Nintendo Gaming Time Price Falls by 99.996% Since 1990

You now get 26,200 games for the time it took to earn the money to buy one in 1990.

In 1990 Nintendo games were around $40. Wages for entry-level workers in 1990 were around $6 per hour. That would put the time price at around 6.7 hours, or 400 minutes. Today you can buy a 12-month membership that gives you access to over 5,000 games for $20. Entry level wages are now closer to $15.72 an hour. That would put the time price at an hour and 16 minutes, or 76 minutes. The time price per game in 1990 was 400 minutes. Today it’s 0.92 seconds. This represents a 99.996 percent drop. For the time it took to earn the money to buy one game in 1990, you get 26,200 today. That would indicate a compound annual growth rate of Nintendo abundance at 37 percent. There are also around 36 million subscribers to this service. Super Mario would be proud.

Tip of the hat: Professor Jeremy Horpedahl.

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You can learn more about these economic facts and ideas in our new book, Superabundance, available at Amazon. Jordan Peterson calls it a “profoundly optimistic book.”

Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a board member at Human Progress.