yes, but primarily because it should be a pack in game.
1-2 Switch seems like just a group of silly party mini games, nothing specatucular, and its not as if its a game you can really play by yourself. Nintendo should have packed it in to show what the Joycons were capable of that Wii Fit / Wii Sports crowd.
Then LATER on release novelty fitness and party games that take advantage of the Joycons and THEN maybe try charging 50$ for the games, because at least arguably at that point the market may have presented itself with lots of people who enjoyed 1-2 Switch and want more party/fitness games like it.
The problem with asking 50$ at release is that NOBODY has used the Joycons before or will know what the hell 1-2 Switch is. I mean, sure, some people are keeping up to date. but the whole reason that Wii Sports took off so quickly is that EVERYONE who had a Wii automatically got to try it out since it was a pack in game. From there you had people who might have later been interested in Wii Sports Resort, the Wii Fitness Balance Board game stuff, etc.
For a new concept and game, like whether it holds its value with gamers in terms of content- that seems like something that needs to be proven a bit before expecting consumers to pay almost full price. I mean for a TINY bit more someone could get Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Bizarre decision by Nintendo. my problem with the price point is that there is a price for the game AT ALL. Like others have mentioned, 1-2 Switch DOES seem very Wii Sports like in the sense of being more or less a glorified tech demo to show off a new feature on hardware.
If Wii Sports had never been packed in with the Wii how does Nintendo magically think millions of people would have known that they liked Wii Bowling? a pack in title like 1-2 Switch is fantastic if they wanted to do a whole line of games related to the Joycon special features and it would have cost Nintendo like nothing to includ it.
The reality is there is noooo way 1-2 Switch, software wise, could cost them like anything to develop. Not packing it in is just bizarre.
In the end the issue is not that 1-2 Switch is 50$ per say, but that 1-2 Switch costing money will automatically block out a lot of people from playing it and will potentially prevent Nintendo from having a crazy success with the Joycons and prevent large numbers of people playing games with them at parties and gettogethers. Consumers need an easy no risk way in to understand and appreciate a gimmick like that.
50$ to try out a gimmick is going to bring in a fraction of the audience that you would have had immediately from just packing it in. Hell they could have just had 1-2 Switch as a digital download included for all systems sold.
Its so bizarre it baffles my mind. The audience and market for the Joycon type games with the Switch has yet to be proven so its perplexing. In pretty much any circumstance you need to educate consumers by giving them easy access. 50$ is not doing that
The only thing I can truly think of is that possibly Nintendo wanted to be certain that the Switch itself was not overall summized as being another Wii gimmick like system, so decided not to include a motion control pack in game because they want to avoid the Wii stigma that hardcore gamers don't like. But that still doesn't make sense to me considering the casual 'Wii' market is potentially gigantic.
