantage of the system's capabilities and producing a full-blown PS5/XS exclusive that pushes it to its limits to where it is absolutely not possible to play on the PS4/XOne is just too much of a steep financial investment for any studio that's not a major AAA developer.

Plus, the graphical leap is just not that noticeable to casual, naked eye anymore like back in the 90s-00s. Like the jump from the NES to SNES, the SNES to the N64, the PS1 to the PS2, the OG Xbox to the 360. Not only were those jumps obvious, but they were also MIND-BLOWING. And they were leaps and bounds above what the handhelds of their day, like the OG Game Boy, GBA, DS, and 3DS had to offer.

For example, if Sega released a Sonic game on ALL platforms back in the 6th and even 7th gens, they had to create entirely separate versions just for consoles and handhelds, to the point where they were creating entirely different games. Unleashed on the Wii/PS2? Very different from Unleashed on the HD twins. Same with Colors on the Wii vs the DS. And Generations on the HD Twins vs the 3DS. And Lost World on the Wii U vs the 3DS.
Now? They can release Forces, Frontiers, SxS Generations, and whatever their next 3D Sonic game will be on all platforms, and they'll all be the same game with the only difference being one runs at higher graphics and frame-rate and the other is portable - Which like you say, is a tradeoff many are willing to make.

TL:DR - In the graphics race, Nintendo is catching up. And fast! To the point where soon 3rd party devs can't really use the "more graphics/power gap" excuse anymore because since almost all the games they make nowadays, particularly the yearly staples like COD, Madden, FIFA, and NBA 2K, they make them to run on the PS4/XOne because they really can't afford to go all in on the PS5/XS. And everyone knows that Switch 2 is MORE than capable of running anything that plays on the PS4/XOne, it can even compete with the Series S in some places, which every 3rd party dev has to make sure their games runs on THAT before running on Series X. Hell, they can't even use the "too much data" excuse anymore since Nintendo went out of their way to get those Game Key cards specifically for 3rd parties. The current landscape is set up to where there are few devs who can really afford to go all in with a PS5/XS and pretty soon, PS6/Next Xbox game, without breaking the bank at a huge risk as these budgets continue to inflate to absurd degrees. So they'll continue to support the older platforms for as long as they viably can, which is perfectly fine for Nintendo because that gives them more time to ride and support their one system for as long as they possibly can, like they did with Switch 1.

You think mario kart world gonna suffer at all from being $80? We have to be realistic and accept there are plenty of people with enough money who will continue to drive this trend. We will see what Nintendo does in the future. 

Which trend? The upcoming Donkey Kong Bananza will be $70 and that's going to be the standard price for most Nintendo games going forward. We don't have to make guesses about the future when we already have the answers.

The main reason why Mario Kart World costs $80 as a standalone is because of the bundle option where Nintendo gives away the game at a notably cheaper price to drive hardware sales.

I think we are gonna see more $80 games both 1st party and 3rd party and we will revisit that on the future. 

There's no doubt that Mario Kart World won't be the only $80 game on Switch 2, but that wasn't your actual point. This is all about whether it will be more common for games to be priced at $70 or $80.

When Donkey Kong Bananza gets to be a $70 game despite how amazing it looks, then it's pretty obvious that Nintendo will reserve the $80 price tag only for a few exceptions like the next 3D Zelda.