Nintendo and its prices

[Ljink96]

alejollorente10 said:

Ljink96 said:

Well, that sounds great in theory but in practice it's trickier than you think. For myself, if something is cheaper than the competition or is cheaper than I would think, I don't buy it. It is like some sort of reverse psychology. I like to pay well for something I feel is quality. But yeah, that's just me.

I find that Nintendo's goal for appealing to a larger crowd isn't by artificially lowering prices, and again, that's the manufacturer's choice. But they rather make gameplay choices (like Pokemon Lets Go) to try and bring in new audiences. Similar to what they've done with Splatoon. When you've got for example, a banker like Kimishima running your company, slashing prices is a last resort, especially if your game is still selling. And Nintendo games are selling better than ever this generation. Zelda has become the best selling entry in the franchise, without a price drop but rather behind a philosophy of high quality games selling hardware.

I hear what you're saying, a Zelda GOTY edition would be great but Zelda is still selling very well. To cut the price so early is literally burning money. I feel that customers who know when they see a good game, will buy if. If it needs to be cheaper for you to buy it, you already probably aren't the most loyal Nintendo customer to begin with or not willing to be a longtime Nintendo consumer.

I do not need the games to have discounts to buy them, at least in the case of Nintendo. I bought Bayonetta 2 in Switch on day 1 despite not having the console and having it and having played it on Wii U. I set an example with Sony as an example of how you could convince someone who has never been a fan. If you sell more consoles, you will sell more games. And if someone bought, 3 or 4 games a year, with discounts maybe you can buy 10 or 12. And probably those 7 or 9 additional games would not have bought them if they were not discounted. But again, if your games are cheaper, you are going to sell more consoles. If you sell more consoles, you sell more games.

Currently, what people think of Nintendo products is that they are very expensive and that should change.

Again, this sounds great in theory but is not always the case. If it were indeed that Simple and beneficial, Nintendo would have dropped the price of Zelda to $5. I also explained how Nintendo is enticing people who never bought Nintendo games before. Nintendo, rather than artificially cut prices, would rather entice players with the game itself. And whoever they can get on board from seeing game play alone, that's more money for them.

Many people wonder why Nintendo's profits are usually so high without the need of an online service fee to bolster profits, and it's how they approach game sales. Like I said earlier, I think Nintendo would rather sell 10 $60 games than 20 $20 games, it makes them more of a profit and more than likely will make new fans of their games if they're willing to buy them at that price point, rather than quickly appealing to gamers who want cheaper games who more than likely aren't going to stay with them for the long haul, a.k.a "Casual gamers".

Nintendo gave away Mario Sunshine as a pack in when I bought it, didn't change the situation that the GameCube had. Slashing prices is an art, you have to have an internal reason to do so on the digital front. But again, as it has been mentioned, Nintendo only gives a Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price for a game like Zelda BOTW to be $60. The retailer, if they wanted could make Zelda cost $1 the day of launch. Nintendo at that point has made their money back. If a retailer is trying to make their money back, they're not going to drop the price unless the game just really isn't selling so that they can recoup their losses to an extent.

Now, Nintendo could release a BOTW GOTY edition, or a Nintendo Selects version of the game down the line in the future, sure. We don't know that they aren't doing that yet. I just think the overarching thing that we don't understand is that Nintendo is once Nintendo sells their shipments, they made their money. It's up to retailers to change the prices. There's not much we can do about that.

HOWEVER

I do feel that at the end of the day, Nintendo should discount a game like Zelda or Odyssey on the digital eshop because they are not manufacturing anything for that cost to remain high, year after year. I do want them to rethink how they treat their digital software prices. And like I said, maybe that changes with the online service coming in September.