The spring sale is only 30% off. Why is Nintendo always so stingy?

From March 5 to June 4, 2002/kloc-0, Nintendo began to sell in spring. Although the poster has the feeling that your friend as a designer will have a stroke, we are still happy to see Nintendo's first-party masterpieces such as Super Mario Odyssey, Arms and Excalibur 2. In particular, this work Excalibur 2 is hard currency in the second-hand market, and the price remains high all the year round. It happens from time to time to buy 350 and sell 430 for half a year. Just when many players were happy for a short time and thought they could finally get rid of the leak, they were surprised at the discount. The maximum discount is only 30%. Is it too stingy? Well, maybe Nintendo players have long been used to it. After all, Nintendo is not stingy for a day or two.

After all, when Sony next door remastered the FF7 which was less than 1 year and sold it at a high price of $60, Nintendo members were able to play the FC simulator 20 or 30 years ago for free, and they were moved to tears. The cost of cassette tape is high, and the discount is a loss. In fact, a very simple truth can explain why Nintendo games are not so discounted. Because the cost of Nintendo cassette is inherently high, unlike modern mature Blu-ray game discs, the cassette used for switch is made through a special process. The cost of the two is very different. The cost of a 32GB cassette is even 60% higher than that of a 50G Blu-ray disc.

For convenience, Switch has made the game cassette very small. In order to prevent children from eating it by mistake, a non-toxic bittering agent called benadryl ammonium is coated on the back of the cassette, which is the most bitter chemical known in the world at present (readers who want to try it can try it), further raising the cost. Like the digital version, the physical version of the cassette is sold at a break price of 10% or 20%, which may not be as expensive as the cassette, so it is really a loss to sell one copy. Of course, some readers may question here: What does the high cost of cassette have to do with me buying the downloaded version? ?

Players think it doesn't matter, but retailers think it's important. If Nintendo greatly discounts the games it downloads on eshop, retailers may not even buy your goods directly. At that time, only Nintendo will eat the bitter fruit of the squeezed inventory. As early as 20 13, Satoru Iwata, then president of Nintendo, explained why the digital games sold by Nintendo were not cheaper than the games on the same physical cassette: we thought that since the contents were the same, both the physical cassette and the digital games should be made at the same price. This peer-to-peer pricing strategy can ensure that digital games will not depreciate relative to physical cassettes.

Perhaps this is also the reason why Nintendo developed from a small card company more than 100 years ago to a contemporary game giant. This seemingly stubborn and conservative? Craftsmanship? In fact, it is also the ultimate embodiment of their constant pursuit of game quality and continuous improvement. Their games are really worth selling so expensive.