Nintendo’s Switch is the first major home console to use cartridges since the Nintendo 64 all the way back in 1996. Cartridges have a lot of benefits, which a system like Switch enjoys and benefits from; but they also have a lot of disadvantages associated with them. And while most of them are minimized by now, there is at least one that continues to plague developers looking to put their games on Switch- cost.
Cartridges are simply expensive. They are far more expensive than a disc, and as a result, publishers often have to contend with pushing that extra cost on to consumers. This is also going to be the case with the physical version of Rocket League– on the Switch, it will cost $40, which is more than the physical version costs on other systems.
“As many of you have likely noticed, the MSRP for Rocket League Collector’s Edition is $10 more on Nintendo Switch than the same version on other platforms,” developer Pysonix wrote in a new blog post.
“As much as we tried to keep the retail price down, the reality of the Switch’s increased cartridge manufacturing costs meant that the MSRP had to be higher as well. That said, we are still VERY confident that players who join us from the retail side will get plenty of enjoyment from what Rocket League has to offer and we look forward to welcoming them to the community next month!”
The news here is, if you do want Rocket League on Switch and don’t want to spend $20 on it, you can pick it up for cheap on the eShop, where it costs exactly as much as it does on other platforms. Still, though this problem with pricing for physical games on the Switch is something that Nintendo will have to address very soon- they are getting third party support for the first time in a while, it is in their best interest to keep the Switch attractive for them.