Nintendo Switch games are too expensive and have every reason to be

When The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Released for the Nintendo Wii in 2011, the motion-controlled adventure was priced at $ 49.99. This week, Nintendo announced a remastered version of the game for Switch: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD, priced at $ 59.99, adding a dollar to the price for each past year. since the release of the original game.

Nintendo fans everywhere breathe a slight sigh of resignation. Skyward Sword, a 10-year-old Wii game, is more expensive than it was when it was released ten years ago – and it will remain expensive, because first-party Nintendo Switch games hardly ever go down. of price. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a porting of a Nintendo Wii U game launched in 2017, is still selling for a high price almost four years later. Super Mario Odyssey too, as well as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Party and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe.

Not everyone likes it. In fact, it is wrong. Nintendo’s competitors, like Sony, are steadily and permanently lowering the prices of big budget AAA games. God of War for PS4 launched in April 2018 for $ 59.99, but in October the price was definitely lowered to just $ 39.99. Today it costs less than $ 20. Marvel’s Spider-Man came out the same year and received a similar price drop of $ 20 in February 2019. Xbox, PlayStation, and PC game releases often see steep price drops in the first year, or few. time after. It sounds like standard industry practice. As buyers, we expect this, and that expectation makes Nintendo’s consistently high prices shocking. Like Nintendo is unfair.

But Nintendo is not unfair. It just follows our lead – because while we’d like to pay less for Nintendo Switch versions of re-released Wii U games, we don’t. We are paying a high price and continue to pay a high price, regardless of the age of the games.

As usual, math and economics are ruining everything. According to Nintendo’s latest financial results report, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has sold over 33 million copies since its launch, earning Nintendo a potentially staggering windfall. And the game is still one of the best sellers: It is still the fifth best-selling game on the Nintendo Switch eShop and to date it is the ninth best-selling Nintendo Switch game on Amazon.

To put that in perspective, one of the best-selling games on PlayStation 4, God of War, had sold around 12 million copies as of June 2019, and is Amazon’s 23rd best-selling PS4 game. PlayStation had to reduce its price to keep buyers interested in Kratos; Meanwhile, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has been selling in record numbers at full price since its launch.

Nintendo games are expensive. Everyone hates him. And yet, Nintendo has no reason to lower the prices – it sells more copies of its games than its competitors and makes more money on every copy sold.

And, for better or for worse, Nintendo fans have gotten used to expensive games. On social media, we joke bitterly about the “switch tax” that prices modern ports of older games at a high price. We often try to rationalize these higher prices – sure, Doom (2016) and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt cost more on Switch, but the developers had to rebuild and optimize these games to run on power hardware. lower than Nintendo. Sometimes we have to rationalize harder: Final Fantasy X / X-2 HD Remaster costs less than $ 30 on Steam and PS4. The price hike from $ 20 to $ 49.99 is the devil’s deal that we’re making to play it on a portable platform.

Nintendo has cultivated an expectation of expensive games, and while we don’t like it, we’ve come to accept it. Consumers have spoken with their wallets and Nintendo has heard us loud and clear: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is worth $ 59.99, despite being a port of a ten-year-old Wii game that Originally sold for $ 10 less.

It seems wrong, like Nintendo is unfair – but the data doesn’t lie. We’re going to buy it anyway, and once again Nintendo will print money.

See also: Best Nintendo Switch controllers for 2021