Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

@Knuckles-Fajita Maybe the Switch (cart) tax is going further to include all physical media. By including everything on the disc/cart, the price increases by £5 meanwhile physical PC versions are just download codes in a box so PC is unaffected.

I can't believe Doom 3 doesn't have Gyro, that's insane! Now I'm disappointed in this port.

@Grumblevolcano Doesn't make a lot of sense though. The digital PS4 version is more costly than the digital PC version.

I'm going to guess that this higher price will be true if not more on Switch.

@Knuckles-Fajita Digital is only cheaper than physical when there's a digital sale on though so £55/£80 is likely the physical PS4 price too.

That only seems to be an issue in Europe. Here in the states games are typically the same price both physically and digitally... unless you're buying from Walmart, who charges under the MSRP.

Also down to the fact that supply and demand doesn't operate with digital products. Because the supply is essentially infinite, the prices are never determined based on that balance between the 2.

Other platform holders do tend to adjust prices to simulate the effect of lower demand over time. Nintendo just don't like doing that for some reason. It's a bit dumb because there are definitely gonna be times when cutting their first party stuff to half price would lead to more overall revenue.

@gcunit
Lol a fair bit, true.

Btw, Dollar cost averaging is a technique used to slowly put money into an investment over time, “averaging out” the dollar cost per stock/ETF/gold/whatever. This protects you from buying all at once when prices are super high. It also prevents you from putting all your money in when prices are really low- but studies have shown people who try to time the market almost always lose.

@Dezzy
Eh... perhaps, But I’m willing to wager that’s not the case, otherwise they’d be doing it.

Total revenue is typically parabolic. You can sell more at a lower price but that doesn’t guarantee more revenue, especially when you account for the sales lost in the long term at a higher price in exchange for more sales in the short term at a lower price.

Every product is different and has a different demand curve. Even disregarding the supply curve, which you are correct to point out has little effect when discussing digital game sales, there’s more to it than simply saying a lower price drives more sales. It does, but that’s no guarantee the price * quantity demanded at that price will result in a net increase of revenue, especially since the current pricing of around $60 has already settled at the price equilibrium. There’s a reason for that- that’s the price that maximizes revenue.

I would say that in most cases for other game developers you would probably be right, that the occasional sale will actually result in a net increase of revenue. In the case of Nintendo games they have maintained such a price integrity that steeper and more frequent price drops could actually do more harm than good we looked at through the lens of total long term revenue.

I’m not saying I know one way or the other because none of us do. But I do know that market participants always act in their best interest to maximize revenue and if they are not putting games on sale there is a reason behind that. Their reputation for maintaining price integrity ensures they can capture the vast majority of sales at or close to full price without relying on significant price drops, which impacts consumer decisions when it comes to future purchases. If a consumer believes it is likely that the game will be sold for significantly less if they wait, there’s a much higher probability they will wait. So by setting the precedent of putting games on sale they are potentially losing more revenue than the sale would actually gain in the short term, not to mention the fact that due to price integrity most consumers end up buying at the higher price anyways, even if it is down the line.

At the end of the day Nintendo‘s sales curves are much different than the vast majority of other game developers. Which means the standard cookie-cutter approach that works for others isn’t necessarily going to be a good fit for them.

I do think there is room for sales for games where demand sharply declines, But most of Nintendo’s games don’t fall in that category, and even games that aren’t top evergreen sellers like Mario or Zelda still see significantly extended tails in the sales curves compared to other games (think Xenoblade, Fire Emblem, etc). If they were to start putting games like that on sale I imagine it would be a few years down the line.

@Dezzy basically everything @JaxonH said.

Keeping prices high sends a message: these games have a high price because the developer believes that they have a high intrinsic value and that value remains high over time.

If the developer doesn’t believe in the value of their products and won’t defend it then why should you ever buy from them at full price? See Ubisoft - why would anyone with any sense ever buy a Ubi game at anything like full price when we all know that over many years they cut prices deeply after 6-12 months.

I agree with most of that but I don't see it how it justifies the conclusion. How can it possibly be true that the optimum price for all of their first party games just happens to be the exact same figure of $60? That doesn't make sense given the demand for each of them is different?

Why is Pokemon Sword the week it releases, when it's in higher demand than any game in the world at that point, the same price as Yoshi's Crafted World, which has long since fallen out of the sales charts?

I don't think it's necessarily true that " that’s not the case, otherwise they’d be doing it.". The other explanation is that perhaps because they own the hardware platform too, they've decided that it's in their interest to take some losses in software revenue in order to try and create the impression that they have a wide range of very valuable games on their platform, which might be better for console sales than if they were more honest and said "We've got like 6 or 7 incredible games on the Switch and then dozens of fairly average ones".

@Dezzy NoE experimented with game prices back in the Wii U era:

• Nintendo Selects tier: £20
• Lower tier: £35 (e.g. Kirby, Splatoon)
• Middle tier: £40 (e.g. Zelda HD remasters, Mario Maker, Pikmin 3, Yoshi)
• Higher tier: £50 (e.g. NSMBU Deluxe, MK8, Smash, XCX)
• BotW tier: £60 (BotW because it was also a Switch launch title)

I'd guess the main reason there's no experimenting going on with Switch is because it's successful so at best you'll see Selects near the end of the system's lifespan.

@Grumblevolcano

Yeah I totally forgot Splatoon was deliberately cheaper. Not sure why tbh, it's a pretty high quality game with no lack of content.

@Dezzy In it's final state yeah, but when it launched it was pretty bare bones. I mean, I tend to forget now, but the current state of Splatoon 2 has roughly 4x the content of base game Splatoon 1. There were far less stages, weapons, weapon types, story content, modes (Ranked was only Splat Zones if I remember correctly) etc.

@Grumblevolcano Whatever happened to Nintendo Selects? Did the officially stop doing that? I always assumed that eventually that would return on Switch.

@Heavyarms55 I think they tend to release towards the end of a systems life, like how Sony does something similar with their consoles.

@Heavyarms55 It usually comes out in the fourth or fifth year of a system's life, i.e. 2016 for Wii U and 3DS, 2011 for Wii. We probably won't see the first Nintendo Selects titles until sometime in 2022, 2021 at the earliest.

@link3710 @FragRed Ah, yeah, that makes sense.

Nintendo being weird with prices is nothing new I suppose. They’ve always hated the second-hand and rental markets cutting into their profits and want us to embrace a digital future, but there is little incentive to buy any of their published games digitally. They only give you 3 bucks in gold points, and the occasional gulp week online trial. They have the evergreen titles on sale sometimes for 33% on the Eshop, but that’s still higher than many used prices for their games.

So at this point going digital doesn’t have any price advantage, because they don’t want to ever discount or feel like they are cheapening their crown jewels.

Added: Those vouchers were a great idea actually and would’ve picked them up, but they were gone in 60 seconds. At least on the US Eshop.

@NotTelevision That hate for the second hand market is nothing unique to Nintendo. That's business in general. The auto industry, music and TV industries, movie industry, etc etc... They all hate second hand says.

@Heavyarms55 Ohh for sure. You’re right about all businesses hating that.

But I’m just saying the mixed message that Nintendo is putting out with their titles. Horizon Zero Dawn and Breath of the Wild were released at the same time. HZD is regularly 19.99 but sometimes drops to as low as 9.99. BOTW is still 59.99 but occasionally drops to around 44 bucks digitally.

If I was just buying a PS4 I’d probably just download HZD digitally for that price. If I just bought a Switch I’d look around for a cheaper physical copy of the game, rather than go to the Eshop and pay 60 for a 3 year old game. Then I’d sell it for around 35-40 bucks used somewhere if I didn’t like it. Then the next guy or gal would do the same.

But maybe Nintendo doesn’t care much about it because they already made their money off the person who bought the game full price, as opposed to pocketing the 20s from all the people who would have gone digital instead.

It certainly hasn’t effected sale of that title in particular, since a lot more people bought BOTW anyway.

But stuff like Yoshi’s Crafted World, that Kirby game, Captain Toad, and Arms would sell a lot more digitally if it was 20 bucks by now. Every time Mario Rabbids goes on sale it sells a ton and everyone even slightly interested has a digital version of that game.