Devs Make Big Bucks On The Switch eShop By Drastically Reducing Game Prices

I get wanting visibility but some of these sales are ridiculous and seems like they're just giving the game away. Even 75% off earns more and gets you that visibility.

Well low price is the next best thing to a demo. And if people like your game they will buy more. Dev loyalty is a thing. And if they don’t like the game you made a sale that you would not have otherwise. Win win.

Plus steam/console subscription sales have devalued games. So you have to complete with armchair analysts that tell you what a game is worth.

It's a pretty good strategy. I admit to buying a number of games because they were dirt cheap and sounded somewhat interesting. One Strike, The Way, and Superhero Fight Club to name a few.

That's the thing with digital. Once the game is made it basically costs nothing for each copy sold. It's just profit. There's no cost of packaging, shipping, game card/disk manufacture, etc...

So selling 1000 copies of a game at 2 dollars is better than sell 100 copies at 12 dollars. Simple math.

And I will admit, I've bought a few games on the eshop just because I saw them on sale.

Yeah great strategy, garbage games make the "best sellers" list. Games like "Sky Ride" pop into the public consciousness every once in a while by going at a steep discount, making the world a worse place by fooling people into buying it and playing it.

Yeah, there are constant sales, though and even going through the sales section takes a LOT of time. I have done it more than a few times but I haven't really bothered to log on to eshop and browse for some time. They just need to change the system. Btw, Membrane was great fun when taking turns with my friend! Got it when it cost a little more than that, though haha

more about how this might eventually start making more and more developers into companies like RCMADIAX which isn't bad per say just not that good or large generally speaking.

Things that cost less experiance more volume. Go figure.

We already did "race to the bottom" on Mobile, and look where it got us.

IAPs up the wazoo..

No thanks..

39 cents is the right price for any game (gamers side)

Admittedly I am one of those people that buy all those super-cheapos. I mean, even if they were to be bad, a few bucks for a load of games means I don't really have anything to lose!

I can also understand it must be difficult for indies to maintain visibility given how many eShop games come out the wazoo. It's hard keeping track of all the releases, and I don't blame them for wanting to drop the prices to get somewhere.

As a game buyer, it's cool sometimes, but I also look at a game that costs as low as under a buck and wonder why it's so cheap, in a negative way. I'm sometimes less likely to buy a game that low-priced unless it reviewed well.

As a wanna-be game dev, I worry about the strategy long term. No doubt my game, if I should ever finish it, won't be amazing, and if the expected price point of the average indie game ends up being sub-$1 for whatever title, that doesn't sound sustainable.

I bought Membrane for $0.09 and enjoyed it. Even though the art style was not my favorite, v the game was well designed with just the right amount of challenge with optional challenge for those who want it.

@Yorumi BuT iT's EvErGrEeN...

Realistically if Nintendo can get people to pay $60 for a 3 year old game, more power to them. Don't hate the player hate the game.

Most of those games that drop below a dollar are pure crap...

I've certainly taken advantage of when games like these cost super cheap. I grabbed Burnstar a while back when it was only $1 from it's original $20 price and is way better the Bomberman R ever was. Also future grind for $2 from $20 was so much fun and actually had a bit of story to it. Grid mania was like 9¢ and had me more engaged than I've had any business being. Grab lab 49¢, defunct for 79¢, space war arena for $1 and some change and I'm sure I have a few others. Some of these games were diamonds in the rough and just needed a spotlight and some of these were just nice little distractions in between larger games. I always look forward to see what could possibly be dirt cheap in each sale and see if it's to my liking.

There’s soooo many games in the eshop that it’s almost ridiculous! I would think a ton of them get lost in the shuffle so a sale is the only way to bring new life to stalling sales. Who wouldn’t buy ANY one game for 9 pennies?? I’m sold for a dollar usually! Lol
But I blame Nintendo for this - when the hell are they going to update the store?? It’s over 2 years now! Even the Wii U’s eshop layout destroys the Switch format!! Of course many Switch games will be overlooked!!

My Steam library is full of dirt-cheap indie games that I took a chance on, though 95% of them have a few hours of gameplay because I wasn't interested in continuing to play. Even when a game is dirt cheap, I stop and think "does this seem like something I would play?" before I buy just to stop my library from exploding.

Whatever publisher discounted robonauts, one strike, not not, that game that was free if you own their old games...

Robonauts wound up being a decent buy when it was dirt cheap for leading to those.

The frederic games were 50 cents each, they at least have a good soundtrack.

And I picked up Nefarious on sale because I wanted to play that game and it was on sale.

Reduce a game by by 85% and your sales go up by 1500%. Nice work.

I still read reviews and watch a couple vids. At least i do now. Buyers remorse is still a thing, even if the game is less than a dollar.
It also adds up. I have got a few of these deals probably totalling $15 or so. That takes me halfway to buying "Inside" or "Transistor" which seems far better value.

So, wait, the Membrane developer only made $9,000 from his 100,000+ sales? Is it REALLY worth it to reduce your game so drastically for such paltry profits?

@rosemo I feel ripped off now. I paid a dollar. A bloody order of magnitude more.

Troll and I is 90% off. Still overpriced.

I have a handful of games that I purchased for $0.99 or less and for the most part they are pretty bad (looking at you Bouncy Bob which I bought for 1 cent!).

There were however a few games that I bought due to an insane sale like Xeodrifter ($0.99), SuperBeat Xonic ($0.89), Don't Die Mr. Robot ($0.99) and Bulb Boy ($1.50) that I actually really enjoyed and would have certainly skipped had it not been for the sale price.

@aznable "Skyride" is just bloody awful. If it was free I would resent the electricity it cost me to download it.

This is just how the premium game market in smartphones killed itself and it became a f2p toxic wasteland.

I hope Nintendo sets some control on pricing because this will destroy the platform.

@Yodalovesu I thought the same thing, but the sales were 0, so a crazy price reduction means you make so many sales, an overwhelming number of sales compared to 0 with 0 future prospects of sales, that for small indie Devs it's a swan song to make some quick cash. Is this sustainable, no, but it's better than 0, and the game was essentially a write off.

Can kinda be hard to tell what's good sometimes though. Some bad games will go 90% off and get onto the best sellers and it makes that section look like a smartphone app store

There are so many great games nowadays that I feel like I'm completely wasting my game by playing cheap garbage. I did buy a few bargain-priced games on 3DS, Wii U, and a couple on Switch, but I lost interest within minutes. Time is more important than money.

@Yodalovesu : They would not have made 9c per sale. I'm sure Nintendo take a cut on every sale, and about 1c will go to tax.

I love to see success stories like this. You go indie devs.

Nintendo needs some sort of a filter system to avoid exploitation of this. Lots of eshop games appear on the top of the sale section every day because they're discounted by upwards of 90%. Most of them were never meant to actually be sold at full price, they're just taking advantage of how Nintendo pushes sale items.

mega fan of the mega discounts. Meant that when i was region swapping, i could clear out my tiny unspent amount with some pretty decent mini games.
It's pretty much the same principle as switching high cost software to subscription pricing.
Make something more affordable or payment-manageable, and your viable customer base explodes. Suits me fine

@Silly_G good point, I didn't think about that. All the more reason to not drop the price so much. I mean, let's say it was 25 cents... People would still have bought it up like mad and the developer would have made a lot more $$.

Btw I'm totally in the same boat as you when it comes to these bargain games. Even if a game is practically free, it's usually not worth the time that would be needed to play through it.

I wish more eshop only games will goes physical once the developers have enough budget to release their games in physical + latest update inside the cartridge.
Physical games are still important things.

It's absolutely logical. Hamster could learn from this, though. Nintendo doesn't need it. People are going to continue paying full price for their games, physical or digital. And they know it since the NES days.

I would say you get what you pay for, but Quest for the Golden Duck at 39 cents is still too much to ask.

Dont need any games clogging up my library! Ha tho I admit sometimes they’re worthy distractions, I don’t think games under $5 should be included in the best sellers list. They end up staying there forever as more and more people see them there and think they’re going to be good. The e shop def needs a revision to the system!

This is not going to pan out well in the long term.

”We just eclipsed 100,000 sales with our last discount of 99 percent off. Only 1 percent of those sales were made when the game was at full price.”

Those 99 percent of sales also accounted for only about 50% of the revenue, making about $9000. Nintendo’s cut is 30%, and I assume the publisher wants something. That doesn’t sound like ”big bucks” to me, if your goal is to sustain yourself doing game development.

It's a nice strategy, but when a price drops so drastically it makes me question the quality of the actual game. Preview image art tells me a lot about what I'm in for

I think if NIntendo dropped the price of Link's Awakening by 99% i'd buy it in a heartbeat.

I think I bought Mutant Mudds and Xenodrifter for like 2 bucks not too long ago. That was a great weekend!

I got Transistor cheap recently. I'm looking forward to it!

I don't buy games just because they are 90% off as i hate having icons on menu of games i never will play.
I check reviews and videos before i buy games at 90% off too.

If Switch supported folders, it would be possible to hide all these games.
Anyways. There have been a bunch of gems too among these cheapies.

After seeing the amount of eShop games drop in price after 3 months I refuse to buy any digital title day one any more. There are SO many games released a week now (quite a few of them good), that as a customer I have to be mindful of my purchases to what I want to play and have actual time to play.

Personally I would question buying a game for pennies as it devalues the perception of it’s quality, people do and I guess some money is better than no money- but it must tarnish your brand in the future? This practise obviously happens on Steam, the Xbox and PS4 stores, and the App Store- Just too many games of all budgets competing in the market.

I really wish that Nintendo reduced prices, too.

I'm impressed! Cpt Obvious strikes again!

@Anti-Matter It'd cut into profits for most of the not-so-great games, and have a risk of doing so even for great games that aren't from the biggest third parties or Nintendo themselves.

I doubt that'll happen. Better to remain digital only and have no risk of losing money.

This article is written like they’ve discovered that lowering prices increases sales. This is economics 101 - there is a direct correlation between price and sales volume.

Reducing to 9 cents is silly but the simple fact is that a lot of games are simply too much for digital titles. I have a 10-12 pound cap on what I will pay for a digital game and if more games launched at that price rather than 20-25 then I’m sure they would see greater sales right away. But yes- the shop is cluttered and not beneficial for sellers.

Well of course. I hope now Capcom reduces their RE games on Switch. Those games are quite old now. ANd most of us here like 50% have played them. You want more sales? offer a better price!

The devs get more sales, get visibilty and the customer makes a great saving. Sounds like a win all round to me.

Hmm 🤔 I’m of the mindset that thinks just cos it’s cheap doesn’t doesn’t mean I’ll buy it. A bad game is bad whatever the price even if it’s free I wouldn’t download it. It’s only a bargain if you need it.

It's not just that these games don't sell well because only a few people stumble upon them. It's because when people do find them, they don't want to dish out £10+ for a game they've never heard of. If it goes on sale for £1, people will buy it.

But while sales reductions are great for visibility, are they even making a profit? I can't see how selling a game for "9 cents" is going to be good for devs.

You guys should occasionally do your own interviews rather than just re-writing other people's work. "Cheap success" indeed.

There’s such a thing as a ‘race to the bottom,’ from which videogames are not immune.

It suddenly becomes less about passion projects, and more about minimal effort/ maximal profit ratios.

I’m all for supporting Indie Devs, but frankly, I’m well past done with the 2D retro revival. This trend seems set only to prolong it.

Any game I'm interested in goes on my watch list and remains there until I get round to buying it. Usually when it's on sale (which is quite frequently). Without the watch list I would struggle with navigation but, in truth, being a nintendo fan for over 30 years, I never truly expected to spend so much time with indie games on a home console. It's a beautiful thing.

@Ryu_Niiyama so many games too. It's a miracle if I play more than an hour for most of the stuff I buy, so no way I'm doing full price unless I'm super amped for it. Glad no switch tax for digital stuff lol. Did love Vesuva Collection and Blazing Chrome, though I bought full price.

I see it the opposite way and steer clear of these games. If a game is 75%+ off then I wonder why and assume it's a desperate Dev trying to make up some sales because nobody wanted to buy a rubbish game.

Ah, I remember everybody hailing the Switch as the new indie haven...It was bound to turn into a crowded mess eventually.

Nintendo really need to sort out their eShop and put some quality control in place because it's turning into Steam with the amount of trash I see...No, I would say worse, because at least I tend to only see things Steam recommending me based on what I've bought and got in my wishlist. On Switch I'm seeing ALL the trash.

Obviously "trash" is subjective and I'm just not going to like every game, and generally I'm fine with that and can understand why others do like it...But there's a ton on there that I look at and thing "damn, who exactly is buying this garbage?"

Some better search functions would help too. Sort games highest>lowest based on all time sales, put some rudimentary 'user score' on there so we can sort based on that, have two options to view only AAA and indie titles. How about instead of just having 1 highlighted indie game on the discover tab that I'm not going to go out of my way to check daily, we just have a page with a couple of hand picked titles that changes say once a week? The filter options on the Switch are pure garbage and its no wonder why so many games get lost among everything else.

Generally I tend to stay away from games that are dirt cheap going for less than £3 unless I know what they are beforehand (such as Steamworld Dig which was around £2 last month). I see a game that cheap and I don't see a bargain, I see a terrible terrible game that wasn't selling so the dev obliterated the price.

I have a few games on backlog, and a few full price retail games on the horizon, so I only look for dirt cheap games beyond that. I add whatever looks interesting to my wishlist and check that from time to time, and check the sales section for insane sales to look further into - I came across a few great games this way, currently playing and loving doublefine's "Broken Age" that I wouldn't have bought otherwise and has been standing there on my Switch fora while now. I hardly ever play on any other format anymore, and still there's plenty of games this way, and time and money left for other lifegoals and projects.
We ain't "rich" by capitalist standards (still I actually have more money than ever before now that I chose to change my standards, despite a much lower income that I share with several others), so collecting like I used to is no option (and I stopped doing that as a conscious choice as well), but we're incredibly rich in that we own our own lives, time and space included, live in good health in a forest surrounded by trees and free animals as well as 3 rescue dogs, and still have the luxury to even play video games if we want to.
So I'm happy that this kind of sales work out for the developers as well. Keep them coming ^_^

I've never seen a decent game priced 99p
These games that need to go from £10 to £1 clearly failed to sell because they where trash in the first place.

@Savino I did the same w/ No Reload Heroes. Played it for about 90 minutes with my kids first time. We got up to some first big boss stage around level 10 or so maybe, then we had other things to do so we turned the game off. No save point, we had to start from the beginning next time, so we've never gone back. I understand some games like it when you start over when you die, "rogue" whatevers, but we weren't dead, all 3 of us survived that boss fight and had better stats from it, but 90 minutes is enough. We won't go back until they add in a save state. Which they won't. At a $1 we probably got our money's worth at least. Also bought Dynamite Fishing that day. Played for 5 minutes, never went back. And with the horrible sad pathetic Switch menu I'll probably never even see the icon again to think to play it again.

@Spoony_Tech A few of the games I bought for 95-99% off I probably wouldn't have bought for 75% off. And you know it's true b/c you know I'm that cheap.

One thing neither the article nor any of the posts have mentioned which I think deserves mentioning - how many of these cheap games are bought with Gold Coins? That's how I buy anything under $1. I think Nintneod knows this and likes those really cheap games for people to spend their Gold Coins on since the people running My Nintendo Rewards haven't realized the Switch exists yet 2 1/2 years after launch. If it weren't for those cheap games all my Gold Coins would be expiring. Those games may not be worth much, but how much is an expired Gold Coin worth?

I think 95-99% off sales and Gold Coins are connected. Or at least it's an hypothesis worth pursuing.

@Savino I could see that. We have a few games like that which we never play unless we have guests, Nintendo Land ONLY gets played w/ little kid company. Mostly my kids just play SSBU though. Hundreds of hours already. We get our moneys' worth out of that one, even with the $25 season pass. And 75 cents for some random skin my kid wanted. Also Gold Coins.

If your kids are old enough to like that I'll suggest Castle Crashers. At $15 it's a whole lot more than $1 but my kids and I had a ton of fun with it on PS3 about 8 years ago. And it has saves. Pretty long too.

I've actually become fairly skeptical of the games that go 75-90% off. The quality of most of these games with deep sales seems to be rather on the low end. For example Mana Spark, I now look on that decision to buy it at 90% off as kind of a waste for money I could have saved to pay towards a better quality indie that might only go 10-25% off.

People like cheap games. 👍🏽

There are probably two factors at work. The first is that it was on sale, so people impulse purchase when they think it is a bargain.

The second issue, is more complicated in that the game may not offer enough perceived value to justify the full price and is priced incorrectly in the first place. But there are so many variables that it can be difficult for large companies let alone a small indie.

I've purchased some of the super cheap games but I hardly play them with the backlog I have so I end up not buying the developers newest game at full price so I don't know it's really doing much other than filling up my SD card. I'm also of the mind that these are pushing units but not really profit. 20,000 units @ .09 cents is only $1800 where as $1.00 on a game only needs 1,800 units to achieve the same sales. You probably will get similar exposure too.

The bigger issue is there are too many games and there's not a store front that really can sort through everything adequately. That's where getting the word out to me is very critical.

Makes sense. Unless I'm super excited for a game I'll usually pass it by unless it's on a healthy sale (on any system).

@Spoony_Tech aaannnnnnnd the problem is? Lol. Better for consumers!!! You wait for the sell to be over and pay full price if it bothers you.

@Yodalovesu mmmm do the math. Would they have that 9000 if it was full price? Hell no! So I’d says yes it was worth it for them.

This is finally the best idea they ever had.

@Savino I'm not really a fan of beat'em ups in general but this was one of those really colorful indie games that grabbed my attention. I'm seriously turned off by the whole retro 8-bit pixel art thing but I was glad to play this indie. Enjoy.

@neogyo A $5 limit would be a great idea for the best-seller list, as it would keep most of the sub-par garbage bin stuff at bay. That being said, I do enjoy some of the games that I bought at less than $5. Plague Road and Castle of Heart, for example. Maybe a combination of price + ratings would work.

I'm going to echo a lot of the previously made comments by saying I'm not a huge fan of this race to the bottom. I've suspected that this was the case for months but it's nice to hear it outright confirmed that this was the case. Truth be told I'm actually far less likely to buy a lot of these games that drop into the sub $1 range on a sale because it genuinely makes me question why the dev charged the initial game at that higher price point if they're essentially going to give the game away for next to nothing at a later date.

In the long run it largely hurts the value of these games because consumers will eventually catch on. "Why buy day 1 when it'll be 97 cents in a few months to a year?" I know it's working out fine in the short term but in the long term it will just encourage more low effort games to flood the eshop.

I feel like Nintendo could fix a lot of these issues by having indie specific categories like they did on the wii u and 3ds eshops. Making it easier to find these titles outside of the limited space of the best sellers and featured lists would largely solve this issue.

Even currently at £2.49, I'm not sure this tactic will work for Troll and I

Simple math and supply and demand. Some of these cheap games deserve to be a lower price point than what they ask, so part of it is finding the price point where it feels fair or a value to the customer. Plus you get attention being on the sale page/ having more downloads.

Basically, you could get 10,000 sales at $10 game, for $100k, or you could sell your game for $1 and you're more likely to get a lot more sales, so 100k sales at $1, for $100k. Many more people are open to buying the game at a $1 than $10, as if it's $10 most people will need to at least already have some interest in the game. At $1 people will buy it even if they don't care all that much or don't even end up playing it, and it's no biggie cause it was so cheap. You gotta find the right price point per people willing to buy to maximize profit, but between 10k for $10 and 100k for $1, 100k is a better win imo even though the amount is the same, cause you get more people at least playing and trying your game (which is part of the whole point of making games, to have people play and enjoy them), and if they like it they may come back and buy more. I'd bet with how many games are on the eshop, cheaper priced games will get a higher overall profit than the more expensive games (unless you're already established, a bigger studio, etc)

@nintendork64 right on yea it wouldn’t be a perfect solution, but somethings got to happen. I’m so bummed when I see a .99 game called “Clock Simulator” on the best sellers list. Lol don’t think that one was ever a best seller but you get my point

I bought Bouncy Bob on sale for $0.01. It was actually pretty ok and a fun "joke game" to play with friends (a running joke we have is that its multiplayer is superior to Smash Bros).

Remember when NBA 2K19 was like $5? I thought that was an error or something. Maybe they earned more money that way so it will happen again.

@Heavyarms55 and yet other consoles want such a hand in that profit these sales never happen there.

@Kobeskillz Or! Let's say they reduced that deep discount sale price to $1.00 and they only sold 30% of the sales they did when priced at 9 cents. That's a massive increase in profit.

My point here is just that I feel kind of bad for the developer having sold 100K copies and not making much money.

It’s funny. I bought both of these games mentioned in the article during those crazy sales. What upset me most is how much I enjoyed both. I felt awful. But at least so many other people gave it a shot as well and made it worth it.

I’ve enjoyed new developers and indie titles on sites like itchio for a while, and I always made it a habit to donate to developers if I really loved their game, especially if the game was free.

I’m glad it worked out for them! Both were incredibly fun and I look forward to their futures!

We need a new eshop section: showelware...

I find this very worrying. I don't want to see the same race to the bottom as the App Store where every game is now a free to play cartoony 2D puzzler with cool down timers and in-app purchases to skip the timers. It's a wasteland on there and I don't want to see the same happen to Switch.

I rarely buy at digital sales in general, and I try to avoid buying from publishers that use this tactic.

But I do fall victim to a good deal every now and then, although it makes me feel like a marketing pawn, and it lessens my satisfaction with the purchase.

A robot named fight is going for the pattern money too which feels weird but now we have super Metroid.

@neogyo clock simulator is bad but the devs have made better games.

A race to the bottom. Us gamers will net some short term benefits but an unprofitable model will kill the industry....

@Spoony_Tech How much does it cost them you think to sell one extra copy?
The shocking thing is it's $0. They can sell the game for cents and still make more than that! So by lowering the price they get money they otherwise would not have.

@bluedogrulez The unprofitable model of having too many game devs? Yes, that will eventually end. However the best will rise to the top and continue.

@BulkSlash Physical games make sure that doesn't happen. So buy physical and don't worry about it. Once distribution costs approach $0 this is the inevitable end result. I thought you guys were all about lower costs and digital games? This is exactly what you paid money for. To get digital games and all that comes with them.

@SenseiDje
Agreed. We need the "Nintendo seal of quality" back. Every game that gets this seal deserves a normal place in the eShop and the ones that don't, get a section of their own. I don't think calling that section "Shovelware" would be politically correct, but it is what it is.

There, you found out how much your game is worth

@Vriess Young people are so funny. The Nintendo Seal of Quality just meant you paid for the licensing and went through the process. It had nothing to do with the quality of the game. Loads of shovelware had it in the NES and SNES days.

https://www.oldschoolgamermagazine.com/why-does-the-official-nintendo-seal-of-quality-end-up-on-bad-games/

@hakjie11 Hatsune Miku

@StevenG
I'm young? Oh, you flatter me

No, really?! Sarcasm.

That being said, most games on the eshop are overpriced, so I always wait for a proper discount (10% off isn't a proper discount).