A pair of former Nintendo employees have shared their unique perspectives on why the company’s games are priced the way they are and why they never go on sale.
Even among notoriously tight-lipped video game companies, Nintendo is famous for being cagey, leaving a lot of the company’s inner workings shrouded in mystery. That’s why, when two people with such intimate knowledge of the company’s marketing strategy share some insights, it’s worth paying attention.
In the wake of the Switch 2‘s reveal, which mainly due to pricing concerns and pre-order woes in the US, has been something of a controversy, former Nintendo marketing leads Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang have been opening up about their time with the company on their Kit & Krysta podcast. In a recent episode, they said the Wii U flopped so bad that getting third-party support on Switch was “really hard,” but reckoned that the Switch 2 is about to mark a new era where “there’s no more proving yourself.”
In the episode (timestamp), the duo dove into Nintendo’s mantra when it comes to pricing its games, which they characterized as “respect the value.” Ellis shared that the pair would often be approached by influencers wanting access to Nintendo software for giveaways, and when they would forward these pitches to the higher-ups, they would “often get a long lecture.”
“Nintendo products have immense value, we must always respect that immense value,” Ellis said. “This is why these things don’t go on sale. The value is the value and we are seriously into that concept of ‘respect the value of what this thing is that we have made, because it is very special.'”
“As a Nintendo customer, fan,” Yang agreed, “you’re kind of conditioned to, ‘If I want to buy this, I might as well by this now, because it’s not going to go on sale.'”
Though, Yang did offer something of a vague counterpoint to the company’s rigid price structure, saying, “Well, how far are you taking this concept of how much your stuff is worth?”
“It’s a Nintendo tax,” agreed Ellis, arguing from Nintendo’s perspective that, “What we made was $60. A lot of those other games that are $60 are junk. They don’t have the level of Nintendo quality or polish or attention, so we need to distinguish how premium this thing is through the pricing, and you will come to understand that.”
While neither Yang nor Ellis mention Switch 2 specifically, it seems like the unspoken context behind the chatter is Nintendo’s introduction of some $80 games, including Mario Kart World. The backlash to the premium price tag has been swift and unified, but in response Nintendo has defended the pricing by saying the racing game is “probably the richest Mario Kart experience” fans will have ever had.
It’s also worth extra clarification that it doesn’t seem $80 games will become the new Nintendo standard any time soon, with big in-house games like Donkey Kong Bananza still being priced at the usual $70 mark.
For everything coming to Nintendo’s new console on its June 5 launch, here’s a list of all the Switch 2 launch games we know about.
