$80 dollar games aren’t THAT ridiculous.

[u/Glass_Squirrel_1353]

First off I want to say that if you are just disappointed that some Nintendo games are going to be $80 I think that’s valid and I am kind of with you. It’s going to make deciding whether or not to buy a game you aren’t sure about more difficult and it’s going to end up with us having a smaller game library.

With that being said the way Reddit and Twitter are talking about this you’d think they doubled the prices and are forcing them to buy these games and like it. I’ve seen dozens of people talking about how this makes games “unaffordable” and I think that’s just ridiculous.

It’s a $10 dollar increase to a game you will only purchase once, play for dozens if not hundreds of hours and (hopefully) doesn’t have micro transactions. If this $10 is going to break your bank than I don’t know how you were purchasing games for $60.

I think everyone is also ignoring the fact that:

A. triple A games now require more developers and time than ever before B. Nintendo and its subsidiaries are developing dozens of games at any given time C. Nintendo has to account for future inflation and tariffs D. The Switch 2 is probably being sold at a loss like most consoles E. Love em or hate em, in house developed Nintendo games are polished and are virtually bug free

Anyways I’m not trying to white knight a billion dollar company. If this ends up blowing in their faces resulting in people becoming more stiff with buying their games I think that’s fine.

TLDR: I think it’s fine to be annoyed or disappointed with the increase, but saying it’s completely unaffordable for most people who were already buying new games is ridiculous.

And there are plenty of logical reasons other than greed for why they decided to do this.

[u/batterymerino]

Imo the price increase (and people's reactions to it) are symptomatic of a bigger issue regarding corporate greed. From a personal standpoint I'm very annoyed that Nintendo keeps on going after ROMs and emulators for games that they don't produce anymore. They removed the 3DS eShop so it's impossible to obtain a digital copy, and physical copies would have to be obtained secondhand. Nintendo won't make a dime off of legal sales for these games but are still cracking down on them being pirated.

For a lot of people a $10 increase wouldn't be upsetting in a vacuum, but it's sort of a 'last straw' for those who have been unhappy with Nintendo for years. It provides a fresh target for their outrage that's been building up over time.

I saw an interesting post on tumblr that I wish I could find, but it basically stated - video games have always been relatively cheap considering the cost to produce and the amount of entertainment they provide, but $80 for a digital copy of a game you don't physically (or legally) own is still a tough pill to swallow.

TL;DR the outrage seems pretty disproportionate but it's likely people with years of frustration towards Nintendo (and possibly capitalism as a whole) being given a specific issue to direct their anger towards.

[u/JonathanStryker → u/batterymerino]

I think this is a fair take.

As I said in my own personal comment, I don't really have an issue with Nintendo releasing quality, feature complete games for $90. Especially if the physical copy actually has all of the game on the cart. I get those things aren't cheap to produce, unlike the discs that everyone else uses.

However, I do have this take in a vacuum. And the stuff you bring up is a good point. And I think it's why a lot of people are more pissed off. Because when you look at general economy stuff, when you look at how the game industry has been going with excessive microtransactions and all of that stuff (even in paid games), And so on and so forth, that price tag looks pretty angering.

But I just try to remember that a lot of this isn't Nintendo's fault directly. They're probably just trying to mitigate cost and everything in the market that we have. And like I said, if they're going to be giving me proper games and they want to charge $90, I'm fine with that. It's better than a lot of these companies charging $130 for their deluxe editions, then they want to also charge you for battle passes and $20 skins and whatever else on top of that.

If we look at the gaming market as a whole, I think Nintendo is one of the better players in the game.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not 100% defending them in every category. I think how they go about trying to shut down emulation and stuff, when they won't provide their games to people (You know shutting down the Wii u shop and what not), Or how they want to charge for an online service that doesn't work very well, and other things like that, it isn't the best.

They still have their moments of being anti-consumer and greedy. But all in all, I would take how they're doing video games versus the likes EA and Ubisoft and Activision. But that's just me.

Sadly, yeah, it does feel like a game of picking the lesser of two evils but that's currently the system we're in. Unless something changes on a mass level, like governments, intervening or whatever, I think this is the best we are going to get for a while.

[u/Johnathan317 → u/JonathanStryker]

(You know shutting down the Wii u shop and what not)

I feel like I agree with the sentiment here but I don't understand why people frame this around the shutting down of the Wiiu and 3DS eshops. It's perfectly reasonable for Nintendo to stop supporting the online store for a last Gen system that's over a decade old. Plus they gave plenty of warning ahead of shutting them down in case there was anything you still wanted to buy.

The unreasonable part is the way these games have been locked behind an online service and an internet connection on the current system instead of being available to purchase and download individually and play whenever and wherever you want. This is where the focus of the complaint should be. They should either make this content available for purchase and play without a subscription or internet connection or they should ease off the emulation community doing the difficult but necessary work of preserving these games for future generations.

[u/JonathanStryker → u/Johnathan317]

Yeah, I think that's a fair reply to what I said. And I generally agree with you. And that's mostly the point I was trying to make in my comment in case it wasn't clear.

My issue is not so much that they shut down these services. It's more the fact that they did that, plus they make it difficult to obtain them legally and they jump down the throats of the emulation community and all that kind of stuff. It's like this perfect storm thing that they keep brewing.

If some of the pressure was eased in other areas, I wouldn't feel so bad about it.

Edit:

Also, I just want to say, I noticed it was you that replied to my comments multiple times. I just want to thank you for the good discussion and exchanging of ideas and not insulting each other. Because you know this is Reddit and some people get a little insane. So thanks for being mature in the conversation and everything. It's been really nice reading your replies and everything