In a bold move this morning, Nintendo announced that all of its new releases going forward will sport different prices between the physical and digital versions. Starting with Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, the default pricing for first-party games will be $70 physically and $60 digitally. Nintendo didn’t elaborate on why this change was happening, but it’s likely related to the price of flash memory storage increasing thanks to the AI bubble.
Now, you can typically find physical games for cheaper than MSRP if you look hard enough. This change in pricing structure also won’t stop individual stores from having their own prices or sales. Nintendo is just setting a precedent for its own games as far as MSRP is concerned. This should result in eShop sales being priced lower when they occur, which might further entice digital sales.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with this. While I think $70 is too high for physical and $60 maybe too high for digital, the promise of digital distribution all those years ago was that games would be cheaper to sell due to not needing to deal with manufacturing and shipping costs. Instead, we’ve been living in a reality where physical goods are almost always cheaper due to store discounts, more frequent sales, and general depreciation of value over time. Maybe a move like this will finally bring about the digital future we were promised, though I would hate to see physical disappear.
For now, if you were hoping to get Yoshi and the Mysterious Book for cheaper on launch, you now have an official way to do so.
Yoshi and the Mysterious Book releases on May 21st, 2026.
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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.
