Nintendo Preorder Price Scam? (TLOZ:TOTK)
Contributed by DJMMT
A couple months back, I wrote a post about how I was absolutely not going to pay $70 for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TOTK), even though I’m really excited for the game. That hasn’t changed. I am still really excited for the game, and I’m still not going to pay $70 for it. But I was never going to pay $70, because, as I stated in that post, I used a voucher to preorder the game for $50, as soon as I realized you could do that through the eShop. While I would have loved to own a physical edition of the game, I love “saving $20” more. What I find most interesting since that initial $70 price tag announcement, is that basically no one seems to actually be paying $70 for TOTK.
*Note that I’m talking about the USA MSRP for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I am highly aware that gamers in many other countries, such as UK, Canada, and Australia will absolutely be paying $70+ for this game because of unequal pricing policies across regions. As a resident of Taiwan, I know this pain all too well. As with most posts on this blog, I’m referring specifically to American pricing and purchasing of games.
As with most major game announcements, there was much anger and debate in response to Nintendo announcing that TOTK would launch with a $70 MSRP. That was a major part of my previously mentioned blog post, so I won’t dive into the details again. But since then I’ve seen literally constant opportunities to pay less than $70 for TOTK. In fact, I’ve seen constant opportunities to pay $60 or less. Why is $60 important? Because we all know that this is the standard MSRP for Nintendo Switch, PS4, and XBOX ONE games. If TOTK had originally been announced at $60, there would have been no controversy (There probably would have been some given the fact that many people are calling TOTK an expansion to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild rather than a full sequel. I did a post about that as well.). It’s odd that after announcing the game for $70 there has been absolutely no reason to pay full price for the game. That is of course if we assume that $70 was actually meant to be full price for the game.
As I said, from the first day that TOTK was available for preorder, you could get it for $50 digitally with a voucher. Soon after that, physical game retailers started doing “limited time” promotions to preorder the game for $60. I can’t say this has been true for all retailers 100% of the time, but I can say that I’ve seen enough opportunities where if you really wanted to buy the physical version for $60 you could. As I write this, I assume there will be at least one more discounted preorder push before the game finally drops. I also assume there will be deals to buy the game for $60 soon after it is released as well. So, if the game could be purchased/preordered for less than $70 in both digital and physical versions from basically the day that preorders went live, was the game ever really $70?
On one hand, it’s very possible that Nintendo really thought we were all so enthralled by the Zelda franchise that we would immediately jump at the chance to overpay for the next game in the franchise. And to be fair, that was/is true for a number of people. I did see plenty of keyboard warriors arguing that they’d happily pay Nintendo $70 for a new Zelda game, because they know “it’s going to be many hours of fun.” But most people, rightfully, felt that while $60 would have been an expected, and I guess “fair,” price tag for a new Switch game, $70 was asking for too much. Obviously, the $70 price comes from copying the PS5 and XBOX SERIES X raised MSRP for new AAA titles. Nintendo thought that they could sneak their way into a seat at the next-gen table without actually releasing a next-gen console. Or, maybe this was all a marketing/PR scam to begin with.
What if Nintendo never actually banked on selling a single copy of TOTK for $70? What if from the very first announcement Nintendo expected and planned for the public to get angry at the $70 price tag so they could quickly offer discounts on both the digital and physical versions of the game down to the standard price and rake in FOMO preorders? Because that’s exactly what happened to me. I saw the trailer, got excited for the game, saw the $70 price tag, got angry, saw the $20 discount for the digital version, and jumped at the chance. I wouldn’t even call it an impulse buy. I absolutely knew I was going to buy that game eventually, when I saw the trailer. And I know that Nintendo rarely offers meaningful discounts on their first party titles. The Switch version of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze from 2018 is still $60 on the eShop and $50 on Amazon for the physical version. Getting a new Zelda game for $20 off the supposed MSRP and $10 off what I originally expected to pay for it literally feels like a steal with Nintendo. And I know I’m not the only one who feels that way. Even multi-platform indie games are usually overpriced on Switch, when compared to the rest of the market.
If you think of the $70 price tag announcement as a way to go viral in the media cycle, which it absolutely did, and then consider how good it feels for people when they manage to get a first party Nintendo title for even just $10 off the MSRP, this all makes a lot more sense. It’s easy to say that Nintendo is tone deaf and just doesn’t understand the market. But such an opinion is laughable when you consider just how profitable they really are compared to Sony and Microsoft. The Switch doesn’t work half as hard as the PS5 or XSX, and yet Nintendo consistently breaks records with their first party titles. People were championing The Last of Us Part II (2020) for selling four million copies in its opening weekend. Meanwhile, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, which most people complained about being terribly low quality as far as performance is concerned, sold ten million copies in just three days. In Japan alone, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet cleared four million copies in its opening weekend. To act like Nintendo doesn’t know what they’re doing is factually ridiculous. That’s why I’m starting to think this whole $70 price tag thing is just a big marketing scam.
I don’t know why Nintendo would feel like they need to put in the extra effort to sell copies of a new Zelda game, but I honestly think it makes more sense than they actually just felt like the game is worth 17% more than other Nintendo first party titles. And make no mistake, there is a long-term benefit to announcing a $70 Switch game. Even if they don’t sell a single copy of the game at $70, they’ve now put the idea of $70 Nintendo games out into the world. Meaning that the next Nintendo console, no matter how comparatively weak it ends up being, will almost surely default to $70 first-party titles at launch, and that will feel normal by then to the public. If I might steal a quote from Training Day (2001), it’s chess not checkers.
Can I prove the TOTK $70 price tag was just an elaborate con to bolster preorder numbers and possibly try to push more people towards going digital? No, I cannot. But do the many factors all falling into place like this paint a picture that looks suspicious? Yes, they absolutely do. I will be curious to see if Nintendo tries to announce another Switch game at $70 before the console is finally replaced. In any case, just a few days left until the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and I’m very excited.
