Games Inbox: How expensive are Nintendo Switch 2 games?

The Friday letters page argues over the positives and negatives of the Nintendo Switch 2 reveal, as one reader is sad at the death of mini-consoles.

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The future of pricing
Sometimes I think people genuinely enjoy complaining. I’ve seen so many online wailing about the Mario Kart World being £80 (even though it’s actually £75) and completely ignoring the fact that the digital version is £67 and you can get it bundled with the console for just £34.

If you get enjoyment moaning online and trying to pretend things are worse than they are then fine, but I think I’ll be getting the console and the game – which looks fantastic – for that low price.

Don’t get me wrong, even £67 is too much and I’m not happy about it, if it’s going to becoming the norm. But it actually sounds like it’ll be a different price for every game, given Donkey Kong is £59 digitally and that stupid tech demo thing is around £5.

I also don’t know what people are going to do when GTA 6 turns out to be £100. It’s already been rumoured and Nintendo’s announcements make it clear things are moving in that direction. Personally, I think it’s a terrible solution for the increasing cost of making games and a far better one would’ve been just making them half the length.

But that’s not where things are going and if nothing else I think you can pretty much guarantee you’ll get your money’s worth out of Mario Kart. I’m still playing Mario Kart 8 now and this new one seems to have a lot more going on.
Ashton Marley

Sign of the times
Well, flabbergasted at the price of Mario Kart World. £74.99.

I cannot see any defending or justification of it.

This at a time when bills are soaring.
They want people to pay over £70 per game.
I feel sorry for the parents of kids that want a Switch 2 and its games.

This feels like greed.

For me personally it put me right off from buying a Switch 2 and straight to looking at the price of a Steam Deck, as I’d ideally like a handheld for work.

Nintendo actually stunned me. The prices, the paying for a tech demo, the upgrade prices, the ‘physical’ copy which is really a download key, the price of Joy-Cons, the price of a Pro Controller. Wow.
Not for me this.

Found prices at £279.99, for refurbished, which isn’t too bad.
Matt

Card dealer
Do you know if it’s true that the Switch 2 cartridges don’t have the game on them and they are only a download key? If true, that’s a total deal breaker for me, as I like to actually own my games. £80 for Mario Kart and it’s just a download code is a joke.

I hope Nintendo aren’t going down that road, as I’ll end up skipping the console completely (and Sony and Microsoft will do away with disc drives too probably, so a retro future awaits).
Simon

GC: It’s complicated. There’s going to be both normal game cartridges, that actually contain the game, and what Nintendo refers to as a Game-Key Card, which are literally just a key to unlock a downloadable game. It’s implied these will be clearly labelled and the only confirmed example so far is Square Enix’s Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster.

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Hardware preference
Very happy to see the GameCube being on the Switch 2 right from launch. It’s a very underrated console and I’m glad it’s getting its due. It does make it sound like Nintendo is trying to make the Switch 2 the everything console, that can play any game, so I was a little surprised the rumour about being able to use a console as a Wii U GamePad didn’t get announced – as that sounded exactly the sort of thing they’d do.

I have to be honest though I do prefer the mini-consoles as the best way to play retro games. I guess you make more money from having to keep a subscription going but I really loved the NES and SNES models and would’ve liked to have N64 and GameCube as well. They could’ve even made them so you could add extra games as DLC, but I guess that’s too much work really.

It’s a shame the age of the mini-consoles was so brief, because I really like them, and it’s a special shame we never got a decent PlayStation one.
Sobert

Wrong figures
I’m a massive Nintendo fan. Ultimately, I was impressed by the Direct.

But

£80 for a first party game? WTF?!

The console price I can live with. The game prices are too high. £65 max.

Pro Controller is almost £80 too.

Overall, this will make me choose more carefully what I buy and will impact on how many games per year I buy.

They have to be 9/10 or above for me to from out that amount. And I’m 100000% not buying them digitally at that price.
Lee

GC: The physical edition is £75. The digital version is £67 and the game is only £34 if you buy it as a bundle with the console.

Christmas present
I thought the Switch 2 direction was good, Mario Kart and Donkey Kong will be day one for me, and the console had for some cool features in handheld mode (VRR, 120fps) I was hoping for.

My biggest disappointment was the lack of a release date for Metroid Prime 4, which would be the perfect launch game for me.

I think Nintendo very deliberately held their cards close to their chests in terms of first party, with only games releasing in the first few months after being shown, to save some announcements but mainly to sell the system as a new go-to place for third party games.

Even Nintendo themselves must have been surprised how well indie games faired on Switch 1, and they surely want to generate that kind of interest in bigger, more high profile games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring.

(The hybrid nature of the console remains a huge unique selling point, I feel).

I fully expect another Direct around July (isn’t there always?), showcasing their planned Christmas games, which will no doubt include a new Mario game as no mainline game in the first six to 12 months of a Nintendo console would just be wrong.

The biggest head scratcher for me though; where the blazes was Microsoft? They’re on record saying they want to support the platform, and there was no better event to announce Halo or Forza or whatever.

Even some smaller games, like Rare Replay or the more recent Battletoads, would have sufficed and seem like a perfect fit.

I’m sure they’ll pipe up eventually, but Microsoft’s absence was surprising to me.
ANON

GC: You’re right, their lack of involvement was very strange. We’re in two minds as to whether there’s likely to be a big Christmas game lurking in the wings. To avoid disappointment, it’s probably best to assume there isn’t, as there are a lot of, admittedly minor, games scheduled for 2025 but with no current release date.

Small changes
I’ve just watched the Switch 2 reveal and I’ll be honest I thought I’d be saying it’s a Switch Pro and in a way it is but they have done what the first switch should have been like. I think the price is a little bit wow but that does look like Nintendo have took a small jump.

It’s like every little bit of the Switch 2 is a little bit better in every way. Will it be enough to sell it? Only sales will tell but that should of been how the switch was. Would I buy one? Maybe. Not at that price but in time maybe I would, yes.
David

The young guard
One interesting and easily missed point made by a YouTuber I enjoy (Arlo, a big Nintendo fan and a great character) was the three young figureheads for the Switch 2. The producer, director, and hardware lead fronted the presentation and they looked like they were deliberately being positioned as the new guard for Nintendo.

When the Switch 2 is replaced, Miyamoto will be well into his 80s (which doesn’t bear thinking about), but I think the young team has made a really encouraging first impression here.

The game prices do sting, and it means I’ll probably be more likely to share games, wait for discounts or sell some on (as long as the Virtual Game Card system doesn’t somehow mess that up). Bundling in Mario Kart World for just £34 is a hell of a sweetener though, and it pretty much locks in the game’s chances of being high in the software charts every week along with Grand Theft Auto 6 for at least the next kajillion years.

While it could be considered disappointing that we haven’t yet seen much, first party wise, that’s comparable with the best looking games of the PlayStation 4 generation (Horizon Forbidden West, Read Dead Redemption 2, etc.). Maybe Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza represent Nintendo once again underlining how production budgets are better spent exploring how interactivity and scale can be expanded rather than focusing on expensive graphics, only for new games to operate within the same old constraints.

That’s pretty much the spirit of Zelda and Mario over the past eight years and I have to say if either or both of these new games turn out to be killer apps, I’ll be increasingly convinced Nintendo (and their new youthful overlords) have it spot on.

It’s almost bizarre to think after all this time Metroid Prime 4 is finally coming out in the middle of all this as well, and it looks pretty good on its own.
Panda

Inbox also-rans
These Switch 2 prices are all over the price. The upgrade payments seem pretty reasonable and the hardware bundle with Mario Kart is great, but the game on its own is outrageous and the Welcome Tour thing for a fiver is bizarre. It may be the only Nintendo game whose sales are measured in single digits.
Wotan

So I guess Nintendo is not actively engaged in killing physical gaming, because it’s just too expensive to buy it on Switch 2. Not a move I had on my bingo card.
Focus

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