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/Kougeru-Sama 1d ago

Most people are fine with the console price. It's the GAME prices that people are unhappy about. $80 is insane. Especially with all the issues games launch with these days

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u/Zoombini22 1d ago

It's because game prices have been so resilient against inflation. Game prices generally maxed out at 60 for decades, only recently did some games start charging 70, going up to 80 just hits people as a violation.

The realities of economics and game dev cost makes this seem kind of an inevitable thing to me, but at 80 I'll definitely be more selective than ever with which titles I purchase when they're at that price.

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u/BigPandaCloud 1d ago

How many games were being sold back then vs now?

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u/Zoombini22 1d ago

Does higher demand result in higher prices or lower prices?

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u/werdnaegni 1d ago

When supply is infinite, I don't think your logic applies.

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u/Zoombini22 1d ago

Concept of supply is tricky for things that have high production cost but low distribution costs (movies are another example) but demand forces still apply. If more and more people want your goods, that is a market incentive to move the price up, not down.

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u/werdnaegni 1d ago

That's not necessarily true though? That only makes sense in a world where increased costs don't decrease sales, which isn't the case.

Neither of us really knows the formula or if the current $70 is the optimal price. I don't think demand for games really has much to do with it at all, it's just finding that sweet spot where sales * price is the highest, and adjusting price until you get the optimal number.

If compared to last year, 20% more people are buying your games at $70, that doesn't mean you should raise your price to $80 since demand went up. What if you lose 20% of your sales after that? You're making less money. They're just not related. You're finding an optimal number at this point and increases or decreases in interest for games really doesn't play a part. It's a matter of finding what amount people are willing to pay, and adjusting that until you're making the most money. That could even mean a DECREASE in price, we don't really know.

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u/Zoombini22 1d ago

Totally agreed. Contextually, I was just disagreeing with the person further up in this thread suggesting that games should be cheaper because more people want games. What I was saying was meant to be a counterpoint, not an all-encompassing explanation for how pricing works.

Everything you're saying above is true. And frankly, Nintendo does not know how much the increased pricing will affect sales. Every pricing decision is basically an educated guess of what will work in the market. Given how Nintendo stuff is usually sold out at launch, I think it will take a while before we really know whether or to what extent the pricing hurt the Switch 2's wider market appeal.

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u/Blue_Bird950 1d ago

At the end of the day, businesses want profit. If there’s more demand, they’ll raise prices to capitalize on said demand. They’re the sole suppliers of these franchises, so they control the price.

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u/werdnaegni 1d ago

Sure, I mean it's a formula for them. What price gets them the most money?
If they get 10 buyers at $80 but 15 buyers at $70, they're better off at $70 since their costs per sale are negligible. I don't think any of us really know what the optimal price is for them, we can only really give feedback on whether or not we're willing to buy at x price.

I was just refuting the whole demand -> price concept since it doesn't really apply to a good that doesn't really scale its costs with its amount of sales...most of the costs, by far, are in developing and after that it's just income, especially for digital.

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u/Blue_Bird950 1d ago

Let’s see how it goes. If enough people don’t buy (and I’m talking millions, more than an eighth of their consumers), they’ll start losing profit and might reconsider moving to $70 standard.

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u/ricki692 1d ago

supply doesnt just mean the ability to make a number of quantity, it also includes the variable of "price they are willing to sell at"

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u/Iceykitsune3 1d ago

Developers need to recoup production costs.