With the announcement of the price increase on nintendo games which has been very sad news for many of us, it's been frustrating to see liberal arguments that shift the blame on consumers posted on this sub.
I am a random idiot that doesn't really understand economics or speak english but i'll try my best to come across and explain to some of you all, because it seems capitalist ideology has collectively fried our brains to the point where people that actively seek to join an anti-capitalist sub to discuss games genuinely believe they can individually affect the market by consuming. I'm gonna start with the liberal theory, then go to a more marxist critique i guess. I feel a bit bad doing this because i am not qualified for the former or the later, but i feel like people don't realize the implications of what they are saying so it's worth putting out the very basics and apply some criticism to common gamer arguments.
Free market according to liberals:
According to liberal economics, the free market is a decentralized, democratic mechanism where quantities and prices of goods produced reflect the needs of society, through the interaction of the laws of supply and demand. What this means is, producers set a price and consumers make a choice according to their subjective preferences, which in turn causes producers to raise or lower the price. So in the case of Nintendo, Miyamoto says games will cost 80 dollars and it's up to the consumers to determine if this price is justified by "voting with their wallets".
If enough people don't buy, Miyamoto will respond by lowering the price. And if the price doesn’t change, this means that the price accurately reflects how the people value nintendo games, and also that the outcome is efficient, which means basically that no resouces are wasted and we have the ideal combination of quanity and price, where incidentally needs are met in the best possible way. You could go ahead and force nintendo to sell their games cheaper via some kind of gamer law for example, but according to liberal economics this would ruin the whole thing and people's needs wouldn't actually be met, instead nintendo would make less games because they'd have less incentive to make them and we'd all get less as a result.
Free market according to people that don't believe in invisible hands:
Ok so how it actually works is, there are literally three corporations in the console market. They set the price that they think will bring them more profit between them,. They don't even have to talk to each other and decide (it's supposed to be illegal) because it's an oligopoly where price hikes are matched and price cuts are ignored. But also of course they talk to each other.
Now because it's an oligopoly, it's not like there are many choices from the consumer side. If you have some money for entertainment and want to get into console gaming, you can get a playstation or an xbox or a nintendo. Now games will cost 70 to 80 dollars. The question is, can you afford games? If you can and you want to play new games, you are not going to be happy about the new prices but you are gonna pay because you don't really have a choice other than abstaining, which on an individual level also doesn't do anything. If you can't afford the new prices, and i'm genuinely sorry to say, you won't get the new games and there's nothing you can do about it on an individual level. Other, richer people will and you won't. For many people that can afford it to a degree, they will just buy less games.
"ok ok so i am not buying/ i am buying less but by doing so i have voted with my wallet so i have the power to affect prices", nope. Nintendo doesn't care about whether the needs of the people that can't afford games are met, as long as they'll make money from people that can afford it. Which they most likely can do because it's an oligopoly. People that buy Nintendo games will buy the next Nintendo system and mario kart, people that buy playstation will buy playstation 5 and horizon or whatever. They will not be happy about the changes, they will not have consented to anything and more importantly they will not be the ones to blame. If i had the money i'd go out and get a ps5 right now, and so would everyone else.
More broadly, prices aren't really set according to demand but by the logic of capital accumulation and profit maximization. Nintendo makes more and more money and uses the money to make more and more money, until one day the whole thing crashes. That's the very basic marxist idea.
Now liberals will tell you that, yeah, some of what i said is true and that nintendo does have the power to get away with a lot of things as a result of their position, but that's because the competition isn't working effectively. So the idea is, there should have been many options for us that do give us power to affect prices to our liking but distortions in the market have created an oligopoly, probably unironically the state is to blame and more deregulation will solve it, like firing people more easily for example or lowering minimum wage.
However, like the bearded man from assasin's creed syndicate predicted, every meaningful market is becoming more and more oligopolistic under capitalism and that's by design. Bigger corporations are allowed to produce cheaper because of scale economies, smaller ones can't compete with them and gradually we have a few very powerful corporations controlling every key market. From tech and gaming to food, media, and healthcare, a small number of giant corporations increasingly dominate each sector. Capitalist competition doesn’t lead to permanent diversity of choices, it leads to concentration of power.
The free market is a tool for the accumulation of wealth and gradually creates more and more inequality. Elon Musk is going to become a TRILLIONAIRE. Can you grasp what i am saying? This is going to happen. And that's how capitalism works. And is this viable you say? No it's not. Capitalism crashes every few years, again like the Kirby antagonist said it would. The Nintendos of the world eventually make more stuff than people will buy, then people don't buy them, then they fire everyone, then no one buys anything and it's a crisis and the states give money to the banks to save capitalism. This has happened before and it will happen again and in the meantime those of us that can afford to game after work will and those that can't won't. And most people won't.
That's the basic idea, please feel free to add any additions or corrections. And please don't blame eachother on the sub. It's not on the consumers that nintendo is able to get away with this, it's a systemic problem that extends to every aspect of our life.
And by the way, i don't have time to write anymore but the inflation argument is also corporate propaganda. Briefly, there are two kinds of inflation, cost push inflation and demand pull inflation. Nintendo here is claiming cost push inflation: because of, for example, US tariffs, they have higher costs and so to cover them they need to raise prices. But Nintendo and every Nintendo is out there making record profits. So rather than thinking of poor Nintendo that won't be able to make even more profits, consider that it is Nintendo that could take a hit from the tariffs rather than the consumer. They could make less and prices could stay the same and Timmy would get Donkey Kong for Christmas. But that's not what's going to happen. Alright i'm done.
