Yeah, no. It is not the only place to play Mario. There’s emulation and Piracy. I’m quite certain skilled people will try to hack the Switch 2 and sooner or later there will be a Switch 2 emulation (although might take a while). €80-90 euro for one single game is nuts.
The only reason I would purchase a Switch 2 is when it is capable of being hacked.
Don’t forget the other obvious option: we don’t have to play mario. Also, there’s a used game market with a ton of older games and Nintendo doesn’t get a cent from that anymore.
No offence to folks who like Mario games, but I don’t personally feel good playing them. They have a working class protagonist who works to maintain monarchic status quo (fighting evil kingdom to defend another kingdom). Also the games encourage violence toward turtles. Not cool in my books.
Anyway, jokes aside, I’m not getting a Switch 2 anytime soon, will probably get a Steam Deck before that.
Everyone knows Mario is cool as f–k. But who knows what he’s thinking? Who knows why he crushes turtles? And why do we think about him as fondly as we think of the mystical (nonexistent?) Dr Pepper? Perchance.
Interested too see how piracy works for the switch 2. I will not buy one, as much as I enjoy Nintendo’s games I cannot stand their software experience (UI, shovelware) or their eco system…how many peripherals do you need!?
Except it’s totally not. Maybe the only 100% legal in every single country way, but not the only way by half. Fuck Nintendo. Fuck $80+ for a game. And fuck the switch 2.
Fuck everyone! You cool Gabe.
What other legal way is there that doesn’t require you to pay full price for the game?
Buying it used? That used to be the norm. Or getting it at the library for free.
I believe Nintendo (and other industry leaders) are going to find out that their old games are the going to be the competition to their new games. If it’s too expensive and the old games are fun…there’s enough of a backlog for people to play.
That and indies.
In the case of them rereleasing old games without doing a remaster, in Canada at least, it is legal to have a digital back up for any game you own, and running it in an emulator is legal.
(Edit: I’m implying here that classic games are $80 on the Nintendo store, they are not. Still legal to have digital backups of modern games, still legal to emulate them as long as you own a physical copy.)
Being in receipt of a gift.
But yes, that pricing is bullshit.
I will buy a Switch 2 for however much it costs and when Nintendo first party titles start costing a whole week of work plus overtime I will still buy them. I will take out a mortgage for the eventual $49,999.99 console and $4,999.99 games. I will sell individual organs directly to Nintendo for whatever they want. I will singlehandedly commit genocide with my bare hands for Nintendo. I will gladly die for Nintendo. I live to serve my angel of salvation.
If Mario is 100x more expensive than it needs to be, and there are millions of games that are just as good for a dime, you don’t buy Mario.
Gamers, be it on console or PC, are dumb. Time has shown this over and over again. Horse armour, overpriced micro transactions, golden cage launchers, games as a service, the list goes on.
There will always be people who buy overpriced stuff or don’t think about what will be in ten years.
Not to mention that other publishers will be watching this closely. If Nintendo gets away with it they will make this the new normal.
Yeah, just prepare for 100 dollar games across the board WITH all of the shitty monetization at this point, gamers are going to buy their circus, consequences be damned.
I doubt it. Maybe Grand Theft Auto and Mario Kart can get away with charging more, but a lot of games asking $70 aren’t finding many customers willing to pay that price right now.
Or pirate it when the emulator inevitably happens
You think so huh? ~pulls on frock coat~
Is that right? ~puts on tricorn hat~
I don’t think Ralph agrees. ~“You’re goddamn right I don’t! - Ralph the Parrot”~
He’s 100% right. Gamers buy terrible overpriced content all the time. Basically all of my friends that play WoW bought a 90$ a mount because it has an auction house on it. That’s more than the actual game costs.
Let’s say Switch 2 emulation doesn’t get good for a few years (which is totally possible, depending on how well Nintendo locked it up). He’s saying that if it’s the only way to play NEW Mario games, people will buy it at $80. He’s right, millions will, but there are some like me who are huge Mario fans who will refuse to support such naked greed. Enough to matter to them? Probably not.
But I hope Switch 2 emulation does get to a playable state sooner rather than later.
Gar???
No thanks. I’ll keep playing my old games.
You see, when a good or service is priced too high, it fails to sell. Economics, bitch!
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Not that prices will be much better for long
Won’t they, though? Even disregarding the option of piracy, while new games will be $70 or $80 or whatever at launch, they go down eventually and Steam pricing has always been better than console.
If I was a sociopathic ceo I would release an update for the Switch 1 that bricks it.
Give it 3 months after launch and there will be an emulator that won’t be able to play games, but already have something like a black boot screen.
It would be funny if the reason Nintendo went after the Switch emulators because Switch 2 is the same, and you get playable games in days.
That was the prevailing theory. Why else go after emulators for a dying system?
Because being able to play your existing switch games with better performance is a big part of their sales pitch for this, but people were already starting to do that with the Steam Deck. At that point the comparison for the devices would look like:
Steam Deck: Cheaper, more ergonomic, can play more games, games cost less, games aren’t locked to the console, no charge for better performance if you upgrade to new hardware, can play any game from consoles up to some ps3 through emulation
Nintendo: Better battery life, 120Hz HDR screen, has a new Mario Kart and Donkey Kong game
In every other way it would lose the comparison.
With the emulator crackdown, people don’t perceive it that way, because they don’t think of emulation as an option for the switch. (I mean, some do, but even Retro Games Corps isn’t talking about that possibility anymore because of the strikes against his YouTube channel; they’ve greatly reduced the visibility of that as an option.)
For my part, I’m leaning towards sticking Moonlight on my existing Switch and just streaming from my desktop. It’s not elegant, but you can’t beat the price.
can play any game from consoles up to some ps3
up to a lot of Switch, you mean.
That also! My sense is that for the switch it’s basically only limited by emulator compatibility, but for ps3 and xbox one it’s partially limited by the available cpu and gpu power. I may be mistaken about that though, I don’t own a Deck and haven’t tested this stuff myself.
It’s been a couple years since I tried PS3 and Xbox 360 emulation, but when I did it on PC was the compatibility of the emulator rather than processing power that caused most game to not be playable. It ran Katamari Forever really well, so I’m hoping I can get it running on the Steam Deck, too!
Definitely worth a try!
Because you’re Nintendo.
I bought a switch and those Zelda games during Covid. When I moved, the switch got boxed up. It’s still in the box today.
I’ll be skipping Switch #2 - $80 games reinforces the decision.
Yup he’s right. Nintendo can charge whatever they feel like, add dlcs and monthly sub payments and 90% of people will buy it all the same.
I’m not schocked by a game costing around 80$ as that’s already what a new game costs in my country.
I remember buying Final Fantasy 8 almost 30 years ago for above 90$ as a teenager.
I also kind of remember that NES and Super NES games were really expensive.
I’m not saying that I want the price of games to increase though and I think it’s weird that Nintendo is doing this when their games clearly aren’t the most expensive ones to create.
I know I won’t be buying a Switch 2and I think people should vote with their wallets.
Game pricing hasn’t changed much, sure. I paid $70 for n64 games in 1996. But volume sure has
FFVIII sold 6 million copies in its first year, a huge commercial success, and has sold 9.6 million lifetime Ever juggernaut games like Mario 64 - 12 million copies. FFVII - 12.6 million Pokemon red blue green combined - 30 million Madden 2007 - 7.7 million (interestingly EA does not release sales figures for modern madden games, probably because sports games seem to make far more money from micro transactions than sales. NBA 2k for example sells around 7m units a year but is one of the highest grossing franchises in gaming)
More recent games:
baldurs gate 3 sold 15 million copies Elden ring 20 million Pokémon sword and shield - 27 million Diablo 3 30 million The Witcher 3 50 million Skyrim 60 million Rdr2 70 million GTA 5 200 million
So when people cry “wahh, videogame prices need to rise because inflation” remember that they are stupid and overlook the very basic fact that 20-30 years ago gaming was a niche activity that got nowhere near the volume it gets today. Any single game selling 50 million copies in the 90s or early 2000s, let alone 200 fucking million, was an insane pipe dream
What you’re saying clearly makes sense and I hadn’t thought about the fact that the videogames market had grown so much.
Still I also think it’s important to take into account that 80$ in 1999 isn’t 80$ in 2025.
I’m clearly not rooting to get more expensive games, but I want everything to be taken into account.
Anyway, I ain’t gonna buy any Nintendo console when how little my kids have used the Switch compared with the Playstation.
How do you know how much it costs Nintendo to make these games? Do you have financial reports or something?
To be honest no, but I know that Mario Kart is making Nintendo a lot of money even if the game is really good and not the cheapest one.
I can’t blame Nintendo for trying to make more money, but don’t blame people for trying to spend less.
