The newest news in the Nintendo world is that the Breath of the Wild, ah…remake? No, Just the Switch 2 version will be ten dollars more than the $60 on the Switch. If you already have the game, then you just pay for an ugrade (which I’m assuming it’s ten bucks) because it’s anothre ten bucks on the Switch 2. And, apparently, the sequel, which is seventy bucks, will also have the ten dollar upgrade to the Stwitch 2.
Guess what is not included? The DLC. I have included another video by TopicArlo (I had a video by him in yesteday’s post as well.) The DLC is twenty bucks. And, as TopicAlo pointed out, Nintendo very rarely has sales on their games. They never go on steep sale, apparently. Again, I don’t know because I don’t have a Switch and am not planning on buying a Switch 2.
Here’s the thing. I’m indignant about the prices because all of this is not morally right. I can’t emphasize enough that I have no skin in this game. I was not going to get a Switch 2. I am not going to get a Switch 2. In other words, it doesn’t affect me personally. But I can look at it from afar and not be happy about what is going on. I wrote about how tired I am of both sides just bunkering down, stuffing their fingers in their ears (Initially, I wrote eyes. Ha!), and singing, “La la la la I can’t hear you.”
The thing that has struck me is how Nintendo is nickeling and diming everyone to death. The other big to-do is how they have a welcome tour video/game for the Switch 2–and it’s ten dollars. A welcome tour that introduces you to the new hardware is $10 extra. Are you fucking kidding me? Sony included ASTRO’s Playroom as a PS5 seller for free, and it won game of the year last year. TopicArlo has a video on this welcome tour video/game which is here. The one I included below is his measured rant on the price of Breath of the Wild.
He started off by saying he was…fine with the price of the Switch 2 ($450, but probably will be more because of the tariffs), fine with the new Mario Kart game being $80, but he wasn’t really. It was ‘fine’ in the sense that he was still going to buy both the Switch 2 and the new Mario Kart game, but I could tell that he was really not happy about it.
This is the problem, though. They will buy whatever Nintendo sells them because it’s Nintendo. I want to say once again that I don’t have any Nintendo hardware/software. I had a 3DS for a hot second because Ian gave one to me–and I hated it. It felt terrible in my hands, and the controls were shit. The screen was too small, and everything about it just felt wrong. I did appreciate him giving it to me, though! That was very nice of him.
It’s capitalism writ large, honestly. Nintendo can put whatever price they want on anything and it’ll sell. TopicArlo even said in the video above that if enough people buy the DLC, well, then we’ll know it’s priced exactly right. Or maybe it was about the tour video. Either way, whatever the market will sustain is the right price.
Not morally, mind you, but no one gives a shit about that when we’re talking about the economy.
The interesting thing about the video I linked to is that Reggie Fils-Aime, the ex-president of Nintendo of America mentioned that he always had to cajole Nintendo into packing in games that seemed like they should automatically be included. Such as Wii Sports. Nintendo doesn’t get America and does not understand what they need to do to get people in America on their side. Another was Wii Remote with Wii Play (a mini game collection).
Nintendo is Japanese, obviously. They have a different ethos and culture than does America/other Western countries. This is not rocket science, but you would think that by now, they would realize what is and isn’t important to Americans/Westerners.
Some people in the Discord have declared they are so over the whole discussion. Their gist is that there are bigger things to worry about (like rent, gas, and groceries), and we’re arguing over toys. They’re not wrong, but they’re also not right.
Little treats go a long way. Psychologists know that if you can perk up your spirits now and again, it’ll make you feel much better overall. Games were slowly, but steadily becoming a part of the mainstream. I mean, they always were to a certain extent, but in the last decade, it became normalized to say you played a game (especially if we’re including mobile games). But in the last few years, we’ve jumped from games being $60 (which they’ve been for a long time) to $70 and now to $80 for a select few. There are speculations that GTA 6 may be $100.
We can talk about whether games should have been steadily increasing in price or not (that’s another post for another day), but I think most people can agree that jumping up this quickly is difficult to adjust to.
That’s my main thing. It’s not the jumps in and of themselves. And I can’t speak to how much the new Switch 2 is going to cost because I have no basis for what it should cost. It’s the fact that everything is becoming more expensive so fast. And in the case of the Switch 2, it’s the sum of all the little parts being so damn much.
Side note: It’s amusing to me that people like to sneer at the PC and talk about how expensive PCs are. And, to be fair, if you want to be able to play the newest games at the highest settings, yeah, you’re going to spend up to a couple grand for it. But once you do that, you’re good to go for a decade. You may need to upgrade the graphic card (if possible) and maybe storage, but I’ve hand my current PC for three years and the one before for over a decade. That one was trash at the end, but my brother took it, cleaned it up, and gave it to his son to use. In addition, I use it for everything else in my life. I can write on it, do business, editing, emailing, messaging, and just about anything else I want to do.
Not to mention that Steam has sales on games all the time. I rarely buy games for full price when they come out (unless it’s FromSoft or an indie game I was really looking forward to. In the case of the latter, that’s rarely over $25), which means that I save tons of money on the games. Games on the consoles rarely go on sale, and very rarely for more than half off. For the seventy dollars it takes to buy one new game, I can buy six or seven (or more) games on sale. Even the big triple A games can be as much as 75% off.
That’s all for today. I will probably write more about it tomorrow. Unless my brain decides to go in a different direction.