Actually now each game on XBOX and PS3 is costing $60.. which is standard price.. so was it $60 in PS2 era also.? and also GC and Saturn time frame..

Secondly were the price for the game software similarly fixed as it is now.. like all new game software costing same amount or the publishers were able to charge more for the highly anticipated game and less for the others.? like MGS1 costing $60 and some no name game costing $30 on PS...

I m talking about general pricing.. not VERY specific cases.

It would not have been $60 for NES games no. But you have to factor in inflation. Just for example Jaws (1975) grosssed $475 million when it released but due to inflation thats now worth $1.8 billion and is actually just had of Titanic.

In the US

GC games were $50
PS2 - $50 (at least, the games I bought late in the generation were)
N64 were $60 or more (i think some hit 75 and maybe 1 hit 90)
PS1 - $50 (i remember them being $10 cheaper than N64 games)
SNES - $60 (i think, starting to get hazy here)
NES - $50 (i was 5 when I got this, so I think that is correct, but I can't remember)

In all cases there were budget titles, but in almost all cases no one went above the standard price. The N64 was an exception, as the larger carts cost more so those were above "standard" price.

so this gen isn't too bad in terms of pricing

Nordlead, I don't think all N64 games were $60. I am pretty sure a decent amount were around 50-60 new. I am not totally sure but here is info from wiki.. It doesn't clarify it too well though.


"While most PlayStation games rarely exceeded $50,[77] N64 titles could reach $79.99,[78] such as the first pressing of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.[79] Sony's line of PlayStation Greatest Hits retailed for $19.95 each, while Nintendo's Player's Choice value line had an MSRP of $29.95. In the United Kingdom, prices around the time of introduction for N64 cartridges were £54.95, and PlayStation games at £44.95 for new titles."

no, it isn't, but when you compare it to just staying in the last gen at $30-40/game (ps2 still gets brand new releases at that price) you can see why people wouldn't want to upgrade to a $200-400 machine with twice as expensive games.

I said at the bottom of my post that all consoles had budget games, but the vast majority of games you or I would be interested in started out at $60.

Yea, I am a little hazy on the price myself since during the N64 days because half the games I bought were used. Sure beats 200-400 for Neo Geo games though...

I remember Dragon Warrior 2 for NES was 59.99 at launch.  Accounting for inflation, that's a lot.  Games this gen look expensive only because the PS1/PS2 eras saw lower prices than the Nintendo-dominated eras before them.

That was because carts are a lot more expensive to make than CD/DVDs. Sony undercut Nintendo's price by introducing a cheaper medium to store the game on. Now that it has gone back up for Microsoft and Sony it is only due to increased development costs.

Nintendo kept it at $50, which implies that their dev costs have remained around the same as the previous generation.