We finally hear from Doug Bowser!
On the pricing:
“What you see right there is variable pricing,” Bowser told The Washington Post. “We’ll look at each game, really look at the development that’s gone into the game, the breadth and depth of the gameplay, if you will, the durability over time and the repeatability of gameplay experiences.
On Nintendo Switch:
Bowser said Nintendo remains committed to selling the first Switch console. Four years ago, in our first conversation, Bowser said the Switch is “redefining what a console cycle can look like.”
“Now I even wonder what is the definition of a console cycle,” Bowser said. “We’ll continue to keep Nintendo Switch as part of the family, giving consumers a number of different entry points that they can come into the gaming universe.”
(…)
“What I would say is that we’ll continue to observe consumers and how they engage and enter into the platform at various levels to try to really understand what the future may look like,” Bowser said. “Here’s the other point. We have an install base [for the Switch] of 150 million plus units. We’ll probably announce more on May 8 when we have our next earnings call. We want to keep those players engaged. Not all of them may be ready to jump to Switch 2.”
Parasite justifies its existence
Deny it profit!
I mean to be fair. 60$ in 2017 are like 75$ now.
And game prices haven’t been going up for a long time. Not that I want them to, but the fact of life is that the production cost for games are way higher now, while their prices are not. Everything else is getting more expensive. I’m not saying it’s not sustainable, but I understand that these companies want to make money, not just keep themselves afloat.
I see this argument a lot and it entirely glosses over the fact that the market is at least one order of magnitude larger, possibly two.
The cost of a game is the development, marketing, maintenance to some degree and in some cases physical production of the medium.
Past that it’s gravy.
You charge 70 in the 1990’s times 100,000 sales vs charging 70 now to a million sales.
It’s not like producing a car where you have a fixed unit cost, this is mostly copying already made data.
Yes, the tertiary costs can go up and the development costs can go up but the addressable market has also gone up significantly.
Nintendo specifically is absolutely not living release to release and is the worst possible example for this argument.
Not only do they not really do sales but they also have DLC all the way up the wazoo and frequently rerelease old games at current market prices, with minor tweaks.
They do not, however, lean all the way in to microtransactions, which is nice
I can’t really disagree with any point you’ve made here.
I am conflicted about the $80 price tag for MKW, but Nintendo already do variable pricing, it has games for 40 and 50, and now it seems they are going to try the 80 price range too.
And as always, vote with your wallets!
One thing you can always count on is NVIDIA, Apple, and Nintendo fans to let you down when it comes to voting with their wallets.
Heh, agreed. You still have to vote, but you just end up on losing side more often than not.
Though, I can’t point fingers at anyone anymore, cause this once I am one of those annyoing fan who are still going to buy it.
Consumerism is undefeated.
So basically Nintendo fans need to vote with their wallet or gaming is about to get really expensive for us all.
Unfortunately… Gomo, and the switch 2 will sell out instantly and Mario kart will also sell out instantley
That’s generally how luxury pricing works, yes.
Nintendo fans will vote just like Apple Fans.
They would pay to lick the boot
I thought I was reading the onion for a second there, had to do a double take. Bowser is an insufferable idiot.
How did that guy become CEO of Nintendo America‽‽ They’ve spent two to three generations of kids training us to OVERTHROW BOWSER!
Oh, were looking at game “durability”? So, when I can beat the next Mario game in a few hours, does that mean it’s only gonna be $20? No? You’re just making up excuses for increasing the price of games? Right.
Don’t forget that you have to pay for a subscription to play online, which is one of the reasons the game is playing for a long time.
Good point. Dude says it’s “variable” pricing, so if MKW, being an online multiplayer racing game that theoretically could have unlimited play time for many players, then a single player game with only about 40 hours average gameplay should be hella cheap by comparison, right?
Well, DK Bananza IS cheaper indeed
But what does Reggie think?
So fucking industry greed. Gotcha.
In a nutshell: We’re going to charge as much as you fucks are willing to pay.
I seriously can’t believe the “Nintendo boss” is named bowser! Honestly! Wtf! I have never heard ANYONE named “Bowser”!
I’m gonna be telling everyone about this…
Bowser, boss of Nintendo…
My body is not ready.
Sorry Doug I guess you were the villain as your namesake after all.
People are too worked up over the pricing, which is not a particularly big deal and was to be expected if you weren’t living under a rock for the last few years, and not worked up enough over the apparent shift away from physical game cards. As usual, gamers are spending all their time and energy chasing completely the wrong issues.
It’s just bold-faced BS. Variable pricing to match the experience would give us games like Princess Peach Showtime or Thousand Year Door for $20-$40. They’re just keeping the $60 baseline and charging $10-$20 more when they feel they can get away with it.
In my mind, all it boils down to is that Nintendo think that they can charge that much and would like us to believe it’s worth it. Whether it is worth it is subjective and up to each individual. Most of us will probably be tighter with our choices in some way.
