When The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword The motion-controlled adventure, launched in 2011 for the Nintendo Wii, was $ 49.99. This week, Nintendo announced a new version of the game for the Switch: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD, priced at $ 59.99, which adds a dollar to the price for each passing year since the release of the original game.
Nintendo fans everywhere are giving a silent sigh of resignation. Skyward Sword, a 10-year-old Wii game, is more expensive than when it first came out a decade ago – and it’s going to be expensive, as first-party Nintendo Switch games almost never get price drops. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a port of a Nintendo Wii U game launched in 2017, is still being sold for the full price almost four years later. Super Mario Odyssey too The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Party, and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe.
Look at this:
Nintendo unveils The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD …
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Not everyone likes this. In fact, it feels wrong. Nintendo’s competitors, such as Sony, regularly lower prices for big budget AAA games. God of War for PS4 was launched in April 2018 for $ 59.99, but by October the price was permanently reduced to just $ 39.99. Today, it costs less than $ 20. Marvel’s Spider-Man was released the same year and received a similar price drop of $ 20 in February 2019. Xbox, PlayStation and PC game releases often see big price drops within the first year, or not long after. It feels like a standard practice. As buyers, we expected this, and the expectation makes Nintendo’s consistently high prices feel appalling. As Nintendo is unfair.
But Nintendo is not unfair. It just follows our lead – because as much as we want to pay less for the Nintendo Switch versions of reissued Wii U games, we do not. We pay full price and still pay full price no matter how old the games are.
As usual, math and economics ruin everything. According to Nintendo’s latest fiscal earnings report, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has sold more than 33 million copies since its launch, earning Nintendo a potentially staggering windfall. And the game is still a bestseller: it’s still the fifth best-selling game on the Nintendo Switch eShop and to this day it’s Amazon’s ninth best-selling Nintendo Switch game.
Who does not like Mario Kart?
Nintendo
To put this in perspective, one of the PlayStation 4’s best-selling games, God of War, sold approximately 12 million copies by June 2019, and is Amazon’s 23rd best-selling PS4 game. PlayStation had to lower its price to get buyers interested in Kratos; meanwhile, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has been selling a record number at full price since its launch.
Nintendo games are expensive. Everyone hates it. And yet Nintendo has no reason to drop prices – it sells more copies of its games than its competitors and earns more money on every copy sold.
And, for better or worse, Nintendo fans have become accustomed to expensive games. On social media, we joke bitterly about the “Switch tax” that modern ports of older games at a premium price. We often try to rationalize the higher prices – sure, Doom (2016) and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt cost more on Switch, but developers had to rebuild and optimize those games to work on Nintendo’s low-power hardware. Sometimes we need to rationalize harder: Final Fantasy X / X-2 HD Remaster costs less than $ 30 on Steam and PS4. The price increase from $ 20 to $ 49.99 is the devil’s agreement to play it on a portable platform.
Óscar Gutiérrez / CNET
Nintendo has nurtured an expectation of expensive games, and although we do not like it, we have accepted it. Consumers talked to their wallets and Nintendo heard us loud and clear: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is worth $ 59.99, despite being a decade-old Wii game that originally sold for $ 10 less is.
It feels wrong, as Nintendo is unfair – but the data does not lie. We’re going to buy it anyway and Nintendo will print money again.
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