this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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Did Nintendo ever really discount their games?
nah, best you'll get is a deal like "buy this $60 game and we'll give you uhh, $10 in credit or smth, idc just buy the game". sometimes physical shops discount their games but that's entirely up to the owners of the shops.
Nintendo's flagship titles are basically immune to sales
Even the old ones aren't particularly immune. A pokemon gold cartridge sells for only $10 less than a brand new Pokemon game at a fair few of the games stores I've been to.
That is more a mix of "collectors" and existential crises. People want to own the games they grew up with (nobody look at my shelf of Armored Core games...) and that went into overdrive when we were all expecting the world to end because of COVID... so expect another massive burst of sales come November.
And then you have the people who decide that, much like with baseball/pokemon cards, their scraped up pokemon yellow cartridge will be their retirement fund because it will be so valuable.
To my understanding, Nintendo actively opposed doing so.
But when Nintendo was "competing" with Sega/Sony, brick and mortar stores had a LOT more power. EBGames/Gamestop could basically do whatever they wanted because moving the Nintendo shelves to be behind the Sony shelves would lead to noticeable sales changes. So it was a lot more common for Toys R Us to run their own sales to move merchandise.
But in the past twenty years or so, Nintendo have actively shitlisted anyone who puts a discount on their games. Amazon famously got shitlisted at least three or four times which led to a lot of weirdness in terms of what "editions" of a given game was available for purchase.
Ah, I remember that. I used to buy most of my GBA and Sega Gamegear games at Toys R Us, and most games went for $20 or less, and I think I got some deals around $5-10 for older games. This was a long time ago, so I don't recall specifics, but I do remember Toys R Us being the place to go for video games.
All my physical Switch games (which is most of them) I got used at GameStop because they were all about 50-70% cheaper than buying new or through Nintendo's store. Even TOTK which I got maybe 3 months or so after release was only $35 used. Games that were even older were mostly $10-20.
And gamestop paid the original buyer of that something like 5 dollars so they could sell it back to you at 7x the price.
Utilizing stores like gamestop can be beneficial to a consumer but the entire business model is built on exploiting children and idiots.
Funny fact: the game stores here are so greedy you can find used game for more than the online shop price 🤷
It won't be so fun when Nintendo shuts down the online shop in 2 years after they drop the Switch 2. Because fuck you that's why.
Where is here for you? I wanna make sure to avoid it.
France.. It's great besides that haha
Yeah, back in the late 90s, Circuit City exclusively sold PlayStation and didn’t even offer Nintendo products until closer to the GBA / GameCube era.
CompUSA did the same too.
Everyone forgets the old retailers, but one big argument to PlayStation beating the N64 was that the games were cheaper and available in a lot more retailers than Nintendo’s products.
They run discounts all the time. So do places like Target. This myth of Nintendo never lowering prices of games is insane.
They don't reduce the retail price, but they do go on sales periodically, but rarely more than 30% or so. Link's Awakening (2019) and Breath of the Wild (2017) still retail for $60. A good sale might bring it down to $40 (probably more like $50), and used on eBay go for $35-45.
For PC games of similar age and initial launch price, you'd probably spend like $10-20. Yes, you can technically get a discount, but it's not going to be that much.