Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD

There's two ways for a company to decide a price and usually a combination of the two is used:
1) effort/production costs
2) perceived value - what are people willing to pay?

(And I'm keeping this simple on purpose so I'm leaving price elasticity of demand out of the equation here.)

It will probably turn out that number 2) alone justifies the 60 bucks price tag in the end

It's really that simple. People who aren't willing to pay 60 bucks, simply shouldn't. If enough people vote with their wallet, 2) will drop to a point just above 1) eventually (not for this release but probably slowly for future releases). I don't think that's the case for a Zelda remaster though. It would probably sell like hot cakes even at a higher price.

@toiletduck
Even in 5 years when this game is sitting in some pawn shop i bet it'll be high priced. Nintendo knows people will pay big bucks for zelda!

Because that was a....new game?

Of course the price of things is supposed to decline over time. Especially when they're not constrained by limited supply. As games that are released digitally are not.

Do you think the Mario 3D All Stars should have cost $100+ dollars then? Those games had minor updates too, and there were 3 of them. I really don't understand how you think they should calculate value at all.

Yes, obviously in terms of the market value (number 2), Nintendo are probably right that enough people are willing to pay $60, that they won't really lose out on much revenue.
That's almost entirely down to the incredibly high value of the Zelda IP right now, combined with the fact that not many people played Skyward Sword the first time around.

@Dezzy

No i would never think 3D all stars was worth 100 dollars. Though all three originally would be well over that!

The thing is every Zelda that has come out for all Nintendo's home systems has been around 50 dollars brand new. Zelda 1 and 2, Link to the past, OOT, MM, TP, SS and BOTW were all 50 dollars!

Yeah i know Skyward sword is 10 years old now but it's not like they're just dropping a digital Wii port on the eshop with no upgrades. If that's what it was then yes I'd agree 60 would be too much.

@Zeldafan79 @Dezzy @toiletduck I mean at the end of the day some people don't care about price. For some economic logic is thrown out the window in favour of nostalgia. I'm part of this crowd at times but only if I've either never played the game or if there's enough changes to justify buying it again. Xenoblade and Super Mario 3D World both had sizeable extra content on top of a remastered main game, so those were decent. The Zelda games don't have this, but have more QoL changes and improvements here and there, instead.

I'll buy this though, Skyward Sword is great.

Funny thing, in my currency, this game is cheaper than other first party switch games, not quite full price.

Yet, it'll still cost around 70 US dollars.

@TheJGG you may not realize, but 'nostalgia' is actually part of 2) perceived value.

Nintendo is kinda acting like a B***H They make good looking joycons knowing people would buy, then when they drift they will be tempted to buy news ones, Its there lawsuit.

It's really not very far from that though. The only thing that will have taken more than a days work for them was adding the analog stick control option for the sword.

Compared to the other remasters they've done for Wii/GC games (e.g Wind Waker/Twilight Princess/Xenoblade), it is incredibly lazy on their behalf.

I mean c'mon. Xbox did the entire Halo series for the same price (minus Halo 5). Bioware are doing the whole Mass Effect trilogy (which includes almost entirely remaking the first game) for the same price.

Nintendo didn't even upgrade the textures in the game. Which you can automate with an AI-upscaler in like a day nowadays.

@Dezzy
Personally / Emotionally I'm completely with you on this.
But business-wise Nintendo follows the strategy to never devalue their IPs. One branch of this strategy is that games stay exclusive to one platform, another is that first party games almost never go on sale, and another branch is that even simple ports are full price.
And despite the personal gripe one might have with this, you have to admit that this strategy has always worked well for Nintendo.

It seems too early to complain about Skyward Sword not justifying the price since we have seen very little of it, it probably won't be worth it but I'd rather bitch with confidence than from speculation.

@jump

Yes, if they add loads of new content, like new islands in the sky, then I'll retract my complaint.

The fact that they didn't even improve the textures though, really makes me feel like it's probably just a lazy cashgrab.

I hope it adds more.
At the moment it feels like skywards swords Mclassic Hd with amiibo support

@Dezzy yeah. At least it's not as bad as the trees in sword/shield

@Dezzy @1UP_MARIO @jump I still can't believe that despite that 3DS port Xenoblade got such a lavish treatment. It was because MonolithSoft worked on it, meaning that they would have made sure it was worth the price tag it was given. True, I grimaced when they said that it was a semi-automatic process, but the fact that some employees redid NPC and weapon models of their own volition, is a testament to how much the team love their game, and don't treat it like a piece of art that should be preserved without any good change. That we got remastered tracks, some QoL features, a new art style, an easy mode, a bunch of new weapons and costumes, a Time Attack mode AND a twenty hour epilogue game mode added free to this one game makes me truly appreciate Monolith even more.

Not to mention how they released Torna: The Golden Country, a DLC, as part of the $30 expansion pass to Xenoblade 2 that already existed, even though there was already a slew of content that just about justified the pricing of that thing. Torna, which constituted about 70% of the expansion pass, was bigger than some AAA games. What a value, honestly. If they remaster Xenoblade X, that's an instant buy. INSTANT.

Thing with Nintendo remasters is that their changes are beneath the surface. A typical port or remaster by them would include all DLC, supposed optimisations for the Switch, and usually that's it. That Skyward Sword has no DLC means they'll just upres the game and leave it.

Of course, I hope they don't do that.

I'd buy the game if it was 80 dollars, it's fun and nostalgic, so I will buy, and I bet that is what quite a few other people would do as well, and tell me you weren't expecting this game to be 60, it shouldn't come as a surprise and we don't know everything about it, so just don't complain.

I'd buy it, play it within a week, and then sell it on ebay immediately.

@Dezzy The permanently good resell value for Nintendo games is one reason I don't mind these overpriced ports too much. I could always buy it, play it, and then sell it for almost as much as I bought it for.

That's... an idea, actually. Hm.

Uhh...what game was ever priced that much? If there's even one game like that, gaming would cease for sure.

I do genuinely feel like if you're gonna have a game cost more than when it was new, you really need to justify it. And unfortunately, the work that goes into Skyward Sword HD does not really make a difference to me or to most people tbh. Or to be exact, knowledge of the work that must have gone into it doesn't make a difference to their purchases. Especially since at the end of the day, that's still less work than what goes into your brand new games.

I mean, it has a lot of content, so it's not as baffling as Link's Awakening being 60 dollars.

I do feel strongly that the entire idea that retail games need to be 60 bucks all the time is really stupid. This could be 40 dollars or at the very, very least, the 50 dollars it cost at Wii launch price, and Nintendo would look better for it, while still making lots of money. Stuff like this is why whenever I do get that Link's Awakening remake, I'm probably getting it used. So Nintendo gets zero dollars from me instead of forty. (and this isn't just me being petty, i both want a retail copy of it but only when its cheaper) The simple fact is that you could put out some of these games, at a store, for less than 60 dollars, and...still easily make money. (and along with that, not force every video game to have 60 dollars worth of content)

That being said, outside of the semi-greedy pricing, Skyward Sword is a worthwhile Zelda you should get at some point if you like Zelda.