FFIII was $79.99 in 1994. Why were cartridges so expensive?

[Super Mega Man]

First of all $80 for Final Fantasy III (aka FFVI) in 1994 with inflation would represent $147 dollars in 2021. That's an insane amount to pay for a regular edition of a game.

As a non techie and an illiterate to what makes a game and a console work I want to try and understand: why were games so expensive in the 90s? It wasn't because of the cost of developing them. AAA games back then cost a small fraction of what a AAA game does now. Was it all because of those stupid cartridges? Was it because of scale economy where videogames weren't AS popular as they're now and because they sold less amounts than today they'd have to charge more? We complain about $70 PS5 games now but back in the 16-bit era you could see games go as high as $90 (Phantasy Star 3 I'm looking at you).

Games have never been as expensive to make as what they are today but they're also the cheapest to buy as they've ever been. What happened?

 

[Druffmaul]

> Was it all because of those stupid cartridges?

Yes

 

[nsilvias]

cartridges were expensive because silicon isnt cheap to make like plastic discs

 

[GMM]

Cartridges are significantly more expensive to produce, especially if it had to be high capacity and be able to store save game data

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Because manufacturing cartridges was expensive. And games that had substantial battery backup systems like FFVI cost more than ones that didn't.

CDs taking over was a huge deal because CDs are INFINITELY cheaper to mass produce.

 

[Deleted member 24907]

Every single game had to be printed onto a PCB and covered in a cart. That shits expensive even today. There's a reason the industry provided CDs and digital downloads as soon as it possibly could

 

[Max|Payne]

The tech was expensive and Nintendo controlled the production of carts, so they could practice high prices and get away with it.

 

[Lunatic]

Wasn't there some games where the cartridge was basically a lower power console in itself have the game run properly? can't have been cheap.

 

[Mr. Shakedown]

Game cartridges were effectively expansion cards you inserted into the motherboard of your console.

For example the SuperFX chip was a whole second supplementary CPU to enable rudimentary 3D rendering in games like StarFox.

 

[Derkon]

Cartridges were expensive yo.

 

[Super Mega Man]

Every single game had to be printed onto a PCB and covered in a cart. That shits expensive even today. There's a reason the industry provided CDs and digital downloads as soon as it possibly could

Click to shrink...

What's a PCB?

 

[hog]

Wasn't there some games where the cartridge was basically a lower power console in itself have the game run properly? can't have been cheap.

Click to shrink...

Yeah this is my understanding. The base NES wasn't up to much on its own so the carts themselves had to include a bunch of hardware to give it an extra kick.

 

[Super Mega Man]

Because manufacturing cartridges was expensive. And games that had substantial battery backup systems like FFVI cost more than ones that didn't.

CDs taking over was a huge deal because CDs are INFINITELY cheaper to mass produce.

Click to shrink...

Why oh WHY could Nintendo think that sticking with carts for the N64 was going to make any business sense…. but that's a topic for another day.

 

[androvsky]

Imagine buying a stick of RAM with the game data engraved on it.

 

[GMM]

Wasn't there some games where the cartridge was basically a lower power console in itself have the game run properly? can't have been cheap.

Click to shrink...

All games on this list had an extra co-processor built in to the cartridge itself, solely for use with that game:

https://www.thegamer.com/super-nintendo-game-uses-super-fx-chip/

 

[AaronMT]

What's a PCB?

Click to shrink...

 

[Syriel]

OP, imagine if every game you bought came preinstalled on a SSD.

 

[NinjaScooter]

Why oh WHY could Nintendo think that sticking with carts for the N64 was going to make any business sense…. but that's a topic for another day.

Click to shrink...

It probably did in a way for them. They made a killing off of 1st party software during the N64 and it was the third parties that carried the risk of producing carts. Granted it also caused them to bleed marketshare, but tbh I'm not sure that wouldn't have happened anyway even if the N64 was CD based.

 

[soulmatic]

Old 1995 Toys R Us Flyer in Canada.

Doom 1995 more expensive than Doom 2020.

 

[Fuzzy]

What's a PCB?

Click to shrink...

 

[Aaron]

Why oh WHY could Nintendo think that sticking with carts for the N64 was going to make any business sense…. but that's a topic for another day.

Click to shrink...

Talking completely out of my ass here, maybe licensing fees? They could charge third parties a lot more using their own proprietary media than Sony could when everyone was on CDs.

Of course, third parties flocked to the PS1 over the N64 in droves, and games on PS1 were cheaper anyway. I remember as a kid being annoyed that the Player's Choice N64 games were still $40 compared to Greatest Hits on PS1 being $20 (iirc, SRP for brand new PS1 games was $40-50, N64 was almost always a guaranteed $60).

 

[transience]

I never understood why the Square RPGs were so damn expensive when compared to N64 games. I would have assumed that larger games = higher prices since that was theoretically the rationale back in 1994-1995.

 

[NinjaScooter]

Old 1995 Toys R Us Flyer in Canada.

Doom 1995 more expensive than Doom 2020.

Click to shrink...

I still remember the copy of Street Fighter 2 my parents got us for Christmas had the tag from Sears still on it. $83.99 IIRC.

Killer Instinct Gold for the N64 was like $79 at Kay Bees.

 

[tokkun]

There was more variable pricing back then. A lot of SNES games were in the $50-60 range. It wasn't only based on cart sizes, but also based on the expected popularity of the games. I remember my mom being shocked when Street Fighter 2 was $75, but that was a game with a lot of hype from the arcades.

Big RPGs like that were expensive though. I think Chrono Trigger was $85 at Toys R Us.

 

[DoctorDave]

Why oh WHY could Nintendo think that sticking with carts for the N64 was going to make any business sense…. but that's a topic for another day.

Click to shrink...

The official reason given by Nintendo was the speed, which was true to a degree. Many N64 games streamed assets throughout gameplay and couldn't have been made on CD-based consoles without major alterations.

The real reason has more to do with Nintendo not wanting to share revenue with the CD drive manufacturers, with the infamous cancelled Nintendo Playstation being only one of their early attempts at disc-based games. They also could continue charging higher royalties to 3rd party publishers who had to go through Nintendo to get their games manufactured.

I'm no expert, but that's the gist of it from what I understand.

 

[Version 3.0]

ROM chips are basically computer hardware, as opposed to how we usually classify them, as media. Magnetic strips or discs (tapes and floppys) or laser-reflective plastic (CDs) are a fraction of the price of actual semiconductor chips.

 

[pg2g]

Why oh WHY could Nintendo think that sticking with carts for the N64 was going to make any business sense…. but that's a topic for another day.

Click to shrink...

Console manufacturers basically had a monopoly on cartridge production, so more money for them.

They also could have thought it was a bad experience. The SSD we are so proud of today is basically getting us back to cartridge level performance (I don't about the actual data rates).

 

[9-Volt]

Nobody bought new games. Either rent, trade or buy used. I finished hundreds of games through trading.

 

[LostCauseUnite!]

Why oh WHY could Nintendo think that sticking with carts for the N64 was going to make any business sense…. but that's a topic for another day.

Click to shrink...

The reason is the same or similar reason to the PS5 is praised today, almost instant load times

well, somewhat

 

[Super Mega Man]

Old 1995 Toys R Us Flyer in Canada.

Doom 1995 more expensive than Doom 2020.

Click to shrink...

Jesus Christ imagine paying $95 and $90 CAD for Batman Forever and Judge Dredd. I know CAD =/= USD but that's still crazy.

 

[Akira86]

man I remember finally getting an NES, after all my friends did. And seeing the price on Super Mario 3, I just knew that game wasn't for someone like me. AKA broke and with parents that would laugh in my face at the idea of spending more than 30 dollars on a video game.

 

[OmegaDL50]

The tech was expensive and Nintendo controlled the production of carts, so they could practice high prices and get away with it.

Click to shrink...

It's not like the prices for Megadrive / Genesis stuff was any cheaper. Yes Nintendo controlled production on the NES and SNES but that wasn't the reason why carts were so expensive.

 

[anaa]

What's a PCB?

Click to shrink...

Given 2 people responded with an image, it stands for printed circuit board.

 

[Teejay]

Old 1995 Toys R Us Flyer in Canada.

Doom 1995 more expensive than Doom 2020.

Click to shrink...

Costs ~$150 today and NHL is ~$130. Ouch!

Plus tax, in ontario it was 15% back then (I think) vs 13% right now which is $~173 and ~$150.

 

[Super Mega Man]

Talking completely out of my ass here, maybe licensing fees? They could charge third parties a lot more using their own proprietary media than Sony could when everyone was on CDs.

Of course, third parties flocked to the PS1 over the N64 in droves, and games on PS1 were cheaper anyway. I remember as a kid being annoyed that the Player's Choice N64 games were still $40 compared to Greatest Hits on PS1 being $20 (iirc, SRP for brand new PS1 games was $40-50, N64 was almost always a guaranteed $60).

Click to shrink...

I was the biggest Nintendo fanboy you can imagine but not even I could continue to ignore the stark contrast in prices you'd see walking down the videogame aisle in Toys R Us in the late 90s. Id see on one side N64 carts ranging from $60 to $80 and on the PS1 side games from $20 to $50. It was unsustainable for Nintendo and it's a small miracle the N64 did as well as it did in that market (which still meant a distant second place).

 

[Rumenapp]

I remember Virtua Racing for the MD being something like €100 in Escudos and some SNES games being €90 (Portuguese currency at the time).

 

[Soap]

Yeah… It was the cartridges. Discs were way more cheaper to produce.

I also remember the early days of digital where pundits were saying savings would be passed on to the consumer because distribution costs and royalty splits with retailers would go down. We all know how that is working out.

 

[Super Mega Man]

Nobody bought new games. Either rent, trade or buy used. I finished hundreds of games through trading.

Click to shrink...

CITATION NEEDED.

Demonstrably false. What the hell?

 

[Pyro]

On Retronauts they've said something to the effect that it was only for bigger games like JRPGs that the price tag got bigger since they needed bigger chips for all the data they held.

 

[9-Volt]

CITATION NEEDED.

Demonstrably false. What the hell?

Click to shrink...

At least I didn't know anyone who did. Video stores very rarely sold any new games, they usually opened up new games for renting or trade. Trade wasn't cheap either, for new games you had to bring old working game plus half of the price of a new game.

 

[Super Mega Man]

On Retronauts they've said something to the effect that it was only for bigger games like JRPGs that the price tag got bigger since they needed bigger chips for all the data they held.

Click to shrink...

An yes. The fabled MEGS that videogame magazines were obsessed about in the early 90s. The only reason I knew a game was 14 MEGS was because of EGM and I didn't know what the fuck a meg was. I only knew that 14 was bigger than 8.

 

[gblues]

Every single game had to be printed onto a PCB and covered in a cart. That shits expensive even today. There's a reason the industry provided CDs and digital downloads as soon as it possibly could

Click to shrink...

Close, but not quite.
(NERD MODE ACTIVATE)

- The game itself is burned onto one or more EPROMs (Electrically Programmable Read-Only-Memory, basically a write-once memory chip)
- the EPROMs are then mounted to a PCB (Printed Circuit Board, plenty of examples posted already), along with any other chips needed by the game (SuperFX chip, MMU, battery-backed SRAM for saves)
- the PCB is then packaged into the cartridge that you insert into your console.

 

[Red]

On Retronauts they've said something to the effect that it was only for bigger games like JRPGs that the price tag got bigger since they needed bigger chips for all the data they held.

Click to shrink...

That's not true. JRPGs were often *more* expensive, but $80+ was the norm in a lot of cases.

 

[Super Mega Man]

At least I didn't know anyone who did. Video stores very rarely sold any new games, they usually opened up new games for renting or trade. Trade wasn't cheap either, for new games you had to bring old working game plus half of the price of a new game.

Click to shrink...

I can assure you that everyone here who was playing games in the 90s bought new games sometimes. I certainly did. Yes I borrowed and rented a ton but I still got new games from time to time. At least 3 a year (end of school year, birthday, Christmas).

 

[Silvergun-Blue]

Just saying "cartridges" is an oversimplification because there were still budget games on cartridge. Yes they were considerably more expensive but there was also a lot variance on pricing if the game was expected to be popular, Street Fighter 2 on the SNES was a good example because playing that in our home was a big deal and for many it was well worth the huge (at the time) price point.

We're kind of seeing this now with Sony's first party offerings getting a price bump compared to many of the third party games.

 

[Silvergun-Blue]

Just saying "cartridges" is an oversimplification because there were still budget games on cartridge. Yes they were considerably more expensive but there was also a lot variance on pricing if the game was expected to be popular, Street Fighter 2 on the SNES was a good example because playing that in our home was a big deal and for many it was well worth the huge (at the time) price point.

We're kind of seeing this now with Sony's first party offerings getting a price bump compared to many of the third party games.

 

[Nessus]

Wasn't there some games where the cartridge was basically a lower power console in itself have the game run properly? can't have been cheap.

Click to shrink...

I mean, the Super FX chip was over twice as fast as the SNES' CPU, while the Super FX2 chip was over four times as fast.

Much more recently there was the raytracing demo cart thing that was basically a completely modern computer that only really used the SNES for video output.

 

[Pyro]

That's not true. JRPGs were often *more* expensive, but $80+ was the norm in a lot of cases.

Click to shrink...

Ah ok thanks for clarifying.

 

[Super Mega Man]

Just saying "cartridges" is an oversimplification because there were still budget games on cartridge. Yes they were considerably more expensive but there was also a lot variance on pricing if the game was expected to be popular, Street Fighter 2 on the SNES was a good example because playing that in our home was a big deal and for many it was well worth the huge (at the time) price point.

We're kind of seeing this now with Sony's first party offerings getting a price bump compared to many of the third party games.

Click to shrink...

SNES budget games were still $50, not like $20 as you'd see on PS1. Unless it was a years old game you'd rarely if ever see an SNES cart priced below $50 back when the console was new (before the N64 came out). And still this was 1994 money. $50 back then bought you like $100 worth of stuff today.

 

[mikehaggar]

I don't remember snes games being that expensive. I was only a kid, but we didn't have a ton of money and I was always conscious of the price of things I asked for at Christmas or on my birthday. I remember snes games being $50 or $60. Are we sure there wasn't regional pricing differences in the US?