Topic: The ports are too expensive

Look what happened to the price of Sushi Striker.

Nintendo presumably has evidence to show that full price ports sell well enough. If they weren't selling well the price would probably come down.

@gcunit
Sushi Striker was like HD smartphone game with Too expensive price. 😆

It's a pretty basic economics 101 equation; price elasticity of demand. It's all about finding the price vs quantity optimum at which the total revenue (or profit) is maximized. There's a bunch of people not buying the games because 'full price' but there's also a lot of customers who don't care and buy the game either way.

I do not care about the price. If the game is ported the right way it is a must buy for me.

Like Diablo III, Dark Souls, Skyrim etc.

@GyroZeppeli Wii u is nearly 7 years old. Prices are like that in uk

Just don't buy if you find them too expensive. It's simple as that. Nobody is forced to buy these ports

@toiletduck Totally this. Nintendo has come to the conclusion that this is the best pricing strategy for them. Personally, I think they are way overpriced. However, do the number of lost sales from people like me add up to more than what Nintendo make from consumers willing to pay full price? At this point, they don't seem to think so. Vote with your wallet and buy what offers value to you. Don't let anyone else try to change your opinion - especially with pithy one liners.

@Agriculture I’m not sure why these discussions keep coming up each time a new port gets announced and/or released. I don’t really care about these ports as I owned them on the Wii U. The only exception is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Bayonetta 1 & 2. The rest of the games, I just ignore.

And that’s the answer - if you don’t like the price of these ports then don’t buy them. As it stands, Nintendo don’t care whether you think the prices are too high because the games sell incredibly well on the Switch. Unless things suddenly change and these ports stop selling more than they did on the Wii U, then Nintendo will continue to bring out these ports at these high prices. And right now, I’m not seeing any indication that these ports are going to stop selling.

At least the ports give you a decent sized game for $60. In that case, it's only really not worth it if you haven't played the game before. What's really not worth $60 is LGPE. A barren, casualized, mobile esque game like that is in no way worth $60.

It makes things rather simple for me, best value first. If that means buying it on a different system, then that doesn't bother me. The joys of being multi-platform.

This is such a weird way to looking at things. You are completely leaving out how games are supposed to sell consoles. Nintendo is in harsh competition with Sony, they outsold them for a while, but now the PS4 is selling faster. A huge reason for that is that you can get games cheap on the PS4. Attachment rates, which is what you are talking about, have zero relevance from a business perspective. If a Nintendo Switch game has an attachment rate of 80 % and a PS4 game has 40 %, then the PS4 game will have outsold the Switch game 2 to 1. The Switch itself needs cheaper ports to make the console a better purchase.

@Agriculture Selling more consoles isn't much of a victory if the profits from software sales are lower.

Anecdotally speaking, it seems to me that Sony consoles very much have a widespread reputation for games dropping in price soon after release. Selling 1 copy of Mario Kart/NSMBU at £40 would probably make Nintendo more profit than Sony selling 2 copies of The Last of Us at £20 each.

All all of these companies care about ultimately is profit. Developers are currently attracted to Nintendo because games are selling at higher prices on Switch. Nintendo maintaining high prices on its own games fosters this culture.

There's some issues here.
1) The games on PS4 (and Xbox) that typically drop in price quickly are not first-party games. The first party titles that do reduce in price typically don't retain such strong full-price product movement as Nintendo's first party at full price.
2) PS4 came out November 2013. Switch came out March 2017. That's almost 3 1/2 years to have a larger library of titles to reduce in price over time.
3) Attachment rates DO matter from a business perspective, as you actually said ("games are supposed to sell consoles"). An attachment rate of 80% means that 8 out of 10 people owning a console bought a specific title, where 40% means only 4 out of 10 bought it.

Just...don't buy it if you think it's not worth it. That's not a weird way to look at it, that's the common sense way.

I think it just depends from person to person. I bought Bayonetta 1 and 2 for 60 and i had no problem with it but I refuse to buy super mario bros u deluxe for 60. Although they are both ports it just depens which games seem more appealing to you there are also new games like kirby that I refuse to buy for 60. If a game looks appealing to you enough to warrant to price just buy it it doesn't matter if it's a port or not. If you are interested in the game but the game is too expensive in you opinion just wait for a price drop.

My god can you just stop complaining about this already!? Just don't buy the game. Plain and simple. If you can't afford it, too bad. I didn't own a Wii U, so I'm grabbing many of these when they come out, or maybe around christmas time. I'm honestly just tired of hearing everyone complain about fully priced ports, when you should be thankful for them if you never got around to them the first time and now you (maybe) have more stuff to dive into.

@MysticGengar I think you missed the point here. The OP has said that they haven't bought the game due to the price. The decision has been made. In addition, no-one is arguing that full priced ports don't represent value to others. It's an interesting conversation that measures the general feeling in the forums. It's simple to dismiss a game based on its price, no issues there. What is more of interest is on a forum full of Nintendo fans, what do we think? The general consensus seems to be split, but with sales the way they are, Nintendo seems to have the pricing right if we use the sales on Wii U as a measure (never a great yardstick to use admittedly). From your comment, being a non-Wii U owner, these ports are off value to you equal to that of newly developed games. Perfectly valid stance. Dismissing others off hand as "whiners" and "complainers" adds nothing to the discussion.

I have to say, I agree with the OP here...

On the Nintendo UK store, they're charging the same amount for DK:Tropical Freeze (WiiU port) as they are for Super Mario Odyssey (AAA Switch game) - £49.99 - which just seems all shades of wrong to me...

As far as I'm concerned - brand new, top tier, AAA games justify top dollar pricing (eg. Smash Bros Ultimate, £59.99) - brand new, second tier, 'AA' games are usually priced around £49.99 (eg. Super Mario Party) which, again, feels fair...but asking for £50 for a last-gen port just feels a little on the cheeky side if you ask me.

They're not all like that - Captain Toad Treasure Tracker (Switch) is currently listed for £34.99, which actually seems like a bit of a steal! ..but I wouldn't expect to pay the same (if not more) for a slightly reworked 'drag and drop' of a WiiU game as I would for a brand new, first-party Switch title - those games do seem to be priced a little too highly for what they are (no matter how good those games may be)

I'd have thought that something like this would've been a lot more reasonable:
£60 - AAA game
£50 - AA game
£40 - WiiU port
...their AAA pricing is fair, their AA pricing is fair - but their pricing for WiiU ports seems (generally) a little on the high side, in my opinion - that's just my 2¢ though!

THANK YOU. I was afraid to say this, because as a lower-income woman, I probably shouldn't throw stones, but it had to be said.

look, I still have my Wii U. I still use it. I have a lot of games that have been ported to the Switch. it would be pretty spendy for me to get ports of these games on the Switch. so you know what? I don't buy them! how easy is that?!

Nintendo don't owe you a thing.
Nintendo ain't your friend who's gonna cut you a deal on a game you want.
you don't have the right to lower-priced games just because you want them.

if video games is too expensive a hobby for you, then you should reconsider your hobby. lo siento mijo, but it be like that sometimes.

@NaviAndMii Toad Treasure Tracker is only £30 on Amazon UK,
In regards to DK:TK, the Wii U version is £22.59 but switch version is £44
The whole thing is nuts especially when it comes to ports/downloads/physicals

@Shellcore
For me, it's hard to go anywhere without seeing people complaining about the price. Every comments section on a remaster or a port, all I can see most of time is people complaining on how NSMBUD is a waste of money, cash grab, etc. I'm honestly just tired of hearing it. Just don't buy the game and let everyone else enjoy it. It should be that simple.