Most of AAA games released these years have a standard price. It is between 60-70 €/$. But after a few months or even weeks its price is well below that figure. As a more recent case we have two releases fallout 76 and Battlefield V. 

We might think that their initial sales have not been good and hence the discount. However we have cases like Detroit, which is down to $19.99, even though Sony has recently announced that it is the best release to date of Quantic Dream. 

On the other hand, Nintendo titles like Captain Toad, whose sales are not as good and its price remains stable over time. 

So, what do you think. Sales, marketing strategy?

Thank you for your answers. 

Yes. It's part of Nintendo's philosophy, they want to keep the value of their IPs as high as possible.

Honestly I'm not a big fan of this strategy, but it's probably better than having games sell at 1/2 of their initial cost after a few weeks. I'm afraid this will lead to the collapse of the market sooner rather than later.

We as humans are easy to manipulate. And both strategies - sales and price stability - are manipulation strategies, that mesh with different strategies to make money.

Slashing the prices is a strategy to incite buying. If a game sells initially at 20€, and you are meh about it, this price may still seem to high. If it was 50€ and then reduced to 20€, the same game suddenly seems like a real great bargain. You can even plan for it. You can calculate your budget with so much sales made at 20€, but release intially at 50€, for the only reason so that you can substantially take off the price and therefore get better sales than if you had it sold initially at that price.

Nintendo (and Apple for that) has a different strategy. They market their games at high value products. This means they have to look for actual quality - therefore you have testing, polish and quality control in most (not all) Nintendo games, which is above usual industry standards (some devs and studios have also high standards, but Nintendo is pretty big for that level). But another point for this is, that prices have for the most part stay stable. Because in our minds the value of any product is influenced by many things, these include the actual price. Take off the price and the product devalues in our minds. That strategy means you have to take the bullet if a game sells badly, but on the other hand you gain much higher profits from successful games and foster an environment with dedicated fans. This is a more risky approach, as you can easily lose said fans if your quality standards slip. But if it works, the profits are pretty stable.

I hate Nintendo's strategy. The thing is, after a while people who really want your game already paid it full price, or close to it. If you want to convince more people and expand your customers base, the best way is to lower the price.

When I see a game half price or even 70% off during sales one year after the release, I can say "Oh, I wasn't sure about getting it, but at this price, why not?". And for the next game, I could be interested enough in it to buy it at release (happened for several IPs that I became a fan of thanks to half random buys during sales). But 60 dollars for a game that I really might not like? No thanks. At lower risk, it's an acceptable risk.

Meanwhile, I'm still hesitating about buying Fire Emblem Fates, but since the price didn't go down, my position didn't change either: "Maybe one day".

The competition. The PS4's games library is flooded with new games every month. Day-night difference between Switch and PS4 here.

I see it as a trade-off. If you price drop consistently, you gain from people that would not have bought your game at full price but lose from people patient enough to wait for the drop. If you consistently maintain your prices, you gain from the patient people still buying your game at full price but lose from people that will not buy your game at full price.

Nintendo has been caught price fixing a few times.

(rumors from insiders say it still goes on)

https://www.ranker.com/list/breakdown-of-the-nintendo-price-fixing-scandal/jacob-shelton

https://www.ranker.com/list/breakdown-of-the-nintendo-price-fixing-scandal/jacob-shelton?page=2

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/business/europe-fines-nintendo-147-million-for-price-fixing.html

"they were strong-arming retailers into selling their products for high prices."
"They also made stores jettison anything made by their competitors"
....ect
..ect

I am not agree with this. In fact, most Nintendo games sell in a impressive way, and they sell with strong legs. It is safe to say they reach the most people with their games. 

Let's see what I can pull out of my ass...

Okay. Here's what we got: Nintendo has a ton of revenue coming in from their games, consoles, merchandise, etc. If one of their evergreen franchises fails to make a huge impact, they can afford to wait. Sooner or later it will sell or become a limited edition collector's thingy. On the flip side, you have companies that rely on huge initial sales to make ends meet. You have companies that think they can make up their initial losses with DLC or whatever as long as a copy of the game makes it into your home. And you have companies that may say "Okay, we're going to lose money but at least we can minimize our losses".

Thank you, ass. You came through for me again!

Thats false, only the very popular Nintendo games have strong legs because Nintendo fans have no choice but to buy full price. But their less popular games do not have strong legs.

But this works well for Nintendo because they make a few strong games and dont have to worry about cannibalizing themselves with many games and lowering prices, which is why they dont care so much about third party games as they see them as competition. If you are an avid gamer, this is one of the reason why having only a Nintendo console its not recommended as their selection of games is very limited compared to the other consoles/pc. 

TLDR one of the many reasons for lower prices in other consoles  is the result of competition from many third party games trying to get a piece of the pie. Meanwhile Nintendo has almost 0 third party competition on their console which allows them to keep their prices up, not to mention they have a very dedicated fan-base.