Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

Square Enix is now charging $70 for PC games (€80 which is insane!) to match their $70 PS prices. I read they want €105 for the Deluxe Edition! Wth!

And that's on top of whoring out their games to the highest bidder over and over again. FFVIIR gets sold to PS, then when the contract expires it gets sold to Epic Game Store, then when the contract expires it'll finally release elsewhere. But what do they care when they get paid hundreds of millions of dollars in advance, twice over, without having to sell a single copy? Saw the same thing with Kingdom Hearts.

And now they have the gall to charge $70 too? I will never buy a game for $70 again. I made an exception at PS5 launch because I wanted a game to play. But that's it. Never again. I simply wishlist the game and wait for $30 now. Because if I'm gonna wait, may as well make the wait worth it.

If they ever try pulling the $70 crap on Switch or Switch 2, I'll stop buying games day one there also. It's just not happening.

I remember reading about gamers who would stay one generation behind, so when 8th gen console released, they'd buy a 7th gen console and it would be new for them. They'd buy their games for $5-10 all generation long. And I think I'm going to adopt a similar strategy, both for $70 games to drop to $30 and for games to get ported to Steam or Switch.

There's so many games releasing, I don't need to play anything day one. I want to, but I am happy to wait, years even if that's what it takes. I'll just forget the game exists, and when the day comes it finally releases on Steam, I'll wishlist it for a price drop (because even on Steam, you've got me twisted if you think I'm paying $70, especially after waiting 2 years).

They're trying so hard to normalize it. Which, I get it. Value is what ppl are willing to pay. No denying that. But I'm not willing to pay it. Everyone has a line they draw somewhere. And for me, $70 is where my line gets drawn (even more so when it's for a game they not only broke into chunks to sell piecemeal, but also sold it off in exclusivity contracts to multiple bidders... screw that nonsense- I don't want your games that badly, I don't care what it is).

@JaxonH I think Nintendo would be the factor of whether Square Enix does $70 releases on Switch. Sony having 1st party releases like Demon's Souls, Returnal, Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart, etc. be $70 made $70 releases on PS5/Series X|S "more acceptable" and having FFVII Remake be cheaper on PC than PS5 would probably burn bridges with Sony. Microsoft has kept with $60 releases though apart from Flight Sim, everything in the past year has been crossgen so games like Starfield will be the true test of pricing. So in terms of Switch, if games like BotW 2 end up being $70 3rd parties will follow.

Yeah, I hardly ever pay full price for any games on Steam, @JaxonH .... There's often discounts available on pre-purchases directly but if not, I usually find the key shops have some Otherwise, wait for the inevitable discounts later, since Steam basically has sales all the time, lol

@Grumblevolcano
They still set the prices for their own games, even if Sony paid to delay other versions. That game was $70 because they think they can charge it, and they're looking to squeeze every last dollar they can.

@BruceCM
I use IsThereAnyDeal and can usually find games day one for $50, but although there are frequent sales, it's always a toss up whether the specific games I wishlisted are included, and many times, the sales aren't that good. Recently saw Psychonauts 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy for $40 in the sale they just had (may still be going on) but I'm waiting for $30 or less. I typically buy day one if it's a game I really want and can get it for $50, but games like that are in the, "eh, I can wait" category.

@Grumblevolcano
Breath of the Wild was 70€ at release physically and it's still 70€ on the Eshop. The sequel will probably be the same.
The question is if they do 70 pounds or dollar this time around.

Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak theme is such a good compliment to the Japanese Yokai theme for monsters in the base game.

Malzeno looks like a vampire monster, and Ludagaron is clearly based on a werewolf. And the whole European Knights thing is a perfect fit. The woman shown in the trailer is obviously Rhondine's sister.

Also, the monster introductions are western poetry, versus in the base game where it was that Japanese style of poetry. What a package this is shaping up to be! And the new hub across the sea, in the "land of knights" Rhondine comes from, looks so beautiful. Love that it's not themed like Iceborne in World (was kinda lame the base game had no ice maps and it took an ice themed expansion just to add one in).

Malzeno (vampire)

Ludagaron (werewolf)

Malzeno Amiibo

Definitely Rhondine's Sister

I wish people would have taken such a hardline stance when horse armor first came out lol

With network based gaming coming into it's own during the PS3/360 era I dont think there was anyway that superfluous DLC wouldn't have happened. There have been too many publishers pushing that type of business model. It probably costs next to nothing to offer so it's an easy way to make a buck. I mean, horse armor was a joke when it came out but who among us can say that they haven't paid for some pointless DLC during the last 14 years? I remember buying skins for Kameo on the 360 and that was a launch game.

Well, yeah, if you want them half price, you might have to wait awhile, @JaxonH .... I got a pre-purchase key for Guardians of the Galaxy for the same price as it's current sale 1 & it was definitely well worth that!
But it'll be on better sales sooner or later if you want to wait. There's plenty still on my wishlist that I'm waiting for better deals on or was getting too many others when they were on sale before

@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.