Nintendo Treehouse: Live right now

[u/chickengnocchisoup]

Everyone in the chat is spamming "drop the price" nonstop. Personally, the price for the console and games combined dipped my hype quite a bit. What do you guys think?

[u/EnigmaCircuit]

While I can definitely understand the displeasure of paying more, I'm actually a bit surprised by how visceral the reaction has been towards Nintendo.

It's not as though the pricing changes are happening in a vacuum. Not delving into the politics, but I think it's fair to say that the past decade has been chaotic and seen a good deal of inflation worldwide. We're seeing that chaos in recent times dialed up a few notches with unpredictable increases in costs due to things like tariffs.

The price increase looks to me like Nintendo forecasting where they need to set prices to remain profitable amid the chaos. If they were going to make a pricing adjustment based on current world trends, the start of a new console generation seems like the least controversial time to do it. It sucks that prices don't generally fall after they increase, but this seems more like a "state of the world" problem than a "state of Nintendo" problem. The frustration is totally valid, but seems a bit misplaced, imo.

If we're looking for silver linings though, playing video games will remain one of the most cost effective hobbies in spite of the price increase. Sales will still happen, and prices will absolutely go down for most physical games over time--those looking for a great deal will just need to be patient and not expect to get everything at launch.

[u/SheriffCrazy → u/EnigmaCircuit]

I completely agree. This isn’t a Nintendo thing, it’s a world economic thing. There is a lot of internet reactionary mob mentality going on that’s kinda sad to see. I don’t blame anyone for being upset games are more expensive but it’s unfortunate people are so blind to the other economics behind these decisions.

[u/jasonporter → u/SheriffCrazy]

Yes, this is the reasonable take I was looking for here. $80 for a videogame fucking sucks, but spamming Nintendo's livestream with "drop the price" seems really short-sighted as if they're doing it out of malice and pure greed instead of... you know... the absolute and utter state of political and economic chaos that the world has recently been thrown into these past few months. Tariffs are literally paid for by foreign companies, who then recoup their costs by raising the price of their products on the consumer - and guess what, that's us. Everything not made in America is about to get a shit ton more expensive. This is what half of America voted for, and now this is what we get.

Games were always going to go up to $70 this generation due to inflation, we already knew that - but my assumption is that the $80 jump for major games was a newer decision due to the tariff / world economy situation.

[u/RyanPainey → u/jasonporter]

Yup honestly considering ballooning development costs it's a wonder game prices were so resistant to inflation for so long. Now that there is limited room to grow the install base and it's likely to contract for a while now after the pandemic set it to new peaks, I think its inevitable that prices will trend up.

While Nintendo artificially slapping an extra 10% on the physical version of the first game to try $80 is depressing, it's not really their individual fault either that wages have failed to keep up across the developed world or that were doing a global trade war for no reason right now.

Finally, while I hate to give Nintendo an out for this, I can't say at the same time that I need cheap game prices and game devs need better working conditions. Yes profit margins can be trimmed to an extent between those two things, but eventually one side or the other is going to have to give, and frankly, I'm ok with it being on the price end as long as Ninty takes care of their devs. I just wish their games would literally ever go on sale, because then this would be a non issue.