I think a fair price for a port is 70% the price of a new title, especially a port from the Wii U. $60US for a new title, $40-45US for a port. That said, I'm still buying them at $60. Captain Toad Switch has terrible controls (the blue dot) so I wish I didn't get that one, but I also picked up Freeze, MK8D and NSMBD.
I really hope they find a way to port StarFox Zero, the controls for that on Wii U are terrible.
I really wish Nintendo would port many games forward. Imagine Mario Sunshine, Galaxy or any of the others on Switch. I'd easily pay over $60 for NES/SNES/N64/GC/Wii/Wii U Mario HD remaster Megapacks. Think All-Stars but with effort.
I'd even pay $100 for a Mario Kart DLC that included EVERY previous track from every previous game, even if we just went all the way back to N64.
they say that life’s a carousel, spinning fast you’ve got to ride it well. The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams. It’s heaven and hell.
Is it too expensive? Of course it is. Nintendo gets away with everything but I don't need to buy it especially that I have both games on Wii U. Prices are created by demand and if nobody were to buy this game it would get super cheap pretty soon. Remember codename STEAM? It became super cheap after some time - I still regret paying full price.
It’s not about wanting higher prices. A lot of people are paying much higher prices than their initial purchase price anyway. Games have actually got cheaper in real terms despite increasing development costs-at least in terms of the initial purchase price-yet people don’t realise it. On top of that the race to the bottom third parties are partaking in (because that initial purchase price is just the entry ticket to being another revenue stream) has bred a sense of entitlement among some games that games should get cheaper still.
By all means ask for cheaper prices but accept that publishers will find other ways to keep their profits up, as they’re perfectly entitled to do.
Nintendo are different because their own games are their primary revenue stream and they utilise the GAAS angle a lot less than other publishers. It is entirely in their interest for the price of their games to stay high. If they have to drop them then expect the next Mario/Zelda to look very different.
As for third party exclusives they aren’t viable anymore without being paid for by the platform holder. Given how much games cost to make locking potential buyers out is insane (it always was and I’m not a fan of third party exclusives at all). I’ve no idea why people keep berating the Switch for not having third party exclusives when other successful, established systems struggle for them.
Don’t know about PC Gaming, doesn’t interest me at the minute as any savings on software would be counterbalanced by the price of entry. Plus I’d have missed out on a lot of my favourite games without owning the Consoles. But I don’t see many publishers deserting the Consoles despite the extra costs involved in publishing on them. Sony and MS have been smart to make their systems so close to the PC. It’s helping third party development.
Coming soon NSMBU deluxe ultra £50/$60 on Switch 2
they say that life’s a carousel, spinning fast you’ve got to ride it well. The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams. It’s heaven and hell.
Whereas what you’re saying just sounds like so many PC Master Race sales pitches I’ve heard over the years. Especially trying to explain away the cost of entry. The PC isn’t a holy promised land of ethics and good manners. COD, FIFA, and the like still sell on PCs. Nvidia, Dell, ASU’s and Steam are profit driven entities. Apart from a few indie devs the industry and the majority of the entities within it exist to make money. That’s not PR, it’s realism.
“If what you are saying was true we should be seeing the PC dying”
I don’t see why. It’s obviously a different beast. If what I’m saying is wrong the Console market would be dying but it very clearly isn’t. If what Nintendo and others are doing with ports is so bad they wouldn’t be selling and neither would their systems. I’ve seen you try a few angles now complaining about ports when what it comes down to is, don’t buy them. Gaming is no different to any other form of entertainment. There will always be old content for a new audience alongside new content. Prices get decided by the market.
@Yorumi it's completely possible the PS4 will catch the PS1. It's only 10 million away at this point. And the PS2 and Wii likely sold so well thanks to massive and, from what I remember, unmatched price cuts. I remember buying a PS2 slim during the twilight years for 99 dollars brand new.
@yorumi the console market is hardly stagnating. Last gen all three consoles sold over 80 million units. This gen xbox is in second with a pretty respectable 40 million, with Switch likely to overtake. Compare that to the market in 5th and 6th gens.
Not to mention that Switch appears to have reinvented what a handheld is capable of.
@Yorumi I'm not claiming that it's bad for the consumer, at least in concerns to their wallets. I'm saying that it hurts the value of a lot of games and distorts how much a game should offer in the eyes of gamers through some nebulous qualifier like hours spent versus dollars. But with such deep discounts that could go down to literal single dollars, that really hurts a lot of games who offer their own thing and do it extremely well. I know a lot of people who literally value games with hours played / money spent, and that's just dumb. I get more enjoyment out of a game like Sonic Generations (which you can beat in 4 hours) than something like Breath of the Wild because every time I play Generations from beginning to end, I enjoy it because it's very tightly packed and doesn't let up. BotW is amazing on your first playthrough and has a lot of good moments, but inbetween can be admittedly pretty boring and you cannot replay it as much because the magic of the first playthrough wears off.
And it's not like media don't try to reinforce that mentality too, that convinces unsuspecting people. There was this awful, recent Forbes article about Devil May Cry 5 where they had this random opinion piece of how it may not feel like a $60 game because it "only lasts 10-15 hours" like some open world game. That's so ludicrous, ignoring the potential replayability, the tightness in game design, or whatever. That's really another factor in the devaluation of games: the need for some arbitrary counter of "stuff" to do in your game that people expect because that's what AAA games have, so let's copy that! People wanted "content" in games like Mario Tennis Aces, but what "content"? Skinner boxes of unlockable rewards to dress up your character? A few modes people won't care about like those minigames in the GBC/GBA games? That makes a multiplayer game worth it... just a progression system? I don't get it. (Note: Aces did have problems like lack of options, but lack of options =/= lack of content) And I love my long games, I shill for Xenoblade and a ton of other RPGs whenever I can for example. (And they're not exempt from bloating of "stuff" too, they can even be some of the worst cases) But I also value games like Sonic Generations and Bayonetta that are condensed but are just as fun when I play them whenever I want. The constant push for "your games are worth nothing because we say so" honestly feels like it's the cause of a lot of games today feeling tired, which is another issue not really related to the pricing but eh.
A straw man was bringing the PC into the discussion in the first place and your initial argument. PC/PS/XBox development is so intertwined now now the development of each version subsidises the other two.
Games have always been cheaper to buy on the PC because of the lack of a platform holder to pay and flexibility of purchase options (relatively speaking, though Steam aren’t shy of anti-consumer practices). PC owners pay for that flexibility through hardware costs and decreased ease of use (not as big a difference as it used to be but still there). That’s how it’s always been.
Across formats the initial purchase price has decreased in real terms. Yet the same publishers are pushing out the same games laden with MTX, DLC and Loot boxes on all formats. That shift is pretty universal and those games are selling enough on all formats to justify still being made.
My argument that if games prices decrease publishers will find other ways to monetise their products applies across the board. It’s based on what has happened in the industry over the last few years and the increasing push in some quarters for GAAS. The PC is different enough to make a direct comparison with Consoles difficult, yet still exhibiting enough of the same trends that I’ve seen nothing to disprove that. The only thing that could disprove that is it stopping. It’s not controversial to say that if a company finds a revenue stream diminishing, they will try and find another one. That’s what the race to the bottom on pricing causes.
As for Nintendo and their ports, or every game in fact, whatever criteria an individual tries to apply to explain why they think they should be priced differently, only one rule matters. The market will decide. Take the Online Service. I think it’s a rip off so I haven’t bought it. But the only thing that will change it is Nintendo not making enough money off it. The only thing that will change their port pricing policy (alliteration time) is people stopping buying them.
It’s perfectly reasonable to say that in some ways the PC is different because it’s true. It’s reasonable to say that parts of the PC market display the behaviours I’ve talked about as examples of why a race to the bottom is bad because it does. It’s also true. They’re not mutually exclusive. So i can say that. You may not like it but I can.
You brought up the PC in a reply specifically to me explaining your take on why the health of the PC market shows that I’m wrong to say a race to the bottom can be bad for consumers and the industry. I don’t agree that it does. Me disagreeing with you is not a refusal to engage.
I’d love games to be cheaper of course but you have to be realistic. And lots of people aren’t. The price cutting of big games has bred a culture where people won’t buy full price because they’ll just wait a few weeks. They think they’re entitled to big discounts and will howl if they don’t get them. If Nintendo can avoid that good for them. For me personally I’m happier to buy their games knowing I can sell them on for a decent bit back if I don’t like them as they won’t have crashed in value within a month. That isn’t A Bad Thing.
I see plenty of anti-consumer practices around the industry and plenty from Nintendo. Region locking the 3DS, their idea of DRM on Wii and Wii U, locking Cloud saves behind a paywall with no alternative method. I think they should have offered Wii U owners some kind of discount, even if just digital. I get really irritated when companies price gone on actually important things in life.
But a games company putting out things like NSMBUDX or DKC:TF, complete high quality games free of loot boxes and microtransactions and setting an asking price that’s then subject to market forces? Nothing anti consumer about that.
You’ve lost me now with the spurious comparisons. If you want to say they’re equally entitled feel free. My belief is one is better for the industry than the other. If you don’t feel that way, that’s fine. You assess value differently to me. That’s fine. You don’t see a race to the bottom and move to GAAS as a problem. That’s fine.
I can’t be bothered with another different take on the circular argument that invariably follows port moaning. The ports will keep coming, some will sell and some won’t. People will keep complaining on internet echo chambers in an exercise in futility. Most people will make an individual assessment of whether they want to buy a game or not*. Companies will keep trying to make money off them.
*In the interests of full disclosure, I paid £33.80 for NSMBUDX and probably wouldn’t have paid much more 😉
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