Nintendo - NES Classics, Metroid Prime 2 Movies

An anonymous reader writes "Game Informer has broken the news that there will be four new NES Classic titles released for Game Boy Advancein the States this October 25th: 'The four titles will include Dr. Mario, Metroid, Castlevania, and Zelda 2: The Adventure Of Link. Each title will retail for a suggested price of $19.99.' [We've previously covered the Japanese re-release of some of these.] Also, Game Informer has put up 15 movies from the Metroid Prime 2: Echoes demo disc that ships with the new Metroid Prime GameCube bundle. The movies cover every single second of the disc, from beginning to end."

Comments

Re:Two of these already on GBA

[Anonymous Coward]

They also released that Zelda Collection as a promotion through Nintendo Power, which included, Zelda, Zelda 2, Ocarina and Majora's Mask ... whic was about 19.99 dollars less than 19.99. Well minus the cost of the magazine subscription.

Re:Two of these already on GBA

[10101001 10101001]

I care because I care about economics. In a free market (which capitalism is something like), airplanes aren't supposed to cost millions of dollars more than it could be sold for. For a given good, there's a whole array of prices people are willing to pay for the good. With enough competition, the actual company selling the good is forced (from an economic standpoint) to keep the price low which causes a good deal of consumer surplus (the whole "Dutch Auction" which Google's IPO is supposed to do behaves in the same way).

Given that little actual work is done to create these classics, the perceived value by most is less than the $20 charged. However, given there's no one to compete against Nintendo, Nintendo will set the price at $20 to maximize its own profit. This almost certainly isn't maximizing consumer surplus which is a sign that the market is neither as efficient nor as healthy as it could be. Every time the free market fails for whatever reason, it's a time I want to know about. For airplanes, it's a question of barrier to entry, government subsidies (lucrative contracts, mostly), and the general lack of demand to approach the efficiency possible. For NES classics, it's a question of the artificial monopoly of copyright. It's not feasible to fix the airplane problem (well, the contracts could be removed, which would help), but such long copyrights *are* something that can be completely resolved.