Battle Chasers And Sine Mora EX Are Getting Physical Releases On Switch, At A Cost

This is a really bad precedent we are creating here... I'm more than happy to have more physical edition of Switch games, but are cartridges really THAT more expensive to produce than regular optic media? Hmmm...

Here we go again.

if the price is due to the manufacture of cartridges, It will be good to see if the download price is £10 cheaper

Will the Switch download versions be the same price as on other consoles?

@mikefoster It must be down to cartridge costs because other Switch games that are more expensive physically, have the same price digitally as on other platforms.

Nintendo Switch TAX.
If it was anyone else it would of been criminal but hey it's N

If you want the cart, pay for the production. I don't see anything wrong with this. Digital and physical should have had a different cost from the beginning since the consumer provides the storage media. Now they need to do it across rbe board and drop the digital price for all that have a physical release.

yeah i pre-ordered them both a month ago, this isn't news.

I`m still interested of buying Switch (because Nintendo exclusives - you cannot deny quality) but all those prices (games as well as accessories) are just too much for me. Even if I can afford the console everything else seems like a huge sinkhole for my hard earned money. More bang for your buck somewhere else, cheaper somewhere else, also already out earlier somewhere else.

I've been wanting to play Sine Mora for years! So happy this is coming to a Nintendo platform!

Well it does make sense. The cartridges are tiny and their memory size for that physical size is no mere feat. These things cost compared to the standard price of a CD/DVD or Blu-Ray. Having nice things always costs more.

If Nintendo made a more powerful Switch or a longer battery life I guarantee the Switch would cost more. It is no different to the accessories, the games or the DLC. 

Yes. Yes, it will put me off.

Can't say anything now. Just curious about the real price of these cartridges. You know, to avoid companies thinking like: "well, it is 4 dollars more expensive than a bluray release, so we'll charge 10 dollars as a market pattern for switch prices...".

Well. Having bought quite a few games on N64 back in the day, I can't say I'm new to this constellation.

Not an absolute dealbreaker but disconcerting. I think an alternative will have to be sorted out in the future as there will be people who own a Switch and another console and the proce may be the deciding factor.

As I lack a PS4 or X1 I will be getting Sine Mora EX on Switch, yet I am seeing less Day 1 purchases on Switch due to these prices.

Why can't Apple just go and find some other memory...sigh.

@Shiryu It is also better for Nintendo - if Digital purchases are made over physical. Profit Margins are higher and allow for bigger development. ( although I like owning Boxes and Carts lol)

Good thing neither of these appeals to me. I'm sure their fans will pay these prices though. I would if I wanted them.

I hate how this is going to just get swallowed and accepted, just because it's Nintendo.

I'm more happy that these are getting physical releases than I am mad that they are expensive. It's pretty clear this is a result of Nintendo's decisions and not some grand conspiracy on the part of almost every 3rd party publisher.

Yeah, I'll be in no rush to pick up any of these overpriced on Switch games, they can wait for a sale.

Not a big deal at all for me.

This Nintendo Tax crap is getting in my nerves. I'll stop supporting games on the platform and sell the Switch if this trend continues.

Ah well I have prime and GCU. Hopefully this trend will die down as manufacturing costs go down in a year or two.

That they need to charge extra to cover the cost of cartridges is totally understandable and nothing wrong... BUT there is no way they're going to convince me that the cartridges do indeed cost 10 dollars each. No one is going to believe that. 2 or 3 dollars is probably much closer to the real cost.
Charging 10 dollars extra is just an easy and quite dirty way to increase the revenue per game.

Pretty rough pricing. I haven't bought a physical game since the beginning of this gen on any system, be it PS4, X1 or the WiiU, but this really makes me feel for folks attached to having games on their shelfs TT

Nintendo can't return to old form with the cost of these cartridges. Sure they dominated with the NES but they also let Sega get a foot hold with the Genesis. I'm not saying give them away but if this continues and games like Bomber Man are 10$ more because of it then consumers won't take that for long especially when looks are concerned we are getting the inferior version.

@maruse You make a good point but could a portion of that $10 also go towards paying for the game box, shipping to stores etc? Not that i doubt there's some profiteering going on here.

These are both digital downloads for me. Problem solved.

Sine Mora costs £24.99 from Amazon U.K. and had been up for preorder for a while. If you purchase now then they'll have to honour that price

So worth it. I'd gladly pay 10$ extra for a physical release, especially if it's a cartridge that should last a lot longer than discs do. A few of the older CD-based games in my collection have already started to go bad, but old NES cartridges work as well as they always did.

@Folkloner Game box and shipping also needs to be accounted for with other versions of the games. Disks and cartridges aside, the cost is more or less the same then. In that case a Switch game shouldn't cost more than a PS4 one. The cartridges are what add to the price, but no 10 dollars. No way. I can't believe it unless they show me proof that the cartridges do indeed cost 10 dollars or so to manufacture.
The thing is that I won't be buying physical versions of indie games. I'll get them digital unless there is no other way. For example if a game that I might really want but isn't available in the Japanese eShop, then I'll have no choice but to import. Which is a pity because I prefer physical to digital.

It's still cheaper than having to buy the same game twice, once for at home and once for on the go (like we've had to do with MH3U if we wanted to play it both ways)... Not saying that $10 doesn't seem too much for cartridge costs alone, and the above is of course no excuse (or nothing BUT an excuse, depending on how you look at it), but this perspective does help me live a lot better with this reality (which I can't change, so it makes no sense whatsoever to whine and complain about it). Like I always say: Change what you can't accept and accept what you can't change. (Though there is of course a third option in this case: never mind, don't buy, and move on).

Yes paying more for inferior versions! That really floats my boat. Omg I should have got a PS4 and Nintendo has lost their ever lovin minds. But im stupid enough to pay for it. I guarantee one thing. I wont be buying near what I bought for 3DS. Android Games for up to 4 times what they cost in the Android and Apple Markets then Cartridges more expensive for inferior versions compared to everyone else. This deal gets better all the time. I especially love the 79.99 controllers. Thank god for Amazons 20% off every new cartridge for Prime members. So Amazon will get my money.

Definitely getting Sine Mora physical!

@maruse At least ONE person here is using logic and reason!

@Damo You're a reporter. You can try to get actual statements from actual developers or Nintendo insiders on or off the record to state explicitly that Switch cartridges cost a full $10 more to manufacture than a PS4 disc. That's a cheap shot to be joining in the correlation assumption that the price difference is a direct result of the actual cost difference in the actual manufactured medium rather than any other costs.

Macronix makes the memory, maybe that's a place to start? There's an investigative story in the waiting here, and everyone instead just speculates based on correlation rather than getting the actual facts behind the markups.

A 33% markup is simply not the difference in manufacturing cost between a PS4 disc and a Switch cart. Not on any scale of economies. Does a physical version cost more than a digital version, especially for a small publisher? Up to $10 more? Sure! Game, box, QA, design, manufacturing, distribution, retail wholesale markup, easily understandable. But the magic $10 difference versus PS4/X1 physical....that's not cartridge price difference. That's a different source, be it costs hidden elsewhere in the Nintendo ecosystem, or simply matching the price to what the market supports.

@maruse It is not unheard for new media. I remember when Blue Ray discs came along: 25 bucks for a single disc. Was the same with the Vita: like a 100 bucks for 64GB cart.

Good, if it means I can get a quality release on the system and physically own it I'm perfectly fine paying at the most $10 more of an expense to do so. A disc can cost pennies a piece, but a multi GB sized custom memory card costs far more due to chips, boards, plastics, even the dumb sticker and all the processing involved in creation and assembly. Tack on anything it takes to get that cobbled together cart into a box and out to retail, it takes dozens of people and much more money than a pushed download.

I'm fine with it.

And if someone wants to whine, you have options. Don't buy it. or get Amazon Prime of that Best Buy Gamers club. Both give 20% off which nearly removes the 'physical tax' anyway.

The $40 game becomes $32, and the $30 game becomes $24. So you're really paying $2 or $4 more, is that so bad?

@NEStalgia It can be. Today, a Vita 16GB card costs 40 bucks, which I guess is the same size used for Switch games. Even with scale economics, a Switch cart could be 7, 8 or even 12 bucks right now, when there is not much demand (still).

People are fast to forget the cost of some releases on the 3DS that had a 10 bucks markup due to cart costs (I think Revelations and some of rpgs suffered the increase).

@tanookisuit Very well said.

@maceng Of course you're right, new media is always more expensive at the beginning. But the examples you put aren't directly relatable since you are talking about media sold directly to the consumer (if I understood correctly you mention Vita memory cards as opposed to Vita game cards) instead of cartridges sold in bulk to publishers.
The problem here is not that select Switch games cost more, it is the fact that they cost between 33% and 50% more than a typical PS4 game! I can't believe that that spike in price is just because of the cartridges.

Hmm, It may be me but I'm sensing a strange pattern

They can keep it!

@maruse That's because you and others are getting hung up over PS4 vs Switch and ignoring that a disc costs radically far less money than a memory card a game is pressed onto. Ignoring the box, the shipping costs, the paper that goes into the game case jacket, etc...just the game. Let's figure it's maybe 2-5cents for a pressed blu ray. That's PS4 costs per title.

Now we look at Switch, it's an unknown. The smallest you can get is a 1GB card, then it doubles in numbers (currently) up to 32GB. Using this as a reference here: http://gameidealist.com/news/download-size-revealed-fateextella-umbral-star/

That game comes in at 2.7GB of space. That means you'd need a 4GB Switch card to flash the data onto it. Given they capped the 32GB currently as the max due to the cost to the developer so they can still profit on a $60 game, you have to ask, what does it cost for a 4GB game? Perhaps $5 for the game chip and whatever the added maybe a $1 involved for the other board components, plastic, silicon, and the sticker. So you're now $6 up over a 2-5 cent blu ray.

Now does this make sense to you people why the games cost $10 more? This again is why I said, I welcome it, and have no problems with paying no more than $10 extra. Most can be mitigated anyway with Amazon Prime and Best Buy Gamers Club anyway.

@tanookisuit well, I'm definitely not ignoring the fact that optical disk are much cheaper to manufacture that cartridges. And I've said before that passing the cost of that manufacturing on to the customer is perfectly fine.
What I don't get is the amount of that cost. I might be very well wrong because I don't have any sources to relate to, but I don't think that $10 extra are fair at all.
If you look at the whole number, $10 isn't actually that much, but the thing is (I've already written about it, so sorry for repeating myself) that if you look at the price of the game $20 or $30 and then add that $10, we've got a 33%~50% increase in price. I don't know you, but 50% extra is far from OK...
In the end it won't stop me from buying the games that interest me, but if I've got to pay more I want to know why as accurately as possible.
And if we put ourselves in the point of view of the common buyers (all those people who don't frequent game boards and got no idea that cartridges are expensive or whatever), it really doesn't;t make any sense. You got to a shop wanting to buy that new Switch game you're so hyped about and find that it cost half as much a the same game on PS4, and you just don't know why. That might keep you from buying the Switch version of the game, or the even game altogether!
In the end is only going to mean less sales overall.

@maruse It is not a matter of a percentage (33% or 50%). Is the fact that a cart seems to cost anything between 7 and 12 bucks, IMHO (I guess that if it costs 12, the developer could absorb the 2 bucks difference).

Also, remember the issue with the 3DS carts at the beginning of the console's life: some titles cost 10 bucks more (because they required more expensive carts) and developers came out and said so.

Also, you may want to read this:

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/03/heres_why_nintendo_switch_games_cost_more_than_those_for_other_consoles

and this:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/128017/Capcom_4GB_Cartridge_Led_To_Resident_Evil_Revelations_50_Price.php

@maceng I new about that, thank you anyway.
In the end we've only got conjectures. The cartridges' cost might be very well $10 or more, or they might be just $1 or $2 and we'll never know for sure.
It's either you accept it or not. I do accept it, although I don't agree with it so I'll keep voicing out my opinions. That's the only thing I can do

@maruse I'll keep it short. Do I think it costs $10 more, no. Do I think it probably adds $3-7 of cost depending on the GB size of the card, 100% definitely. They just are skimming a bit off the top to an amount of maybe $5 at most because round numbers are far easier. I don't think you'd ever see someone retail a Switch game just to cover it so it would be $29.99 on PS4 and $33.99 on Switch.

You still are ignoring facts and playing a classic marketing technique to obscure facts playing the percentages game. Please stop, it's actually not based on any actual reality, just being perceived burned by the game maker.

Trust me it's not as little as a dollar, there's more than a dollar per all that rolled into the little cart solely based on the chip sized to store the game alone. As I said, they're not being exact and rounding up is all. In the end you're buying the storage chip and paying a few bucks gamer tax to round it up to the next whole $10 mark (which is $30, $40, or $50 for Bomberman.)

The previous post I used Fate Extella because that Vita game is hitting Switch in around a month I believe. I was able to quickly find the download version of the game total size to use for the comparison.

Of course it puts me off! If the same game is cheaper somewhere else then that's where I'll buy it. $10 more for the same game is a rip-off. Some of you kids on here will learn that once you start paying bills, purchasing vehicles, hiring labor.

You do pay more for quality. You don't pay more when the quality is the same no matter where you purchase it from. That's like saying a Snickers bar purchased at Neiman Marcus is worth more than one purchased at Walmart. Don't just easily hand your money over kids.

It's not the cartridge that costs more, it's all the R&D money they're trying to recoup from developing that bitter coating that goes on the cartridges

@OGGamer I'm on a very tight budget and not some kid, but to me it sounds like you're the whiny one moaning about a piddly $10. If you're that bad at managing your books, that's a personal issue. You're not paying for quality, you're paying for parts. This is not some conspiracy or mystery.

I will absolutely be buying Nightwar. I would not care if Switch versions cost $20 more then X1/PS. I prefer Physical and will gladly pay the extra for it.

@Damo Hah! Of course it's not quite so simple. It would take some digging and you guys have plenty of industry contacts if you were really going to get into it. Cart costs to individual studios may well be under NDA, but my real point is, there is digging that can be done to at least tryto investigate and no other outlet is really equipped to do so unless one of the very big ones like Kotaku were to want to stir up the hornets nest (like they do best... ) . Commenters following the correlation is one thing, but it's painful to watch actual articles posted following that logic that is for many many reasons very obviously not the whole answer. That whole line of thinking started with a rumor mill that was somehow codified by the shoddy, shoddy, EuroGamer article that did little on its own but speculate without any substance. If investigating it turns up no cracks or leads, then it can remain an unknown, but the cartridge cost speculation just doesn't hold much water as is.

@maceng Do you mean the wholesale cost of 16GB gamecards was $40, or are you talking about the 16GB proprietary flash ram cards? That's a different thing (a mix of poor production planning and a backfired attempt at price gauging.)

A 16GB thumb drive goes for about $7 at retail. That's the main board, NAND chip, housing, and a USB connector. The Gamecards appear to be using a similar NAND (unless it's non-writable memory which is even cheaper). That's a retail package, not wholesale pricing. And the cards don't have USB connectors, saving the cost of a licensed part. It's just the memory chip soldered to a board that itself contains the traces that make the contacts, in a plastic case. If that's $7 at retail with a USB connector (Licenced from USB Consortium), that gives us a baseline for what wholesale pricing for embedded components on a custom PCB with no connectors at all (the PCB is the connector) would look like. Surely electronics with gold tracing cost more than a stamped piece of lacquer, but not anywhere close to $10. Not at scale.

That's not to say publishing on Nintendo doesn't cost more than any other platform after adjusting for fees and such. It very well could. But that's different than "cartridges are so expensive!!1"

The "The cards are $10" crowd are off their rockers even before we examine the $40 standard 3DS games and the $20 Switch game.

@tanookisuit Your point to maruse is exactly the point I've been making though. These things don't cost anywhere near that markup. It is just extended pricing because the market will sustain it. To say it's because of the cards is inaccurate. Charging $10 to cover 3-7 (I'd wager it's $2-5), isn't "because of the cards". It's because they can. Which if fair. I just cringe at the bashing of an excellent format due to assumed reasons that aren't true or even logical.

The cost of cards also doesn't really ring true though given the 3DS and, particularly, Vita versions of games are also not getting the markup. Vita gamecards are a proprietary MS/MMC which typically cost more than a PCB-mounted NAND module due to the miniature fab. I still think the cost of cards is being overbaked. Even $5 is excessive unless they're using the fast stuff. Which they aren't.

@NEStalgia They are "reporters", but a very, very large percentage of the articles here (and at Push Square) are sourced from elsewhere. Not saying it's necessarily a bad thing, (though I wish kotaku didn't exist) but I really wouldn't expect them to do that extra bit of leg work on something like this. Seems above their paygrade.

@RedMageLanakyn It's video game journalism, everything is above the pay grade. Nobody does this for the pension and dental

But, yes, I do see your point, much is just content aggregation, not reporting, and most of the reporting is in the flavor of opeds, and more importantly reviews (which do have lots of effort put into them.) Still, they do have some amount of reach, and they use it on occasion. If they're going to keep beating the "$10" drum and keep speculating out loud that the cartridges are the reason, they should really consider doing the legwork on investigating it, or at least stop beating said "$10" drum on empty speculation which does little beyond lend weight to a mere baseless rumor.

@NEStalgia I agree, couldn't have said it better myself.

@tanookisuit That's cute. I never said it was a conspiracy. I currently run a VERY successful business. I charge more than my competitors and stay busy every day of the week. Why? Because I offer more than my competitors do. You have to pay for that "more". That's not what you're getting here. Nice try though. Maybe Nintendo will give you a gold star for coming to their defense?

You'll be paying $10 MORE for each software purchase. Whether it's the same or an inferior product. How many switch software purchases do you plan on making? 10, 20, 100? If each of those software purchases is $10 above it's counterparts how much money did you lose? I'll let you do the math kiddo. An example will be FIFA 2018. It's an inferior product that will be priced the same as it's superior counterparts. You can be a sucker if you want. Just don't expect everyone to join you.

Let me know if you want more tips on how not to throw money away.

I'm not throwing it away, throwing it away would be buying a digital rental they throw a BUY icon on top of and you get nothing to keep for your cash. Nintendo doesn't need a defense let alone to respond to crybabies over a small price difference. You're being cheap, point blank, and then raging about it on a video game forum hoping to find like minded types who feel entitled as well. I'm not a sucker, I just don't feel like I'm entitled to get a much more expensive media format than a disc or a download for the same price.

Also if you were smart you'd cut the difference for the most part and just use Amazon Prime or Best Buy Gamers club and knock 20% off the top. That $40 game becomes $32, and the $30 game is now $24. $2 or $4 extra is more palatable than +$10. I've picked up all but 1 Switch game through Prime.

Balls!