Pokemon indeed behave closer to Sony/MS games when it comes to sales/chart performance

Yeah, but I think the Pokemon Company has a lot more say in how they're run compared to other companies Nintendo controls. They tend to release things on their own, went mobile before Nintendo officially did, and Sakurai has talked about how adding Pokemon is similar to adding a third party.

But, Pokemon games also don't go down in price.

So by having more expensive games that sell less they make more money and thus can afford to run less than popular franchises like Metroid, Xenoblade, and Pikmin.

....I swear that is the most Nintendo logic thing I've ever seen. I also want to do a Jim Sterling AAA extended soundbyte, but I'm not good at such expressions.

I feel like no one has yet mentioned another reason why other publishers tend to drop their game prices much faster: the rest of the modern industry is so tied up in the sales of DLC to drive profits that publishers often use the heavily discounted base game as a Trojan horse to get it into your home and get you to buy the game's DLC along with it.

That's how games like NBA 2K can go on sale for $3 in the eShop, and Dragon Ball FighterZ is constantly marked down by 75%. They've already written off the price of the base game to try to make their money from DLC sales.

Nintendo games aren't nearly as reliant on DLC sales and primarily stick to the traditional model of making profit from the base game.

We usually have a players choice lineup by this point of the generation with games listed at 29.99, but Nintendo has been so dominant that they seem to be back to arrogant Nintendo again. Some Switch games have dropped down to $45 randomly this generation like Zelda, Mario etc so that is kind of nice. Nintendo doesn't seem to realize that if they dropped older games that aren't selling much these days like Xenoblade, Donkey Kong Country TF, and Bayonetta they would pick up steam again. Games like Donkey Kong and New Super Mario U I beat on the Wii U but would probably buy them on a whim if they did drop to $20.

In terms of physical sales, wouldn't this have more to do with retailers? Nintendo just suggests a price for the retailer. If these retailers have stock they can't seem to get rid of, it would seem that they'd put them on sale as we've seen in the past with major 1st party games being $30-$45.

In terms of Digital, man who the hell knows. But they do put games on sale here and there on the eShop. So while the price drops may not be permanent I do see them digitally and physically at times throughout the year.

Now the actual question, why do I still pay full price for Nintendo games years down the line? Well, I generally trust the quality of Nintendo 1st party titles, I generally know that the entire game will be on the disc/cart and thus it physically holds actual value and isn't a glorified steam key.

As a couple of final notes, though I buy Nintendo 1st party titles at "Full Price" I often don't actually pay the entire thing. Some retailers will take off $5-$10 for a new release so I do take advantage of that when I can.

Also I feel Nintendo's brand name goes a long way. We associate quality with Nintendo because more often than not, they do what they do very well (and have been doing it for longer than its competitors) and when you add in familiarity and nostalgia, all of that feeds into the value of a Nintendo game. As an anecdote when the Wii U launched, I walked into a GameStop and traded in all my 1st Party Wii games (yes, big mistake) to get a Wii U (yes, big mistake) and those games covered the entire cost of the console and then some. The employee made sure to tell me that the only reason I got that much credit was because the games I traded in were Nintendo 1st party games. Even used titles hold great value.

All in all, I don't think there's generally one reason why Nintendo games don't often go on sale compared to its competitors. But to mark it up to "lack of competition" for every Nintendo console doesn't seem right either. Because this question has been asked for decades at this point.

It is mostly due to being used to it and also lack of harsh external competition on the platform.

One nice thing is the games do hold value if you do end up selling the games. You can buy say Paper Mario for $35 at Gamefly beat it and sell it for $30 to gamestop or 30-40 on Ebay. One thing I'm not looking forward to is when Nintendo releases their next console and will probably follow Sony and Microsoft and start selling them for 69.99 with the games rarely going on sale.

It is funny to see the assumption that the Non-Nintendo games are less valuable because most of the sales of those games are done on full-price on the first month or two instead of 6-24m after when they drop price.

About games in general, on PC I bought most of my games when they dropped under 40 Euros, and preferably under 30 Euros, but when I was a console gamer, I bought most of my Intellivision games when they dropped to 29000 Italian Lire or less, that's around 15 Euros.
I guess knowing console games are usually more expensive than PC ones, If I ever buy a console again I could start considering 40 Euros already a must buy price for some of the best games, particularly for some racing sims that could have online multiplayer support terminated some years later, so the higher sweet spot could be an investment on game longevity. But for games that give their best on SP and local MP, like many of the best Ninty ones, the longevity would be ensured anyway, so no need to accept a higher price, unless it's the best price I could ever obtain. Not being a die-hard Ninty franchises fan, though, I could find alternatives if Ninty prices stay too high for too long.