| Soundwave said: 3rd party games are cheaper than Nintendo's physical copy games in many respects, I paid significantly less for Street Fighter VI than I did for Donkey Kong Bananza, if the game had to come physical on cartridge as part of a dumb mandate, that may not have been the case. 3rd parties are not going to subsidize the $10 extra cost, they need that extra margin as is because development costs have skyrocketed. The extra cost for the cartridge will be ON TOP of that additional $10 that goes to cover game development (and will be standard on Playstation and XBox as well). Again these are valid realities, these are not just made up shit. The higher speed cartridges push the cost of cartridges higher, then you have tariff bullshit on top of that. Then not only that, 64GB is not enough space for a lot 3rd party games to begin with. I don't want a fucking compromised experience because some 40-year-old game collector needs to live in 1996 forever for the sake of "tradition". Key Cards lets developers just set their game size to whatever they need without a fuss. 128GB cartridges are likely not happening any time soon and if they ever do it will likely be in very limited quantities. EDIT: "$10 extra" also may be generous, there are reports floating around that 64GB Switch 2 cartridges cost $16 for the cartridge only. That's a substantial cost. If people want this option so bad, then pay the extra $16 per game for it, why should a developer who's already operating on thin margins eat a $16 surcharge per copy on Switch 2 versus other platforms. |
Third party games aren't cheaper. Your example of a port of a two year old game is meaningless when new games go for $70.
Again, there's no subsidy. When both the game price and production cost of the physical medium rise by $10, it evens out. Apparently it needs to be mentioned that Switch 1 cards did not cost $0 to produce, so your maths that costs have increased by $16 for the publisher fails first grade elementary school level. Rising development costs have already been covered by third parties with Deluxe Editions, DLCs and microtransactions.
You are very gullible if you defend third parties here; they aren't operating on thin margins. Let's look at Capcom because you mentioned Street Fighter VI:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/capcoms-back-catalogue-titles-dominate-its-q1-2025-game-sales
- Net sales: ¥45.5 billion ($303 million), up 53.7% year-on-year
- Operating profit: ¥24.6 billion ($164 million), up 90.8% year-on-year
That's a margin of more than 50%. But yes, you've got to defend poor Capcom.
Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.
