Gaming Nintendo To Sell Cheaper Games

[LightyKD]

This past week, Nintendo announced that as part of their new strategy, we can expect cheaper Wii U games. Firstly I had a feeling this would happen. Kinda hard to sell your games for 60 dollars when your competition is selling games for systems, twice+ as powerful for the same damn price. It boggles my mind that Nintendo never thought of it earlier. Its been nearly nine years with the PS3/360. I'm sure developers can make games at that level and still make a profit whilst selling the game at the $40.00 range. Captain Toad, Kirby and Mario Party are just the beginning. This should be very interesting. What are your thoughts people?

 

[Reploid]

WiiU is still doomed.

 

[endoverend]

I think it's a great idea. Although obviously this won't apply to every game. Captain Toad, Kirby, and Mario Party 10 are all short/budget games, and it's hard to imagine games like Xenoblade Chronicles X or the new Zelda to be sold for this price.

 

[LightyKD]

I would like to see one of the two following schedules happen.

- One main $60 game per season and all other Wii U games at $40. This would be similar to the current WWE Pay Per View schedule, if the analogy helps.

- All games being $40 except for four really big titles during the months of September, October, November and December (gaming season). This type of schedule would allow the final four the proper time to be prepared for the biggest time of the year. Not to mention Nintendo could start hype trains at every E3, which would really drive holiday sales.

 

[chavosaur]

It has always been kind of hard for me to justify paying full retail for a nintendo game because well, I can usually complete it in a couple of hours. (especially kirby and all that)

So im totally for this, itll make me buy more games at launch

 

[endoverend]

I wish they would do 30$ 3DS games now... I hate paying 40$ for stuff like pokemon.

 

[laudern]

The price of wii u games (in particular used wii u games) in Australia is ridiculously high. If you were ever in the business of buying games to sell at a much later date, wii u is the console to do it for.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Captain Toad
Mario Party 10
Kirby's Rainbow Curse

What do these all have in common? They're really short games and not worth the full RRP so obviously Nintendo's not stupid enough to charge $60 for it.

3DS gets proper full games and Wii U receives small almost eShop-type for $40. *smh*

 

[OriginalHamster]

I have always found eShop prices for Nintendo developed games extremely expensive. NES Remix 2 is $15USD for example, other developers on eShop low their prices over time, but Nintendo ones keep high, the same happen at retail level. Launch week sale for Wii games is nice though.

 

[shinkodachi]

Nintendo still has a few more of these budget titles coming up, so maybe they were referring to them? I definitely don't expect Mario vs. Donkey Kong or Mario Maker to be sold at $60 RRP. I also have a feeling the games Miyamoto is working on (Star Fox, Project Guard, Project Giant Robot) will be equally "cheap" $40 RRP titles like Captain Toad or Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, because they all have one thing in common and that's being based around the Wii U GamePad for all of the gameplay elements.

Xenoblade X, Zelda, Devil's Third, etc. will most likely sell at $60 RRP. Then there's the "middle ground" like Yoshi's Woolly World where it's kind of hard to tell how much it should be sold at, though going by Mario Party 10 as an example, I think it's fair to say the "cute" and family friendly small-ish titles will be $40 RRP like the Wii U GamePad exclusive games.

 

[fischermasamune]

The good part on the prices being kept high is that the games don't lose 80% of their value in three years. The way I see is that it sends a "message" for the costumer to buy the game as soon as s/he wants because the depreciation isn't that high.

 

[mightymuffy]

Could do with a link to this.... Hehehe, 'link' *lets himself out*

But seriously though the link would be nice: if they're talking about this being across the board I'm a bit uncomfortable with the idea of Zelda U being sold for $40: that currently-rather-barren Hyrule could end up being what we get.... If like has been mentioned however, this ends up meaning more of a focus on the $40 type of game.... errr, still not all that keen! (Did enjoy Captain Toad though, and found the rrp to be just about okay...)

So no, not sure I like this.... at least it means I can type 'No Likey, No Lighty' on here though!! *Lets himself out again, although thankfully most of you won't know what the fukk I'm going on about!*

 

[shinkodachi]

Could do with a link to this.... Hehehe, 'link' *lets himself out*

I believe this is what LightyKD is referring to: http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/6/7991445/nintendo-software-price-cut

 

[LightyKD]

I believe this is what LightyKD is referring to: http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/6/7991445/nintendo-software-price-cut

Thanks for posting that link.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Nintendo still has a few more of these budget titles coming up, so maybe they were referring to them? I definitely don't expect Mario vs. Donkey Kong or Mario Maker to be sold at $60 RRP. I also have a feeling the games Miyamoto is working on (Star Fox, Project Guard, Project Giant Robot) will be equally "cheap" $40 RRP titles like Captain Toad or Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, because they all have one thing in common and that's being based around the Wii U GamePad for all of the gameplay elements.

Xenoblade X, Zelda, Devil's Third, etc. will most likely sell at $60 RRP. Then there's the "middle ground" like Yoshi's Woolly World where it's kind of hard to tell how much it should be sold at, though going by Mario Party 10 as an example, I think it's fair to say the "cute" and family friendly small-ish titles will be $40 RRP like the Wii U GamePad exclusive games.

This is it.

Captain Toad
Kirby and the Rainbow Curse
Mario Vs. Donkey Kong
Mario Maker
Mario Party 10 ($40 but with the addition of amiibos it's another $77)
Project Guard/Robot

These all fall under budget titles so no surprise they cost less than the normal games.

Zelda 2015, Xenoblade X, Kirby's Rainbow Curse (for the soundtrack itself) and Yoshi's Wooly World are my picks.

 

[shinkodachi]

Speaking of these budget titles, I find it curious how quiet Nintendo has been about Mario Maker. E.g. we know very well what Mario vs. Donkey Kong is going to be like, Play-Asia even has the Japanese box art revealed and you can preorder it already: http://www.play-asia.com/mario-vs-donkey-kong-minna-de-mini-land-paOS-13-49-en-70-8hy1.html. But what about Mario Maker? It's oddly the first Nintendo title that I'd rather buy on the eShop than retail and it has great potential if LittleBigPlanet on PS3 is anything to go by.

Then again this is Nintendo and they don't have proper online services, so expecting anything like LittleBigPlanet may be farfetched. I'd still like to see more on that game, especially how sharing will work. We know it's coming, but we haven't seen it in action.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Speaking of these budget titles, I find it curious how quiet Nintendo has been about Mario Maker. E.g. we know very well what Mario vs. Donkey Kong is going to be like, Play-Asia even has the Japanese box art revealed and you can preorder it already: http://www.play-asia.com/mario-vs-donkey-kong-minna-de-mini-land-paOS-13-49-en-70-8hy1.html. But what about Mario Maker? It's oddly the first Nintendo title that I'd rather buy on the eShop than retail and it has great potential if LittleBigPlanet on PS3 is anything to go by.

Then again this is Nintendo and they don't have proper online services, so expecting anything like LittleBigPlanet may be farfetched. I'd still like to see more on that game, especially how sharing will work. We know it's coming, but we haven't seen it in action.

The cover looks really cool and £17? That's definitely a pretty good price but I don't want to have my eyes looking at the GamePad screen (if only if it were anywhere near as good as Vita's OLED) since it's not very good in comparison to the HDTV.

I suppose you could even make it cheaper by selling the 3DS version on eBay.

 

[shinkodachi]

The cover looks really cool and £17? That's definitely a pretty good price but I don't want to have my eyes looking at the GamePad screen (if only if it were anywhere near as good as Vita's OLED) since it's not very good in comparison to the HDTV.

I don't understand why Nintendo is making it for the Wii U and 3DS in the first place. We know that the game is made using Nintendo's Web Framework, they demoed the game at GDC to show it off:



So the game is already in some form of JavaScript and HTML5, making it the perfect browser game, or even better, an iPad and Android tablet game. This is the perfect game for Nintendo to make an entry into the mobile device market. Sell it at 99 cents and it'll sell over a million, guaranteed. It doesn't need explanation or statistics or anything else. It's 100% sure to sell over a million copies on the App Store and Google Play store if Nintendo just put it on there. And I really don't understand why they're not doing that.

The game is already in a format that's suitable for mobile platforms and the idea is simple enough it can work on an iPad perfectly and it has Mario in it, which is just icing on the cake. People would go crazy about it and the media would go into a frenzy and Nintendo's stock would skyrocket. I'm not even making this up. Seriously whatever Iwata is smoking I want to have some of it too because if Nintendo thinks the best place for Mario vs. Donkey Kong is Wii U and 3DS then they must've gone insane already.

Make of this what you will. I personally will try to avoid as many of these $40 RRP "budget games" if they're just glorified iPad games that aren't even on the iPad. If they were, I'd buy them all and we all know for a fact even after Apple's 1/3 cut of sales on the App Store, Nintendo would still make more money out of this game at 99 cents than they ever will on Wii U and 3DS at $40 RRP.

 

[[Alt][F4]]

This is nothing to get excited about, don't expect $60 quality games for $40.

 

[shinkodachi]

This is nothing to get excited about, don't expect $60 quality games for $40.

This. Thank you so much for pointing out what I tried to say in a single sentence. Nintendo may expand its reach in the current market with cheaper budget games, but they're just that: cheaper budget games.