The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on Switch eShop Temporarily Had a $70 Price - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 07 February 2023 / 4,825 Views
Nintendo might be looking to increase the price of its games to $69.99, joining Sony and Microsoft who have increased the price of their major first-party games.
The Nintendo Switch eShop page for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was listed at $69.99 before it was later removed.
Following the temporary price of $69.99, GameStop, Best Buy, and Amazon have all stopped taking pre-orders for the game.
If Nintendo is going to charge $69.99 for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom we might get an announcement tomorrow, February 8 during the Nintendo Direct. It will start at 2:00 pm PT / 5:00 pm ET / 10:00 pm UK and can be watched on YouTube and Nintendo.com.
The Amazon page for Metroid Prime 4 is also no longer taking pre-orders. It had a listing of $59.99 for pre-orders earlier today. This does suggest Nintendo might increase the price of its major first-party games to $69.99.
GameStop, Best Buy, and Amazon have stopped taking pre-orders on Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
— Benji-Sales (@BenjiSales) February 8, 2023
This follows Nintendo listing the game at $70 on the eShop before quickly taking it down. Looks like we'll be getting official announcement Nintendo is moving to $70 at tomorrow's Direct pic.twitter.com/ggCvkBFUSF
welp, Amazon took down Metroid Prime 4 preorders. https://t.co/I14MjIQ5oP
— Wario64 (@Wario64) February 8, 2023
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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id gladly pay $70.00 for this game, look at all the games with so much lest effort and quality that charges $60.00
Ok for new games but for old games this is just absurd. Imagine changing 70 USD for Mario Kart, a game originally released 9 years ago
I think this is just for the new games lol
I think this will likely for now just be TotK.
Makes no difference if its old or new. A game that costs $50m to make still costs $50m to make now.
It makes difference. Production costs and inflation are rising, but those games released long before already paid themselves. Of course, companies always want to increase profits, but charging more for such old games feels like too much exploitation
This is not an old game.
Except a game that costs $50m now is actually cheaper.
Inflation is a great thing, right?
I don't know how much funding Tears of the Kingdom has received. I just randomly stated $50m. Zelda might be more than double that figure.
I get that.
But the total dollar amount is irrelevant.
Inflation means that our dollar is actually worth less due to various factors... Thus $1 in 2013 is worth more than a $1 in 2023.
It's only if game budgets exceed the inflationary rate that real costs have increased.
Real incomes have been an increasing trend here... Of about 2-3% per year, mostly to maintain our higher standard of living relative to the USA.
...Until COVID and inflation outstripped that growth, which sounded a call to boost minimum wages to keep up.
Still... If you keep the same static game budgets, then technically games get cheaper to produce over time.
think of it this way, full time man working gets $50,000, woman gets $30,000, maybe she is part time or not as skilled as she raised kids for 20 years. 30 years later the man gets $45,000 from the company for his job, woman also gets $45,000... so now you say for the country average pay per worker is higher, but actually you're doing the same job and getting paid less
labour productivity actually declined, you just have more workers in the workplace
must be how they plan on paying the 10% raises for all their employees.
Zelda and Mario are two franchises I wouldn’t really mind spending some extra money on. That being said, I hope Nintendo doesn’t increase all their first party games in price.
Oh dear. This plus considering the quality of current Switch emulators could make this game the most pirated console title of this generation.
The problem is a lot of countries are in a weaker position than the US. Forespoken for $95 CAD plus tax in Canada? $104 ????
Games are not selling not because people wouldn't play them, but the total greed of those prices means you should play your backlog and skip launch day, for almost every game.
$70 USD is a huge price for most countries after being converted to their currencies, and we don't get differential pricing anymore.
First it was xbox pay-walling online play which we laughed at and just called an American thing. No way would "honourable" Japanese companies like Sony and Nintendo stoop to that level right? Then Sony followed suit. "Well... Nintendo is Nintendo. They've always been different. They focus on quality and value." Then Nintendo started pay-walling their shit too. Now we're at a point where game prices are slowing creeping upward starting with Microsoft and Sony until it eventually becomes industry standard. When will the nickel and diming end? If the console industry starts dying it will be because of this and nothing else.
Dammit I want the new nintendo to release already .. I don't want to have to buy a switch at the end of its cycle for zelda.. Hoping for some big releases like starfield to release to keep my busy..
Hopefully just a mistake. Nintendo games are evergreen with their prices (mostly) and you could argue that they should cap at $50, not $60 or $70. If the dreaded $70 Nintendo game returns (N64 games were very expensive), let's hope they wait until the next platform (2024 or beyond).
Probably, in Europe Breath of the Wild, on Switch, was also €69 if I remember right. Funny Amazon and other rapidly stopped preorders, they’ve now given a lot of people a $10 discount, maybe, lol. :-P
Breath of the Wild and Smash Bros. have always been €69,99 on the European eShop, even though you can also buy them with a voucher for €50 (and get €2,5 of that back in coins) They have been adjusting prices of their games depending on the size for years now. Not always in a correct way but I can pretty much guarantee Pikmin 4 is going to be €59,99 when it releases just as we knew 100% Tears of the Kingdom was going to be €69,99.
The price of PC, XboX and Playstation AAA games has gone op to €69,99 a while ago. Games like Final Fantasy VII remake and Forspoken are even €79,99
I'm not too upset about this if the game's as good as it looks.
Probably just a mistake. Or that's the price in Europe or Australia or somewhere where games stuff normally costs more.
We accepted it and defended it. These companies are on record profits yet we accepted their excuses to do so. All AAA games are going to cost $70+ moving forward.
I've seen only a few people defend it, mainly Sony first party games.
The thing I'm seeing online is that Microsoft don't deserve to raise prices because of varying reasons, and Nintendo games aren't worth $70 because they "quote/ don't put as much effort into the graphics and framerates for their games" /end quote"
What a load of crap. Development costs dont change. They all invest just as much money into developing AAA games.
Hope no one actually believes otherwise.
A lot of those profits come from DLC, microtransactions and mobile games. Some games more than make back theor development costs on theor own without any of that, but costs for developing games have gone up a lot in the past few generations, while the pricetag remained the same.
And these companies have been making record profits while raising the price on their customers.
