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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Why do Nintendo game prices never fall?

chakkra on 18 February 2015
naruball said:
One of the many reasons I've only bought like 4 games for my 3ds, 5 for wii, and over 200 for ps3 and over 100 for psvita. They have every right to keep the price as high as they want, but I refuse to pay it.

Why do they do it? It's exactly what Pokoko said. Because they can. With Wiiu the consumer doesn't have that many options and bought the console for Ninty games anyway. Before that, they were dominating and were getting a whole lot of sales from casuals, hence mario kart wii selling over 30m and the wiiu version not having sold even 5m (its numbers are still impressive considering the installbase, but show that the core fanbase is not nearly as big as some people thought).

As for the people saying because of quality or because they keep selling, they need to try to think without bias for a second. Obviously both gamers and reviewers thought that Uncharted 2 was a quality title and it sold very well, but the game got several price cuts. A whole lot of Ninty games that don't sell well at all don't get any price cuts. And the ones that are out of print, they are for a reason, i.e. the game doesn't sell well enough to justify more copies being made. Quality and sales have little to do with it. Sales had in the past (Mario Kart and Smash kept selling for years), but not any more.

Maybe it's working for Ninty, maybe, in the long term, it's not. Had I found a Zelda game at a reasonable price and bought it, I could have been introduced to the series and become a fan. I could have bought the rest of available zelda games and even a wiiu for the wiiu zelda game. Because it was so expensive, I gave up. Is it really a good idea for Ninty to keep the prices so high? Maybe, maybe not. I, personally don't think so. I became a fan of the Elder Scrolls after buying Skyrim on steam for like 2 quid. I think it's part of the reason Steam became so successful or that people choose ps4 over other consoles. There are tons of deals that make gaming feel/appear to be cheaper.

This



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binary solo on 18 February 2015

For Nintendo profit per game sold>volume. And of course most of their games sell high volume as a ratio of install base anyway. Also not making sequels within a generation (usually) means each game is that sub-franchise's game for that console generation. Therefore you want Nintendo's game from X franchise for the Wii U / 3DS then your only option is to buy that one game and you have to pay alomost the same price as the day 1 buyers.

Not sure how that holds up for franchises like Pokemon that do have a few games per generation. But I think Pokemon fans are so used to getting screwed over (e.g. no multiple saves per game) that permanent full price for the game won't raise the ire of a subdued player base.

Also because 3rd parties have very little appeal among the Nintendo fanbase, with a few exceptions, even when a game is Nintendo exclusive, when a 3rd party drops the price it really does not pose any threat to Nintendo games. Therefore Nintendo has an effective monopoly on their own consoles, and when you have a monopoly you charge more. If Nintendo wasn't in hardware competition with Sony and MS, and now Smartphone and Tablets, Nintendo would probably be charging >$60 for games too.

Or the TLDR version: because they don't have to.



“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

zorg1000 on 18 February 2015
shikamaru317 said:
zorg1000 said:

Not necessarily.

$60x2,000,000=$120,000,000

$60x1,500,000=$90,000,000

$20x1,500,000=$30,000,000

$90,000,000+$30,000,000=$120,000,000

$120,000,000=$120,000,000

So dropping the price and getting more sales doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as getting more money.

Well yeah, but the price rarely drops straight to $20 from $60. It's usually $40 first, then $30, then $20. 


But those prices don't really make much sense for the amount sold that u have given.

In ur example the game sells 1.5m, then it either sells an additional 500k if it remains at $60 forever or an additional 1.5m if it reduces in price to $40 then $30 then $20 over the course of its life.

In theory, if it sells an additional 500k at $60 then it would have to be $20 to get the full 1.5m extra sales because u would have to divide the price by 3 in order to multiply the sales by 3. So by first being $40 then $30 before hitting $20, it wouldn't be able to reach the extra 1.5 million sales.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

zorg1000 on 18 February 2015
kupomogli said:
zorg1000 said:
kupomogli said:
zorg1000 said:

Not sure what ur talking about, Gamecube had Player's Choice and Wii had Nintendo Selects which cost $19.99

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Selects

Yeah, they did, but they waited until each console was pretty much dead, dropping the prices of games that pretty much everyone who was interested had anyways.  Also from what I remember, most of the Gamecube games were $30  Every other publisher doesn't wait four years to drop the price on their games, months away from unveiling their next console.


Like RolStoppable pointed out, if all interested people will eventually buy the game at full price than what benefit is it to drop the price in the first place?

It's a formality.  Nintendo is doing it because they have to.  It's the reason why they do it on the systems death bed.  This way they can squeeze every penny from their fanbase and come out looking like the good guys to those very same people.

That doesn't make any sense, if the game is going to sell roughly the same regardless of price than their is literally no reason to drop the price.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

AlfredoTurkey on 19 February 2015
mZuzek said:
AlfredoTurkey said:

They do not lol. How many copies of Tropical Freeze sold last week? The reason they stay at full prices is because Nintendo wants to make money, period. Nothing wrong with that, as they are great games. But there really isn't anything more to it.

Are you kidding me? If I remember correctly Tropical Freeze launched to only like 300k units sold. Look where it is now. Sure, it might not be a huge hit like Mario Kart, but it has legs and was still selling months and months after it was released, and still is.


Define "selling". I'm pretty sure it sold close to nothing last week lol. I'm not trying to be a dick, or a troll, or mean... I just don't understand what you're trying to convey here. When a game has legs, typically what that means is it not only sells a few copies a year or two later (or even more), but that it sells WELL for a long period of time. Minecraft has legs. GTA5... has legs. I'm not so sure Tropical Freeze has legs.



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Wyrdness on 19 February 2015

This thread proves a lot of people don't understand RRP.



Wyrdness on 19 February 2015
AlfredoTurkey said:
mZuzek said:

Are you kidding me? If I remember correctly Tropical Freeze launched to only like 300k units sold. Look where it is now. Sure, it might not be a huge hit like Mario Kart, but it has legs and was still selling months and months after it was released, and still is.


Define "selling". I'm pretty sure it sold close to nothing last week lol. I'm not trying to be a dick, or a troll, or mean... I just don't understand what you're trying to convey here. When a game has legs, typically what that means is it not only sells a few copies a year or two later (or even more), but that it sells WELL for a long period of time. Minecraft has legs. GTA5... has legs. I'm not so sure Tropical Freeze has legs.


TF launched at 300k last year and had crossed the 1m mark at the end of December, it'll be doing that for years, the original sold 6m eventually over the years.



zorg1000 on 19 February 2015
AlfredoTurkey said:
mZuzek said:

Are you kidding me? If I remember correctly Tropical Freeze launched to only like 300k units sold. Look where it is now. Sure, it might not be a huge hit like Mario Kart, but it has legs and was still selling months and months after it was released, and still is.


Define "selling". I'm pretty sure it sold close to nothing last week lol. I'm not trying to be a dick, or a troll, or mean... I just don't understand what you're trying to convey here. When a game has legs, typically what that means is it not only sells a few copies a year or two later (or even more), but that it sells WELL for a long period of time. Minecraft has legs. GTA5... has legs. I'm not so sure Tropical 

Legs isn't really about total numbers, it's more about percentage sold after initial release.

U used GTAV as an example for legs. The PS3+360 versions have sold about 34 million total since it launched in Sept 2013. Over 20 million of those sales came in its debut month, or almost 60%. After 10 weeks GTAV sold 26 million or about 75% of its lifetime total.

On the other hand, Tropical Freeze had a debut month of about 300k, it's current lifetime total is about 1 million so only 30% of its lifetime sales have occurred in the debut month. After 10 weeks Tropical Freeze sold almost 500k or about 50% of its lifetime total.

Tropical Freeze is showing better legs than GTAV.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

MDMAlliance on 19 February 2015
Wyrdness said:

This thread proves a lot of people don't understand RRP.


Isn't it usually referred to as MSRP?  



Wyrdness on 19 February 2015
MDMAlliance said:
Wyrdness said:

This thread proves a lot of people don't understand RRP.


Isn't it usually referred to as MSRP?  


Recent times yeah, depends where you're based I guess, in UK people still use the other term mainly because  we're too used to it.