While Nintendo has raised some eyebrows with its decision to charge $80 for some of its first-party titles coming to the Switch 2, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella believes that it isn’t that big of a deal. Speaking to GamesRadar, Piscatella points out that gamers have been spending well over $60 or $70 on games for quite some time these days thanks to the existence of Collector’s Editions and various Deluxe Edition releases.
Piscatella points out that because of this, the average price of the game has been higher than $70 at launch anyway, thanks to the fact that games often tend to offer extra in-game content in their more expensive editions.
“The big games have not been 60 or 70 bucks for some time at launch,” he said. “With all of the Collector’s Editions and Gold Editions and Silver Editions and all these other things, the average price people are paying for a new video game on average is much higher than that base price, and has been for years, and keeps inching up. So I’m not as kerfuffled about the $80 price point as a lot of other people are, because, realistically, people have already been kind of spending that, whether they want to admit it to themselves or not.”
Fundamentally, whether a game does well at any price point comes down to the quality of the game, according to Piscatella. “Ultimately, if someone thinks a game is really cool, they want to play it, they’re going to buy it at whatever price they need to buy it at,” he said. “That’s just kind of the nature of the price-insensitive video game fan that wants to play the game they want to play.”
As for the long-term consequences of Nintendo’s new price tag for its games in the form of other publishers also adopting it, Piscatella believes that, ultimately, it will be up to the market to decide whether the price point works or not. Coming back to his point about a game’s quality, Piscatella said that, if a game is not good enough, the market will likely end up rejecting the price tag.
“It’s up to that video game buyer whether or not they want to make that purchase, and generally, if a game’s good enough, they will, and if a game is not good enough, or they’re not excited enough about it, they won’t,” he said. “And prices come down really fast. It’s just the nature of the price sensitivity and the enthusiasm of the audience. So we’ll have to see. I think [Mario Kart World] will be fine at launch. We’ll see what it does in holiday.”
Piscatella also brought up the fact that there is a much larger range in game pricing these days than there used to be before digital distribution took off. Back then, all games were priced essentially the same, usually at $50. These days, however, prices can range from super-expensive Collector’s Editions that cost well over $100, to free-to-play games, and everything in between.
“Back in the physical-only days you had 50 bucks. That was it. That was the only game you got,” he said. “Now, games of all sizes, all kinds, are priced in all kinds of different ways, and more free-to-play than ever. I know everyone’s kind of focused on that top level, and sure, I get it, but in terms of the available options, there’s so many all over the board, and it’s more diverse than it’s ever been. Publishers are much smarter about discounting and pacing, pulsing of the promotional pricing and how to keep that demand going. So, yeah, it’s nothing new. This is nothing new that we haven’t been through as an industry, over and over again for years and years and years.”
Nintendo will be launching the Switch 2 on June 5, and one of its launch titles will be $80 racing game Mario Kart World. Talking about the price, Nintendo has described the title as offering the “richest Mario Kart experience yet.” The console itself will be priced at $449.99. Questions have also been coming up about Take-Two Interactive’s and Rockstar’s plans for the price of Grand Theft Auto 6.
