The true answer to "Why Nintendo games never go down in price?", by Satoru Iwata. My conclusion: Different philosophies attract different consumers

[delete12345]

In the book Ask Iwata, Satoru Iwata is quoted:

After a piece of hardware is released, the price is gradually reduced for five years until demand has run its course. But since the demand cycle never fails, why bother reducing the price this way? My personal take on the situation is that if you lower the price over time, the manufacturer is conditioning the customer to wait for a better deal, something I've always thought to be a strange approach.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I'm against lowering prices entirely, but I've always wanted to avoid a situation where the first people to step up and support us feel punished for paying top dollar, grumbling, "I guess this is the price I pay for being first in line."

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There are different philosophies in terms of marketing your products in the video gaming industry, not everything is in agreement with each other:

There's the Nintendo philosophy, then there's the Ubisoft philosophy which is lower the price of your game by half a month after launch... When he speaks of conditioning users to wait... Ubisoft fans know not to buy at launch anymore for this very reason.

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Nintendo's mentality is basically ignoring all of the social norms on deprecation BUT still making a profit. They know whether the games brand new or 4 years old as long as it's on the newest system people will still buy it and why change what isn't broken.

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And there are some who despise a certain mindset that was spawned by Iwata's philsophy:

It sucks being an early adopter and then having someone who waited get it for cheaper

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I can't say I understand what would suck about that, tbh. As far as I'm concerned, I paid more to play it before someone who waited and paid less, that's fair, imo.

Personally, I find that Nintendo's strategy means I just don't buy as many of their games. If I'm not interested enough in a game to pay $60 when it comes out, I'm not going to magically become interested enough to spend $60 on it a couple years later, but if a game I was mildly interested in drops to $20-30 I'm more likely to just go ahead and buy it.

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Honestly, fuck this mindset. Why the fuck should you not be happy that someone else didn't have to pay as much for something as you did? If you buy a product, you've accepted the price for it at the time of purchase. You decided that it was worth it for you at that price. And now that you've spent $X on it, you're going to get mad that someone else managed to save a few bucks later down the line? It's childish and selfish.

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I think they all said it the best. Different philosophies attract different types of customers. We will never agree with one philosophy because of the conflicting ideals. But because we have conflicting ideals, it makes it all the more interesting to see the many outcomes being discussed. This is my conclusion.

Source of all the quotes:

r/nintendo - Why Nintendo games never go down in price, directly from Satoru Iwata

5,708 votes and 1,034 comments so far on Reddit

www.reddit.com

 

[Powerofthecloud]

That answer is because they can because the player base always is turning. I've said this before but they own the younger market and as long as people are making kids then Nintendo should be fine.

 

[Deleted member 63122]

In my opinion, companies should do what work for them best. If that strategy works for Nintendo, go ahead. If Ubisoft's plan work for them, awesome.

 

[cw_sasuke]

Plenty of Nintendo games go down in price though...for some reason people act as if every Nintendo release is a MK8D, BotW or AC seller.

You can get Paper Mario TOK for sub30 here. It's all about retailers confidence of being as to sell the stock a certain prices...with Top Nintendo sellers retailers know they don't have to be as aggressive because the customers is willing to pay up for these games, same for something like CoD. Those are usually once in a generation games too.

 

[nsilvias]

i remember when i had a gameboy advance id buy tons of nintendo games for cheap prices and it was great as a poor kid but then the ds came around and i bought like 2 years later and man was i dissapointed at how expensive game were compared to the gba. i sold that thing cause it just wasnt affordable on my crappy allowance

 

[Ernest]

No one expects them to lower their prices after a few months.
I think the issue is that N's games never lower in price, even after years and years

 

[Deleted member 3017]

That answer is because they can because the player base always is turning. I've said this before but they own the younger market and as long as people are making kids then Nintendo should be fine.

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That's really not the sole reason it works. Nintendo's audience is extremely broad, far beyond just the younger demographic. It works because Nintendo has conditioned its audience since the 1980's to not expect frequent price drops, unlike almost every publisher in the industry. And since the vast majority of Nintendo-published software is of high quality, the market at large has accepted it.

 

[NioA]

I feel like this is a shitty explanation for something that just shouldn't be done; the 90% of games tends to go on sale after a certain period post launch, so why Nintendo games have to differ?
Switch doesn't even have a Nintendo Selects line yet.

 

[DarkSora]

Mario Kart 8 is STILL selling like hotcakes so no need to lower the price on it at all.

Maybe bundle it for a black Friday bundle but that's about as close as they'll go in terms of "lowering the price".

I doubt we'll even see 9 until the Nintendo Succ.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

In this particular way I think Nintendo treats games more like other entertainment media. If there's a new album, a new movie on Blu-ray, a new book, people don't generally assume the successful ones will have their MSRPs halved within a year.

 

[delete12345]

I feel like this is a shitty explanation for something that just shouldn't be done; the 90% of games tends to go on sale after a certain period post launch, so why Nintendo games have to differ?
Switch doesn't even have a Nintendo Selects line yet.

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I think it's because the top 10% are the Nintendo evergreens.

 

[Imitatio]

Well done opening post! And yeah, I agree. People often are unhappy with Nintendo's approach, but I personally dislike the way others do it much, much more, as I feel being there early with a release is worse than waiting further.

 

[Ernest]

And he never mentioned why they charge full price for old ports.

 

[danmaku]

Plenty of Nintendo games go down in price though...for some reason people act as if every Nintendo release is a MK8D, BotW or AC seller.

You can get Paper Mario TOK for sub30 here. It's all about retailers confidence of being as to sell the stock a certain prices...with Top Nintendo sellers retailers know they don't have to be as aggressive because the customers is willing to pay up for these games, same for something like CoD. Those are usually once in a generation games too.

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Yup. This isn't Nintendo philosophy, it's the strategy of every company with a big hit. GTA, CoD... any company will do it if they can afford it. Few can, though.
Also, I'm not sure why customers should be happy that some companies can squeeze more money out of them than the average... I'm happier when more people can afford to play a game, not less.

 

[Soul Lab]

I feel like this is a shitty explanation for something that just shouldn't be done; the 90% of games tends to go on sale after a certain period post launch, so why Nintendo games have to differ?
Switch doesn't even have a Nintendo Selects line yet.

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Because it works? Do you think the other publishers lower their prices because of goodwill?

 

[JuniperAndSage]

A lot of what causes depreciation doesn't exist for digital goods.

 

[Jafin]

Nintendo doesn't need to lower their prices on games like Super Mario, Mario Kart etc. because they still sell very strong even years after they release. If a shop reduces the price on something it's usually because it's not selling well, so they want to entice more people to buy the product. Why do that when people are still willing to pay full launch price? Sales numbers don't lie.

 

[Starlatine]

Yup. This isn't Nintendo philosophy, it's the strategy of every company with a big hit. GTA, CoD... any company will do it if they can afford it. Few can, though.

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GTA and CoD have several sales, free play days and whatnots. GTA V was even given away for free

Nintendo keep their prices up cause they sell it like that, there's no galaxy brain explanation behind it, it works and it makes money, they keep doing it. If Mario Kart tanked in sales in an alternate universe for whatever reason they would give discounts. It's that simple

 

[delete12345]

And he never mentioned why they charge full price for old ports.

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Old ports are considered the same as, "I don't want the consumers who bought the game years ago feel that the re-releases in the future are going to be priced differently, being cheaper, and then the consumers waiting for cheaper prices to wait for us to make future re-releases. We can't anticipate that we will always do re-releases in the future."

 

[LuigiMario]

I think if you look at Nintendo's less successful systems like Wii U and GameCube, they had no problem discounting top tier games on those systems to drive high attachment rate. On Wii and especially Switch, they don't really need to do that. Sure, Wii had Nintendo Selects, but a lot of the top sellers (New Super Mario Bros, Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, and Smash Bros Brawl) never got those versions, so it was basically done out of a need to get a second wind of sales. Combine that with the fact we're just in a different era now (retail don't stock NEARLY as many games as they used to and digital sales account for over half the sales of popular games), the need for a large physical retail presence is less important.

 

[Ephonk]

Mario Kart 8 is STILL selling like hotcakes so no need to lower the price on it at all.
Maybe bundle it for a black Friday bundle but that's about as close as they'll go in terms of "lowering the price".

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They don't see that as lowering the price, but as increasing the value of the entire package.

 

[Radarscope1]

Yep. Marketing.

 

[krat0zs]

I just think it's ridiculous and stupid that you can get Horizon Zero Dawn complete edition for £5 but BOTW costs £50 still without DLC. And it makes it harder to swallow when a game is overpriced for the content it delivers (Not saying BOTW is, I mean games like ARMS, Link's Awakening remake, Pokemon LGPE, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX, New Pokemon Snap, Mario Tennis Aces etc) because of the fact that they'll never permanently lower in price and rarely go on sale

 

[Ernest]

Old ports are considered the same as, "I don't want the consumers who bought the game years ago feel that the re-releases in the future are going to be priced differently, being cheaper, and then the consumers waiting for cheaper prices to wait for us to make future re-releases. We can't anticipate that we will always do re-releases in the future."

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Bullshit excuse. They paid full price and got to play that game for years and years before other people. It should lower in price down the line. Pretty much everything (movies, books, music, etc) lowers in price over time. But Nintendo's somehow different? Fuck that.

 

[Okii]

As a consumer your benefit is a direct contradiction to that strategy so I don't understand how anyone that buys games would agree with it? But that is r/Nintendo so the answers are gonna be heavily skewed.

 

[Mr. Lemming]

Sort of a sidenote to this discussion but Ubisoft's approach meant that between when my preorder of Fenyx Rising shipped and when it was delivered the price was cut in half. Thankfully Best Buy credited me the difference but how does that make sense.

 

[Imitatio]

It's kinda funny how some of the reactions exactly prove the points made in the OP, lmao.

 

[Deleted member 8752]

Rightfully or wrongfully, Nintendo is trying to make their software seem like a premium experience. Personally, I don't mind, but I tend not to buy that many games in general. Just a few good ones per year that I think will be really good. So it's not a big deal to me.

 

[henlo_birb]

I love Nintendo's strategy for pricing games when it comes to physical. Makes it incredibly easy to sell used games on Switch. If you don't want to replay it, the price of a Nintendo game is really low when you consider how well they retain value and how high the demand for used product is.

 

[ghostcrew]

Nintendo basically have the perfect situation where can afford to stay the course and not lower the price quickly (thus conditioning people to just pay full price) simply because they have so many monster titles that just sell and sell and sell and sell and have an ever turning over playerbase. There's always a new generation of kids who's parents want to buy the Mario Kart or the Luigi's Mansion or the Pokemon or whatever. Iwata is right, why lower the price is the sales are never lowering?

Other pubs don't have quite that luxury. Dropping the price is a time tested method for giving sales a shot in the arm and back into the public conciousness. There's simply greater competition on other platforms for the types of games and genres that the likes of Ubi, Sony, MS, etc make and you have to work harder and, yes, take cuts on the price to get the mindshare back. There are a hundred third person open world skill tree based games. You've got to be at the top of that tree. Nobody else is making Mario games. The brand is that strong.

There is no right solution for everyone, pubs will do what's right for their products.

 

[Welfare]

I feel like this is a shitty explanation for something that just shouldn't be done; the 90% of games tends to go on sale after a certain period post launch, so why Nintendo games have to differ?
Switch doesn't even have a Nintendo Selects line yet.

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Why does Nintendo have to follow the other 90%? Why do they differ from Nintendo?

Clearly the general public agrees that Nintendo games are worth full price.

The strength of Mario Odyssey or BOTW as games are still the same today as in 2017. Why would the value go down unless for special events, like MAR10 or Black Friday?

 

[Deleted member 8752]

Nintendo keep their prices up cause they sell it like that, there's no galaxy brain explanation behind it, it works and it makes money, they keep doing it. If Mario Kart tanked in sales in an alternate universe for whatever reason they would give discounts. It's that simple

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It's likely true. I remember that I was able to buy Metroid Other M for like 5 bucks new within a year of release because it tanked in sales.

 

[Dekuman]

Nintendo games do go down in price via eshop sales and eventual players choice releases and special bundles like the ones where you get Mario Odyssey with a pro controller for $20 extra.

The critique has always been it doesn't suffer the same price collapses as your standard annualized games or more recently Sony's price drops.

When put in that context the discussion quickly devolves into console warring and accusations of schilling and being a robot consumer if you don't buy games at $20.

I've pointed out those games are not made to be sold at $20 or even $30 and are effectively chasing the same full priced audience. Nintendo simply prefers not to drop their prices and chase after those who would only buy games deeply discounted. This was subsequently confirmed by the Days Gone producer interviews who noted people who got the game on sale or for free aren't really making a sequel happening any quicker. It's the full priced market that decided that.

 

[ByWatterson]

As much as I love deals, and have a backlog created almost entirely from sales, I think what he's saying makes sense.

And honestly, as I get older and make a little more money than I used to, I kinda like (?) spending full price to support developers and publishers that put out great products. I mean, I'd obviously rather not! But there is a satisfaction in dropping $70 on Returnal, you know? They deserve that full price.

 

[Tiny Chihuahueño]

Have zero issues paying full price for Nintendo games because i have the guarantee it'll be a polished, great product 99% of the time.
Can't say the same about those companies who release games at 70€ only to end up in a sales bin a few months later.

 

[Bedameister]

It sucks for me since the Switch is my first Nintendo home console and therefore I have never played most of the series and I'd like to try games like Luigi's Manson, Donkey Kong, Fire Emblem etc. but at that price I won't risk it because I don't know if I will like these games or not.

 

[prestigiousbus]

I don't think there's a "philosophy" behind this. There is a high demand for switch games, so Nintendo basically has no incentive to lower prices since people will still buy them even if they're expensive.

 

[Giga Man]

Honestly, fuck this mindset. Why the fuck should you not be happy that someone else didn't have to pay as much for something as you did? If you buy a product, you've accepted the price for it at the time of purchase. You decided that it was worth it for you at that price. And now that you've spent $X on it, you're going to get mad that someone else managed to save a few bucks later down the line? It's childish and selfish.

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I agree with this comment, tone included.

 

[ShinUltramanJ]

I've said this before. Nintendo has trained their fanbase to accept paying full price for games.
It works for them, but not for me personally. I no longer buy their games, and don't see myself buying any future Nintendo platforms. The value for my money just isn't there for me, as I'm not going to spend $60-$70 for a single videogame, when I can get so much more with that same money elsewhere.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

And he never mentioned why they charge full price for old ports.

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This is another way I think Nintendo treats games more like other entertainment media. Star Wars gets a rerelease, nobody expects it will be for $4 because it's old.

 

[Rosebud]

I don't think there's a "philosophy" behind this. There is a high demand for switch games, so Nintendo basically has no incentive to lower prices since people will still buy them even if they're expensive.

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There's no super high demand for games like FDC and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon though, yet they will be $60 forever.

This sucks because niche games are less likely to find a big audience and get sequels.

 

[Trevelyan]

Bullshit excuse. They paid full price and got to play that game for years and years before other people. It should lower in price down the line. Pretty much everything (movies, books, music, etc) lowers in price over time. But Nintendo's somehow different? Fuck that.

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Funny how we're all told to be ourselves, don't conform to the norm if you don't like it, etc, but hey, if it comes to something we like, fuck that noise, eh?

 

[Graven]

It's because their playerbase will eat it, simples as that. No need to do mental gymnastics to explain It.

 

[808s & Villainy]

That answer is because they can because the player base always is turning. I've said this before but they own the younger market and as long as people are making kids then Nintendo should be fine.

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It's 2021 and we still have people acting like Nintendo's fanbase is just, or primarily, children? Come on

 

[TanookiTom]

As a consumer I obviously would like games to be as affordable as possible.

At the same time I think these discussions often tend to overlook a few key points on the side of the developer. For starters I think Nintendo has managed to keep crunch time limited/is striving to do so, has significantly increased their workforce and fluctuations pretty limited - even during WiiU times. So that is something I appreciate.

Secondly and perhaps more importantly I think it doesn't quite work to compare Nintendo to companies such as Sony or Microsoft in particular. Those are global conglomerates who have several business arms. Nintendo basically only have their video game business. Their IPs are their largest assets. So they have a much keener interest to keep the value of their IPs high and they also have much less maneuverability to sell hardware etc. at a loss and then make up for it with other business areas.

Finally I also appreciate that Nintendo has kept game monetization such as in-game purchases pretty limited. I think all these are factors that contribute to their pricing strategy.

Then you also have quite frequent and good discounts on their digital games and at least here in Germany physical games never stay full-price at big online shops such as Amazon etc.

I do absolutely agree though that Nintendo should introduce a "Selects" line for some classic evergreen titles. But I can also see that from a business perspective they have little incentive to do so.

 

[Rosebud]

Funny how we're all told to be ourselves, don't conform to the norm if you don't like it, etc, but hey, if it comes to something we like, fuck that noise, eh?

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Nintendo is a company, not a person who needs acceptance lol

 

[Scruffy8642]

In a sense, it's kinda good because it means I have no guilt about buying their games on day one. Because I know that even if I waited, I'd likely only get like 10$ off max anyway, so what's the point. But yeah, definitely frustrating buying a 4 year old game at full price.

 

[Streusel]

good thing they abandoned Nintendo Selects.
personally, as a gamepass subscriber, i can't really justify highly priced purchases anymore. only nintendo game i got last year was origami king, this year nothing so far.
they'll get me with botw and xenoblade, though.
economically, their strategy fully makes sense though. and it's nice to know that i can theoretically sell my nintendo games for quite a lot of money.

 

[Starlatine]

There's no super high demand for games like FDC and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon though, yet they will be $60 forever.

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Games like these wouldn't have super high demand even if they launched at 30$. As long as they sell within expectations while being 60$ the math still works

 

[Noppie]

Bullshit excuse. They paid full price and got to play that game for years and years before other people. It should lower in price down the line. Pretty much everything (movies, books, music, etc) lowers in price over time. But Nintendo's somehow different? Fuck that.

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This is not entirely true though? When I go to a bookstore, popular series are still full price. When I go out to buy a Star Wars Vinyl, it's still full price. When I want to purchase a blockbuster LP from years ago, damn right I'd have to pay full price.

It's wrong to simply say almost everything lowers in price over time when it just doesn't for the most valuable IP.