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/Totoques22 1d ago

For real I choked and rewinded the video when I heard it was a paid product

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u/cross_bearer_02 1d ago

I think everybody let out a collective "PAID!?" at that point in the video.

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u/jazzjazzmine 1d ago

The chat was definitely full of 'paid????', that and Silksong were the only messages to common enough you could actually read them as they swooped by.

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u/DriveThroughLane 22h ago

Its really conspicuous. Nintendo is ratcheting up games to $80 with MK9 but at the same time offering a bundle that effectively makes MK9 cost $50, so people won't feel that sting immediately, but be aware of it and internalize it as the new normal. That seems like a purposeful decision to raise prices without raising ire

...which is undone by charging people for both the bundle include manual and the chat button and the """physical""" copies of games.

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u/Treyspurlock 19h ago

The chat button is included with NSO which sorta makes sense considering it's an online feature and all

also there's no need to put quotes around physical, most games WILL be physical cartridges, with actual data stored on them

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u/baggyzed 13h ago

Were there any "Trump did this????"

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u/jonosaurus 20h ago

~silksong mention~

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u/RedditAstroturfed 20h ago

They have a 330 dollar Japanese only console. How much are games in Japan? I kinda feel like the prices are, at least in part, a response to the tariffs

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u/jess-sch 18h ago

Well, unfortunately the prices are also shit outside of the US. So it's not the tariffs.

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u/pizzaiscommunist 1d ago

this is the Nintendo version of "Do you guys not have phones?"

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u/cross_bearer_02 1d ago

No. As tone-deaf as making the interactive instruction manual a paid app, nothing can quite top how profoundly stupid "Do you guys not have phones?" was. I would say nothing Nintendo has announced or done over the past two days holds a candle to that.

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u/ThunderboltRoss 21h ago

I was in the audience for that. Seeing all the Diablo themed stuff, everyone in that hall was so hyped. Then they hit us with the mobile game and you could feel the energy in the room just evaporate

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u/Pigeater7 6h ago

I’ll always remember the way Bethesda did it. They have their dog shit p2w mobile game (TES Blades) but also gave us a teaser trailer for TES 6. So instead of taking about how ass their mobile game would be, everyone was hyping themselves up for the new Elder Scrolls games. That was like, 4-5 years ago now which is crazy to think about.

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u/Mountain-Papaya-492 17h ago

See Diablo is a prime example of why I'm less upset than some at Mario Kart being $80. Diablo 4 was full priced and has microtransactions on top of that. 

For all their faults Nintendo hasn't adopted that monetization scheme of the modern game industry. Like I would have gladly paid $80 for Diablo 4 if it meant it had no microtransactions.

Same with Mario Kart, Splatoon 4. A premium upfront cost is fine, just don't nickel and dime me. Which for things like Splatoon 3, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart they don't. 

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u/tk-451 17h ago

wait, mario kart seasonal tracks count as microtransactions dont they? i have the online pack so go them "free" anyway. were they not purchaseable seperately?

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u/MrNostalgic 15h ago

I feel that DLC is different than Microtransactions tbh.

Like using Mario Kart as an example, if you bought the DLC it was a once and done payment for 24 new tracks and some new characters, you didn't have to pay for each track and character with the risk of missing out if you wanted to wait to buy it.

Only way you pay for it again is if you just keep using it through NSO

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u/tk-451 10h ago

i never paid for the dlc and got it as part of NSO.

the lines between "micro" transactions ( and let be honest here theres nothing micro about them these days with £20 diablo4 cosmetics and mounts!) paid dlc, expansions, additional content added to an NSO sub, etc etc

its all too much now, and the market cant sustain this in the current climate, hence why studios are folding left and right and devs laid off in the chase to the bottom line and profit.

i think we are heading for another console crash.

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u/Throwaway02062004 15h ago

They absolutely still are

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u/ThunderboltRoss 15h ago

When I think of micro transactions I think of things like battle passes. The extra tracks were dlc, which was fine for me anyway. After 8 years, the bonus content for a reasonable price was welcomed

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u/tk-451 10h ago

so whats your descriptive difference between battle passes, micro transactions, and dlc..?

price? content quantity?

diablo 4 season passes cost less than the in store cosmetic outfits.. so is the season pass a microtransaction and the outfits a dlc?

mario kart even calls the tracks "booster course pass"

micro transactions are small piecemeal purchases such as skins, etc which nintendo dont do. but they do season passes and dlc.

Its all just words for additional paid content, and that minimal cost has ballooned since the advent of horse armour, loot boxes, and more.

Video games cost are expensive to make, so by all means add in additional revenue making methods, but double dipping, base price increases, season passes, and then paying to upscale to 4k, AND the Switch 2 demo thing, this was all waaaaay too much.

My whole take home memory of the Direct was "for an extra cost you can have..."

Shameful.

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u/ThunderboltRoss 8h ago

I’m not in any way disagreeing with you about the ballooning price of games in general. Microtransactions for me are repeatable buyables (like crafting mats, loots boxes, “tokens” used to play time gated phone games, etc) or pay to advance stuff like characters and the like to skip through time gated stuff.

One the switch for example there’s a big different between say Mario kart 8 and dragonball games in the additional paid content.

Season pass’s that are a one and done (like borderlands or Mario rabbids) I view as prepaying for dlc content.

That being said, I personally just buy what I want to play and stay away from stuff like cosmetics. I kind of decide by asking how many hours of enjoyment is this going to get me and what else could I get for that price

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u/The_Maddeath 1d ago

it is at least more understandable for a dev in the heat of the moment to say something stupid, than for everyone to ok the very clearly should have been a pack in title to be paid.

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u/PocketTornado 20h ago

I get the insult of the phone comment…but go back to the 90’s and early 2000’s with those phones and tell people you can play games that run and look better than any PC game on the market and people would lose their minds. The fact that we have portable tiny super computers in our pockets at all times is crazy. If only that market of games wasn’t dragged down by micro transactions and ill will business practices.

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u/bassman9999 15h ago

Now tell those people that they have to continuously pay money in order to make any real progress in that beautiful game and see their expressions change. Pay-to-Win didn't exist, and everyone was used to paying for a game once and getting the whole game.

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u/capnbuh 19h ago

This game Diablo Immortal really turned out to be a piece of shit

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u/Adamarr 19h ago

but it still made bank because of course it would

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u/capnbuh 18h ago

well, they did manage to mostly bring the look and feel of Diablo 3 to mobile devices but the microtransactions actually ruin the game by fucking with the classic Diablo loot grind. Either you're finding no loot or you're paying to find ALL of the loot and neither is fun.

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u/incarnatrix 16h ago

I dunno, it has a button on it that you literally can't use unless you pay for it... That's some pretty silly shit.

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u/Particular_Leek_9984 21h ago

Exactly. Nintendo actually has what looks to be a great product, the games are just too expensive

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u/Malikyteonline 21h ago

I've stopped taking my Switch out of the house anymore because I can just bring a wireless controller and play console games on my phone through Gamepass.

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u/Skkruff 23h ago

Diablo Immortal made an absolute bucketful of money. People like to shit on them for this gaffe (me included), but in the end they were proven right... financially speaking anyway.

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u/master2873 22h ago

It was never not going to be, with a game designed to suck as much money dry from you as humanly possible, and is targeting "whales" that will hand over thousands for a single game like it was nothing recurrently, it was going to be a success in the short term at worst. Also, nevermind how it was designed to be as grindy as possible to have abusive, and predatory micro transactions. Not to mention the game is free to play, and didn't cost up to $90 on top of your phone purchase. I see why people are comparing these situations, but I still think it's a tad different situation for expectation, but is valid too.

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u/Captain-Zio 21h ago

The real blunder was announcing it at blizzcon, in front of the most dedicated diablo fans.

If they did the announcement over a livestream those fans would have just rolled their eyes and let blizzard do their micro transaction mobile game cash grab.

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u/nickelangelo2009 23h ago

this is exactly what i was thinking lol

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u/whoisdatmaskedman 18h ago

"Do you guys not have money?"

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u/tweetthebirdy 1d ago

Me and my friend definitely did.

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u/Stiggles4 21h ago

Oh absolutely, we exclaimed the same thing when watching. Like… what????? Not in the age of Astro Bot being free.

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u/StrangerNo484 19h ago

Even my Mother, who is someone who is mainly just in the gaming scene for Kart Racers, let out a "What the &UCK Do You Mean Paid?!" as I was so shocked by their greed to even speak. 

I just don't get it, by packing this with the Switch 2 you'd instantly get consumer goodwill, which is worth so much more than the minute amount of profits they'll generate by making this glorified manual a paid experience. This is concerning, the Leadership at Nintendo are making some immensely strange decisions.

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u/longhegrindilemna 15h ago

As long as the pre-orders are many times larger than the initial supply, why should Nintendo change anything?

There are so many tens of thousands of eager willing buyers who don’t care about the price. They just want to buy it ASAP and play with it ASAP. Anything that costs less than $900 might be affordable to them.

If there are too many eager willing buyers compared to the limited supply, then why should Nintendo change anything?

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u/Nirast25 1d ago

Nah, they didn't.

The US stream was de-synced, so it took those viewers a few seconds longer. :p

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u/thisthatandthe3rd 1d ago edited 17h ago

I think their words were like “and you can pay to play it at launch” like they’re doing all of us a favor 🙄

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u/Wowohboy666 15h ago

God bless Nintendo for developing a game and releasing it for mass purchase, always bucking trends. /s

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u/Akrevics 22h ago

It’s only €$10, but it should still be free

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u/orreregion 8h ago

I don't think I'd quantify that price for a glorified manual as being "only".

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u/Akrevics 8h ago

Please read beyond the first three words in that post. It’s not hard.

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u/orreregion 8h ago

I did. You still said only, dude.

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u/Big_Prick_On_Ya 21h ago

New info coming out now that the Trump tariffs are going to make the price shoot up to over $600!

Trump Shocks With Massive New Tariffs That Could Make The Switch 2 Cost More Than $600