Update: Nintendo has clarified that first party physical games won’t be increasing in price and digital will be slightly cheaper.
Nintendo has said on its official website that beginning May with pre-orders for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book first party physical and digital editions will have different price points. These price points have yet to be announced it seems like digital will be slightly cheaper than traditional physical editions. The Kyoto-based company has revealed that the digital edition of Yoshi and the Mysterious Book will be $60 in the USA.
This is huge news! I believe the reason in the past upon which this was not done at all was Nintendo didn’t want to alienate their Big Box Store partners and their share of profit from the games. Thus having Nintendo price their Digital version of the titles to be the same MSRP as their physical games. Because if everyone noticed the digital games were lower price point there’d be no point for the Big Box Stores to sell their games at the Physical MSRP and lose customers.
As a consumer I do think this is the correct move. It’s already Nintendo’s own IP, Cartridge, Publisher, Developer, etc etc so they’re already saving money there. Plus with Digital they cut out the middle man of production for that.
Now I’m totally onboard with Physical too, I don’t want to see physical disappear totally. (It never will, despite what the haters say) But overall I’m happy that Digital editions will be priced lower.
This news is a test for people reading comprehension. And many failed it seems lol. Or they just want to hate on Nintendo no matter what.
Now, THIS is great news!
Now this is wonderful news.
As long as they are real physical editions and not keys, i am fine with this. Remember when companies said digital would drastically decrease game costs, yet it was all BS and they are priced just under physical or full price?
Long overdue, but great news. Here’s hoping PlayStation follows suit
This would be great news is the digital games were getting cheaper (ala 2.5D games back to $50), but they are staying the same price. Physical copies are just $10 more now.
Correct me if i am wrong but the whole “digital versions games have to be priced the same as a physical version” was an idea from the Iwata era, wasn’t it?
No, it was the distributors who imposed that because otherwise, for them, it was unfair competition since they increase the price of the games to make a profit. Selling everything digitally will therefore make it possible to lower the price since the distributor’s margin will be removed..
Look what i’ve found, i’m pretty sure Sickr reported this back in the day.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/nintendo-explains-why-its-digital-games-are-not-less-expensive/1100-6415997/#:~:text=Nintendo%20explains%20why%20its%20digital,compared%20to%20the%20boxed%20product.
Definitely will speed up the death of physical games.
Physical media will never die. Just look at vinyls and DVDs. They are outdated but have a specific charm to them that people go out of their way to look for. The same thing can be said for video games whether you agree with the sentiment or not. Even if physical game production drastically decreases, it will never truly die and will become for the die hard fans of the hobby.
Physical will continue to survive, physical collectors have already said they would pay the cartridge fee if it means getting physical games
Me. I am one of those people. Plus Limited Run Games and similar companies are proof that there’s an audience for physical game collecting. Regardless of your feelings on LRG (mine is pretty abysmal at the moment), the desire for these companies to do well with what they promised their costumers is proof that there’s audience exists.
They’re raising prices and your response is “great news!” Bizarre response
There not raising prices
I am willing to spend the extra bucks to get it physically, It’s nice saving space on my switch and displaying the case. But this makes digital more appealing, but I still like getting games physically.
Anyone in the comment section saying “this is good news” is an idiot. This has already been the case in Europe since the Switch 2 launched. You know what happened? Digital prices were at 70 (80 for Mario Kart World)… and add 10 onto that for physical. Nothing is getting cheaper here.
Sorry, we don’t live in europe, these prices didn’t effect us until now. Can’t really say we are idiots when we never had the chance for this pricing structure until now.
Not to mention that games have been generally better priced here in the States compared to overseas for a while now. It’s only been with the Switch 2 generation that game pricing has become ridiculous
What’s funny is, Switch games have always been around 5 or 10 dollars cheaper at the Walmarts near me compared to their eshop price, for whatever reason.
Anyways, it would be great if the cut the eshop prices of a lot of Switch games when this rolls out. At the very least, they could knock $10 off all the games they had on the voucher program
The reason is simple: retailers do whatever they want with prices on the sole condition that they do not sell at a loss.
In Japan, for example: it is not uncommon for stores to sell with zero profit, why? To clear out stock..
A- are you guys celebrating another price increase?????
Stop spreading lies, prices are not going up and Nintendo just confirmed it.
Go suck a lemon.
Interesting move by Nintendo! Pricing physical games higher than digital reflects production and distribution costs, but it may push more players toward digital purchases in 2026 . For simpler, low-cost fun, platforms like https://easy-games.io/ offer instant access without extra costs.
It is NOT Nintendo that sets the prices but the large retailers, Nintendo (like any other company for that matter) only gives ‘suggested’ prices, no one is obliged to follow them!
Ffg