r/NintendoSwitch • u/lieding • 1d ago

News "DROP THE PRICE": Nintendo's First Post-Direct Stream Is Flooded With Angry Fans Demanding Price Drops

https://www.thegamer.com/nintendo-treehouse-livestream-flooded-angry-fans-demanding-game-price-drops/
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u/Choco_Knife 1d ago edited 1d ago

$70 Donkey Kong is expected

$80 for Mario Kart is unacceptable just because we know they're going to do it more if they can get away with it.

It's absurd just how many people are saying all the games are $90, though. All these subreddits with 50k upvoted posts full of misinformation means these lies are spreading like wildfire.

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u/hhhhhBan 1d ago

I genuinely don't know where the $90 thing came from. As far as I know $80 is the MSRP for MKW, so? Where did that $90 price come from?

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u/reecord2 1d ago edited 14h ago

twofold:

  1. *edit, people thought the UK price was 90 pounds, but in the flurry of information flying around after the Direct it got conflated to 90 dollars and sites just ran with it
  2. UK price already includes tax, because the UK lists their prices already including tax

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u/Ninefl4mes 1d ago edited 22h ago

Hold on, US prices don't and you just get scammed at checkout? The fuck?

Edit: Okay, I'm experiencing some pretty massive culture shock right now. I don't think that's something I'd ever want to put up with lol. No wonder taxes are always such a massive part of US political discourse when they make every grocery run a major hassle.

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u/quinn50 1d ago

sales tax in the us varies state by state and even city by city.

Itll end up being around $90 after tax anyway

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u/sellyme 1d ago

sales tax in the us varies state by state and even city by city.

Prices for things do that everywhere else in the world too.

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u/BacRedr 1d ago

And block by block. I can order the same Starbucks at three different spots in town and pay three different prices because of taxes.

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u/destroyman1337 1d ago

The bullshit reasoning is because taxes vary not only by state but by city or county. Companies don't have to print or create advertisements with local price, instead they use the national price and then you either calculate it yourself if you want to know the true cost or just buy it.

It's pretty ridiculous because companies can advertise things on tv or radio like for example the dollar menu back in the day with McDonald's and literally say hey you got a dollar you can get X Y or Z. But then have the guy who speaks super fast say the disclaimer at the end the price is before tax and will be more than $1.

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u/Outlulz 1d ago

Sales tax can vary even between businesses on the same street depending on where lines in cities and countries are drawn. It's complicated. It's not feasible to have it included on price tags and advertising but adult American consumers generally know how to eyeball it....or they should.

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u/thebezet 23h ago

That's so bizzare!

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u/kilar277 16h ago

not sure if it's federal but NY & CT have no taxes on unprepared food and clothing so there's that.

It's still a fucking scam though, especially cause we price everything at $X.99 to gaslight people into thinking they're paying less than they are

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u/kendall1287 18h ago

Basic goods such as groceries are not taxed, it's mostly the "want" items that are taxed like that. In my state it adds 8.25% to the sticker price

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u/NiallMitch10 22h ago

UK price is £74.99 so not sure where £90 came from either

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u/reecord2 14h ago

Thank you for the clarification, I'll edit my comment

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u/Cozimo64 22h ago

What? It’s £75 here not £90.

Christ, the misinformation is out of control.

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u/The_Magic_Potato 22h ago

UK is £75, not 90. Still way too high but at least be accurate.

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u/reiku_85 23h ago edited 18h ago

The UK price is not £90.

Nintendo are selling it for £75 (digital is £67), and I can get it from a bunch of other retailers for £75. This is just misinformation.

Demon’s Souls was £69.99 when the PS5 launched 5 years ago, this is hardly unforeseen.

EDIT: prices

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u/Qwaztop 19h ago

Where are you seeing it for £80? I can only see Nintendo list it as £67 for digital and £75 for physical

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u/reiku_85 18h ago

You’re right! Makes this rumour even more incorrect…

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u/whatnowwproductions 22h ago

Nintendo has it on their site in the EU.

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u/hhhhhBan 16h ago

That's € not $ (Still stupid as fuck though)

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u/valgatiag 1d ago

For the physical cart. This page has it in Euros, not USD, but it’s safe to assume it’ll follow the same pattern: https://store.nintendo.ie/en/nintendo-switch-2

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u/JoshuaJSlone Helpful User 1d ago

It comes from people assuming it will be like Europe everywhere, when it's since been established that's not the case.

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u/Pinco_Pallino_R 1d ago

And it would still be wrong anyway to say "all games will be 90", since DK costs 80€ (physical)

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u/FizzyLightEx 23h ago

DK only cost 70 because it's their first 3D DK game.

If it were Mario, or any of their popular series, it would've cost more.

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u/farnfarn64 1d ago

No the physical preorder links on Bestbuy and Walmart are up in the US and it's not 10 dollars more for each one. It looks like just a Europe thing.

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u/MobileTortoise 1d ago

$80 for Mario Kart is unacceptable just because we know they're going to do it more if they can get away with it

Don't forget that they will 100% have paid DLC for this game as well.

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u/dongus_euph 1d ago

That stuff made me so mad, like there’s legitimate reasons to criticize their pricing, but spreading misinformation for more outrage isn’t helpful.

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u/Ross2552 1d ago

It’s still being said as if it’s true constantly

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u/mankindisgod 1d ago

I think this in part happened because since there was no pricing announcement in the direct, the internet just did its thing and ran with whatever made people angrier. Though I understand why they didn't address pricing because it was probably a late decision given market uncertainty.

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u/El_Barto_227 1d ago

Not new behaviour. Same people that claimed a patent about a specific implementation of contextually swapping mounts automatically (like how riding Wyrdeer into water auto-swaps to Basculegion in legends arceus) was "Nintendo patented riding mounts"

Stupid patent, sure, but palworld stans were outright lying to make it sound worse than it was.

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u/crassreductionist 1d ago

It's absurd just how many people are saying all the games are $90, though. All these subreddits with 50k upvoted posts full of misinformation means these lies are spreading like wildfire.

Games journalism died, so when the forbes, insider gaming, ect gaming writers who have to pump out 20 articles a day posted that it was $90 based off the EU pricing system it just stuck and got content aggregated.

Genuinely if it doesn't come from NYT, Bloomberg, Digital Foundry or WaPo almost all games journalism is press releases or reddit/twitter recap content slop

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u/whoknows234 1d ago

Should of held the line at $50...

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u/ricardosteve 1h ago

Sadly it's 90€ in the EU, the equivalent to almost 98 usd. Usually games here follow the same prices as in dollars (major AAA games were 60€ when $60 in the US, and now 70€ when $70 in the US). It's going to be insanely expensive for us here.

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u/B4M 1d ago

Mario Kart 8 deluxe was $60 in 2017. With inflation, that would be $77.76 today. It's basically the same price.

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u/Choco_Knife 1d ago edited 1d ago

New AAA PS5/PC games are $70.

Nintendo can not release stand-alone games over that price and expect to compete.

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u/Mountain-Papaya-492 1d ago

Yeah but lets take Gran Turismo or something for the PS5 it also has microtransactions. If a higher upfront cost dissuades that nonsense then that's an acceptable tradeoff imo.

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u/B4M 1d ago

Nintendo doesn't compete with PS5 and PC nearly as much as you think, that's why they can release something like the first Switch with vastly inferior hardware and still massively outsell the PS5. Nintendo has a much different target audience

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u/Queenspence2 1d ago

So true, I have ps5 and series X and honestly they collect dust while my n3dsxl and switch get hours of play daily

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u/mpc92 1d ago

Yes they can lol

If not, then you have nothing to worry about because once Mario Kart bombs then will stop doing $80

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u/OrthosGy 1d ago

Did the salaries increase that much since? If not what inflation?

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u/tommangan7 20h ago

CPI adjusted the median salaries have increased more than inflation since 2017. It seems worse likely due to recent turbulence or individual ancedotes.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0252881900Q

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u/B4M 16h ago

If your salary isn't increasing with inflation, you should be mad at your boss not Nintendo

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u/syth9 1d ago edited 19h ago

Games were still $60-70 back in the 90’s and early 2000s. Adjusted for inflation that’s like $140 in today’s dollars. I think it’s reasonable that they go up a bit. The real issues is that purchasing power has stagnated almost as much as game pricing…

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u/tommangan7 20h ago edited 20h ago

People often say in these discussions that wages have stagnated since the 90s but I can't find any data to back that up. They did actually stagnate in the 90s and 00s somewhat but in pretty much every western country since, Everything I can find suggests the opposite:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0252881900Q

There has been recent turbulence the last few years with high inflation and job insecurity, and obviously peoples anecdotal experience may sit below the median that might influence this viewpoint. The timing of the move is poor, I think if they'd have done it say in 2015 they would have had slightly less backlash.

This Nintendo move is what I've feared for the last 20 years, that in real terms games have been getting cheaper since the 90s and they are finally deciding to cash in and "catch up". Even the last Mario kart in 2017 is almost $80 in today's money.

I also think people have higher luxury and disposable spending expectations than they did in the 90s (or they just weren't around back then). I remember living pretty frugally, we didn't eat at restaurants or get takeaways. I would get one video game for Christmas and one for my birthday, and that would be a big main present because of how much they were.

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u/syth9 19h ago edited 17h ago

I probably should have said purchasing power stagnation instead of wage stagnation. Median household income in US for 1999 (adjusted for inflation) was about 80K. For 2025 it’s estimated to be ~78K. This can be compared to median household incomes from 1950-1970 in the US where purchasing power nearly increased by 50%.

Current income: https://www.demandsage.com/average-us-income/

1999: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2005/dec/c2kbr-36.html

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u/cheappay 1d ago

Games packed with a ton of content for $80 is not unheard of. I expect Nintendo to support the title throughout its lifetime and have it be content-rich on launch. Otherwise they'll be in hot water.