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IcaroRibeiro on 19 June 2021
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Slownenberg said:
IcaroRibeiro said:

How have you arrived in such conclusion? There is nothing even remotely close to animosity or any sort of gaming wars in this thread

The argument about pricing is relevant because this is the context of the market. Metroid is for a large part of Switch userbase a fairly unknown franchise and none of their titles released in the last 10 years have seen any sort of commotion

The most popular Metroidvanias in the market are indies, it was indies the ones to start a new wave in the genre, most of those indies are available on Switch and most of those indies are cheaper without comprising their quality

Nintendo brand and reselling value can maybe justify the 60 USD price tag, but to say the pricing and the fact this is a 2D release don't impact sales is nothing but delusion. Why are exactly people bringing up Link's Awakening to this discussion when even with the Switch brand and the release just after BOTW this game barely managed to outsold a Phantom Hourglass, a game released when Zelda franchise was much less popular? 

There was a precedent for a 2D non mainline Zelda selling about 5 million copies, and even Switch push couldn't make another 2D Zelda sell much more than that, maybe LA end selling 6 million once Switch is done but even then it's a increase of about 27% over Phantom Hourglass. It's surely a great increase, but not quite what was expected after BOTW elevated the IP for a whole other level. Why? Because LA is a 2D, a remake of a Game Boy game and is 60 USD

A increase of about 27% for Dread using a 1.8 million baseline would lead to ~2.3 million. Surely enough to a record breaking number, but there is a underlining indicator this could just go beyond if the price was more attractive. And unlike Zelda, there is no Metroid Prime 4 hype catapulting the IPs popularity, Metroid will need to fight with their existing strength alone. 

Yup exactly.

A full priced $60 2D Metroid versus a plethora of very good Metroidvanias (from retro style production vales all the way to stuff like Ori which has better than Metroid Dread production values as far as I can tell so far) all in the $15-$30 range.

People will pay more for Metroid than the rest simply because of the brand name, but not triple the price. $60 will absolutely affect sales, possibly by a few million. Just like Zelda:LA remake - that game could have sold millions more at $40 with all the Zelda hype in the BotW era but basically it had a great launch and then totally died off because nobody wants to pay $60 for a GB remake. Similarly, I expect Dread to have a great opening, at least for a Metroid game, and then sales to totally die off as everybody willing to pay $60 will have bought it at launch. And the crazy thing is Nintendo doesn't even react to the market when this happens. After the Zelda:LA remake sales died off (about two weeks after it released) I figured Nintendo would give it a price cut to $30 or $40 like a year later to pick up a few more million sales, but nope, just no reaction at all, so we can expect the same non-response from Nintendo when Dread's sales go quiet after launch week or at best after the holidays.

Nintendo is great but they sure make a lot of boneheaded decisions. 2D Metroid at $60 in 2021 is yet another one.

It's not a bone headed decision, they are just aware it's good to keep the image that Nintendo games never go down in price is exactly the reason why they never go down their prices.  customers are used to either pay 60 USD or to not pay at all. If they start pricing cut their games B tier games then their evergreens can start losing steam, because customers will realize the moment nobody is buying anymore is the moment the prices go down 

Well, I hate this price policy but there is nothing to be done. They are selling Zelda SS for 60 USD with barely any improvement and again this will hurt their sales, but Nintendo is very well aware their branding is more important than sales. They aren't like Sony who is desperate to make PS owners to starting liking their IPs, for Nintendo a game losing sales is okay as long the few buyers loyaling buying their products (and paying 60 USD on regular basis)