Switch price: It's not the hardware you need to worry about

They find other places to make the money

I'm starting to come up with a quick way to summarize the Nintendo price experience, especially the more PC enthusiasts push their rhetoric of cheap gaming, great sales, and better performance to try and hide the thousand or so most put down on the good hardware. Their hardware is costly, but for the most part their software is cheap (but not always, the physical media has it's moments and advantages still). Meanwhile Nintendo is consistently the opposite. They mark their systems cheaper, often by $100 or so from their closest competition. Out of a generation that put their systems out at $400, Nintendo's latest rumor of the switch is coming out with the idea that Sony had set their systems at for temporary holiday sales: $250! That's nice. However, here's the huge difference: I can walk out with that new 400: system with two high-quality games at the additional cost of $40 of games I desire. To get the same likely quality out of Nintendo, even using their current Wii U system for fairness of avoiding new releases, I would be most likely paying up to $100, or even $120 eating through most of that savings. ...and the extra kick is then I'd probably have less value in those two games, because while I could have gotten Doom & Witcher 3 on the PS4 for those cheaper prices, I'd be paying Nintendo more for likely rail shooters or side-scroller type games. Maybe I'd get Splatoon or Hyrule warriors at best (omitting the savings I'd get from just buying a normal Warriors or Empires game). The sad thing is, while I can continue those savings on PS4 with patience, that same price likely continues across most of the Nintendo brand. The only time my patience has ever paid off, was with the games Zelda windwaker HD (made over a fucking decade ago originally, with the HD being the very start of this bullshit $50 remaster trend), and Bayonetta 2.

Basically, what I'm highlighting is Nintendo's software pricing issue. You need games to continue to play your game console on, and Nintendo has plenty of quality games, it's just they're expensive. Gaming can already be an expensive hobby as it is, but as should be with any market, the consumer can be patient or smart and get out cheaper. Not so well with Nintendo though. It's almost like a devious trick. Market kid friendly experiences, cheaper entry prices, and then once it's in your hands you have to push hard on your cash for the slightest new thing. It's really no-wonder as a kid I used to always get the latest Nintendo handhelds for christmas, only to then turn around and be denied so many of the interesting games. They all get held up and stuck on $40-$50 price ranges, while more quality experiences could drop to even as low as $5 (rare, but possible) on other platforms. I had maybe 10 DS games out of my many years of owning the console. Nearly every game that caught my eye was either out of reach, a present, or... well, that one Pokemon game I bought once I sold my half-broken Ipod for it (and yes the buyer was aware of its issues, I wasn't a jerk about it). Hardly a single game was actually affordable as a kid, and even now that I buy most of my games I sure as hell don't waste much effort looking in the Wii U section when the games on the PS4 fluctuate and offer more enticing experiences for less. I'm not dirt poor, but I sure want my money to last the best it can. I only jump on the high price for games that absolutely deserve it, and must be had, like Smash Bros or Mario Kart. Those games I could replay for ages, love a while, and deeply appreciate. Then wooly world... yeah, you're giving me a freakin' sidescroller for the same price Doom releases for. No thanks, I'll go kill demons in the best FPS ever that I've been entertained all year by with all it's depth and features, than a one-way 2D game. While Playstation has LBP3 that you could freakin' build Yoshi in for $20 and less on temporary sales, Nintendo stubbornly keeps it at ransom for over a year at around $50! (at least as of posting, that link is a live store page so it could be whatever soon). Thanks Nintendo, continuing to sell the same kind of gameplay for $50+ over the years, and refusing to ever let it's price drop until it's irrelevant.

Fun, but NOT $50 FUN!

Oh, and I know what many die-hard Nintendo fans want to say. It'll come up along the lines in several different forms. Let's go over the likely two counter-arguments that don't involve blatant fanboyism or intentional misunderstandings of my arguments...

1. Nintendo is the full experience, that doesn't ask you for much more! You pay it all up there, and get it right on the disc while others are still making you pay through pieces. Response: That stopped when they started using under-stocked statues to unlock on-disc DLC that so much as hid actual tools and levels from the very game it released with. However even pretending you've got a point, I do as well when bringing up the fact not all games elsewhere release in poor shape. Plenty of games are amazing right as they are, and get even more amazing over time with some free updates and content patches. I very rarely buy DLC, never buy microtransactions, and I tend to still have a lot of fun in most of the games I play without it.
2. Their quality and demand show this is right, and so they keep their games up high with the steady and long lasting demand. Response: Right, and we're pretending they're the only ones? No, the two games I named earlier (Witcher 3 & Doom) are selling high and still making bargain deals with their userbase just as an added spice to their sales. They are smart and understanding in that one person buying $60 in rare occasions deep after launch isn't the same great value as five people buying it for a brief $20 sale. The only other publisher this stingy is Activision, and even they take their best seller COD and cut the price off by $20 every release now sometime around launch. Oh, and $50 Starfox Zero would like a word with you about those awesome sales, and it's high reputation (sarcasm intended). Heck, they don't even have the hardware sales this round to last but so long! Nintendo just does this out of habbit and because they feel they can. The 2nd hand market sadly does little with this, even if there's definitely copies floating around. (contrary to popular belief that pretends nobody sells big N's games back.) This isn't an isolated incident based on some magic sauce of their games, it's just a rare sad effect of the market not working as normal, and Nintendo is one of those names that manages to get away with it.

Some quality games, way easier to acquire.

So what else do you want me to say? It's all right there. It's in my Wii U library, and all those that came before it, and contrasts horribly when compared to my PS4 library where I have more games than space and time to play them all. The only defensive move I can say, is that once a blue moon I will have to suck it up and say "I still want this game, and we all know Nintendo are too stingy to drop their price, so I'll bite it and buy it." However out of every single damn instance of that (New Super Mario World 3D + Star Fox Zero) they have lost way more sales from me. Hyrule Warriors, New Mario Bros Wii U, Splatoon, DKC Tropical freeze, and Pikimin 3. Oh and you might be reading some of those and thinking of the tacky red-framed "Nintendo selects" reprint that drops the price, but they waited for over a freakin' year to the point where I was just uninterested! ...people don't want to sit there and wait for you to decide to reprint your freakin' games 3 years post-launch, they want you to actually mark them down gradually so you can actually see a game you want on sale one lucky pay check day, be taken back surprise, and just buy it. Not when you have to be reminded the game exists, and then just continue ignoring it because you realize a ton of other cool stuff is coming up, and you've already lived without just fine!

Oh but wait, it extends beyond the Wii U of course! Bowser's inside story, Kirby's epic yarn, Twilight Princess (Which they're reselling again for $50, thanks Nintendo), Xenoblade Chronicles, etc. I could go on and on about how many Nintendo games I have completely avoided because they did not drop the price within a reasonable time. Not one of those games saw a penny for me, so I hope that two-time purchase was worth it! Heck I never knew Twilight Princess even had a Nintendo Selects re-release, it just took that long that I didn't care or even see it once it happened, and that was a game all the way back to gamecube... much like Windwaker, the first HD re-release alongside Last of Us to choose pricing itself as a new release. Yeah, thanks Nintendo! I... wonder how many times I've uttered that sarcastically in this article. By contrast, I bought Mario Maker without hesitation when it dropped to around $45 bundled with a Mario anniversary amiibo on amazon. That was a cool deal to me, and I struck that offer and still don't regret it (like I do StarFox Zero. Fun game, just not worth what I put in.)

So guys, before we go cheering in about the price, before we go gallivanting how amazing Nintendo is at under-cutting their competition, and before we go assuring ourselves its such a bargain, remember you're buying a game console... which needs games. Then remember who hoards those games up in a pile, clinging onto their $50-60 price tag regardless of what actual content and depth is on them (anything from a rail-shooter or sidescroller, to a complex multiplayer brawler, it's all the same apparently. And if it's not, just add a toy!), and holds them there flight or failure for potentially years. Remember who forced their launch games to stay at $60 until they started slowly running out of copies, wait a few extra months, and then restock them with an ugly red print with hopes you're still interested. Then remember all they're competing against, and how much you'd save just getting your light-hearted fun playing Owl Boy when it releases on sale from so much as just releasing on steam! I'm keeping my fingers crossed Nintendo change that with the Switch, but they haven't given me much hope in that regard. Nintendo is not a good deal, and not a good bargain, it's where you're paying for your console still by the very trickle of each individual game. Remember that before you cheer the Switch and it's rumors under $300 price point... but who are we kidding, it could easily still be that $300+ for the bundle that comes with the game. And that game will be $50-60 on it's own for the next year or three, because... well, have you been paying attention?

Thanks Nintendo!