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Spazzy_D said:
KylieDog said:

That isn't how it works.  You've never bought something you knew was robbing you in price but you wanted/needed it regardless?  Things sell past their 'worth' all the time, just look at ebay for millions of examples.


That IS how it works in a free market.  The market dictates the price, if people stop buying them, becuase they don't see the value relative to other games in this example, then the price goes down.

Yes, but like I said to immortal, the first buy doesn't reflect the rip-off. It's only in the follow-ups that we see the effects of the regret sentiment. I agree with KD.

Immortal:

While what you're saying is true, there are about a million other reasons for which Nintendo has seen a decline in some of its recent games. I don't know about Brain Age, but both Nintendogs and NSMB, some of my favourite games on the DS, were much less entertaining for me on the 3DS. And, mind you, I've never even seen what this so-called competition looks like so the value of these games has just declined independently for me. How do we know that this isn't the case for everyone else?

We can see that this clearly doesn't apply to all of Nintendo's successful DS games since Mario Kart is holding on just fine on the 3DS, 3D Mario (although it's practically 2D) is doing better than ever and AC is breaking records everywhere in Japan. I'm sure these games have some cheap competition, too, but it doesn't seem to be affecting them.

Para 1. It's possible, but if it declined independently, and there is also more difficult competition, that poses a serious problem. If not, and competition is stronger just the same, it still poses a threat. Either way the price is a very important thing to consider as competition increases. It could also be that your interest in the games reduced due to fatigue and it became less entertaining for you.

Para 2. Mario Kart is holding off OK. Contrarily to MK DS which took time to take off, MK 7 had a more explosive start, but looks like it will have weak legs. I'm going by the popularity of the 3DS hardware in the US and Europe for an idea of what the future trend may be like. It isn't very reassuring. 3D Mario is a whole new game and deserves its sales. AC is a hugely addictive game I don't see that trend stopping anytime soon.

Nintendopie said:

What are you trying to imply with "before the Wii"? It's hard to compare something that sold almost 100 Million units to something that sold around or less than 30 Million. 

Games sell platforms. But in the case of Wii, the platform sold the games. What does that say about the games, and about Nintendo's strategy (pricing, offerings, etc.)?

Rolstoppable said:

If an argument is bad, then it's fair to call it bad. Am I supposed to lie or sugarcoat everything?

What you said in this post moves this discussion a step forward. The assumption you make is that robbery is defined by production values, so you come to the conclusion that a 2D platformer is overpriced at $50 when a game like Halo 4 sells for a similar price. However, that's not how most people judge games. They don't ask "How much did this game cost to make?" when deciding whether it's worth their money, they ask: "How much entertainment is this game going to provide to me?" - By this definition, the development budget of any given game is completely irrelevant.

If the games listed in your OP could sell at $40-60, then they would have been brought to retail. Additionally, the much superior Rayman Origins couldn't move many copies at these prices and thus quickly dropped in price. If RO couldn't sell at $40-60, then Limbo, Super Meat Boy etc. certainly wouldn't sell either.

@bold. If my argument is bad, then there needs to be a reason other than "look, you had to use non-platformers to make your point", when that doesn't take aways from the heart of what I was trying to highlight in the first place, irrespective of genre. And you know that. ;)

"How much entertainment is this game going to provide to me?" How do you put a price tag to entertainment? Usually, price is based on cost and revenue. If I'm selling you a very fun game that took me 10 days to make, should you buy it at 50$? I wouldn't expect you to... In theory I understand what you mean, and I agree that entertainment value needs more place in the discussion, I don't agree that it's the golden standard for pricing either. I think there's more to a price than entertainment value. When a great book can be bought at 20$, I'm not sure 50$ is a reasonable price when only entertainment is the topic.

I think RO shows that Nintendo's games have unmatcheable brand power. In the movie industry, there are some excellent movies that would never hold a candle to hollywood blockbusters in terms of BO sales. Are they less good? Exposure, popularity =/= value.