Switch eShop Game Prices Can No Longer Be Below $1.99, Says Death Squared Dev

To curate all the garbage that just go to the top because they are .99 .... ok ... it’s good

Ok, so I understand preventing sale titles to top charts just because they’re on sale.... but limiting sale price??? This makes no sense considering some games are $3.99 to begin with, which would prevent the title from ever being on sale for more than 50% off.... yet a game like Immortals (or any 59.99 game) could hit 96% off without hitting that limit.... smh

Maybe this is why I'm starting to see games on the Wii U and 3DS eShop have $1.99 as the lowest too. I'll still check sales on those systems, and the cheapest on both is $1.99. I'm guessing it's not only Switch with this rule.

Would this include discounts as well?

@Northwind agreed! It must be insane trying to get exposure, so placing a game at a low price must be one of the only ways.

If only Nintendo could find a way to make the shop easier to navigate. Though to be honest, even Steam is at a point where's basically impossible to find something you don't know you want randomly.

Still need a folder for my shovelware 😉

@snatcher only buys shovelware
im just making that up for fun : p I kidding

Many of these games are not worth 1.99

@WoomyNNYes Oh ok bc I was like is he acussing me of buying crappy games? but your just using me for your joke kk.

People kept saying because there's a lot of garbage titles on the eShop and other digital stores that there will be another videogame crash soon. No there isn't, digital distribution prevent that from happening again as any games that doesn't sell could easily be taken off the digital store.

Ahhh the Nintendo seal of quality...

Nothing can be below $1.99 except free to play games, that makes sense. Like I get why this rule is in place because devs were playing the system by selling games for next to nothing thereby making them appear in the best sellers list and getting them more sales. But it's also a rule that just doesn't make much sense when it still allows for free games. Why not just not allow games sold at less than $1.99 to appear in the best sellers list.

Old roms from capcom or Neo Geo are not worth 1.99. Collections of old roms, maybe.

Tbh, who really browses the eShop freely? Sites like DekuDeals have surpassed the eShop in every way I can think of; the eShop for me is purely something I go through to complete the transaction once I've browsed elsewhere and made a decision.

Which makes me wonder what the goal is here. Clearly Nintendo isn't interested in boosting visibility or fixing its shop design in a meaningful way, so why do this half-step that doesn't really change anything?

I don't understand why anyone is mad at this. It will make the bestsellers lists more useful to find actually good games instead of 1 cent shovelware.

This doesn't really solve any of the actual problems with eShop discoverability. There are many tried-and-true solutions, like having a "you might also like" section on a game's store page, or a personalised "recommended" queue based on your previously played titles, but Nintendo never seems to favour doing what's obvious and being asked for by fans and users in favour of pulling random verbs and nouns out of a hat and stringing them into a corporate action statement.

This isn’t the solution. The eShop is so unbelievably bad that I just don’t really buy Switch games if I can get them elsewhere. Work on discoverability before taking away an exploit for indie devs to be discovered.

@SimoneBelmont @Northwind It really is bad. The other day I was trying to find a game that I couldn't remember the title of, and I had to sort through hundreds of entries in the shooter and platformer genres. After like an hour or more I found it. It was Huntdown.

R.I.P 8p crappy game discounts.

@Bizaster No, this is if you DISCOUNT a game. So if you sell a game for £5 and want to discount it in a sale, it can't be discounted lower than £1.99.

If you add a free to play game, its no problem as well, those can't ever be discounted, aside from microtransactions.

Not that any storefront is perfect, but this is a good solution applied to the wrong problem. If the Eshop got an overhaul to make games more visible and easily explored, this wouldn't be necessary.

What happens if the publisher decides to price their game at 99 cents? Usual price I mean, not sale price. Does that mean they have to overprice their product because of Nintendo's rules? And this is just like putting a higher lowest price barrier for the storefront, a developer can still put their games at the lowest point and thereby try to game the system. Instead of improving their crappy product that the eShop is, they just muddy the water. Well done Nintendo.

I hate that they revoked the ability to give a free game if you already have a different game. At least they didn't remove the functionality entirely.

I got agent a for 99 p one time and it’s bloody good! Xxx

@Moistnado

Seal of quality just meant the game worked not that the game was any good. I learnt that the hard way after spending my birthday money on Dragon's Lair on the NES back in the day!

@Giygas_95 I had a similar experience that you did, only I discovered it's not in my region to begin with. Esp Ra De.

@nessisonett It may well be the solution, lest it becomes like the Apple store, where everyone races to the bottom, price-wise!

That's a shame, I've tried some games that I would never consider picking up because they were less than £1 and really enjoyed them - Horace, Earthworms, A normal lost phone and Agent A being good examples. I've also bought some rubbish as well but for such a low price I just delete it and move on.

@Mr-Fuggles777 You wouldn't have brought those games for £1.79? That's still incredibly cheap, less than the price of a cup of coffee. The good games on sale like Horace weren't much lower. Those games that cost more like 9p were just pure trash.

This reddit comment is even older than the other talks of price limitations in context, so only time will tell how and in what region it applies. Between the similar nature delays in the restriction effect due to advance discount submission and the very oddity of an idea that a digital storefront owner could dictate third party prices at all, this is a pretty foggy story even despite devs themselves chiming in.

Just allow users to give a star rating after they've played it for 3 hours. Then just sort by most 4 and 5 star reviews.

Why Nintendo just let the minimum price at 0,99 and just filter the garbage out of the shop? why consumer got to pay the price for Nintendo's mistakes?

@SwitchVogel I would say the vast majority of people browse the eShop.

Most aren’t as connected as we are. Many are casual gamers and there are literally millions of kids with Switches who don’t know anything about third party sites as an option to find Nintendo games.

My two children, for example, have their own Switches and are 6 and 9. Their only way to know about new games on Switch are through the news section, the eShop or me telling them.

Thankfully they aren’t bored because they have a great selection of games I curated for them and we are mainly physical so they can share games and so they are rarely looking for new ones. But occasionally they get some eShop funds and that eShop is a bit of a poop show.

This is just another greedy move by Nintendo. Higher price, more income for Nintendo.
Meanwhile, Sony and Microsoft allows 1$ games.

This is a good move. Any game < $2 is absolute trash. I think they should even make this a $10 minimum. With a check that a game can't be priced higher than on competing platforms. Meaning a game for $5 on Steam will never be released on the Switch.

@XCWarrior
You are asking for the impossible.

Eshop will never be fixed, because there is nothing to fix.
Would 200 games on same screen help? Nope. Then you would need a magnifying glass to see whats on screen.
There is no good way to fast browse 4000 games on any console or Steam.

They could change interface 1000 times, but you would still need to scroll 1000's of games.
This is why Steam only added more filter options as there is no better way.

Compare eShop, Steam etc. to a landfill.
There is no way to keep 100% track of a landfill either unless you dig up everything that is there.

You need to browse 100% one time and add games to wishlist along the way.

The only way to get a improved eShop and Steam is if 95% of developers stops releasing games on them, and 95% of existing devs removing their games from eShop.

As for shop browsing on console. It's terrible on Xbox and PS consoles too. Why?
No consoles ist able to stream shop fast enough from online even on fiber lines.

@Clyde_Radcliffe not as likely, it feels like more of a commitment having to play a game I don't like for 2 hours than 1 - I aim to get 1 hour per £1 spent as a minimum.

@Mr-Fuggles777 For real? LOL

Then you are missing out on a lot of great games.

How will I know which titles are shovelware and which are discounted indies when they’re all $1.99 during sales?

That's a shame. I have bought some cool titles in that price range.

Many of those games shouldnt even be on the switch eshop.

@Moistnado Those old NeoGeo games are worth 1.99.

I’ve downloaded some £0.08p games just because they were so cheap, played them for a few minutes then deleted them because they were so bad/boring. Making them 1.99 isn’t going to make them better games.

@Whalehome : Good point.

@Bass_X0 : I too bought the odd absurdly cheap game earlier in the Switch's lifespan, but I decided that my leisure time (and microSD storage) is more valuable.

If there's anything I learned this past year it is to trust big business and not complain.

Stupid. Really stupid. Nintendo try really really hard to make me not like them.

Also I picked up conduct together for pretty cheap and ended up moving it. Also Rekt was pretty great to play with my family. Unfortunately the other 15 or so games I got for cheap or free were basically a waste of time. At this point there's enough games worth my time that I'll shell out the money for them.

I saw this news nearly a month ago in another website, and I still see games for 0.99 in the eshop, so this is not gonna happen.

@Stocksy This is not confirmed. I still see games for less than 1.99, and you? This is bs.

@Bass_X0 maybe Neo Geo games are worth 1.99 to you. Some are good games, first, second, third time round. But I'm not paying again, I've paid so many times, I'll pay nothing more than a token amount now, like 50p. The sales need to go lower for these old, low value games that are so very easy to get for free anyway and are already owned by fans on multiple devices.

@Cheez I LOVE Conduct Together! Such a chilled and addictive game and the soundtrack is fantastic. Nice to see it mentioned here.

Urban Flow, the car equivalent, seems to be more popular but I couldn't take to it so much. I prefer managing trains over cars.

How is a huge list of 1.99 games better than a huge list of 0.99 games?

And that's why we need a rating system!

@Ventilator not really, most of the better known indies are already available on GamePass or have been given away as part of PS+ and as I dont play on the switch as often as my other systems I'm more hesitant to drop money.

@Mr-Fuggles777 Okay. I also pay for PSN+ and Game Pass Ultimate which have most of the best Indies anyway as you say.

For that reason i buy more games on PC and Switch than on other systems.
My main Xbox console is actually my PC as it's near same as a Series X console. For console only i use Xbox One X mainly.

There is only one reason Nintendo are doing this - to get their 50 pence minimum per game. This has nothing to do with anything other than Nintendo coining it. They've no interest in improving user interface design.

@SwitchVogel slowly raises hand

Their "fix" hurts consumers more than anyone. If I'm looking for a quick game sometimes something that's a buck is worth it, even if it's not a great game. And getting something for free because I bought something else is also a pretty sweet perk to me they are now getting rid of.

It's a shame. The developers did it to obtain visibility, of course, but many of us wouldn't have bought certain games if it weren't for those massive discounts, so this is going to hurt small developers and make the Switch a little less indie friendly, in my humble opinion.

Does he mean no game can go on sale for that low? Because I know plenty of games that are below $1.99 as a standard price. Maybe going forward they will not allow that.

maybee not let any old garbage on there seeing as now already asset flips appearing regulary its nothing short of a disgrace.

"Obviously, this excludes free-to-play titles."
Thank god

Welp, it's Nintendo. No surprise here.

Nintendo should do more, but this is important. It tarnishes the brand to have games that don't match their user base well continually taking up slots in the store space. Another way to have handled this would be to just categorize any game below the cutoff as "bargain bin" games that are completely separate from the others? Maybe.

I think of games like Slayin' 2. It's really a good match to many Switch users, I think. It's a deeper, longer term game than the mobile original. The developer really seemed to target the platform well. I'd hate to think it gets lost in some of the very shallow games that are still built for 2 minute play sessions, micro-transactions, and ads. Still raising the prices of those shallow games probably isn't going to help right away and might even discourage people with the lack of value.

Game stores are difficult. Apple actually does a pretty good job on their iOS App Stores but they have hired full-time writers for articles including behind the scenes and tips and other ways to bring attention to new games or games with interesting developers, etc. It's complicated human work to curate and bring attention to games that don't come with their own marketing separate from the store.

There are so, so many more video games then even 5 years ago. A developer/publisher needs to be ever vigilant in trying to reach an audience, from before and during development, cultivating interest in some gamers that you are targeting to finding the USPs and exploiting them carefully and in a way that the right gamers see them, to acting sharp and quick when something fortunate happens. It's a whole other game, selling a game, and stores can only do so much.

@Clyde_Radcliffe this pretty much sums it up.
Also this is just a Nintendo bandaid that doesn't fix the eshop problem. Also 1.99 is the new 0.09 now lmao

@HollowSpectre that's just the start of it.

We also need written Reviews, new categories such as budget titles, games you might like, or even a functioning eshop on the switch that loads more than one page at a time

@Moistnado If there were Capcom and NeoGeo arcade games on sale for $1.99 on Switch, I'd buy them easily.

I bought atv drift & tricks cause it was discounted to about 85p & looked abit like pure which I had on xbox 360 & loved , regretted it as soon as I played it because it's rubbish

@KingMike 1.99 is still a bit expensive for me, seeing as I have them on a cartridge, a snes mini, a Wii, my phone, my pc, a psp and some capcom games on my Gba too. I suppose they are new games to other people but not to me.

I don't understand this. It doesn't mean that the games that are $0.99 on the eShop now will be purged from it, they're just going to charge twice as much for such games.

How are there four hearts on this article?! This is literally the most anti-consumer thing Nintendo has perhaps ever done, which is really saying something, especially these days, and I'd say this should be called out just as harshly as Joy Con Drift.

I hope they eliminate the minimum price soon! I've bought so many Switch games for under a dollar over the past couple years. It's one of the most addictive things about the Switch. It's like Steam, but for a system I want to turn on and play all the time (for whatever reason I don't like playing games on my PC).

Ah, good old rules to protect us from what benefited us. I mean harmed us because... Some... Made up reason that is definitely not solved this way. The eshop is not good to discover games, it's not because there is the possibility of games to go really cheap. Nintendo is getting very arrogant again. I mean they've always been, but often in a respectable way. This is just a slap in the face,especially if they try to make it look as if they're doing it "for the consumer". Businesses and governments alike seem to make i a sport to insult the people as much as possible with blatant lies about how they're "protecting" them against whatever they've come up with this time to twist into a "problem" for the consumer when it's just a "problem" for the exploiter's profits and power to keep growing.

@Mr-Fuggles777 How did you feel about Horace, sir? I am still playing through and enjoying.

@SimoneBelmont Isn't that how capitalism claims to benefit the people? Through competition? But when it actually almost seems to work in that way, there they are with their regulations AGAINST the consumer.

@COVIDberry perfect example of a game I wouldn't have gotten at any higher price, but now that I've played it, I know it deserves praise.

I have been looking into this and there are several “if you own x of our games you get % off”, for instance I got No Thing for 19 cents 2 years ago and there are several Forever Entertainment games available to me for less than a $1.99. I also bought a game from Cool Small Games once for .39 cents and have several below $2. No comment on the quality of these deeply discounted games but to me it appears that that is still an option for publishers if they want to OR possibly if that was set in place before the rule change they get to keep it that way.

I did have to look for publishers who are notorious for doing these discounts through the search, they don’t show up on the sales page at all, and if you were to search all games and sort by price they would be sorted by their normal price OR a legitimate sale price (that is excludinging x% of because you own one of their games.)

The lowest price game I have found (available to me) is 9 cents for Go! Fish Go! from cool small games btw if anyone’s curious.

Lastly I think if they are disallowing discounts below $1.99 it is unfortunate, even though many deep discount games are shovelware, there’s many games that went on one time deep discounts that I grabbed that were awesome and I wouldn’t have tried at full price because I couldn’t tell how fun they were through screenshots and short videos. Membrane for 9 cents anyone? Great puzzle game and ton of fun! Pan-Pan! Ding Dong XL! Whipseey for 99 cents, that games worth no more than that but it’s fun for a dollar! Some good games should only be a buck! Ah anyway I’m one who likes variety and having the Witcher 3 and Mario Kart sitting next to Arcade Archives and cheap fun games, score chasers and arty experiments, it’s what the switch is to me, all the kinds of games on my tv and on the go.

@COVIDberry I'm loving it, it's been put on the back burner since I picked up Immortals and the MH demo dropped but it's a great game.
The humour is very British and reminds me of shows like peep show, I nearly spat my coffee across the room with the Mushy scene at the party lol.

@Shambo Competition has benefits and tradeoffs, like all things. There's no one thing that is just 100% positive. Drink too much water, and you upset ph levels in your heart, for example. Doesn't mean water is bad, though.

I argue many of those games should not be published on the eshop in the first place. It tarnishes the brand of the eshop. If more reputable Indie developers wish to sell their product, there is got to be more quality control which such responsibilities lies on Nintendo. If I recall correctly Attooie discounts their games so highly and frequently because they are push down the list by mediocre games that are released weekly but when mediocre developers learn they can do this, they will do the same thus just pushing games like Mutant Mudds further down the "games on sale" list.

@Clyde_Radcliffe Yeah it's great! Unfortunately I never would have found it if it wasn't discount.

Still won't get rid of the trash shovelware on the eshop though

Why shouldn't a developer be allowed to sell his product for as much or as little as he wishes? I strongly disagree with Nintendo here.

I don't understand this move. Why not just change the ranking system for the top-sellers list? Just say it excludes sales below $2. Done. If a company legitimately wants to sell its game for 99 cents it should be permitted to do so.

@Ventilator I'm not arguing. That's why I said not even Steam has a good solution. Word of mouth (aka seeing stuff on social media and videos/reviews being done) seems to be the only way for games to get some sales/traction now.

Don't they only do this to game the system because it's impossible to discover smaller titles on the eshop unless they're brand new or massively discounted?

What if Nintendo just made the eshop suck less?

@XCWarrior I know you don't.

Word of mouth is the thing that the games needs as you say.
5000 tiny covers on same screen would be a terrible solution. You would still miss out on games.

Main point is. There is no way to improve eShop to promote like 5000 games at the same time.

@SwitchVogel I totally agree. I really hope that Nintendo reconsiders this new policy. It's anti-consumer and anti-developer in my opinion for the following reasons:
1. The eShop is a terrible mess and most games get buried very quickly. Sometimes sales are the only way to find "hidden gems".
2. I personally have discovered developers/publishers through highly discounted games and then bought subsequent games from them at higher prices.
3. Some developers have very limited budgets and simply can't market their games without aggressive pricing schemes.
4. Not all devs make money off the base game, some sell that for very cheap going to make money on DLC packs, etc.
5. Price fixing is never a great long term strategy. The free market should ultimately decide how much something is worth. Now, Nintendo says "All games are worth at least $2", but the consumers didn't decide that.

Now, I agree that Nintendo maybe should stop games that are discounted over XX% from climbing the bestseller charts. Developers can market their games through social media and sites like Nintendo Life doing PSAs on sales or Deku Deals. However, they should not stop developers from charging what they want to or consumers from discovering games based on a very low price.

@MortalKombat2007 It's a Japanese thing. Only Sony and Nintendo allows any crap to be released on shop.
It's like Sony and Nintendo is desperate to have as much shovelware as possible.

"My Name is Mayo" were only allowed on Nintendo and Sony consoles too. You click 1 button 10.000 times on a picture. Game completed.

You don't see these kind of useless "games" on Xbox shop as MS don't allow it. Sure there is bad Indies on Xbox too, but these 1$ games were never on Xbox shop ever for 3 gens in a row.
Shovelware were always a Japanese thing and started already on Playstation 1.

What a lazy copout instead of actually improving the eshop interface. If I don't wishlist a game it might as well not exist anymore.

Anybody with half a brain can see what game is good just by googling it. This just seems like a ploy by nintendo to raise their game prices. Nintendo really is going the way of apple products, Over priced old hardware with expensive apps.

Edit: and the shills who defend it.

RIP penny games

I'm pretty sure the only reason for this is that Nintendo will make more money on each sale. It won't help the mess that is the e-shop in any way.
We need a rating system!
There are lots of qol improvements they could make that would be easy to implement. For example have games on your wishlist show up first the sales tab or add an ignore list.

I saw a game that was £0.09 the other day so this definitely isn't a rule in the UK yet

Death Squared is a great game, especially co-op. It's a shame they feel the need to reduce it so low, it's well worth the full asking price.

The change that prevents "free" if you bought a previous title will be a killer for companies like Qubic games, whose entire business model seemed to be using free giveaways to get games to the top of the charts.

I think the price bottom will fix some things and break others. It will not help discoverability, but it will make a lot of $1.99 unable to be put on sale or drop price in order to manipulate the charts. So a lot of those developers will either have to improve the product or find another method of selling.

This is why we need more vapourware. It makes not buying stuff much more streamlined.

@Giygas_95 Was it worth your while?

@matdub I couldn't say since I didn't buy it yet. I was waiting for a sale on it.

@Mr-Fuggles777 When I first begin playing Horace (after all that story build-up), I thought, "We have a dumpy little robot with a synthesized but faintly British accent. He kind of looks like a stereotype. This seems too cute..."

However, the creativity in this game is really to be commended, and I'm having a good time. I wondered what people in the UK would think, so thanks for replying.

@Ventilator That's not what I meant by word of mouth. I meant like on social media platforms. I am aware Hades exists because I see 1,000 Tweets about it. The problem is, gamers seldom mention most indie games on there.

I know. Twitter were always a mess, so i never discovered any game there ever, and same for the bloat fest FB.
IRC is the social media i discover games on mostly.

@Giygas_95 It does look pretty cool, but like you I will await a sale. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, I would never known of it's existence otherwise.

@matdub Hey no problem! Hope you enjoy if you do get it at some point.

Is this limit for EUR shop too or not? Because there were some games at 0.99€ yesterday, and Europe always had the 0.99 limit (there were some exceptions if you already owned a game from the same developer you got e.g. 90% of the already discount price and sometimes the final price was some cents. So... should I buy Retro Games at 0.99 for half an hour of nostalgia or I will get it later at 1.99?

Is this why PQube is having a hard time putting the freebie they promised, It Wrong to Try to Shoot ’em Up Girls in a Dungeon?, on the e-shop? Just take freebies off the most bought list.

Is it only new listings can not be below $1.99; Or no discounts can make a game fall under $1.99?

@Ventilator I downloaded My Name Is Mayo just for the easy trophies.

@Bass_X0 yeah. I completed it twice on PS4 and VITA. 2 x Platinums while watching a movie.
After ~10.000 button mashes, Platinum unlocks.
Only need to change task now and then.

I don't see the point in getting Switch version as you get nothing for completing it. After all there is 0% gameplay in it.
People play them only for quick Platinum trophy.

@Ventilator Yes, I agree with that. Without the trophies, there is just no point.

Jumping Joe is a good cheap game.