It's happening. Nintendo's February Direct confirmed The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the developer's first game to sell for $70 on the Switch. This price hike is in no way unusual in the modern state of gaming as Nintendo's competitors Xbox and Sony raised the prices of their own first-party games in 2022. However, Nintendo's unique pricing practices make this sudden increase in cost distinctly worse for players.
Most publishers tend to lower the prices of their games and offer discounts in the months following their release. This is done for many reasons, such as a game's gradual decrease in popularity or as a strategy to attract more consumers. Regardless, lowering a game's price over time is a fairly standard practice that, for many players, is a godsend. At a time when developers like Ubisoft and Take-Two are raising game prices alongside Xbox, Sony, and Nintendo, many players who can't justify the high price tag of $70 for games like Tears of the Kingdom (or simply cannot afford that price), could be turned off from gaming.
Nintendo Does Not Drop Its First-Party Game's Prices
Unlike other platforms, Switch owners rarely experience the luxury of game prices dropping as Nintendo rarely lowers the prices of its first-party titles. As the late Nintendo President Satoru Iwata explained in his book Ask Iwata, "My personal take on the situation is that if you lower the price over time, the manufacturer is conditioning the customer to wait for a better deal." Though this philosophy has been successful for Nintendo, it will make TOTK's price hike that much worse for Switch owners. Other consoles' first-party games will eventually become less expensive, while the Switch's will remain inaccessible to those who cannot afford the new high price point.
The Nintendo Switch Is Too Old For Price-Hikes
What makes TOTK's price hike even worse is that the Nintendo Switch is too old to justify it. Sony and Xbox raised their first-party games' prices in part to accommodate the more expensive hardware and software of ninth-generation consoles. Although which generation the Switch belongs to is up to YouTubers like Nintendo Prime to debate, Nintendo can't rely on this excuse. The Switch is twice as old as its ninth-generation peers and hasn't received a truly significant upgrade. The rise in first-party game prices is thus forcing Switch owners to pay more to play on a lesser console.
Nintendo's pattern of rarely dropping costs creates further problems with future price hikes. Until TOTK became available for preorder in February 2023, BOTW cost $60 - that's nearly six years of being full price. If the prices of first-party Nintendo games only drop when their sequels become available for purchase, players might have to wait years until new $70 titles like TOTK start seeing price drops. By that point, Nintendo's rumored 2024 Switch console might be out, and these older games and the console they're played on would be outdated.
Nintendo's price jump to $70 for first-party games thus seems unfair in comparison to Sony and Xbox. On top of refusing to lower prices for prolonged periods of time, Nintendo has failed to justify the higher costs of games due to the Switch's lack of significant hardware and software improvements. First-party titles on Nintendo Switch consequently have a lot more to prove to account for these high prices.
Source: Ask Iwata, Nintendo Prime / YouTube