
No, I Will Not Pay $70 for a Vanilla Switch Game
Contributed by DJMMT
Recently, it was announced that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will release on May 12, 2023, and retail for $70 at launch. Given that Nintendo’s pricing models having never fallen in line with industry standards, we can assume that it will be $70 for a very long time. I’m not going to sugarcoat it or lead in with a drawn-out philosophical discussion. That’s just ridiculous. It is unprecedented for Nintendo, or really any AAA publisher in 2023, to raise the standard MSRP of AAA titles mid-gen.
There is no argument that falls in line with established industry precedent that Nintendo can make to justify charging $70 for a Switch game in 2023. It’s simply a case of them knowing they can get away with it. The Nintendo Switch is a last gen console. Not only that, but it’s the weakest last gen console. We allowed Switch games to be $60, because that was the standard MSRP for AAA games last gen. We were simply nice enough to play along and ignore the fact that the Switch’s specs didn’t measure up to either the PS4 or the XBOX ONE. And honestly speaking, I’m OK with that. I know many people aren’t. But I never had a problem with Nintendo charging the standard last gen MSRP for their AAA titles. I do have a problem with the fact that their prices never go down like games on all other platforms, including PC. But the release price being $60 never seemed unacceptable to me. I draw the line at raising the price to next gen levels without offering next gen hardware to play on.

I was not happy when publishers decided that PlayStation and XBOX games would launch for $70 on next gen consoles. I accepted the justifications, and I’ve now bought a new PS5 game at $70 (I preordered Wild Hearts), but I was never happy with it. That being said, the logic was sound. I may not have agreed with the argument, but anyone arguing in good faith had to accept that the logic behind trying to justify PS5 and XBOX SERIES X games increasing in price made sense. But notice that PlayStation 4 and XBOX ONE games are still launching at $60. Even for games that are also available on next gen hardware. Because there’s no legitimate justification to raise the price of games on a console that’s more than five years old. It simply doesn’t fall in line with established industry practice. They didn’t even raise the price of games for the PS4 PRO. That was new, superior hardware, though only nominally so, and they did not try to raise the price of games as a result. Because everyone, including Sony themselves, agreed that it was a last gen console and thus should have last gen priced games. Nintendo charging $70 for a Switch game is simply hubris.
What’s even more angering about Tears of the Kingdom being $70 is that it’s not even a “new” game. Not only is it an existing IP, but it’s also a direct sequel set in the same world/map as its predecessor, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. For those who don’t remember, that game released on the Nintendo Switch for $60. Yes, there was also a Wii U version, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion. Other than the bullshit argument of “well prices should increase every gen just because.” Again, it’s about precedent. So again, we’re being asked to pay $70 for a game built into an existing map on an existing engine that we’ve already paid $60 to play in previously. I didn’t realize that Nintendo was taking pointers from Bethesda now. Yeah, I said it.

Let me be clear, Tears of the Kingdom looks great. I’ve seen haters online complaining that it looks bad because it doesn’t look better than Breath of the Wild, but that’s bullshit. No one should have expected it to look better, because they always said that it was going to be a direct sequel. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But there is absolutely something wrong with charging more money for a fraction of the work. And that’s exactly what this is. They didn’t have to build a game from scratch to make Tears of the Kingdom. They didn’t have to develop an entirely new art style. They didn’t have to develop new physics and combat mechanics and balance them. Most of the work of making a game was already done for this. They spent the last six years doing mission design and plot writing. Which is fine, but it’s not worth $70.
One thing I’ve really become irritated with in the last one or two gens of gaming is that people seem to have lost their perspective on how to judge the value of games. People always debate how much games are worth and how that should be calculated. The classic rule of thumb was $1 per hour on the low side with a cap of standard AAA MSRP, but I’m not even talking about that. I’m talking about how games should be valued in the market. And that’s the important part. Games exist within a market of games. They aren’t released into, and shouldn’t be judged within, a vacuum. A game is not worth $5, $50, or $500 because of how good or bad it is. Questions like how short or long it is are irrelevant in a vacuum. All these factors only matter in how they compare to other games. If all games were one hour and $60. It wouldn’t make sense to complain about a AAA game being too short unless you could beat it in less than an hour. On the flip side, if a game is $70 and only five hours, that’s a problem if other games in the same genre released around the same time are just as good or better and also more than five hours long. So, let’s not just say Tears of the Kingdom is worth however much money because I like Zelda games. Let’s compare the game to competing titles in the actual market today.

In the last couple years, we’ve had many open world third person adventure games. Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and Sonic Frontiers just to name a few. All those games, two of which are available on Switch, and were at launch, released for only $60. Now I can’t say if Tears of the Kingdom will be better or worse than any of those other games. I haven’t played it yet, so it’s impossible to make that judgement right now. But I can say that it won’t look or play better than those other games, because it’s built into an engine and world that’s six years old. It might look as good as Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but it’s just not going to surpass any game that released recently on the PS5. That’s not to say that it won’t be more enjoyable. That’s subjective. But we can be sure that from a tech standpoint it will not be a better product than Elden Ring or Horizon Forbidden West. That’s just an objective fact, due to the hardware it was built for and the older systems it was built on. So from a market standpoint, there’s really no justification to charge more for Tears of the Kingdom on last gen hardware. Especially when we know the next Nintendo console is already in the works and will absolutely release a port of this latest Zelda at full price, which will also sell really well. It’s just blatant greed at this point. There is no valid argument for why that game should cost $70 in the current market.
As the title says, I will not pay $70 for a vanilla Switch game. In the case of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, this is not just a philosophical statement for effect, but a literal truth. I already preordered the game, but I did so with an eShop voucher, which allowed me to get the game for $50. And I was happy to pay that price. Like I said, I don’t have an issue with new AAA titles on Switch launching for $60. That is the last gen standard. It’s a new game, even if it is a direct sequel set in the same map, on last gen hardware. Based on industry precedent, a new Zelda on last gen hardware should launch for $60. Being able to get it for $50 feels great. I’m surprised they allowed it to be purchased with a voucher with that increased price point. That’s actually why I already preordered it. I genuinely feared that they would change their minds and remove it from the list of voucher compatible titles.

One person I saw online said they think the reason for the voucher discount and $70 price tag is to intentionally drive people away from physical sales and towards digital purchases. I don’t know if that’s true, but it makes a lot of sense. In general, the gaming industry has been bending over backwards for the last decade trying to get people to buy into subscription services and to stop preferring physical media for their game purchases. What better way for Nintendo to do that than to offer a $20 discount on what will very likely be a GOTY contender? There are still Switch games that released years ago that you can’t get for $20 under MSRP.
That explanation makes even more sense when you consider that the vouchers became available less than a month before preorders went live. I don’t know why vouchers aren’t available all year round, but they’re not. And the fact that they went live right before the announcement of Tears of the Kingdom being announced at $70 doesn’t seem like a coincidence. If the goal really is to push people towards digital purchasing, this was the perfect way for Nintendo to do it.

In any case, the idea of Switch games being $70 is just unacceptable, and I will not be participating in any way. I love my Switch, and I will continue to use it. But there’s no excuse for such blatant and unjustifiable greed from Nintendo on this one. What’s also angering is that it basically confirms that their next gen games will absolutely be $70. But at least that would fall in line with industry precedent.