Topic: Nintendo Switch games should be $50 – hear me out!

The Wal Mart in my town sells many Switch games, new ones included, for $50. I think it's some kind of regional thing (and it does somewhat relieve the pain of living in a hellhole like Florida), but it also made me think — with PS5 and XSX making the leap to $69.99 MSRP, why not take advantage of that and lower Switch games to $50? It would make relatively short games like Metroid Dread and Kirby more appealing and improve Nintendo's image, as they've accumulated some bad press over the years. Also, from a parents' perspective (as they hold a lot of purchasing power), seeing $50 games on the shelf is more attractive than $70.

Of course, this is just a pipe dream. If Nintendo will charge $60 for a jazzed up Wii U port with a straight face, then $50 for a new game hasn't so much as crossed the minds of the higher up suits. And obviously from a consumer perspective everyone wants cheaper games, but I think the price reduction would still help them in the long run, at the very least for the not-quite-AAA titles. What do you think?

Or make older games $50 and the new stuff stays where it is.

Since Switch launched with Mario Odyssey, BOTW, MK8D, Splatoon 2, Luigi's Mansion 3, Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, etc, I think Nintendo's image has been highly positive for their great AAA games which also happen to be family friendly. So, I'm not sure I agree they suffer from bad press since 2017. Regarding price of Nintendo games, I understand your point, but If PS and XBOX increase new AAA game prices to $69.99, Nintendo won't have to do anything with their price, because it will already be $10 less.

From a parent's perspective (who are most likely non-gamers), I don't think they are aware, or would care to know, if some AAA Nintendo Switch games are ports from the Wii U. They see a Switch game case at the store with mario on the cover and think, "new mario game!". If they do know they are Wii U ports, it's still very possible their kid is young and the Switch may be their first game console.

Welcome to the nintendolife forum, @moomin!

I do agree that more varied pricing would be highly appreciated. I don't think length and development cost alone justifies the cost of a game, but at the same time, when Hyrule Warriors + all its DLC and BOTW are the same price as...a remake of the gameboy Zelda, I think it's a bit off (and kinda stupid if your'e trying to get people whose first Zelda was BOTW to expect a 2D version of that to even remotely have any sort of comparable amount or type of content).

A hellhole like Florida? People from all over the place retire there because of how great it is. Never understood the concept of it being "cool" to always hate on the place you live.

As far as the game pricing, I agree. $50 if it's a complete game, MAYBE $60 if it's a huge open world. Otherwise, if it's the type of game that will heavily rely on future DLC to complete the game, it should be $30-40.

I think some people are thinking of this in too simple of terms of just cost development and then whack on a margin equals profit. So playing devil advocate, think of it as fast food and fine dining. You can argue that a big AAA game should be priced less than a more niche game, one game is gonna sell volume in terms of dozens of millions and the other is gonna sell in terms of hundreds of thousands so one game will be getting it's return on invest from the margin on the game being sold and the other is getting it's return on volume of sales. Pricing the AAA lower will also ease the secondary market which is a non-revenue driver for the publisher as there's not bunch point in buying it used when it's affordably priced in the first place whilst the more niche game which is bought by the more hardcore fan aren't less likely to sell them on.

@jump
The pricing of digital goods have always been and will always be a bit funky like that. The cost to physically create the actual good is virtually zero so when you do raw supply/demand the supply is effectively infinite. And if supply is infinite then it doesn't matter what the demand is, the price approaches zero. Or at least "zero enough" when you consider how small bandwidth costs are in relation to downloading a single piece of content. Same deal with physical media in a sense except the price floor is the cost of the media itself

Which is why there's DRM and licencing which artificially "limits" supply. Meaning you only "own" items you are licenced to own. Piracy isn't "owning" the content. Which makes supply always equal demand. But then you still run into an issue because there is still a fixed cost of creating the content in the first place. A cost that doesn't go up as more copies are created. So in theory as demand approaches infinity the cost should again approach zero (or the cost of the media itself for physical media). At least theoretically

Of course in the real world platform holders and publishers have a monopoly on their goods. So they can set the price however they want. Which means goods priced at their perceived value, not their actual cost

This really aged like milk huh

@moomin

Honestly I'd be tickled pink if the games would go back to the $30 price range. They were $30 for gb, gbc, gba, & ds then the 3ds $40 then Nintendo switch $60. It's eventually going to get to point where were going to be out priced at some point... I like the games & on one hand love the next console / handheld but dread the price tag attached to it any more so... 🤷‍♀️🤦‍♀️✌️ I've personally been getting alot of switch games on the cheap both online & the clearance section of any store i go to mostly walmart for $20 Nintendo switch games. Also if I import i check the seller's store using the button: Lowest Price mark for Nintendo switch games. Depending on who you buy from can get some Nintendo switch games imported for around $20 as well because the game is from a few years ago 2018, 2019 etc. 🤷‍♀️✌️

Happy Gaming! (^_^)

I don’t miss the all over the place pricing of the 90’s. As publishers set MSRP as what they thought they could get away with and games at least in my area didn’t seem to go on sale often. If a game is too high wait on a sale or buy in a year.

Don't Say Gay

@moomin ugh forgot about that. Not to mention the book banning (land of the free though right?). Thank you for the reminder not to spend any money there when I stop over for my vacation in a few weeks.

@Eel wanna lock this? It's something that could be in the main thread.