Nintendo announced last month that when The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launches in May, it’ll retail for a price of $70, making it the first ever first party Nintendo title to release at that price point. Though an increasing number of companies have adopted that pricing model for their games in recent years, given the fact that Nintendo is still running on older hardware, the announcement came as a surprise to many.
However, the company says the game is going to justify its higher price. Speaking in a recent interview with The Associated Press, Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser said that the open world title’s higher price point is reflective of the kind of game it’ll be, which he describes as a “an incredibly full, deeply immersive experience.”
“We look at what the game has to offer,” Bowser said when asked about how Nintendo arrived at the decision to release the upcoming Zelda game for a higher price. “I think fans will find this is an incredibly full, deeply immersive experience. The price point reflects the type of experience that fans can expect when it comes to playing this particular game.”
He went on to re-iterate that the $70 price isn’t going to become a standard for all future first party Nintendo releases, and that the company will instead decide things on a case-by-case basis.
“This isn’t a price point that we’ll necessarily have on all our titles,” Bowser said. “It’s actually a fairly common pricing model either here or in Europe or other parts of the world, where the pricing may vary depending on the game itself.”
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is due out for the Nintendo Switch on May 12.
