Don’t Nintendo do every one of those too? Gacha phones games, plenty of DLC, lots on incomplete games like a bunch of the sports games, and Mario Kart world still adding requested features. They also lock things like fast travel behind plastic toys when the mood takes them. They do all those things and they’d do them one thousand times more if it would make them money. I guess they don’t fire lots of people(Japanese employment law makes this hard), just pay them mediocre wages while making insane profits. A Reminder: The second Spider-Man game cost so much in part because the staff working on it received $40m in bonuses during its development. This isn’t necessarily something we should be shouting down. There just needs to be the right balance applied. 

Nintendo games are cheaper to make because Japanese employees make less money and Nintendo uses less technology in their consoles and games, making them cheaper to develop on. Obviously it will cost less to push the Switch 2 to its limits than it will cost to make a game that pushes the Series X and PC’s. Personally I am all for indie games and games with smaller budgets/price, they’re often better than the bloated checklist focused AAA games we get. But it’s great to get a banger every now and again, something that makes you glad you have a great gaming rig or a Series X/PS5 Pro.

I mean even a lower budget lower priced Xbox game like South of Midnight visually blows away anything on Switch 2 and plays just as well. 

On topic, I doubt this budget mark is true. If it were that high I think this would be launching day one on PS5 as well.