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Nintendo President Vows Cheap Games
Chris Morris, over at CNN's Game Over column, had a chance to talk to Nintendo President Iwata last week about that company's goals for their next generation console. The message Morris came away with: $60 games are not in Nintendo's plans. From the article: "If we can come up with an addictive, but simple title - such as Tetris 15 years ago - my attention should be focused on containing costs ... So, I would make it available through the Virtual Console. I think the opportunity for ourselves will be much larger than software that costs $50-$60. ... Of course, there are a number of people waiting for a 'masterpiece' title. For those games, we'll utilized traditional distribution channels."
Nintendo will have much of the old SNES and Sega Genesis catalog available for download. There's a lot of games out there that I didn't get to play the first time around. Heck, this would be a lot like the Phantom game console, only real.
Yes, XBOX 360 also has online distribution and cheaper prices for some games. So? What's your point?
While the summary doesn't make it immediately apparently, the article states that this is for more than the downloadable content:
Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo of Japan, told me last week that while the company has no control over what its partners ask for their games, "I cannot imagine any first party title could be priced for more than $50."
And one would assume that the industry would generally follow the lead of the publisher... generally.
Well, if you had read the article, the Nintendo president said he didn't understand how games could sell for more than $50.
Nintendo's been doing what it can to keep costs down -- hell, they were the most profitable of the last round of consoles, even with the much smaller share.
And as for downloading -- unlike MS, they already have a massive collection of console games to distribute -- the article (which I'm guessing you neglected to read), make reference to selling more lower cost items, rather than focus on selling a few higher priced items.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
For the most part, Nintendo has always strives to make game affordable. They were the first to offer "Best Of" games, those popular titles that sold over a million or more copies that they started to discount from their original price, usually in the $30 CDN range. But I ask, if you know your next Legend of Zelda is going to sell millions, why launch it with a $60 price tag?
Its not like Nintendo has to guess what will be a hit and what won't. A Zelda, Mario, Metroid, etc incarnation will always sell like hotcakes, so why not just offer them at a discount price to begin with.
I hope this isn't just all talk and no action, which has been very typical of Nintendo for the last 10 years. The Revolution name should be more then just a marketing gimmick. If it doesn't offer dramatically different game play, more features and lower costs then where is the Revolution except on the label. If its just another vehicle for more Pokemon and Mario and Zelda derivative titles, then I think Nintendo might be in big trouble.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Maybe not in that regard, but let's see the XBox run Mario or classic Zelda without using some illegal emu and roms that takes chips and crap to make it happen.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
funny timing this article, I just blogged about it on my site. :)
Basically, I ranted about how I saw Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion at futureshop the other day. The prices are getting a little out of hand if you ask me. This is what I saw:
(All prices in $CDN)
PC Version : $59.99
XBOX 360 Version : $69.99
XBOX 360 Deluxe Version : $79.99
Why on earth are the console counterparts so much more? Does the xbox 360 license cost that much more? I certainly do not like this trend, and am happily awaiting my Nintendo Revolution. Speaking of Nintendo, here's another plug for them. I just picked up Tetris DS the last week for $34.97CDN. I've been playing it a LOT. It's a great pick me up game. I can turn it on, connect to Nintendo's Wifi service, have a few games against people around the world, all in the span of about 10 min. What a great deal this game is.
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
A Zelda, Mario, Metroid, etc incarnation will always sell like hotcakes, so why not just offer them at a discount price to begin with.
Because if they were to do this, they wouldn't be Maximizing profit. You sell Zelda at the 50 dollar price point initially to customers like myself, who will whip out a check the second it comes out, and you keep it there, so that little billy has time to save up to buy the game at full retail price.
The only reason you drop prices is because after a year and a half, there is plenty of new hotness out there, and chances are, you will get lost in the full retail price shuffle. So you slap a distinctive yellow stripe on top of the box, slash the price to 20 bucks, and sell to everyone that "heard it was good from somewhere" but weren't willing to fork over $54.11 just to see if he would enjoy running around as an elf with a boomerang. You don't get as much profit, but you're making more money then you would selling 0 copies at $50.00.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
When it comes to the business of games I listen to N. They are the only company that is in the market to make money by selling game hardware and software. Not media centers, not set top boxes. Game systems and games.
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
Geometry Wars came out in November. As I recall, Nintendo first announced the Virtual Console at E3 last year, in May. I don't know when Microsoft announced Live Arcade, but I'd wager both companies came up with the idea concurrently. Sony, on the other hand, appears to be far enough behind that I think they're just copying the idea.
Gamecube games currently take the longest to come down in price. Their best sellers cost $30 where the PS2 greatest hits only cost $20. I've also noticed that it takes many of their games a long time to come down in price compared to PS2 and XBOX. You can argue quality over quanitity I guess. They also made a killing on selling un-updated NES remakes for gameboy for 20 bucks a pop. I haven't exactly associated them with being budget oriented. I think they are just doing some smart marketing to respond to the gripes gamers are expressing about $60. Let us not forget there were SNES and Genesis games that cost $75 15 years ago. Like I've said before, Street Fighter 2 for SNES blew me away and was totally worth $75. If they can make a game today that has the same effect, I would pay that much again.
Just to play Devil's Advocate...
Microsoft could pull out all the titles it made for Win32, DOS, and the MSX and resell them; after all, it shouldn't be difficult for MS to emulate any of THOSE platforms (although they'd probably need an agreement with ASCII to resell the MSX stuff). MS actually HAS made quite a few games over the years.
If you find $30 for a DS game expensive wait until you see the price of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories for PSP...
I do believe that Nintendo hasn't announced ANYTHING with regards to download pricing yet. Either you know more than the rest of us do, or you're pulling numbers out of your ass.
Goo goo g'joob.
The thing in this interview I found most interesting were the details and hints at storage options. First, they flat out said that the Revolution will have a SD slot. Hopefully this will get away from the proprietary memeory cards of the past (or present). Second, Iwata said that there will be usb ports built in for practically andy storage method. So USB flash drives and external hard drives become an option. Sweet. I have to admit that the $400 price tag of the 360 is very off-putting. If Nintendo can keep the cost down by not including a HDD while still making one a practical expansion option, I'm all over it.