Since the price of Switch 2 games were quietly announced after the April 2nd Direct, the internet has been whipped into a frenzy. For those who have been happily living their lives under the safety of a rock, let me fill you in on the basics. Mario Kart World, the flagship launch title for the upcoming console, is set to cost £75 in the UK. That’s $80 in the US and €90 in the EU. At the time of writing, this is the only game in the launch lineup with this high a price, with others ranging from £35 with the Bravely Default remaster to £67 with Donkey Kong Bananza.

Bill Trinen has pitched this variable pricing in an interview with GameSpot, saying that it’s based on “just how robust the experience is”, but this isn’t the company’s first rodeo with the model. Looking at first party titles on the Switch, we saw Nintendo’s standard pricing for games fall at £50, with the expansive Zelda titles Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom sitting as outliers at £60. There were also some more experimental retail titles targeting a lower price point, with Sushi Strikers and Miitopia coming in at £40, though at the time I did comment myself that the price for such games might still be too high for people to give them a shot. Going even further we do see the odd retail game come in lower than that with Metroid Prime Remastered standing out at £35, though this is just as much an outlier as the two Zelda titles. Much of what we had on the Switch seems to be present in the Switch 2 game pricing, albeit with a higher ceiling. What may come as a pleasant surprise to some is the fact digital games do see a small discount when compared to their physical counterparts, something I’ve thought would’ve been sensible for years. I wish it wasn’t presented alongside higher prices as a whole, but it’s better to have it than not.

Nintendo fans have, as far as I can see, come to terms with variable pricing. When people saw the two Zelda games being £60 they weren't over the moon, but there was something of an understanding that these higher price tags are limited in number, and easier to justify in terms of the game you're getting. Now that higher price point is becoming the norm, it's not hard to understand the frustration. Especially with it being pushed even higher for a game that doesn't have that same scale and depth as we've seen from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

A £34 game when compared to its £75 RRP almost seems too good to be true.​

Coming back to Mario Kart I really just find myself confused with its pricing as a part of a bundle. Mario Kart World is the sole major first party launch title, I don’t think it’s overstepping to say the vast majority of people picking up the system day one would be buying it anyway. The question of value shifts to whether it’s worth £34 as opposed to £75, and suddenly it doesn’t seem so dramatic. I genuinely cannot fathom why Nintendo would choose a path with so much backlash while also not charging the price they've opened themselves up to backlash for. If we were going to fall back onto the tried and tested line of corporate greed, the offering of a reduced price bundle just doesn’t make sense. Even assuming this was a ploy to make the bundle seem like a better value package to drive sales, it’s really not as though Mario Kart World wouldn’t have leapt off the shelf as a standalone £50 or even £60 release. Mario Kart 8 stands as the highest selling game for both the Wii U and Switch after all, fans have been wanting a new release for years.

An opinion I’ve seen floating around is that this is Nintendo’s first real push towards a more digital-focused ecosystem, and I can see value in that thought. Where Microsoft and Sony asked consumers to go all in with specific digital-only console variants, Nintendo instead opted to have the same console and capabilities with a little nudge here and there. Between Virtual Game Cards to simplify playing across multiple systems, the slightly reduced prices mentioned earlier, and this huge cut for Mario Kart World, I will be genuinely interested to see how physical sales are impacted on the system. How consumers act now is almost certainly going to have a impact on what follows the Switch 2 down the line, and though I don't believe this is necessarily the beginning of the end for physical releases, it is something worth watching.

I feel like there’s a lot to discuss on this topic, but instead of trying to say it all myself, I wanted to put the question out to the larger community. What would make a game worth £75 to you? If it’s a question of how many hours you’d play, what pound per hour ratio do you think is reasonable? If you feel it’s a question of world size, how big would it need to be? Would you just be content if this higher price point demonstrably resulted in higher quality and more complete games out of the gate? Let us know your thoughts below.

 

[Lumpofcoal]

Personally, I do not subscribe to the $1=1 hour benchmark. There are games that I have put many hours into but I couldn't say that I enjoyed those hours in good faith.

Take starfield as an example. At the time of deciding I had enough of the game, I had about 350 hours in it. But did I actually enjoy most of those hours to justify the 70 price tag? Absolutely not. Why did I play it for that long then? Desperation and sunk cost fallacy. I was hoping that as I played more, I would find/unlock something that would drastically ramp up the fun factor. I also didn't want to waste my money, given that I had already gone over the refund limit. I also couldn't come to terms that Bethesda (of skyrim fame) could produce such a stinker. It was analogous to dumpster diving to find a nugget of gold, because "never say never".

Another problem with such a benchmark is that it results in the flawed thinking that only open world games are worth it because they usually are the ones that offer the most "hours". Even if those hours could be due to having extremely restrictive stamina (eg. Having to sleep after harvesting a few crops), durability (eg Hammer breaks after a few uses) and travel (slow travel speed compounded by restrictive stamina) mechanics. In other words, tedium artificially pads those hours, but they are not necessarily fun.

As to what I would consider worth that price tag? If I find it appealing enough to do more than one complete playthrough over the years. In a way, it's similar to the hours benchmark but the key difference is that I could have hours in a game but never come back to it again or even have completed it at all. There are very few games that I revisit after all those years. I still play Heroes of might and magic 3 (gog) till this day and have completed all the campaigns like over a dozen times. I have played fallout 1 and 2 from start to end for about a dozen times as well. I'm now on my fifth COMPLETE playthrough of fallout 4.

Even though I like Nintendo games, I struggle to recall titles that I have done more than a single complete playthrough. Only zelda ones thus far. And very likely Unicorn Overlord in future as well. Contra too if we are talking about as far back as SNES. That does not mean I did not "enjoy" (I did enjoy them) the rest of them, but I would only play 70 usd at most for most of them. I think the outcry over the prices is also due to their shift to 70 having been not too long ago. And we are greeted with a sudden 80/90 price hike. If it had been a completely new console design, it might have taken off the sting a little but this isn't it. The optics here are poor to say the least.

While I'm no longer able to afford riding even coach class on the ninty train, I still wish them and all those who are able to afford it all the best, I do not begrudge them their enjoyment.

 

[LightyKD]

Me, I'm quick to raise my middle fingers up at Nintendo. The article linked below puts into eloquent words my feelings about the whole situation.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/its-beginning-to-feel-like-gaming-isnt-for-everyone/

 

[subcon959]

I'm not sure that I agree with the people that justify the cost by claiming gaming is a luxury. That's what the Nvidias and Nintendos might want everyone to think, but it certainly wasn't the roots of gaming, and it doesn't have to be the future either.

 

[RedoLane]

There used to be a lot of discussions solely focusing on why a game should be simply bought based on it's quality factor, but with the increase into what could be the new standard price, there are way more discussions right now about how much it worth spending on in parallel to personal taste.
I'll admit, I'm not so into Mario Kart like some other people, so I won't be spending 80 bucks on a new Mario Kart. As for Metroid, yeah I have a special attachment to it, but that's all there is to it, hence why I'll buy the cheaper Switch 1 release.
Third-party games? Count me out. They're cheaper on PC, mind you, and no it's because Steam offers regional pricing AND has frequent sales. A lot of them won't stay exclusive on Switch 2 anyway.

Honestly it's not an issue for me to buy those games on Switch 2 since I have a decent salary. the problem is it's simply not the cheapest option available to me, and when it comes to 1st party games, a lot of them are starting to...wear me out. I guess I'm getting older.

Heck, I think the best option right now is to save up money. As much as anyone can. At some point that inflation period will pop off, and even if the prices won't drop, you'll have a fun time when they go on sale because you'll spend AND have some more left in your safe.

TL;DR: If you like the game, save up. If you LOVE the game, still save up or get it through the cheaper option. It's all about your personal taste, so be smart and decide if it's worth the price tag, otherwise save up and invest when it's cheaper.

 

[BlusterBong]

It doesn't make any sense to run a company like that, especially when they could've just gone with the (now standard) $70 pricing and avoided all the controversy.

I'd just like to remind you that dispite all the protests about the $70 when that was the fresh new price hike, gamers still bought it anyways, PC gamers complained about it, but still went along with it like they did with always online DRM and Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat that is deeply invasive to the OS, and death of PC physical media (this one being handwaved away with "muh steam sales, muh daddy GabeN" since 2004 dispite them complaining about Half-Life 2 requiring Steam but took it up the ass anyways). Xbox and Playstation gamers made a huge fuss about about the price hike (and i think a small set of some people tried to get a lawsuit) but they took it anyways, just like they did about how physical Xbox/Playstation games were made increacingly irrelevant since the PS4/XBONE generation.

The same path is going to be the case with Nintendo and the Switch 2, just with 10 more dollars stapled to the price tag and the kevetching about how "Iwata wouldn't have done this" with things like having the tech demo sold seperately dispite only letting Reggie (who was the the head of NoA, which only really means glorified regional marketing director") do it because he had an ad campaign that had Wii Sports be part of it that worked really fucking well, only to still fumble the ball on the Wii U on top of lock having the Wii U's tech demo equivilent (Nintendo Land) to the $349 "Deluxe Bundle" or be forced to buy it seperately and then doing the same with Switch 1 and 1-2 Switch without even having the choice to have it bundled before Iwata passed. the only difference is that Normies (not just the fanboys) will ethier buy it right away and it becomes a huge success, or it ends up being a 3DS level success where people start buying it when the price is lowered a slight amount.


>"Surely Piracy will help fight the corporation" some people might say

No it won't, because then the companies can go from "The game sold x million copies, yay us!" to "x million players are playing our game and counting, yay us!" and get the same level of positive PR since it would be trivial even for the modern day AAA developer to code in a simple way to ping a server they own dedicated to how many people are playing one game even on a cracked copy and have it count as a person playing or just outright pull a number out of your ass. why do you think BioWare and Ubisoft were going on about how many people were playing Dragon Age Veilguard and Assasins Creed Shadows respectively all while not showing how many copies the games moved at all until they had no other choice (like how BioWare/EA was forced to show that Veilguard was a flop to investors and how Ubisoft is basically preparing to be bought up by Tencent)

The winning move is, and always has been not to play, but both the normies, the fans, and the hardcore gamers are completely unable to through no fault of thier own.

 

[Xzi]

I'd just like to remind you that dispite all the protests about the $70 when that was the fresh new price hike, gamers still bought it anyways

Not really, day one sales for AAA games on average are way down, and there are still plenty being sold at $60 or less too. The publishers quickest to adopt the $70 price point were those that make the vast majority of their revenue from MTX, so the base game ends up being half off six months later anyway. The bigger issue with Nintendo in particular pushing a higher price point is that we know they're super stingy about sales, the base price of their games doesn't go down for the entire life of the console, and they still push DLC on top of all that. Even EA can't hold a candle to that type of greed.

The winning move is, and always has been not to play, but both the normies, the fans, and the hardcore gamers are completely unable to through no fault of thier own.

That theory has yet to be tested when it comes to Nintendo, as they are historically considered to be the family-friendly (and by extension, budget-friendly) gaming brand. Parents are going to be a lot more hesitant to buy a more expensive system with more expensive games for their kids, especially in the face of economic uncertainty. That's a rather significant portion of Nintendo's target audience, considering everybody else can potentially be poached by Playstation or PC/Steam Deck.

 

[BigOnYa]

go ahead buy the switch-U for just one shitty game it's your money your wasting. and when people find out how to cheat it in (and they will because their security is and will always be pathetic) online will be ruined just like number 8 so don't come crying to me when you have absolutely NOTHING to play afterwards. you'll be in the same boat as ps5 owners

Wow, the love here is overflowing. Damn somebody for buying something they like. They have some nerve.
On a side note: he's gonna be playing those games for year or two before you get to pirate them, if you lucky.

 

[Nincompoopdo]

For $80 you can buy a retro handheld that includes over 20,000 games.

You know Nintendo is in trouble when their share price drops after revealing the Switch 2.

 

[BlusterBong]

Not really, day one sales for AAA games on average are way down, and there are still plenty being sold at $60 or less too. The publishers quickest to adopt the $70 price point were those that make the vast majority of their revenue from MTX, so the base game ends up being half off six months later anyway.

as far as the companies being supported by MTX, I guess i can give you that given that many of them were Sony, Blamco, Ubisoft, ect., but that doesn't change the fact that discounts are often temporary, and when they expire, they go back to the hard price they set which in this case is $70 and isn't even the same across all platforms, as many of Sony's games are still $70 outside of the occasional sale on PSN dispite being $10 lower on Steam alongside there being a three page list of games on that platform that are $70, and you can still find several games that are on Steam that are still $70 that are deemed "Best Sellers" (you know, the catagory meant for games that a lot of people are buying within a couple months) if you sort them by price despite them being out for a while now, let alone still keeping up with many games priced lower to varying degrees, even if many of the games are from those same set of publishers should tell you that $70 are already becoming the standard that most big companies are aiming for. $80 is just the same issue but it's ten more dollars this time and has the same exact problems.

That theory has yet to be tested when it comes to Nintendo, as they are historically considered to be the family-friendly (and by extension, budget-friendly) gaming brand. Parents are going to be a lot more hesitant to buy a more expensive system with more expensive games for their kids, especially in the face of economic uncertainty. That's a rather significant portion of Nintendo's target audience, considering everybody else can potentially be poached by Playstation or PC/Steam Deck.

The past few Nintendo consoles after the GameCube and GBA would like to prove you wrong including if you rounded the price up like i've been doing, even more so if you accounted for inflation. The DS's launch price was still significantly higher at $150 vs. the GBA's $100 launch price (Which IGN treated the price of as a concern for would be Buyers, might I add), with salt poured into the wound when you realize that Nintendo also used to drop the prices of thier consoles even before the next pair of console came out in the 6th gen, as they had also set the price of the GBA and later the SP version to $80, so you would have went from a $50 jump in price to $70.

Then the GameCube was initally launched for $200, and later slashed down to $100, meanwhile the Wii was priced at $250, 50 more dollars than at launch and $150 if you accounted for the GC's slashed price.

I shouldn't even have to explain the two editions of the Wii U's launch prices being another $50 than the base models and another 50 for the deluxe models on top of the lower cost model Wiis being priced at $150 and the older model being $200 by like the GC initially was by the time of said reduced cost model (so tack on another $100/$150 and $150/$200 respectively for both Wii U models compared to the Wii Models) before they set the deluxe models' price to the Basic model's launch price and largely left the base models largely behind besides specific bundles

And we all know the story of how the 3DS launched with it being $100 more than the DS at launch and another $30 on top of that for the standard DS at the time of release while being the same $100 difference for the DSi.

My point here is that how they've been rasing the prices with each console has always been Nintendo's M.O ever since Iwata took office, and now it's been taken to what i'd argue is it's logical extreme with the Switch 2 where the Switch 1 and it's varriants are $150 or more/less depending on if you base it of the OLED or Lite's pricing only being differentiated from past consoles by them staying at the same price since thier debuts.

And even if they end up going for a Playstation 5, there's not many games worth buying it for on top of the Price hikes in certain regions (not to mention the similarly fixed prices when they're not on sale from before) since Sony gave up trying and throwing thier games on Steam since the PS4 and online MTX/infrusturcture is the only thing keeping the brand alive and Steam Deck/PC is still going to give problems for many, many reasons, including brand recognition GabeN's platform simply doesn't have outside of the more involved gaming sphere. If you really wanted to be generous if they did switch to a different platform like the Steam Deck, most normies would see it in the same way they compared DVD to Blu-Ray when that was fresh and new, where they only saw the sharper increace in pixels and higher price and say nope and go back to what they had or just get something else entirely (which could also include a Switch 2).

 

[ChibiMofo]

I still can't believe how uneducated most of these whiney gamers are. A $60 game in March 2017 (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for Switch, for example) would be $78 in today's money. If you (just like 67 million other people) were okay with that price, why would you have a problem with $79 in today's money for Mario Kart World????

Use the brain that evolution provided you, people! FFS!!!

 

[Xzi]

$80 is just the same issue but it's ten more dollars this time and has the same exact problems.

I'd say it's an even bigger issue considering they're dropping this on our heads after only a few months of adjustment to $70 becoming the new norm, and they're also pricing it based on what they believe "feels" right. Following that precedent, Rockstar will almost certainly price GTA6 at $90 to $100, and then it'll become a free-for-all of AAA games being priced anywhere from $70 to $100. Would be the most direct example yet of Nintendo doing real damage to the gaming industry as a whole.

My point here is that how they've been rasing the prices with each console has always been Nintendo's M.O ever since Iwata took office

That doesn't matter though, because they were still budget priced relative to the competition through every generation since Gamecube. No longer. Nintendo is now hedging their bet on being able to make more money even if they sell fewer total consoles/games, here's hoping it backfires.

 

[SecureBoot]

I still can't believe how uneducated most of these whiney gamers are. A $60 game in March 2017 (Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for Switch, for example) would be $78 in today's money. If you (just like 67 million other people) were okay with that price, why would you have a problem with $79 in today's money for Mario Kart World????

Use the brain that evolution provided you, people! FFS!!!

It isn't as clear cut as that. Salaries have not increased to match inflation

 

[Taleweaver]

I forgot to ask about the elephant in the room...

Is customers... How much are you actually going to have to shelve out for the games (and console)?
In the eu and iirc uk, the price is the price including all taxes. But with the extra tariffs and threats to even more tariffs for Japanese goods... How much are you actually spending for those "80 dollars"?

(this isn't about the politics, btw... I'm genuinely ignorant on what that price really means. I've heard of shops in states price labeling items in their stores without taxes, so I'm not sure if this is the full price for you)

 

[LangdonL]

DLC should be expelled form the way too old games right?

 

[Taleweaver]

It isn't as clear cut as that. Salaries have not increased to match inflation

Hate to point it out, but i have to...
1) the price of other goods have increased. These are goods. So yes, it is as clear cut as that.
2) the worse news is that most likely the AVERAGE salary has increased but not the median. With a large inequality, that means that, say, for every 9 regular employees who have problems affording a switch 2 game there's a hedge fund middle manager who can now afford ten.

 

[jesus96]

Be ready for next big games like smash and Zelda being $100 and just because people where spamming that they would pay $120 for GTA on social media so they jumped the boat in advance

 

[subcon959]

Be ready for next big games like smash and Zelda being $100 and just because people where spamming that they would pay $120 for GTA on social media so they jumped the boat in advance

It doesn't really matter what GTA6 costs, people have and will buy a PS5 Pro just to play that game.

 

[krakenx]

Can we talk for a second about how the controller is $90 and that doesn't include the charging grip, which is another $40.

Of course none of this really matters since you won't be able to actually get one a Switch 2 at MSRP until spring 2026 or later.

 

[AkiraKurusu]

Especially with it being pushed even higher for a game that doesn't have that same scale and depth as we've seen from Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

...Those games don't have much "scale and depth", in my well-known opinion - they're the same from beginning to end; boring, derivative open-world tedium. They don't evolve like previous Legend of Zelda games, nor like other open-world games like Ghost of Tsushima.

Wide as an ocean, deep as a mostly dried-up puddle, those two.

Anyway, the main point - pricing. It's definitely going to be ludicrously high in Australia, like all USD->AUD price conversions are, so this will be incredibly frustrating for Aussie gamers. Not looking forward to this one bit, and this is just nonsense, especially since a lot of the revealed games so far are just Switch games with a tiny amount of extra polish or added gameplay. Should be the same price, I'd say, for these re-releases of games that aren't even that old yet.

 

[Blasingame]

I'll save $80 for the first party titles and exclusive to Switch 2.

I'll be on the lookout for first party exclusives that have physical collector's editions like Xenoblade games.

Don't know how pricing will play out for 3rd party games. If there will be a "Nintendo Tax" for 3rd party games on their digital storefront.