Over the years, games on the Nintendo Switch eShop have sold for as little as a penny, but now it would seem Nintendo has a new rule in place that stops any digital game from being listed for less than $1.99. In the past, quite often you’d see some of the chart being dominated by cheaply priced games but according to Death Squared developer SMG Studio on Reddit, the new rules have been imposed so the lowest price you’ll see for a game will now be $1.99.
Chances are, at the time of writing, some titles will fall under this bracket and that’s most likely due to when price reductions were submitted, and of course the rule won’t apply to free-to-play games like Fortnite. So if you see something cheap and you’re thinking of downloading it, do it sooner rather than later if you can!
Dumb!
Agreed considering how much shovelware is on the switch eshop
that is the reason actually. many shovelware games were claiming to be 60$ but with a discount to just 1$. so Nintendo back in December said they would require games to be no lower than 2$ …..im not sure this helps all that much.
And exactly how many will risk trying a new title if it looks like shovelware but actually plays good. Ive bought games for less than that where it made me consider buying more of their games but this isn’t good for developers who are trying to make a living.
Sure the first few games might be shovelware for some but deep down the others might be gems that wont be found otherwise thansk to rules applied.
There are a thousand reasons why this might be the case. Running a credit or debit transaction costs money. That’s why many small businesses have a surcharge in order to run a card transaction. Precisely what rate they pay depends on changing structures and agreements between visa and mastercard and the business in question. Sometimes its a flat fee, sometimes its a percentage of the transaction. Costco stopped taking Mastercard a short while ago for precisely this reason, the deal being offered wasn’t good enough for accepting mastercard to make financial sense. What does Nintendo pay Visa to run a transaction for a 0.75 cent game? We have no idea, but it is completely believable that it means Nintendo loses money on the transaction.
I don’t understand. Does that mean even with price reductions it will never be lower than $1.99? Or is it just the base price that can’t be lower than $1.99?
the lowest price can be is 2$, this was actually done back in November I believe.
Over Christmas I bought some racer, called venom something or other. It was £0.91p
So bad I actually wanted a refund
Even when consciously tripping into the shovelware trap because it looks so damn cheap, I still recommend spending a few minutes googling the game and some reviews. there sometimes really are some sweet games hidden within that pile of junk.
Bulbboy for instance was quite amusing and didn’t really cost much (and its really on dscount all the time) and sometimes there would just be some iOS/Android ports that just weren’t much effort to port but still quite OK games.
BUT I gotta say all of these little games are another reason for folders on the Switch, as I got just a zillion shovelgames, demos, weird things I can’t remember why they are on the system and hidden in between 60 bucks AAA games.
this UX just sucks.
This probably has to do with the ridiculous amount of shovelware that was abusing the prices of the eShop to sell lots of games and remain in the top seller lists. I remember reading a lot about indie developers pointing out how this practice actually hurt their sales in some cases.
Also, Nintendo may want more money. That too…