This sums up my thoughts.  For once I slightly disagree with Rol.  While Nintendo does generally produce higher-than-average quality products, I think their pricing structure also trains customers that, regardless of perceived quality, you might as well pony up the cash right away if you're at all excited about the game.

Almost everyone else in the industry (probably there are exceptions, maybe Blizzard) follows the cycle below, which the observant cheapo can exploit, and which is designed for maximum milkage of hardcore gamers.

1. Release at full price (maybe with a premium package too)
2. Release DLC
3. Release a "Complete" retail version with DLC (hello Horizon Zero Dawn and Street Fighter V)
4. Dump the price

It tends to happen like clockwork, sometimes they might skip step 3 if the game sucks / sells bad, but the industry is so confident in this model that they just keep doing it even when a game is good enough to survive at full price for a while (I'd say HZD could have stayed at full price).  I'd argue it's a mistake, but to be honest, it seems to have worked for more than a decade so maybe it's a good business move?

For me personally, I will not buy most industry games at full price anymore because it's only 12-24 months until you reach step 4.  If the game is a real quality title, it will still be fun two years later, and it will cost you half of the original retail price and maybe even less than quarter of the cost including the price of DLC.

its a policy I remember iwata saying he wasn't a big fan of price drops because it would send a message that it may be better to wait on price drops...and I can only speak for myself when I say this but I can understand his view I rarely buy games as they release on my ps4 as I can usually find them way cheaper just a few months after release

It's brand perception, just like Apple and Samsung are able to charge a premium for their smart phones although their products don't do anything special over the competitors.

smh...... you just can't help yourself can you?

The issue here is nintendo (not any quality nonsense as he would like to have you believe). They like every platform holder gets a cut as royalties from the sale of their games. Ifthey don't budge on their own expected cut, then no one else can cut their own prices, unless they want to give away the games for free.

In addition to that, and the second issue, is a lack of competition on nintendo platforms. Usually, the bulk of games you see on a nintendo platform only exist on a nintendo platform. If a lot of multiplatform games start making their way to the NS then nintendo will be forced to budge on their pricing. Take say Anthem for instance. If that game was on all platforms, then in around 3 months you would usually be able to find it brand new for like $40. $20 less than what it launched at on the PS4/XB1. At that point nintendo won't have a choice but to drop their own price.

So nintendo does it cause they can get away with it. They don't play when it comes to their money.

lmao If you really believe that you sir are delusional.

It's definitely more about Nintendo games being in high demand than Nintendo acting different to other publishers, I think. There are plenty of cheap first party Wii U games on Amazon (Bayonetta for €16, Starfox for €25, Mario Tennis for €16) so that claim can hardly be true. But if someone can prove me wrong go for it, I don't mind being wrong.

While I agree that it's not purely a quality question, Nintendo has never had to slash prices on GBA or DS games where they had great third party support, why would that change even if third party support improves significantly for Switch?

It's just a matter of making that choice to say, "I'll sacrifice a few sales in the medium term to show customers I'm not budging on price." instead of saying, "I expect a constant flow of sales which I'll achieve by constantly throwing out incentives."  The risk of option 2 is you may slowly train more and more customers to wait.

In fact, could it be the "mid-tier" of gaming was damaged by these practices during the Xbox 360 / PS3 / Wii era?  In that timeframe, I would frequently find retail shelves filled more than 60% with discount games, and many lower-selling games (maybe 20% of the shelf) were selling at $10-$20.   The "cool" answer is that online destroyed retail and physical gaming.  Sure it did, but maybe a part of the problem is that retailers became fatigued with the non-stop price drop cycle and backpedaled to a risk-averse AAA games only approach.   Now, retailers basically carry only the biggest of the big titles and most games go away after a year or two and never come back.

Most of their games have great legs, so they don't need to lower the price.

I don't see why Rol's argument is so hard for some to understand. It's not about being blind, it's about true market demand. The market decides what is quality and since Nintendo's largest IPs are almost always in high demand their perceived quality and worthiness of MSRP stays up. Nintendo would be the stupidest company in the world if they didn't take advantage of their IP's quality and demand in this form.

Its not just about having "third party support", its about competition.

With your GBA and DS examples, even if tehre is a lot of third party support those games are still only found on those platforms.

Ok, look at say Doom. Imagine that game was released day and date on the NS along with the PS4/XB1 versions.

Now say sony, nintendo and MS each get $20 of the $60 from every copy of that game sold and the rest goes to the publisher and retailer. Typically, sony and MS are more willing to reduce their cut to say $10, allowing the retailers or the publishers to reduce theirs too and ultimately the game costing less. Nintendo is against such practices.

But in this example of doom, if sony and ms drops their cuts and nintendo doesn't, what you end up with is the game costing $40 on two other platforms but still costing $60 on the NS. Next thing you hear is that games cost more on the NS than they do anywhere else. Nintendo may ignore that if it was just the odd one or two games.... but when talking tens of hundreds of games then they have to match the other two consoles pricing model.

None of this is something they have to deal with because the games you find on nintendo platforms are usually only found on nintendo platforms.