Fifa 18 on Switch receives 494% sales increase in the UK due to price cut

Bazry · Feb 19, 2018

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...-nintendo-switch-push-sends-fifa-back-to-no-1

The Nintendo Switch version of FIFA 18 jumped 494% in sales last week in the UK (physical sales only).

It has helped propel the EA game back to No.1. The Switch version of FIFA was heavily cut in price last week to under £30 (including digitally, which isn't counted here), making it the most affordable version of the game on the market.

However, the PS4 version remained the best-selling FIFA, and there was a sales bump for all SKUs of the game.

It is now currently the 6th best selling game in February on Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/2018-02/videogames/ref=zg_bsar_cal_ye#1

At launch, it was the most expensive version despite missing basic features such as online play with friends. Last week it received a price cut to around £22 pretty much everywhere in the UK

EDIT: http://www.chart-track.co.uk/index.jsp?c=p/software/uk/latest/index_test.jsp&ct=110032

Sold more than the XB1 version last week

Should also note that all versions received a price drop last week, Switch was just the heaviest one

cw_sasuke · Feb 19, 2018

As the Switch installed base keeps growing these kind of mainstream games will perform better. People forget how much of new customers bought one furing the Holidays...the first games you buy are obv. the big first party games...a couple months later there is breathing room for 3rdParty purchases ala Fifa if the price/content is right.

The most important thing is that EA is even willing to push the Switch version and make it sell - on WiiU they never even bothered with dropping the price or figuring out how to best approach the system and its userbase (cant blame them).

I think the Switch version could have a very strong summer during the World Cup - i just hope that EA has some update in works to let players challenge their friends.

K Samedi · Feb 19, 2018

cw_sasuke said:
As the Switch installed base keeps growing these kind of mainstream games will perform better. People forget how much of new customers bought one furing the Holidays...the first games you buy are obv. the big first party games...a couple months later there is breathing room for 3rdParty purchases ala Fifa if the price/content is right.

The most important thing is that EA is even willing to push the Switch version and make it sell - on WiiU they never even bothered with dropping the price or figuring out how to best approach the system and its userbase (cant blame them).

I think the Switch version could have a very strong summer during the World Cup - i just hope that EA has some update in works to let players challenge their friends.

The online system probably has to do with Nintendo's paid online subscription service. I don't think they want to implement their own system but it does weaken the Switch version significantly. The sales have been rather good still and gives good hope that future more complete versions will sell even better.

darz1 · Feb 19, 2018

cw_sasuke said:
As the Switch installed base keeps growing these kind of mainstream games will perform better. People forget how much of new customers bought one furing the Holidays...the first games you buy are obv. the big first party games...a couple months later there is breathing room for 3rdParty purchases ala Fifa if the price/content is right.

The most important thing is that EA is even willing to push the Switch version and make it sell - on WiiU they never even bothered with dropping the price or figuring out how to best approach the system and its userbase (cant blame them).

I think the Switch version could have a very strong summer during the World Cup - i just hope that EA has some update in works to let players challenge their friends.

Need For Speed Most Wanted is still full price on wii u eshop.

But im glad they are trying this time around

Deleted member 11276 · Feb 19, 2018

Makes sense since the FIFA version on Switch is downgraded in graphics and modes

Bazry · Feb 19, 2018

K Samedi said:
The online system probably has to do with Nintendo's paid online subscription service. I don't think they want to implement their own system but it does weaken the Switch version significantly. The sales have been rather good still and gives good hope that future more complete versions will sell even better.

There are plenty of games on Switch that allow online play with friends, its totally on EA for it being missing

ReplacementPelican · Feb 19, 2018

FIFA switch is great. Having a career mode than I can take on holiday, on the plane, when the missus is driving. Perfection.

I know people were upset about certain features that weren't added but it's perfect for me. Glad to see it doing well, maybe try and keep the pricing at launch a bit kinder though - £40, maybe?

chusetto · Feb 19, 2018

cw_sasuke said:
i just hope that EA has some update in works to let players challenge their friends.

This is the principal reason why I ended up selling this game -.-

Deleted member 2254 · Feb 19, 2018

I mean, unless you're rich as fuck it makes sense you won't diple-dip near launch for full price if you already are regular on another console, especially considering your saves, FUT, etc. don't carry over between versions. So it makes sense that when douple-dipping became considerably cheaper, people were up for some FIFA on the go. I, for one, would pick it up for about 30EUR, much more than that doesn't make a lot of sense to me considering it's a yearly game and I already have it on another console nonetheless.

BLLYjoe25 · Feb 19, 2018

ok so you're telling me if you lower the price more people are likely to buy it? wow!

X1 Two · Feb 19, 2018

Did it go from 1000 to 6000?

Bazry · Feb 19, 2018

BLLYjoe25 said:
ok so you're telling me if you lower the price more people are likely to buy it? wow!

Just like if you release a game with basic features missing and price it higher than the others, people won't buy it, yet it was deemed a flop at launch

Mory Dunz · Feb 19, 2018

X1 Two said:
Did it go from 1000 to 6000?

maybe.
or like 2 to 12.

Once we get Switch game rankings it might help

Puroresu_kid · Feb 19, 2018

Long term fifa should have a home on switch.

llehuty · Feb 19, 2018

cw_sasuke said:
i just hope that EA has some update in works to let players challenge their friends.

Wait for it being the selling point of the next entry.

VegiHam · Feb 19, 2018

Take note Nintendo

Your UK prices are nuts.

Powwa · Feb 19, 2018

Yup I also bought it from Amazon and currently busy with FUT. Having a complete FUT experience on a portable is a dream come true. It looks and plays like last gen but for this price I can`t complain. If it wasn`t for Switch version I`d never pick it up on somewhere else.

Bazry · Feb 19, 2018

http://www.chart-track.co.uk/index.jsp?c=p/software/uk/latest/index_test.jsp&ct=110032

Sold more than the XB1 version last week

Should also note that all versions received a price drop last week, Switch was just the heaviest one

Paradox House · Feb 19, 2018

Yeah saw that on Amazon. Was second or something ridiculous. Good sign.

Soap · Feb 19, 2018

VegiHam said:
Take note Nintendo

Your UK prices are nuts.

This is very true. Nintendo need to cut switch game prices by at least £10 to match the other consoles. I'll pay a premium for their tent pole games, but ports of old games? No.

Raijinto · Feb 19, 2018

The Nintendo Switch version of FIFA 18 is an EA game guys just as an FYI...

Pokémon · Feb 19, 2018

VegiHam said:
Take note Nintendo

Your UK prices are nuts.

Nintendo has nothing to do with the price of an EA game.

VegiHam · Feb 19, 2018

Soap said:
This is very true. Nintendo need to cut switch game prices by at least £10 to match the other consoles. I'll pay a premium for their tent pole games, but ports of old games? No.

Yuuuup. £50 for the Bayonettas? Sixty (yes, six zero sixty) pounds for Zelda? It's all a load of nonsense.

pld said:
Nintendo has nothing to do with the price of an EA game.

That's why I said "take note". They should observe what an impact a fair price had on a game on their system. Then they should apply that lesson to charging fair prices for all their games.

ghostcrew · Feb 19, 2018

A big price drop on a mainstream game like FIFA will do absolutely solid work at multiplying sales numbers. It was £55 more or less everywhere at launch. Wouldn't be surprised if it picked up some double dippers who want a portable version.

cw_sasuke · Feb 19, 2018

VegiHam said:
Take note Nintendo

Your UK prices are nuts.

Fifa is a Nintendo game now or what ? MK, Odyssey, Zelda etc. are selling just fine.

VegiHam said:
That's why I said "take note". They should observe what an impact a fair price had on a game on their system. Then they should apply that lesson to charging fair prices for all their games.

You might wanna check out the shipment numbers of Nintendos first party games on Switch.

If you think Nintendo has to price their first party exclusives the same way EA has to do to sell a Fifa version on Switch that doesnt offer feature parity to the other versions i dont know what to tell you.

llehuty said:
Wait for it being the selling point of the next entry.

Yeah....thats def. one likely approach.
My point was just if they think they could sell alot of copies during the summer months because of World Cup and the DLC it would be smart to add that feature already.

Otherwise they will just wait for Nintendos online service to launch and have full support with Fifa 19 on it.

oni-link · Feb 19, 2018

Take note, Nintendo, people buy stuff when you put things on sale/lower prices

I don't have a Switch yet but I would have spent 5x what I ended up spending on the Wii U, eShop and retail, if almost everything they sold wasn't a rip off

I know you can argue they're not competing directly with the other consoles, but when I would check the price of an indie game on Wii U/Switch vs the price on PS3/4, the Nintendo versions were always far more expensive

VegiHam · Feb 19, 2018

cw_sasuke said:
Fifa is a Nintendo game now or what ? MK, Odyssey, Zelda etc. are selling just fine.

Take note as in observe and learn from.

Nintendo's games would sell even better if their prices weren't ripoffs.

oni-link said:
Take note, Nintendo, people buy stuff when you put things on sale/lower prices

I don't have a Switch yet but I would have spent 5x what I ended up spending on the Wii U, eShop and retail, if almost everything they sold wasn't a rip off

I know you can argue they're not competing directly with the other consoles, but when I would check the price of an indie game on Wii U/Switch vs the price on PS3/4, the Nintendo versions were always far more expensive

Yeah, exactly, all of this. Oni Link gets it.

shaneo632 · Feb 19, 2018

I wish there was a demo of it. I want to see how it runs in person.

Coxy · Feb 19, 2018

VegiHam said:
Take note Nintendo

Your UK prices are nuts.

This. I've got loads of games on my wish list (amazon) but not taking the plunge till they get to a realistic price (i.e. match the other consoles)

Bazry · Feb 19, 2018

VegiHam said:
Take note Nintendo

Your UK prices are nuts.

Putting aside that Fifa has nothing to do with Nintendo, their own games seem to be selling fine on Switch. If a major 3rd party title is going to have success on the platform, they cannot price it higher than other versions, especially when its missing basic features

Mory Dunz · Feb 19, 2018

someone better be taking down all these notes.

cw_sasuke · Feb 19, 2018

VegiHam said:
Take note as in observe and learn from.

Nintendo's games would sell even better if their prices weren't ripoffs.

This can be said for every game and publisher.

They are only rip-offs for people who dont have the money to buy them or arent that interested in the game to begin with.
There is enough data out there...you might wanna "observe and learn" yourself first if you think Nintendo should take lessons from 3rdPartys on software pricing.

P-MAC · Feb 19, 2018

VegiHam said:
Take note as in observe and learn from.

Nintendo's games would sell even better if their prices weren't ripoffs.

Selling more copies means nothing if you're getting less profit off each one. I can assure you you don't know more about selling video games than Nintendo.

Spine Crawler · Feb 19, 2018

its a good ersion so kudos to ea

Bazry · Feb 19, 2018

oni-link said:
Take note, Nintendo, people buy stuff when you put things on sale/lower prices

I don't have a Switch yet but I would have spent 5x what I ended up spending on the Wii U, eShop and retail, if almost everything they sold wasn't a rip off

I know you can argue they're not competing directly with the other consoles, but when I would check the price of an indie game on Wii U/Switch vs the price on PS3/4, the Nintendo versions were always far more expensive

VegiHam said:
Take note as in observe and learn from.

Nintendo's games would sell even better if their prices weren't ripoffs.

Yeah, exactly, all of this. Oni Link gets it.

The attach rates of Nintendo's games on Switch are insane, what they're doing is working perfectly fine for them. That model doesn't work for 3rd parties where the consumer has a choice however as we saw with Fifa, especially when they don't even offer the game for the same price and have basic features missing

Deleted member 20297 · Feb 19, 2018

Was the price cut also only for the physical version or does that include digital distribution?

Paradox House · Feb 19, 2018

Nintendo doesnt set the price of indie games. Not sure how third party prices are relevant

VegiHam · Feb 19, 2018

cw_sasuke said:
This can be said for every game and publisher.

They are only rip-offs for people who dont have the money to buy them or arent that interested in the game to begin with.
There is enough data out there...you might wanna "observe and learn" yourself first if you think Nintendo should take lessons from 3rdPartys on software pricing.

P-MAC said:
Selling more copies means nothing if you're getting less profit off each one. I can assure you you don't know more about selling video games than Nintendo.

Bazry said:
The attach rates of Nintendo's games on Switch are insane, what they're doing is working perfectly fine for them. That model doesn't work for 3rd parties where the consumer has a choice however as we saw with Fifa, especially when they don't even offer the game for the same price and have basic features missing

You guys remember this is a thread about the UK right? As in the only region where the Switch isn't a record breaking phenomenon? There's clearly something going on here that isn't a problem in Japan, America, France or Germany. And it's pretty clearly the price, as this FIFA price drop result shows.

Bazry · Feb 19, 2018

c0de said:
Was the price cut also only for the physical version or does that include digital distribution?

Its been on 50% off sale on the eshop for a number of weeks

Bazry · Feb 19, 2018

VegiHam said:
You guys remember this is a thread about the UK right? As in the only region where the Switch isn't a record breaking phenomenon? There's clearly something going on here that isn't a problem in Japan, America, France or Germany. And it's pretty clearly the price, as this FIFA price drop result shows.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/sw...ce-launch-exceeds-wii-u-total-uk-sales.21677/

Even in the UK the attach rates are good

Terranigma · Feb 19, 2018

P-MAC said:
Selling more copies means nothing if you're getting less profit off each one. I can assure you you don't know more about selling video games than Nintendo.

On the other hand, you sell to more people, tot whom u can then sell your dlc and season passes to.

.exe · Feb 19, 2018

I was looking at that Amazon.co.uk offer earlier. Really tempting! If I wouldn't have found such a great deal on Bayo 1+2, I'd have gotten Fifa 18 for sure, and I haven't played a Fifa game in over 15 years.

P-MAC · Feb 19, 2018

VegiHam said:
You guys remember this is a thread about the UK right? As in the only region where the Switch isn't a record breaking phenomenon? There's clearly something going on here that isn't a problem in Japan, America, France or Germany. And it's pretty clearly the price, as this FIFA price drop result shows.

Unfortunately British people <{[in general]}> just don't like Nintendo games. This has been an issue since the SNES outside of some Wii/DS related fads. Nintendo games launch at £49.99, the same as Sony, Microsoft and EA games. Yes they drop slower and yes lowering the price would help them sell more, but certainly nowhere near on the scale of something like Fifa. Fifa, COD, Battlefield etc is the majority of what sells here. It's a shitty market that's mostly not interested in anything new or different. The key to Nintendo breaking UK is with games the UK likes and a strong Uk based marketing department. Lowering prices would help but not a huge amount, and would cut profits too. If that was their only option in the UK I'm sure they'd rather not be here tbh.

VegiHam · Feb 19, 2018

Bazry said:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/sw...ce-launch-exceeds-wii-u-total-uk-sales.21677/

Even in the UK the attach rates are good

Yeah attach rates are good. As in, people rich/Nintendo loving enough to pony up for the expensive hardware are then willing to buy the expensive games. (To be clear, I am one of those people.)

But the system is record breaking everywhere else and not here.

P-MAC said:
Unfortunately British people <{[in general]}> just don't like Nintendo games. This has been an issue since the SNES outside of some Wii/DS related fads. Nintendo games launch at £49.99, the same as Sony, Microsoft and EA games. Yes they drop slower and yes lowering the price would help them sell more, but certainly nowhere near on the scale of something like Fifa. Fifa, COD, Battlefield etc is the majority of what sells here. It's a shitty market that's mostly not interested in anything new or different. The key to Nintendo breaking UK is with games the UK likes and a strong Uk based marketing department. Lowering prices would help but not a huge amount, and would cut profits too. If that was their only option in the UK I'm sure they'd rather not be here tbh.

I do not believe that there is something intrinsic to the UK audience and only the UK audience that makes them not like Nintendo; but is somehow not a problem in other countries. There's nothing special about British taste that would preclude liking Mario the same as America does; other than a historical pattern of high pricing.

Drop slower is an understatement. Games on other platforms are £30 within a month; and PSN has frequent good sales on first party games at this point. Breath of the Wild is going to be sixty quid forever.

Mbolibombo · Feb 19, 2018

oni-link said:
Take note, Nintendo, people buy stuff when you put things on sale/lower prices

I don't have a Switch yet but I would have spent 5x what I ended up spending on the Wii U, eShop and retail, if almost everything they sold wasn't a rip off

I know you can argue they're not competing directly with the other consoles, but when I would check the price of an indie game on Wii U/Switch vs the price on PS3/4, the Nintendo versions were always far more expensive

What indies on the Switch E-shop are far more expensive than the PS4 counterpart? I've bought multiple indiegames (22 to be exact). Not a single one was more expensive.

Is it possible that single games has been more expensive? Sure. But always? please..

Raijinto · Feb 19, 2018

VegiHam said:
Yeah attach rates are good. As in, people rich/Nintendo loving enough to pony up for the expensive hardware are then willing to buy the expensive games. (To be clear, I am one of those people.)

Nintendo are not about to do a worldwide price cuts of their smashing success console and its equally successful biggest games just because FIFA sold well for a week with a price cut. Your argument is... well it's out there that's for sure.

TheGummyBear · Feb 19, 2018

VegiHam said:
Yuuuup. £50 for the Bayonettas? Sixty (yes, six zero sixty) pounds for Zelda? It's all a load of nonsense.

I paid £40 and £50 respectively for those titles, on their launch days, in Argos.

VegiHam · Feb 19, 2018

Raijinto said:
Nintendo are not about to do a worldwide price cuts of their smashing success console and its equally successful biggest games just because FIFA sold well for a week with a price cut. Your argument is... well it's out there that's for sure..

No not worldwide price cuts. UK price cuts of their okay selling console and it's equally eh biggest games. As a response to this UK data. Rest of the world is fine, I don't care.

TheGummyBear said:
I paid £40 and £50 respectively for those titles, on their launch days, in Argos.

eShop prices mate. Fair play physical is cheaper (and this isn't a Nintendo specific problem) but a) Digital shouldn't be more expensive than physical anyway and b) I don't want physical games on a handheld.

P-MAC · Feb 19, 2018

Terranigma said:
On the other hand, you sell to more people, tot whom u can then sell your dlc and season passes to.

Very true! Unfortunately I don't think Nintendo have enough DLC released to do that kind of strategy thus far. But I wish they would.

McPoo · Feb 19, 2018

I got it on release and was pretty disappointed. I knew it would be a paired down version, but it really did feel dated compared to 17/18. The Joycons really aren't suited to the game either, with the way the triggers and L/R are situated.

For £22 I can see it be worth picking up and playing around with, but otherwise I couldn't really recommend it to anyone

Fifa 18 on Switch receives 494% sales increase in the UK due to price cut

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