Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@JaxonH Half expecting SE to get a fourth payday on FF7R by pimping the game out to Game Pass after the console exclusivity window has expired, lol (after Playstation exclusivity contracts, EGS exclusivity contract, and the game also went live on PS+ a year or so after launch).

I don't regret buying the game one bit (it remains my favorite release of 2020), but the exclusivity antics and the way DLC for the game is being treated as a next-gen upgrade incentive is putting me off the sequels pretty hard. Assuming it doesn't take them another 5+ years to release the next one, anyway,

I'll probably upgrade my GPU at some point once stock recovers, but, after mulling it over, I think I'm done buying gaming hardware for a while. My current setup is sufficient for my needs. Microsoft has done an amazing job making XSX/XSS utterly unnecessary for me, and PS5 seems to offer little more than nickel-and-dimed PS4 upgrades and an approaching tsunami of licensed superhero games, which, aside from the Woman Woman one, I'm not particularly keen on regardless. Very tempted by SWOLED, but given how much life the Switch seems to have in it, I can't help but feel like Nintendo has at least one more hardware revision in them. Barring that, I fully expect the successor to be backwards-compatible with current Switch hardware (frankly, it had better be).

And yeah, as a matter of principle, any $70 MSRP games only get purchased at $20 or less. The push for a new MSRP is spearheaded by only a few big companies so far and is obnoxiously artificial.

I think the funniest thing about all of this is I would argue Nintendo have been sorta ahead of everyone else in terms of scummy pricing. They charge A LOT for their first party lineup and it basically never goes on a meaningful sale. They’ll also rerelease games, with really no changes at all, and charge you full price at modern prices and again never discount that, either. And that is ignoring all the artificial scarcities they create by only giving some things a limited time to be purchase, despite the fact they are digital so therefore unlimited. And that is ignoring as well that plenty of first party stuff has loads of DLC or MTX as well, so they aren’t even free of that trend.

Hell, even third party stuff which may be cheaper than the first part stuff and may go on meaningful sales, is usually still always more expensive than buying it on other platforms. It is especially funny given a Switch version is also usually always compromised in some way too, to get it to work on the Switch. You’re paying more, for a probably inferior version, just so you can take it on the go.

Yet despite this, Nintendo anti-consumerism seems to mostly go under the radar and I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be mad at others, but I’d argue in some ways Nintendo are absolutely the worst of the lot and have been for a very long time, but fans seem to mostly just accept it, because they can’t play the first party stuff anywhere else.

It really, really doesn't. There's endless whining online about Nintendo pretty much every day, lol.

Nintendo isn't really above worst industry practices, IMO, they're just usually a generation or so behind the competition in that regard. One of the benefits of the bubble they exist within.

With that said, we're going to disagree in some respects, because I don't think there's anything scummy about Nintendo's pricing strategy (specifically, their games not going on sale for years). What's scummier to me is releasing a game at a certain price, bleeding early adopters dry, and then rapidly cratering the price a few months later, destroying the resell value of those early copies. Which is the norm for most of the industry, and why I typically don't support most third-party releases at launch.

Which isn't to say that I don't think Nintendo should probably put their games on sale more quickly than they do for budget-conscious consumers, but I vastly prefer their approach to companies rapidly cratering the value of their products after launch.

No disagreement on the limited availability tactic they abused last year for games like Fire Emblem NES and 3D All-Stars being supremely scummy, though.

Third party stuff being more expensive on Switch is only an issue with Nintendo if they're the publisher, which they usually aren't, so I'm not sure why you're bringing that up.

It blows my mind that new releases for the PS4 would drop dramatically within months of being released. Like, there's zero incentive to buy at launch unless you just have to play something. Almost all of my PS4 games where bought after launch at a fraction of the price.

Nintendo games being never seeing a price drop never really bothered me much. They usually hold their resell value as well.

@Ralizah
What's scummier to me is releasing a game at a certain price, bleeding early adopters dry, and then rapidly cratering the price a few months later, destroying the resell value of those early copies

This.

I see games that release and by the end of the week they’re already on sale, by the end of the month they’re half price. And it’s like… I just bought this for full price! Not all games, obviously, but many.

Sales are based on demand. It’s not a moral choice they’re making, where we “deserve” price drops and they “greedily refuse”. Price is a function of quantity demanded. As a game continues to sell the quantity demanded drops, and thus price must drop to spur the lessened demand. Nintendo games are typically evergreen and will sell many millions more over the coming years. They also employ price integrity to ensure that is the case. And price integrity is a very valuable tool and it’s something that I used when I used to sell advertising. Company A pays $3600 but company B is only willing to pay $2500. Do you make the sale? If you do you’re $2500 richer, but word will get around to Company A you’re using price discrimination against them, and the perceived value of your product has now decreased. Better to reject the offer and maintain price integrity.

Whether a company maintains price integrity or not is up to them. But usually the companies that maintain price integrity, their games are more consistently evergreen because people see more value as a result. We’re not “owed” a price drop. And there’s nothing scummy about maintaining price integrity. If they have the demand to justify it, then so be it. At the end of the day it means any physical games I buy keep their value. And, I guarantee any 3rd party that saw evergreen status like Nintendo games, would be doing the same exact thing. They don’t drop their prices out of charity, they do so because nobody’s buying them after the first month.

As for 3rd party games, they’re usually not more expensive at launch. We did have a spell of games with a tax in the first year or two, but that has mostly died out. The issue is games release later on Switch, and ppl expect an orange clearance sticker on launch day, ignoring the basics of supply and demand and why lower prices are provided in the first place. It’s only to spur demand once it’s dropped from selling to a market. When a game comes to switch a year later it still has demand at full price, at least for a time, and until it’s exhausted that demand they’re not going to drop the price. Some games launch at a discount if it’s been too long, but that usually depends on their own estimation of whether there’s demand at full price within this particular market after that particular time delay. Life Is Strange released like, 2 months later, and people were saying it was too expensive at the same MSRP.

Every market is different, has different demand curves and legs, but Nintendo is a significantly different market than the power platforms. Games sell better over the long term. So it makes sense that 3rd party games don’t drop in price as much or as fast. Because they don’t need to drop in price, because way more people are buying them. The reason games race to the bottom on other platforms is because sales fall off a cliff after the launch window, and they practically have to twist your arm to buy it for pennies on the dollar. If that was how the market worked on Switch, we’d see games dropping in price just as much, just as fast. It’s basic economics, not moral policy. It’s why we saw Neo: TWEWY Switch version at 3X higher sales ranking on Amazon at $50 than the PS4 version was hitting at $25 (imagine how bad it would be doing without that price drop to compete!). There’s more consistent demand long term. That’s nobody’s “fault”, it’s just an economic reality. It is what it is.

There’s a clear separation between fair play, and things that are “morally bad”. Maintaining price integrity isn’t morally bad. Some consumers may not find it as advantageous but it doesn’t change the fact it has nothing to do with morals. Selling micro transactions and XP boosters… ya. Two totally different things. Anyone who thinks Nintendo is “as bad” as other companies is confusing morality into economics where it doesn’t belong. That’s not to say Nintendo is perfect but the things they actually do that could be argued against in a moral sense, pale in comparison to other companies. I’d gladly take Ubisoft and EA and Activision games abandoning MTX, abandoning pay to win, abandoning unjustified $70 price hikes, abandoning online only mandates, and instead maintaining price integrity.

Oh, fair enough. I never see many people talking about Nintendo, I just mostly see people complaining about EA/Ubisoft. I guess I’m just outside of that bubble, but I do agree with those people. I’d say Nintendo are just as bad.

I guess I am just used to how other consoles/PCs price their games. Seeing a five plus year old game still be the same price as the day it came out, with at most a couple of quid off on special occasions, is just really odd to me. I don’t think about it as resale, I just think about the fact that I can wait a couple of months on say PC and get a game for a fraction of the price or just pick it up on Gamepass as part of my subscription. I guess this is pro consumer but not good for people who want to resell their games, that isn’t an angle I’ve ever had to think about.

I do agree generally though that there isn’t often enough benefit for people who decide to pick up day one, especially with how broken many games are these days on release. Paying 50 quid to be one of the first people to play the most broken version of the game hardly seems worth it, when you can wait a year, it’ll cost under a tenner and now be the most polished and complete it’ll ever be. You never need to worry about that with Nintendo first party though, their games aren’t ever coming down in price lol

I assumed Nintendo must have some involvement with what they list on their Eshop, much like Steam and Epic control the prices of their games through contracts to list them, so they must be at least partly behind why the games are more expensive on the Eshop usually than anywhere else, if available.

@Losermagnet Yep. And, over time, this creates an environment where games as a whole are undervalued, and this hits non-AAA stuff the hardest, because those don't typically have a built-in day one audience of long-time fans of the series or developer and casual purchasers.

I don't think it's an accident that indie games typically enjoy their strongest day one sales on Switch.

Which isn't to say I don't understand why someone who isn't bothered about getting games they want on release wouldn't prefer the tactic that saves them a ton of money, of course, but I do see it as inherently exploitative of early adopters.

Aside from Atlus, whose games I love enough that I'm willing to put up with this crap, my purchasing strategies align with how companies treat their early adopters.

@Pizzamorg Yeah, I totally get why someone coming from other ecosystems would be put off by Nintendo's pricing strategy for their games, since it's wildly different from the competition. From the standpoint of maximizing value for one's dollar, it makes Switch not a very attractive platform for game purchases, I imagine.

How one feels about it personally will probably align with their beliefs on how game pricing affects they industry and also how inclined they are to be day one purchasers.

I do believe third-party stuff not published by Nintendo stays higher in price because there's less of a culture of value depreciation in this ecosystem, which is probably at least partially due to Nintendo's own approach to game pricing.

I'm a firm believer that third parties will simply follow the pricing startegy of the platform holder.

As such, on PS4, you had price parity with third and first party games, and then large sales relatively quickly.

On PS5, both parties go for the new higher price and far less extravagant sales for the most part, relatively speaking.

So on Switch, third parties go for the £50 price, and tend to maintain it, because that's what the platform does.

@Haruki_NLI It's important to note that major third parties tend to have sale price parity across platforms with their games unless the ports are new.

It's fine, they can charge whatever they want. It's their games, after all.

I simply won't partake at $70. Maybe enough ppl will abstain to backfire.

I worked out the math with equations, and learned that making $10 extra profit per game sold, but losing $60 on a small percentage of sales they would have otherwise had from ppl who say screw that, means they'd have to retain at least 86% of their original MSRP buyers at the higher price, assuming the other 14% don't end up buying the game at all as a result, which obviously isn't realistic.

So I ran the numbers again accounting for those ppl buying at half price instead of skipping the game entirely, and learned they'd have to retain 75% of their original MSRP buyers (assuming the other 25% wait for a $30 sale) in order for the tactic to remain profitable.

If their sales at $70 exceed 75% of previous sales at $60, they've successfully increased their revenue.

Food for thought. The more ppl that say screw that, I'll wait for a $30 sale (or just end up forgetting about the game by the time that happens) the better chance they lose money with $70 games.

But I can almost guarantee they ran statistical studies first, and polled a few thousand random gamers asking if a $70 price would dissuade them from purchasing a game, and established a 95% confidence interval for the proportion of gamers who would wait for a half off sale. And chances are, the high end of that confidence interval didn't break 25%, otherwise they never would have employed the tactic. These companies hire the most brilliant minds in the world to work out these kinds of projections. They know what they're doing before they do it.

Counter argument.

Despite games being more expensive on PlayStation, I find that it is often easier to find them cheaper than Switch titles, even at launch. So the $70 is just a facade, and if you spend the time browing a couple of online stores, you can easily find copies for cheaper than that. If not, wait a month or so and the game is down to $50. I prefer that over the knowledge that a Switch game will remain $60 for the foreseeable future with no hope of a discount. Price drops are good IMO, as it also allows people with a less disposable income to enjoy the same games too.

And, unless you've been living under a rock, it's pretty well established that most games decrease in price over time. For something like Horizon 2, I have no problem paying $70, despite knowing the game will be cheaper if I wait a couple of months. They aren't forcing me to buy it at $70, sure they're enticing you to do so, but anyone can wait if they really want to.

I do think it's scummy when a company increases the game price, but the game is still riddled with MTX and DLC on top of that. But that game shouldn't have been 60 either, that should've been a FTP game.

In Europe the price went up from €60 to €80, which is relatively speaking a lot more than in other territories. I'll probably buy fewer games at launch because of that, I'll admit. But if I'm not willing to pay that much for it, I don't mind waiting a little longer either.

It probably also helps that I don't buy more than a game per month. I simply don't have the time to play more than that.

I honestly don't buy anywhere near as many games as I used to because I'm generally not playing games as much. Outside of major Nintendo releases, of which there honestly haven't been that many lately, I'm mostly picking up stuff from a few years ago. Which is usually heavily discounted. Compared to other expenses the cost of gaming is a non-factor. So if the prices at launch went up a bit it probably wouldn't bother me much if at all

Not something I'm too worried about especially given the current state of other parts of the gaming/tech industry currently. I mean if people want to start charging $90/100AU again for games at launch? Doesn't really bother me that much. I'm far more concerned about the fact that two year old graphics cards at retail currently cost more than double they did at launch and how long that's going to drag out for. Because that will eventually bite everyone if it doesn't correct itself soon...... which may include console makers raising the price of games to cover it

@Octane Counter-counter argument

Digital only consoles. We've seen physical PS5 and Xbox games drop in price. Digitally, not so much.

I'm stuck with a digital PS5. Only once preorders were gone and mine was locked in, obviously not going to change it to a disc one that no one has at the time, did Sony mention the new pricing of £70, up from £50

But historically their digital sales on first party games have been good, across all digital systems thus far. I reckon in a year the games will be on some decent sales.

Lol. Lmao. Here we are a year later, best sale on some of those launch games has been £20 off.

Sure we can say Nintendo only does 33%, but that's from £50 down to £34. That's fairly palatable. Going from £70 (Still finding this hard to swallow) to £50, yeah it's a saving, but it's also still a full price game really.

It's a bit like where I work: products come in, few weeks later get a price cut. That new price is what the business "intended" to sell them for, when factoring in costs and the like for it to be profitable. Any that sell at the initial higher price is just a bonus markup.

I suppose that's my fault for not seeing the warning signs of Sonys push to be as much like the Western third parties they lean coming over the hills.

I agree games drop in prices more. But it was never about a "this console is worse than that console" comparison, so that fact seems somewhat irrelevant. It's just about, "I'm not paying $70". Nothing more, nothing less. Though if we're really getting into "which is better" then even a lower price can't make up for lack of gyro and hybrid play. I'd sooner buy a hybrid game for $50 with gyro than get it for $20 without either. But again, this was never about comparing consoles and making claims of which is better.

I typically buy day one. And I buy a lot of games, so that extra $10 could translate to hundreds of extra dollars per year, and as I get older, I'm spending less and less on games. But ya, they'll eventually drop. Eventually. It's been almost a year and Ratchet and Clank is still $70. The lowest it got was $50, which hardly seems like a deal from the $60 price point it should have been. Pretty sure the same is true for Demons Souls. So PS5 games definitely aren't dropping in price nearly as fast, at least, the exclusives aren't. And those are the only games I buy on that system, since non-Switch multiplats are automatic Steam purchases for the gyro (and soon, hybrid with Deck).

But ya, games do eventually drop price. And that's exactly what I'll be doing. Waiting for price drops. I'd gladly buy day one for $60 if it's a game I really want, but at $70 I'll wait. And if I'm gonna wait, the wait needs to be worth it. Not gonna hold off a year just to save $10-20. Otherwise I'd rather just eat the day one cost.

But then there are the 3rd party games that see hyperinflation starting the day of release. $70 becomes $60 by week's end, $40 within 2 weeks and $30 within a month... that just feels like a sucker punch to the gut for someone like me who likes to buy day one. $70 games, alongside holding off and waiting for Switch/Steam ports, is teaching me patience. They're betting on gamers giving in to their higher pricing, exclusivity deals and delayed ports out of impatience. But so help me God, they'll flinch before I do.

@Haruki_NLI Ouch, that's why I don't buy digital, and digital-only consoles. You're completely dependent on what the publishers is going to charge for the product. With physical retail games there's the benefit of competition between retailers, so prices on average will almost always be lower than digital.

@JaxonH To be fair, Ratchet & Clank came out in June, almost exactly six months ago. Though I'm kinda surprised to see it's still at $70/€80 on the online store. I expected it to be lower than that. I'm surprised to see that PS5 games in general hold their price for this long. Anyway, I can find physical copies for €55, which is like 40-45% off. Not too bad. I expect the low availability of the PS5 may also play a role in this. As it's still a much wanted console, and any new buyers will also be looking at games to play, so I suspect most PS5 exclusives are still in high demand.

Wasn't Shadow of the Tomb Raider one of those games that was 50% off in like a month? lol. Yeah, I am glad I didn't buy that one at launch.

Agree 100% with this, this is my stance/feeling too.

Talking about games, I got to and beat the first boss in Loop Hero… then choose to keep going and died lol. Luckily it still seems to keep my story going, but that is a lot of resource lost.

Gotta be honest, I was kinda so so about Loop Hero to begin with but with each loop I found myself getting a little more addicted. I don’t normally like rogue like/light whatever they are called games but something about Loop Hero just vibes for me. I like how it isn’t about like the skill of one’s dexterity, but about how one properly gears and manages what they have at their disposal.

My main issue is despite what the NL review says, I actually think progress at the beginning feels quite slow. The game opens up a fair amount and adds more variation after the first dozen or so loops when you start getting enough resources to properly upgrade your base and change around your deck etc but those first few loops are kinda whatever, and I wonder how many people will bounce off because of that.

I’m still only a few upgrades in, but I’ve already seen pretty game changing things introduced since I started playing, that made beating the boss possible. It is a satisfying, tangible, loop of progression I haven’t really felt in other rogue like/lite games I have played.

Like I played that Hades game everyone raved about and the first boss just absolutely beats me into the floor. I am not carrying much at all into each new loop, it is just incremental dribbles of progression, putting a lot of the progression in my dexterity and the idea of having to do hundreds of runs just to get enough power to get through the opening boss doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest.

Whereas I feel like I carry a lot of new progression with each unlock in Loop Hero, giving a real meaningful sense of momentum rather than just mindless repetition. Maybe this’ll kill it long term, but I’d rather my progression isn’t held at arms length so they can tack on another 0 on the end of my playtime. This is why I haven’t really enjoyed these sorts of games previously.

I think that - on balance - having looked after my games collection (including the boxes) that I could now sell the Nintendo first party games I've accumulated down the years for at least the original box price (sometimes much more than I actually paid when new).

I've played those games for hundreds of hours and they did originally cost hundreds of pounds but in effect the games have ultimately cost me nothing - except the opportunity lost of potentially earning a small amount of interest on the money.

This is partly because Nintendo has defended the value of their games. I'm not saying it's necessarily always the correct thing to do (I think some Nintendo games are over-priced, that some games need a more enticing price to attract a broader audience long term and that Nintendo should launch a "Nintendo Selects" budget range for Switch) but it's by no means "anti-consumer". I know where I stand with Nintendo's pricing - even if I think everyone is agreed that it's a relatively steep initial investment.

PS5 games will probably go back to the pricing status quo when the chip shortage eases up and more people are able to buy one. There's no sense in dropping the price of those games right now because, if you own a PS5, you're inordinately likely to be the sort of consumer who pays top dollar for games at launch anyway. Price dips are meant to tap into the wider market outside of established core fanbases, but, right now, the lack of availability of PS5 consoles makes that demographic almost non-existent on PS5.

@Ralizah
I found some PS5 games are as cheap as PS4 games in my country, usually the smaller 3rd party games. (450,000 - 600,000 IDR)
Not every PS5 games got $70 price tag, even the $60 games here sold with price around 680,000 - 750,000 IDR (under $60).

@Anti-Matter nice. Which games are they