The Pricing of Pokemon

[Imperator161]

The other day, I was thinking about how GameBoy games in general, and Pokemon games in particular, used to cost about $30. Now, a standard handheld game costs around $40. This seemed like a big jump to me, but when I stuck the $29.99 pre-tax price I paid for Red back in 1999 into an inflation calculator, I was surprised to discover that it came out to $42.xx in 2016 currency. So perhaps my games aren't really more expensive at all.

What are your thoughts on Pokemon game prices and how they've varied through the years? Are you happy with the cost? Is it higher than you would expect? Lower? Does a difference in your own earning power/financial situation today affect how you perceive game prices, and how much you're willing to spend on games? And what are your thoughts on other pricing structures (e.g., microtransaction games like Shuffle, or supplemental payment for a Bank subscription, vs. a standard storage game like Box, My Pokemon Ranch, or the Stadium 1/2 boxes)?

 

[COOLTRAINER♂]

If you look at the credits for Pokémon games over the years, the number of staff members working on the games only get bigger. Gaming in general is currently reaching a point where the sheer size and cost of development teams can cause issues with big-budget, HD, AAA console games being averse to taking risks for fear of poorer sales. Prices creeping upwards a bit is mostly a natural consequence of what's happened.

 

[Shiny]

In Australia is seems the pricing for Pokemon games is $60, give or take $5 and I think that's totally reasonably considering the amount of work and staff needed to make the game the quality it is.

 

[Jessie]

Quite honestly, I'm surprised the games are still only $39.99 here. I would expect them to cost more.

 

[Arjay]

Here in the UK the prices range from £30 to £40 depending on where you go. Some places do a discounted pre-order price as well.

 

[Judge Mandolore Shepard]

Whenever I think about the prices of Pokemon games, there are three prices that I think of. The three prices being the price without the sales tax, the price with sales tax, and the discounted pre-order price.

 

[EC]

The three prices being the price without the sales tax, the price with sales tax, and the discounted pre-order price.

I used to think about only that first price.

And then Amazon started charging sales tax in Ohio.

 

[Hikamaru]

Like Cooltrainer said, there are more staff working on the games these days compared to the early years of Pokemon. That is likely why the games are costing a little more than they used to.

 

[Fannie]

Here in the UK the prices range from £30 to £40 depending on where you go. Some places do a discounted pre-order price as well.

I keep seeing prices of $39.99 in this thread. In my local GAME store they are £39.99. Better value in the US, it seems. No fair :p

 

[Hiatus]

I feel like they could put more effort into reducing the price if they'd like, considering that their aim is to keep it affordable for just about everybody (I remember reading this in one of their interviews).

 

[Hiatus]

I feel like they could put more effort into reducing the price if they'd like, considering that their aim is to keep it affordable for just about everybody (I remember reading this in one of their interviews).

 

[Imperator161]

I keep seeing prices of $39.99 in this thread. In my local GAME store they are £39.99. Better value in the US, it seems. No fair :p

As an American, I'm not too familiar with prices abroad, but it does seem like they're frequently not adjusted according to the relative currency conversion rate. Is that a recent trend, or has that always been the case? I guess if it's the latter, once stores started the tradition of charging more abroad, they can get away with continuing to do so...

 

[Fannie]

As an American, I'm not too familiar with prices abroad, but it does seem like they're frequently not adjusted according to the relative currency conversion rate. Is that a recent trend, or has that always been the case? I guess if it's the latter, once stores started the tradition of charging more abroad, they can get away with continuing to do so...

I've only become aware of it within the last couple of years as the person I play the most is American (on Xbox) and he gets almost every game much cheaper than me both on the market place and on disk. I tried utilising VPN in a way that I could get US prices but it wouldn't let me put my payment options in,

 

[Banz]

We get the worst deal. Since Nintendo doesn't officially sell anything here, people have to either import or but from stores who import it. The price then includes original cost of game at wholesale price, plus shipping costs, import duty, and seller profit. Game prices then come to around Rs 3000-3600 (USD 44-52 by today's exchange rates, but this is after a recent crash in rupee value.) It might not seem so bad, but if you adjusted for purchasing power we're paying 2-3 times of what we should be a fair price.

 

[Eden]

To my knowledge, the rise of game prices (predominantly cartridges) are based off of higher tech (despite the 3DS being about five years old), and the constantly rising budget for new games in order to take advantage of the stronger hardware as well as meet consumer expectations. If you compare the sizes of .nds files for all the generation four and five games (as well as big DS games in general from the beginning to end of the system's life cycle), you'll notice that they were able to increase the cartridge size by quite a big margin. Thus, they were able to take advantage of that space to cram more into the games.

Concerning wacky pricing decisions abroad, most things I keep hearing about are generally taxation and miscellaneous costs that are involved in bringing the games to other countries.