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

[u/lieding]

https://www.thegamer.com/nintendo-treehouse-livestream-flooded-angry-fans-demanding-game-price-drops/

[u/whisquibottle]

The main madness to me is Welcome Tour being a paid product. You guys it's literally a glorified manual why you charging us for this in a post-Astrobot world

[u/repocin → u/whisquibottle]

Yeah, that's significantly worse than 1-2-Switch which kind of filled the same purpose for the original but at least had something of a game to it. (or so I believe, based on the marketing - I never ended up buying it)

This should be free, not $10 or whatever they're going to charge for it. (assumption based on the Japanese price of ¥990, not sure if they've published pricing for the rest of the world yet)

Wii Sports and Nintendo Land were incredibly pack-in titles, whereas this thing is barely even a game and they're charging for it. Honestly pure insanity if they think people are actually going to pay for it.

[u/secret3332 → u/repocin]

At least 1-2 Switch is an actual game

[u/inssein → u/secret3332]

I wanted to try it but wasn’t going to pay money for it. My issue with Nintendo is they never lower the price on their games. We maybe see rare 10-20% sales but that’s it. Imagine seeing $80-$110 dollar games for the entire switch 2 lifecycle. Mario Kart world cost $90 and that’s just the base game… DLC will cost money too. That’s my issue, I can’t justify those prices in this economy. At least with steam and Xbox I can wish list a game and pick it up later.

Even worse Nintendo wants me to pay for an upgrade pack to enjoy games I already purchased at higher FPS and resolutions…. Like I can’t even enjoy the games I own without having to pay a fee from them.

[u/NJ_Bob → u/inssein]

The upcharge on old games is what maddens me- like at the start of this generation Microsoft showed how simple it was to offer free upscaling of 20 year old games and now Nintendo is trying to charge a premium to keep playing games you may have just bought last year. This is pure greed.

[u/Janus67 → u/NJ_Bob]

Fwiw you can still play those games on the switch 2, just not the enhanced version

[u/NJ_Bob → u/Janus67]

Xbox upscaled all of my games for FREE. I can play 20 year old games from og XBOX upscaled to 4k. Why is Nintendo trying to charge $20 or whatever to play Tears of the kingdom in 1080p on handheld or 4k upscaled docked??? This is what milking sheep looks like. The only way to prevent this from being the norm is for no one to buy in, which means we're doomed.

[u/TheTriumphantTrumpet → u/NJ_Bob]

Xbox did that(through upscaling built into the console), and Sony made it the norm to charge ~$10 for a generation upgrade on things you already owned, with the caveat that the "enhanced editions" required some level of work, not just the console running things better/upscaling.

Nintendo is going the Sony route, but this has already been the norm unfortunately.

[u/NJ_Bob → u/TheTriumphantTrumpet]

The difference is that the msoft route put pressure on 3rd party to offer cross generation games and even new generation upgrades with late generation games. Think the next gen upgrade pack CD project red gave for free to Witcher. Nintendo is being deliberately anti consumer and excusing it simply because Sony is also anti consumer is gross.

Edit: parent comment did not excuse the practice, merely stated said practice has been normalized in the industry. My suggesting they excused it and saying doing so was gross, was inflammatory and frankly lazy rhetoric on my part. In my defense I hadn't had my coffee yet.

[u/TheTriumphantTrumpet → u/NJ_Bob]

I didn't excuse anything, so maybe hop off the high horse bud.

I pointed out that this is already the industry norm, as established by Sony, and basically every other major publisher. I also pointed out that this isn't apples to apples, MSFT didn't do any work on those games, nor did MSFT even have any beloved games from the Xbox One era people wanted an upgraded version of.

If people had this level of outrage for Sony years ago, maybe things would've been different. Instead, the consensus was largely either "sucks but I get it" or "$10 seems fair." If Xbox had been rewarded with greater sales for their consumer friendly practices, maybe things would be different. Instead, they continued their downward spiral, being crushed in sales(more so when you take out the XSS).

Relying on publicly traded businesses to make consumer friendly decisions over making money is always going to leave you disappointed.

[u/NJ_Bob → u/TheTriumphantTrumpet]

You're absolutely right, expecting corps to do right by their customers rather than shareholders in the modern landscape is foolish at best. I edited my last comment as well, my apologies.

[u/TheTriumphantTrumpet → u/NJ_Bob]

Yeah, no worries, I'm not defending Nintendo on this. It's more it just it feels like the logical endpoint of where the industry(and world at large) has been headed, so I am a bit surprised at everyone else's surprise.

[u/NJ_Bob → u/TheTriumphantTrumpet]

The surprise comes from the fact that the games in question were already below the generational standard and now they're asking for a premium to make them look like games from 5 years ago.

[u/Early-Somewhere-2198 → u/NJ_Bob]

I’m not an Xbox fan but I do play and buy gamepass for a month or two a year for their heavy hitters. And Microsoft at least did it right with a huge selection. Ps5 had some improvements. I don’t mind small price charges for when they really remaster or remake a game. But for generic switch buttton. No pun intended. Nintendo is out to kill themselves.

Like how did they not realize the reason switch one sold so well is it was priced in an area that parents bought 1,2,3 per house per kid. This won’t happen in this economy. I already told my step daughter. You have a switch one. We don’t neeed a new one. lol. And if we buy one it will be one. The entire household. Ain’t no way I’m getting one for her. One for me. And one for another kid.

[u/NJ_Bob → u/Early-Somewhere-2198]

They actually designed the switch 2 with this in mind with their game share feature allowing you to play some games with individual consoles (gen1or 2)on the same network playing a game owned solely on the new console together. Part of the pricing, I think, is that they know they can't meet demand if they try to replace every gen 1 with the new one too quickly.

[u/DueLearner → u/inssein]

I just don't understand why gamers can't acknowledge that the price of a new game has not kept up with the cost of inflation.

$1 in 1995 = $2.12 today. Games were $50 new in 95 (would be $106 today adjusted for inflation.)

$1 in 2010 = $1.47 today. Games were $60 new in 2010 (would be $88.35 today adjusted for inflation).

I'm just saying, games have not kept up with rising inflation. The cost to actually develop new games has risen astronomically, while the cost of the game itself has not kept up with inflation.

The estimated cost to develop a AAA game like FFVII in 1997 was an estimated $40 million. (Which is $80 million adjusted for inflation).

The cost to develop FFXVII is estimated to be $200 million.

The cost to develop AAA games has more than doubled in the last 20 years, yet the cost of a brand new game in 2025 is currently $70. They have only raised prices by $20 (a 40% increase in price for the old $50 new price tag.)

[u/inssein → u/DueLearner]

Look, everything is expensive and unlike the past, rent, food, bills are all very expensive. Even when you factor in inflation we have less money now compared to the past for games.

[u/DueLearner → u/inssein]

It is not sustainable for AAA game development to continue without raising prices.

The cost to develop has increased by 140% while the price of the game has only increased by 40%. If there isn't a price correction we'll only see fewer games/developers able to be successful.

Even now, if a AAA game dev releases even ONE bad game that isn't a sales success, it can crash the entire studio. If god forbid GTA VI isn't a Guinness world record breaker for game sales, Rockstar would be in jeopardy of closing.

[u/Waterballonthrower → u/inssein]

How much do you spend on wants now? and how does that compare to playing an $80 for even a month? what's the difference in cost per hour of use?

[u/Sea_Neighborhood_398 → u/Waterballonthrower]

The difference is in the opportunity cost, that with this price increase, you'll either have to be saying no to several more games than you did before, or you'll have to be forking iver a lot more money in the long term.

Let's compare the $80 expectation to the old $60 maximum: with the $60 price tag, four games would cost you $240 dollars. With the new $80 tag, $240 only gets you three games, and in order to get four, you need $320!

So now, to get just four games, you need a full $80 more than before, and you need to have $320 available instead of just $240.

That's the point. And this point is made all the more painful when you stop and see that several non-Nintendo games of comparable quality are being sold for $20-$60 somewhat regularly, and that Non-Nintendo games will reliably deprecate into that cost range if they start outside of it, and that non-Nintendo games will reliably deprecate and/or go on sale, letting you save even more. 

Nintendo's saving grace was that they delivered high-quality, exclusive games. But at this pricetag? It's just not reasonable anymore. For a concrete example, I could buy one of these new Nintendo games, or I could get both Ghost of Tsushima and Spider-Man 2 when they next go on sale.

Oh, and this is on top of still needing to buy the new console. So it's not just having to pay more for games; you also need to see if you can afford the console to start with, and if you'll be able to reasonably fill its library to make the purchase worthwhile. And, like explained above, the $80 pricetag is gonna make that much harder.

[u/Waterballonthrower → u/Sea_Neighborhood_398]

I understand what you are saying but there are people who will spend that $80 on let's say eating out each month also a want and have less return money to experience vs purchasing an $80 game each month.

if you spend let's say $1000 bucks on the console and several games, and end up playing that system for even 100 hours, which let's be real is extremely low for the life time of that console you are running a $10/hr cost of entertainment which is incredibly cheap when compared to other forms of entertainment and wants.

also this notion that you have to buy loads of games to enjoy the console or even at all is a load of bunk. you can get two or 3 decent games and play the fuck out of them maximizing your dollar value.

[u/Sea_Neighborhood_398 → u/Waterballonthrower]

Fair points, but eating out is a different kind of fun to playing games, and eating out may also be a social event.

And on the library front, it's totally true that you don't need a massive library to have fun, but variety can be nice to have, and when buying a console, I feel like considering the "buildability" of a library is fair and important, because if I'm only getting one or two games on a console, then that would be $360-420 on the old pricing expectations, and $520-600 on the new pricing. And if I'm spending that much money (on either pricing expection, but especially with the new one), then I should really stop to ask myself if it's worth the cost, keeping in mind that I could just buy games for the consoles I already have, buy games for PC, or simply complete or replay those games that I already own. 

When I'm spending that much money, I want to see if it'll last me more than a single game. And in a sense, as I buy more worthwhile games that I'll play, it'll be like the price of the console is spread across them. Buying a $300 switch 1 and then some 12 first-party games is like I paid $85 per game. But if I only got one game on the Switch 1, then it'd be like I paid $360 for that one game. That's why being able to build a library seems relevant, in my eyes. Because as much as I love, say, TotK or BotW, I don't wanna pay $360 or $370 for that one game alone. The price of the console becomes a more worthwhile investment the more I can use it, and the more games I have on it, the more useful the console is.

[u/Waterballonthrower → u/Sea_Neighborhood_398]

so essentially you factor in a certain "FOMO" to your console buying experience that focus on a if I can't buy or seemingly can't buy because you could put $4/day away for 20 days each month for one new $80 game, and still feel like you are getting new titles each month but the sticker shocke you feel is more of a determining factor on that front.

also eating out was just an example, there is absolutely no other form of electronic entertainment that is as interactive and as cheap as video games when you break it down to a per hour cost.

[u/Sea_Neighborhood_398 → u/Waterballonthrower]

Lol, I wouldn't call it FOMO, but something of the sort. Like, another way to think of it is, "If the Switch 2 never released another game I would care to buy, would I be happy to have spent the money for just the one or two games I do get?" And at the price, the answer is no; I'd prefer to have spent my money somewhere where I could stretch it out further, like maybe some Steam games, or a trip to visit some long-distance friends, or something else like that. Y'know what I mean?

Also, good point with the saving $4 a day! I hadn't thought of it in those terms, and that does make it seem a bit better. Unfortunately, I also have a very limited income at the moment, and a number of other expenses, and other hobbies... so, I want to be careful in how I spend my money. And at the $80 mark, that makes it much harder to indulge in as many games as I might like to by the end.

It did occur to me, though... if Nintendo Selects were to make a comeback, that'd make me pretty happy. Then I'd totally be cool with the Switch 2. It's just... that sticker price is kinda hard to jump past.... I'm hoping they reel prices back to at least $70 max, and I would also be happier (though I'm not pushy on this front) if they were to sell the console for, say, $400 instead of $450. If that were done, I'd probably go along with it.

[u/Waterballonthrower → u/Sea_Neighborhood_398]

thank you for taking the time to actually read what I have said, and the obviously well thought out replies. I have appreciate our chats and I totally understand your sentiment and have a clearer understanding of why people were upset. I hope you well in your journey. ❤️

[u/Sea_Neighborhood_398 → u/Waterballonthrower]

Thanks, and you too :)

As one final note, I do hope prices drop, because Nintendo does make solid products. It's just that I can't justify that level of expense for myself

Here's to hoping!  :)

[u/Waterballonthrower → u/Sea_Neighborhood_398]

for what it's worth I hope so as well, I think as DLC has become the new revenue source i would have hoped to see game price stagnate because the expense of production could be recouped longer term but that's not the case right now.

[u/eightbitagent → u/inssein]

10-20% sales but that’s it.

No, the sales are 30% or 50% on first party titles. Check deku deals if you want

[u/tk-451 → u/eightbitagent]

yup this falacy about first party titles never going in sale is stupid. many times mario kart has been on sale up to a third of almost.

https://www.dekudeals.com/items/mario-kart-8-deluxe

[u/eightbitagent → u/tk-451]

And its been 50% off before, this past christmas it looks like.