As part of a talk at the New York University Game Center this past weekend, former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé opened up about a number of topics ranging from his philosophy on business to his time at Nintendo. As you would imagine, one of those topics was about how Nintendo prices its software, which rarely (if ever) sees discounts as time goes on. While most people have assumed this already, it comes down to Nintendo feeling it doesn’t need to lower prices as the quality of the software should speak for itself.
As he explains, Nintendo has a philosophical opposition to releasing games that require big day-one patches. “The Nintendo mentality is, we’re shipping a game complete. It’s ready to play. There’s no day one update that’s gonna take three hours,” Fils-Aimé said. “It’s a different mentality, right? That is their thinking. I’d liken this to this idea of Kyoto craftmanship.”
“We are going to build the best games. We are going to send them out feature complete. And as a result, this is sometimes where customers push back, we don’t discount our games,” Fils-Aimé continued. “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild never received a price discount from the day it was launched… Occasionally retailers might decide to do something, but the company never discounted. And it’s part of this process – we’re gonna make it the best we can, we’re gonna send it feature complete, and we’re gonna charge a fair price and that price is never gonna change.”
This is barring the occasional sale where Nintendo might lower the price by 50%. Zelda: Breath of the Wild has actually seen a few of these, but its MSRP is still $59.99 after eight years. The NintendoSwitch 2 Edition on cartridge clocks in at $69.99 and the season pass has never received a price drop to my knowledge. This is in contrast to previous generations where things like “Player’s Choice” and “Nintendo Selects” would permanently discount a game to $20 or $30 after a couple of years.
While I can understand why Fils-Aimé is saying here, I think this mentality is going to need to change for the Switch 2 generation. The price of the console is already higher than what most people expected, and with digital versions now clocking in at $10 cheaper, Nintendo clearly knows people don’t have as much money to spend on games anymore. General depreciation of value isn’t a bad thing.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
