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Frogger on 29 January 2016
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burninmylight said:

Never said otherwise, and you know I'm not making this up. Of course Steam has plenty of full-price games. There has been what Nintendo considers a major sale going on in the eShops for three weeks now. However, Steam is ridiculous with the amount of full-price and AAA games that go on sale for absolute steals. That's what makes it so popular. People are much more willing to give up the option for physical and accept DRM for bargains.

Meanwhile, here's what's going on with the eShop right now:

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/01/the_north_american_eshop_winter_warm-up_sale_concludes_with_15_more_discounts

 

 

Wii U eShop

3DS eShop

These sales are OK, but they aren't "OMG DROP EVERYTHING AND BUY!!" good. They aren't, "YOU CAN'T AFFORD NOT TO TAKE THIS OFFER!!" good. They aren't, "YES, I WILL GLADLY TAKE A DIGITAL ONLY CONSOLE FOR THOSE PRICES!!" good. If you scroll down to the comment section, you will find most of the readership disappointed in them. Those type of sales won't cut it for a digital-only console. Like I said, you can't compare $1 smartphone games to $40-60 console games.

 

That's a very fair point. While I think that My Nintendo will make up for this lack of comparable sales, I really don't think that price disparity is as much as an issue as you do. Most of the games that are full price are Nintendo 1st party games that most people buy full price anyway. It really just depends on how you value games and what you can afford. It makes Nintendo no difference if you refuse to buy Mario Kart 8 digitally for $60 just because you can buy it used for $30. Nintendo's still making $0 on that. The game is still worth $60, whether you want to like it or not. The box, paper, and disk are worth cents. You're paying for the experience, not the box. Nintendo games are expensive regardless, and that's never changing, physical or digital. They have an almost political opinion of the subject, fearing the devaluing of games and pointing to the music industry as an omen.

Third parties are much better about having eshop sales though. Atlus and Capcom regularly have flash sales that absolutely are comparable to Steam sales, and so does Ubisoft. That's just off the top of my head, too. Same with price drops. Very few of the games I own were bought at full price, and I'm all digital.

That's not saying that I don't think they should improve the sales, because they should, but I don't think it's an issue that will decide if an all digital platform from them will flop or not.