Tuesday, March 14th 2023
Nintendo of America CEO Defends Breath of The Wild Sequel Price Hike
Nintendo of America CEO Doug Bowser granted a rare interview to Associated Press, presumably as part of promotional duties prior to the February 17 opening of its Super Nintendo World theme park at Universal Studios Hollywood. In an article published on March 13, AP News journalist Greg Keller threw in a surprise query about the $70 asking price for Nintendo's upcoming sequel to 2017's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Fan backlash to Nintendo of America's price hiking reached fever pitch earlier in 2023, and the company has not been very communicative with reasons for increasing the pricing of certain flagship Switch titles, until now.
Bowser's response was suitably neutral, but plenty can be read into it: "We look at what the game has to offer. 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. This isn't a price point that we'll necessarily have on all our titles. 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." It is clear that he thinks that Tears of the Kingdom presents good value for money, given the standard of content being offered to the prospective player. It is possible that he is hinting that upcoming remakes of legacy Legend of Zelda games will be offered at sub-$70 prices. The recently released Metroid Prime Remastered debuted digitally at $39.99 on the Nintendo eShop, and physical copies have been sold for less at retailers.
Bowser was also asked about Nintendo's expectations regarding sales figures for the upcoming Zelda title, and it was clearly a topic he did not want to discuss in any great detail: "There are, but they're not publicly disclosed yet." He was happier to acknowledge that supply chain issues are no longer a big concern for the company: "Really coming out of the summer and into the final quarter of last year, the holiday period, we saw that that constriction, if you will, in chip supply reduce. So right now, from a supply chain perspective, we're able to supply the demand that's out there."
Nintendo has kept production values for their games relatively low this generation - its Switch hybrid console is famously not capable of outputting 4K in-game resolutions, and therefore developers are not required to produce ultra detailed assets and content. In contrast, budgets for AAA titles on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles have ballooned, in order to accommodate the manpower required to make sprawling and graphically ambitious games. Current generation console owners have become familiar with the resulting price hikes, so it will be interesting to see how things pan out for Nintendo, as their rumored Switch 2 model comes into focus. Is a regular MSRP of $70 a preview of the future, or should we expect a couple of sawbucks to be attached to that in 2024 and beyond?
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available to pre-order for $69.99. Pricing for the deluxe box set Collector's Edition is not yet confirmed for North America. UK retailers listed the Collector's Edition at £109.99 before all available pre-order allocations were sold out.
Source:
AP News
Bowser's response was suitably neutral, but plenty can be read into it: "We look at what the game has to offer. 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. This isn't a price point that we'll necessarily have on all our titles. 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." It is clear that he thinks that Tears of the Kingdom presents good value for money, given the standard of content being offered to the prospective player. It is possible that he is hinting that upcoming remakes of legacy Legend of Zelda games will be offered at sub-$70 prices. The recently released Metroid Prime Remastered debuted digitally at $39.99 on the Nintendo eShop, and physical copies have been sold for less at retailers.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is available to pre-order for $69.99. Pricing for the deluxe box set Collector's Edition is not yet confirmed for North America. UK retailers listed the Collector's Edition at £109.99 before all available pre-order allocations were sold out.
39 Comments on Nintendo of America CEO Defends Breath of The Wild Sequel Price Hike
And doing and good gameplay has aslo a cost ...
Back to the topic, if you spend a lot of hours in the game, it's ok if it's ( a little bit ) expensive ...
But if you're not sure, wait for discount
Adjusted for inflation that's $130-150
Nintendo did not set the trend for high game prices and crap tons of DLC. The PC did that. But it's been set. Nintendo does have sales but does not lower base prices permanently. They don't screw up and constantly release stuff in beta stage and suffer idiotic day one issues with their games. The reality is that PC is the root cause of all these high game prices, DLC, dumbed down crap, idiotic stuff released when it should not be. So Nintendo is not the one who should have the finger pointed at them over it, you want to point the finger, it's PC gamers for all of it. Congrats take a bow master race, now get on the cloud.
For Zelda specifically you're talking about a series that routinely nails things and gets perfect awards or best in a generation. It's had it's share of flops, but for the most part they nail it. This game is a follow up to the current best game of all time per most reviewers and people. It's been in development for years with a massive team of people. It's also still nothing like their 8bit, 16bit, or N64 era games. It's not an unreasonable ask all in all.