How much did a Nintendo cost in 1991?

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) launched in North America on August 23, 1991 with an MSRP of $199.99. This positioned it as one of Nintendo‘s most expensive console releases in history when adjusting for inflation – that $199.99 had the same buying power as over $400 today.

Nintendo‘s Priciest Console Launch

To illustrate just how commanding the SNES price point was, consider that the original Nintendo Entertainment System arrived in 1985 with a price tag of $179.99. That‘s about $500 when adjusted to 2023 dollars – so the NES was actually more expensive at launch than the SNES in real terms.

But by 1991 when the 16-bit SNES launched, the 8-bit NES had already seen significant price cuts during its lifecycle, dropping to around $99. So the new SNES reprsented a major price hike over what many NES owners had recently paid.

Below shows a comparison of Nintendo console launch prices over time, adjusted for inflation:

As we can see, the SNES really does stand out for still being a very pricey console launch by Nintendo standards even today.

Consumers Balk at $199.99 Price

In 1991, many consumers were shocked at the lofty $199.99 SNES price. After all, Sega Genesis launched two years prior at $189.99 – and Sega was positioning Genesis as the higher-end console!

As a fellow lifelong gamer myself who remembers the early ‘90s battle vividly, the SNES seemed astoundingly expensive to parents and kids alike. Even as a fanboy eager to upgrade from my trusty NES, I still had to plead for months with my parents to get the SNES for Christmas. And I was one of the lucky ones!

Nintendo realized the pricing was scaring some consumers away. While diehard Nintendo fans adopted the SNES quickly enough, mass market adoption was slower due to the high cost.

So in 1992, Nintendo started releasing bundles like the SNES Action Set that packaged the console with a Super Mario World game cartridge for $149.99. This represented a $50 or 25% price drop just one year after launch!

Clearly Nintendo was trying to find a pricing sweet spot that would drive further SNES penetration into American households.

SNES = Tremendous Value Despite High Cost

Now despite some misgivings over price, those like myself willing to take the plunge on that first $199.99 SNES certainly got tremendous bang for our buck.

The 16-bit graphics, enhanced sound capabilities, and most importantly the legendary games library made SNES an utterly magical system that more than justified the pricing premium in my view.

After all, we‘re still talking about SNES masterpieces like Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, Super Mario Kart and many more over 30 years later! Paying an extra $100 or so to enjoy those groundbreaking experiences was well worth it.

And that gets to an irony surrounding the high SNES pricing – it was a core driver of why the games library got so good. Nintendo could fund bigger budgets and take creative risks, confident the higher consumer prices would let then eventually recoup costs.

So the SNES stands as an interesting case study where a pricey console with initially slow adoption still succeeded wildly thanks to the value of its games making up for the hardware costs over time. This pricing gambit clearly paid off handsomely for Nintendo.

Understanding Today‘s Gaming Economics

In closing, I think it‘s useful for modern gamers to study the SNES pricing history to put today‘s console prices into better context.

Folks today often complain about new $70 PS5 and Xbox games being too expensive. Yet relatively, games are vastly cheaper than what ‘90s gamers had to pay when we account for inflation!

And Nintendo continues pricing their consoles at a premium to Sony/Microsoft to this day as well – the Switch still retails for $299, over four years after launch. That‘s only $100 less than the SNES commanded way back in 1991!

So while we all wish games and consoles were cheaper, hope analyzing how today‘s prices stack up to ye olde SNES era gives some helpful perspective!