Nintendo on $70 Games: Price is Determined on a 'Case-by-Case Basis' - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 08 February 2023 / 3,467 Views
it was confirmed Nintendo would be charging $69.99 for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in the US via the Nintendo Store page for the game. This is the only confirmed game from Nintendo to be $69.99 and another first-party game from Nintendo coming out later this year, Pikmin 4, has a price of $59.99.
Nintendo in a statement sent to Game Informer stated it determines the suggested retail price of its games on a "case-by-base basis" and the $69.99 price for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will not be trend going forward.
"We determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis," reads the Nintendo statement.
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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Meaning most games will be 70 and a few will be lower.
They've already been doing this in Europe since the start of the Switch and only BotW and Smash Ultimate are 70€.
And why are they only talking this now?
They've talking about price on a game per game case since the start of the Switch... They have also had varying prices of their games throughout the Switch's lifetime.
I have seem games cheaper than 60USD, and Nintendo done that in the past and even other companies. But I hadn't seem they charging 70 this gen.
Yeah, I believe there has traditionally been more variation in Switch pricing than in XB/PS pricing in most markets.
As an aside, 70 Euros is significantly cheaper than $70, because the price in Euros includes sales taxes, whereas the price in dollars is before sales taxes are added. That means this game will probably cost 80 Euros. Ouch.
No it costs 70€. There's no probably. The price is on the eshop.
I've had this conversation with someone else here already. Why would they raise the game's price to 80€ but have everything else still at 60€? That's stupid and nonsensical. And they didn't raise it anyways.
There's no ouch. No need for stupid assumptions when the price has been known for over a week now.
My supposition was that would raise this to 80 Euros, and perhaps sell other games in the future at 70 Euros to bridge the gap. But fair enough if they've chosen not to.
No need for you to insult people who made a supposition that ended up not being true. What's that in service of? Over time people will forget what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel, so being unnecessarily mean to people is a lose-lose proposition.
If they're only charging 70 Euroes, then they're giving Europeans a deal. 70 Euros, minus VAT, plus currency exchange, works out to about $62 USD.
You are free not to care of course, but please understand that it means you will almost certainly convince fewer people of your opinion. Unnecessarily insulting someone gets their back up, and makes you less credible to an independent observer.
I'm not perfect, and don't always catch every detail, therefore I don't insult anyone else for not being perfect. Perhaps you feel you are perfect. However, since there's no such thing as perfection, I humbly submit to you you're insulting others for something that also applies to you (imperfection).
I was trying to help you, not criticize you. The independent observers are anyone reading this thread, but not commenting in it.
And my point was about saying things in general in life, it's as true when you're talking to people at a party as it is on an internet post.
You don't win arguments by insulting the other side. That gets their back up, and closes them off to your ideas. And that's generally true of anyone listening in, too.
So $70, don't like that much. But case by case pricing should be standard in this industry. If we get prices regularly varying between $40 like the Prime Remaster and $70 for the absolute biggest productions, that would be good for the industry and possibly a boon to mid tier franchises that struggle to sell at the arbitrarily obligatory $60.
And I'm specifically referring to full retail releases from larger publishers. Price variance has already been standard in the indie and small publisher circuit, obviously
Probably going to be $70 for all their big, major S-tier titles like Zelda, 3D Mario, Mario Kart, or Smash Bros. And then the standard $40-60 for everything else.
In Europe (Belgium) Breath of the Wild and Smash Bros. were €69,99 but Mario Odyssey and Mario Kart were €59,99. I reckon they will actually look at the scope of the game, as they have done in the past here.
This is the same as always. Nintendo has released games at less than the $60 price point many times. But it is clear that $60 has been the standard price for their big games. That standard price has now changed to $70. Will we still get some games that release below that? Of course. Just like we've gotten games that released below $60. But, everybody needs to come to terms with the fact that $70 is now the industry-wide standard price for a AAA game
They've been doing this in Europe (or at least Belgium) for a long time. Games like Smash Bros. and Breath of the Wild were €69,99 and Mario Odyssey was €59,99. Vouchers still drop these games to €50 though.
Tears of the Kingdom is also available through the vouchers in Europe.
What are these vouchers you're talking about?
Subscribers of Nintendo Switch Online can purchase vouchers in double packs at the cost of €100. These vouchers can then be redeemed for eligible first party games which are basically all the ones that cost €60 or more (there are only three that cost €70, including Tears of the Kingdom). So it's basically a discount on digital Nintendo games with free selection of what you want.
Is there something like this available in the US?
They brought it back a few days/weeks ago.
All of Europe.
In my experience, there is more variation in Switch pricing than in PS and Xbox pricing here in Canada too.
I am cool with it. Games used to cost a lot more in the 90s
your so right... even the consoles (not only Nintendo) cost more than they do today.. and now the money is even less worth..
Haters gonna complain.. thats how game forums works... but point is.. Nintendo are the last to rise prices... If people have to hate someone.. hate the one that startet the trend "console users have to pay for online.. Or thr one that first startet raising prices to 70$.. #nintendolove
Wait, they did? I'm a 90s guy and I don't remember that.
Some games retailed for more than 80 bucks, and if you do the right thing and adjust for inflation you would see that games costed much, much more.
I don't believe it!
Maybe it is a case-by-case thing for certain Switch games, but what about the next Nintendo console's games? I wouldn't be surprised if games cost that much for the next Nintendo console.
Don't buy it if you don't like the price.
Prime remake is only $40 physical so we'll see but I bet all Mario/Zelda/Party/Kart def be $70 and Pokemon. Xenoblade I think would be stupid to do so. Same with published Platinum games as they need all the help they can get and $70 would really hurt those games.
even at 70$/€, we are still very far from the prices of the 4-5th gen, I very well remember to have payed my Ocarina of Time at 525 Francs in 1998, which would be today over 80$ (AND in ignoring the inflation in 25 years...).
I wouldn't mind if that was actually the case since the $60 dollar standardization is generally overused, especially by Nintendo. We end up having games like Breath of the Wild, Skyward Sword HD, Link's (Re)Awakening and various Mario sports titles and Wii U ports at the same price. I honestly don't mind $70 for something as big as BotW, but the others make more sense at $40, or $50 tops. Of course I don't really expect them to start charging less for their smaller or less ambitious games, but we'll see. At least Prime Remastered is $40.
I preordered it for $50, cuz screw paying $70. But I guess if there is gonna be one game they charge extra for its gonna be the highly anticipated sequel to the most renowned game they've made in the past 20 years.
$70 with minimal voice acting, minimal graphical upgrades, no ray tracing and no motion capture. Not justified imo.
Games like zelda should be priced at $100.
I mean you can cut out the 70 price tag and paste this with 80 and beyond and then you'd have to question where the logic is at by then.
I've always seen Ninty as that one player in the industry that tries so hard to warp the logics of time and space to say "price cutting devalues the product" (and if you apply that logic to literally everything, then everything is suddenly somehow devalued and "worse" off).
Either way, the £60-65-70 tags are why I didn't buy many games on the switch, because that's just too much for me, it's too much for me when anyone charges that much tbh. I've been far too used to just paying £35-45, and that's about as far as I go to this day.
Extra $200,000,000 or so coming Nintendo's way.
Games should be lowering in price, considering how many extra costs are being grafted to them. $70 is permissible for a complete game. $70 is theft if they’re going to slap a bunch of DLC and micro transactions onto it.
I know.
Sorry typo. Nintendo has never done microtransactions in payed games before.
I do agree with this somewhat. The vast majority of DLC is overpriced and/or should have been included in the main game.
Part of the Breath of the Wild dlc was a bit rubbish as well and could have been a simple update, whereas Mario Kart DLC has been great value.
If a game is littered with micro transactions I also believe the base price should be lower than a game with no micro transactions.
It's so expensive to be a Switch owner. Even games that came out in 2017 are literally the same price!
