Let's remember that those games came in cartridges that were very expensive to manufacture. As games got physically bigger in the SNES, the prices had to go up, just to pay for the hardware.
After the SNES era, we saw how Playstation games were quite a bit cheaper than N64 games, but it had nothing to do with Nintendo wanting to make more money per copy: It had to do with the fact that pressing CDs was cheap as dirt, so the game developer would get as much money, per copy, despite a cheaper price.
With the switch to downloadable, we can save even more than that: The cut from the retailer, the distributor, the box manufacturing... You could cut at least $20 from a game, easily, and still get the publisher the same cut.
If you want to talk about game pricing without dealing with fixed non-development costs, you are comparing apples and oranges, on purpose.
I don't see how manufacturing cost is relevant. If a game is worth $60, you as a consumer don't care how that number gets divvied up amongst the people involved.
Because manufacturing cost and other costs that are a direct per unit cost, as opposed to an over all sunk cost like development, can not be recouped by 'making up for it with volume' as they say.
So a company selling such games will have a higher price floor than games without those costs, and due to that floor may not be able to achieve a profit maximizing profit maximizing point that a game without those costs may be able to achieve (such as selling 100 million games at $1 each). Their entire set of optimal production possibilities would probably be shifted inward.
Not saying a consumer should factor this in, just the game maker has a restriction on the consumers they can target that they would not have without those costs.
I do. Little factors like that may well nudge me one way or the other if it's something that I'm not sure about buying. In economic terms this is somewhat irrational, but then economics' assumption that the consumer is fully aware of his/her utility function/ There are lots of situations where this is not the case - have you never gone into a bookstore without having a clear idea of what you wanted to read?
After the SNES era, we saw how Playstation games were quite a bit cheaper than N64 games, but it had nothing to do with Nintendo wanting to make more money per copy: It had to do with the fact that pressing CDs was cheap as dirt, so the game developer would get as much money, per copy, despite a cheaper price.
With the switch to downloadable, we can save even more than that: The cut from the retailer, the distributor, the box manufacturing... You could cut at least $20 from a game, easily, and still get the publisher the same cut.
If you want to talk about game pricing without dealing with fixed non-development costs, you are comparing apples and oranges, on purpose.