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We put together information for those video game baskets throughout 21 non-consecutive years, returning to 1982, then stabilized the small costs to constant February 2025 dollars utilizing the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI calculator. You can see all our information and sources in this Google Sheet.
The bad old days
In simply small terms, the $30 to $40 merchants regularly charged for video game cartridges in the 1980s looks like a relative deal. Taking a look at the inflation-adjusted information, however, it’s simple to see how even an $80 video game today would look like a deal to console players in the cartridge age.
Computer game cartridges were simply traditionally pricey, even compared to today’s top-end video games.
Credit: Kyle Orland/ Ars Technica
Computer game cartridges were simply traditionally costly, even compared to today’s top-end video games.
Credit: Kyle Orland/ Ars Technica
New cartridge video games in the 20th century regularly retailed for well over$100 in 2025 cash, thanks to a mix of reasonably high production expenses and reasonably low competitors in the market. While you might typically grow older and/or utilized cartridges for much less than that in practice, essential brand-new video games at the time frequently cost the equivalent of $140 or more in today’s cash.
Rates took a while to cool down as soon as CD-based consoles were presented in the late ’90s. By the start of the ’00s, however, small top-end video game rates had actually been up to about $50, and just increased back to $60 by the end of the years. Changing for inflation, nevertheless, those early 21st-century video games were still requiring costs approaching $90 in 2025 dollars, well above the brand-new $80 small rate ceiling Mario Kart World is attempting to develop.
Those$50 discs you keep in mind from the early 21st century deserved a lot more after you change for inflation.
Credit: Kyle Orland/ Ars Technica
Those$ 50 discs you keep in mind from the early 21st century deserved a lot more after you change for inflation.
Credit: Kyle Orland/ Ars Technica
In the 2010s, inflation began consuming into the worth of video gaming’s de facto $60 rate ceiling, which stayed extremely constant throughout the years. Changed for inflation, the small typical prices we discovered for our video game “baskets” in 2013, 2017, and 2020 wound up nearly exactly comparable to $80 in continuous 2025 dollars.
Is this simply what things cost now?
While the dive to an $80 rate may appear abrupt, the post-COVID dive in inflation makes it nearly unavoidable. After years of yearly inflation rates in the 2 to 3 percent variety, the Consumer Price Index leapt 4.7 percent in 2021 and a tremendous 8 percent in 2022. In the years considering that, yearly cost boosts still have not gotten listed below the 3 percent level that was as soon as viewed as “high.”
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