7 ms·

The Nintendo Switch has a pretty healthy indie offering. Though there is the switch tax where games that are 10$ on steam are 30 on switch.

mcphage 5y ago
Or how many $5/month (for all of them) Apple arcade games are $15+ on the Switch.
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  I hear nobody complaining about nintendotax
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    Well, I complain about it by not buying a switch. Game prices on the switch is why I haven't gave in to the temptation yet.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      You say that like games aren't already kind of absurdly cheap for how much work goes into them. People used to pay $60 of 1980s money for, frankly, pretty shit[0] NES games. That's ~$150 worth of money today. $30 games are downright cheap and I'm continually impressed by how entitled gamers can be when they complain about modern game prices. People pay $30 for a decent meal at a restaurant FFS. Which isn't to say that you should by a switch. If you don't think it's a good value then obviously you shouldn't. I'm just saying that not buying it because 'the games are too expensive' seems like a pretty unjustified complaint to me. [0] Not all of them were shit of course, but the catalogue is 90% shit and people did buy a lot of shit games.
      - lnxg33k1 5y ago
        Well, consider that you could buy any kind of game first hand for $60, then after finishing it, you could be able to sell if and get some money back. Today you pay $30 (for some games, but a lot are still $60, $80, etc.) Plus the DLC, credits, extensions, registration to an account no ability to sell it or buy second hand. Game industry got pretty bad, I've enjoyed it in the past, and I have the ability to just move on and ignore anything game related, what I am upset about is that today's kids are squeezed and coerced in order to play anything, and that is why I wish we had governments trying to put a stop to the current gaming companies greed
        eropple 5y ago
        $60 was also worth quite a bit more in the heyday of GameStop et al. What you characterize as "greed" is more reflective of general consumer desires (physical media is pretty dead, and I say this having a paper library of around 500 books) and that games are ever-more-expensive to make. For the preposterous number of person-hours that go into an AAA title, $100 isn't unrealistic. But there's price anchoring dating back to the nineties now, and that as much as anything is why games upsell the way they do. (The "complete edition" prices are probably more representative of what a sustainable price for a player really is.) Or we can do microtransactions until our souls bleed and go back to single-use codes in the game case. That's a thing too.
        krageon 5y ago
        > What you characterize as "greed" is more reflective of general consumer desires While it is hilarious that you imply that vendor lockin, half finished games, arbitrary difficulty curves meant to stimulate mtx and a lack of ownership is a "general consumer desire" I think it is more reasonable to say that the consumer has no choice. They (or we) clearly still desire to buy videogames, so folks end up buying what is essentially trash.
        lnxg33k1 5y ago
        Yes i forgot about half finished games, that's another perk of modern gaming world
      - johnchristopher 5y ago
        > I'm continually impressed by how entitled gamers can be when they complain about modern game prices > I'm just saying that not buying it because 'the games are too expensive' seems like a pretty unjustified complaint to me. That's because on this topic you are quick on making judgements on people and don't (want to?) realize their reasons for not buying a switch can be valid and these reasons are not attack or counter arguments to the reasons for why you would buy switch games. I am not an entitled gamer. edit: and FWIW I was checking the switch page for Disco Elysium and I see that the price tag is the same as Gog's (39.99) but now I don't care anymore about discussing this topic here and now. Nintendotax gone ? Just checked Life is stange:true colours, same price tags as steam.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        I guess the difference I'm trying to make is between "it personally isn't worth that to me", which is of course entirely valid, and a more objective-sounding statement of "games cost too much", which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous.
        johnchristopher 5y ago
        I wrote: > Game prices on the switch is why I haven't gave in to the temptation yet. Not: > Game prices on the switch is why it's not worth gave in to the temptation yet. > I guess the difference I'm trying to make is between "it personally isn't worth that to me", which is of course entirely valid, and a more objective-sounding statement of "games cost too much", which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous. No, you built a straw man argument. Do I go around asking for a refund because The Witness has been given for free and I paid for it in full upon release ? That would be entitlement. Not buying a switch because switch games are too expensive for me is not being entitled. I also think not buying a switch because I may think switch games are too expensive is not being entitled. > [..] , which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous. Yeah, way to go. First you suggest in a reply to me that people who think like you think I do are entitled and then you state your opinion is objective and then throw a blanket statement about something no one said and suggest this position is objectively ridiculous. Fitting username.
      - mastax 5y ago
        That may be true, but the switch exists in a market where games are extremely cheap. High quality free to play games, cheap indie games I play for weeks, steam sales, huge numbers of games given away by Epic Games, "free" games with prime gaming, and the insane value of Game Pass. It feels like every time I spend money on a game its free on the Epic Store or "free" on Game Pass within a few months. There's never been a cheaper time to be a PC gamer... assuming you already have a PC. I still play $60 for games because it's not a big deal for me but it's weird when I already have so much entertainment available for almost nothing. Playnite says I have 1050 games available to play, about 50 are duplicates and about 350 are from Game pass. I've apparently spent less than $600 on steam and much less than that on all other stores. Seems like the market value of the average game is about $1. (Hands waving furiously)
      - bcrosby95 5y ago
        A lot more than just inflation changed since the '80s. Off the top of my head: massively larger market, better tooling, better hardware, better distribution networks. Gaming companies aren't entitled to my money. They're allowed to offer games for the prices they want, and the market is allowed to buy them or not.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - bitofhope 5y ago
        If games are so expensive to make and sell so cheap, how come are the game companies getting bigger and making record profits year after year? Not that the median game developer seems to be much better off for it, though. Besides, many of those $10 games that are $30 on the Switch are made by smaller teams or even solo creators. Just because some video game properties have grown into giant franchises with multimedia companies pouring tens and hundreds of millions dollars and armies of people into them, that doesn't mean the majority of video game titles around are like that. Come to think of it, in the light of the countless recent stories of overwork and abuse in the games industry and the scandalous quality issues plaguing high-profile releases in recent years, I'm not even sure if we should be incentivizing games having a lot of work go into them. How come is it entitlement to not buy things that cost more than you think they are worth, anyway? Expensive things don't become cheap just because they're cheaper than four decades ago nor because they happen to be created and marketed by large corporations with lots of employees. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlfyxWaeGCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlfyxWaeGCE
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        > If games are so expensive to make and sell so cheap, how come are the game companies getting bigger and making record profits year after year? Not that the median game developer seems to be much better off for it, though. That's a fair point. My first guess is lootboxes and microtransactions being used to make up the difference, as well as underpaying employees. For big studios it is common to lay off developers immediately after a big release. Regardless, I don't think that same logic applies to smaller studios. > How come is it entitlement to not buy things that cost more than you think they are worth, anyway? That isn't what I was saying, though I admit I didn't make it very clear. If you don't want to buy something because the cost isn't worth it to you, that's perfectly fair. What I am annoyed by and think is entitled is any kind of objective-sounding judgement that 'games are too expensive'.
      - adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
        there are some major differences that mean inflation isn't the best indication for price the biggest is market size. in 1980, there were very few people buying games compared to today. also, for non-aaa games, the difficulty of making a game has in many ways gone down significantly. NES era games were at the absolute limit of hardware capabilities, and required a ton of wizardry to fit within size constraints. now graphics expectations are higher, but modern computers are so much more powerful that you can afford a lot more sloppiness.
    - krumpet 5y ago
      Consider the total hours games like BotW offer and divide that into the price. That might alter your feelings that game prices are too high. I know it did for me.
      - jbverschoor 5y ago
        It was about the nintendotax, not the games.. Just like 'AppleTax' of 30%.
  - mcphage 5y ago
    I grumble about it, but I buy them anyway, because they're worth it.
  - erikpukinskis 5y ago
    It’s better than the Apple tax where devs have to silently pay whatever fee Apple demands because of the gag order.
    - jbverschoor 5y ago
      Do you really think Nintendo doesn't require an NDA? And that they take less than the 30% from Apple?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- yaomtc 5y ago
  Don't you have to continue paying the subscription to continue to be able to access those games?
  - mcphage 5y ago
    You do—so if I like a game enough, I'll pick it up elsewhere, too. But digital games as a whole get harder to play over time. I've moved my DSi games to my 3DS, and I've got a Wii with a whole bunch of titles.
- ryanbrunner 5y ago
  The economics of game passes are like this with nearly all of them. The XBox game pass has several games (on both PC and XBox) where their price is multiples of the monthly price.
- toyg 5y ago
  But one is forever and one is only for as long as you maintain indentured servitude to the richest company on the planet.
  - bzzzt 5y ago
    Forever seems like a stretch. When Switch is succeeded, how long before Nintendo shuts the Switch shop down? You can't legally move downloaded games between consoles.
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      This was a big issue with WiiWare when Nintendo shut down the Wii Shop. People could keep what they had downloaded, but once the Shop shut down, you couldn't redownload anything.
      - mcphage 5y ago
        > People could keep what they had downloaded, but once the Shop shut down, you couldn't redownload anything You can still redownload things. Nintendo says at some point they'll turn that off, but they haven't said when yet.
        colejohnson66 5y ago
        Ah. My mistake. My point still stands: you're at the whims of Nintendo.
    - toyg 5y ago
      Download is only one way to buy Switch games, and at least I'll still be able to use one console - compared to zero as soon as I stop paying my feudal obligations to Apple.
      - colejohnson66 5y ago
        Not every game on the Switch Store is available on cartridge
salicideblock 5y ago
I've noticed :/ I'm hoping the Steam Deck will provide a more open portable console.
- Zhyl 5y ago
  If the Deck takes off, we will see lots of other handhelds following the same blueprint too.
  - officeplant 5y ago
    We already have piles of handheld PC's taking off with or without the Deck at this point. I'd love an AYA NEO if the prices weren't so high.
  - schmorptron 5y ago
    I wouldn't be too sure to be honest, only companies with a big game platorm can compete with Valve being able to subsidize these and sell them at cost or less, because most game purchases one them will be through steam.
bluescrn 5y ago
A wide range of indie games being available doesn't mean it's a viable business for the indies. Many are loss-making passion projects.
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  Passion projects cannot be described as "loss making". When passion projects become "loss making", then people loose their passion for it.
The-Bus 5y ago
Stadia also has a lot of indie games but thanks to their sales, you end up with a comparable price to Steam sales. Disco Elysium, for example, went on sale for US$18 vs. ~$23 on Switch. Steam's sale price was ~$20.
docmars 5y ago
This is the sole reason why I don't play Switch games unless I can get them on sale, or they're exclusive like BotW. I have a 14" gaming notebook (ASUS G14 2021) that's portable enough and offers decent battery life especially for lighter games with access to my Steam library offline, and plenty of key shops to find games for uber cheap when there's no demo available for me to vet the value of a title first. Win-wins all around!
- fnord123 5y ago
  > Win-wins all around! Do devs get more money from Steam than Switch on a per unit basis? If not, using Steam means the dev is not winning as much as they could.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    You assume that the Steam users are willing to pay the same price as Switch users, but that's not necessarily the case. Volume matters as well, maybe the number of Steam users is way more than the number of Switch users so they can make up for the lower price by selling more.
    - docmars 5y ago
      Exactly this — and devs selling on Steam have the choice to participate in sales or not.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Unfortunately, physical copies of games are not depreciating; BotW, despite being five years old, is still selling at full price. Good for them though, I mean it's a great game, and it means the games don't depreciate much on the secondhand market either. Although I'm confident people don't want to sell physical Switch games, a lot of them have a lot of life in them and become prized possessions.

mcphage 5y ago

Or how many $5/month (for all of them) Apple arcade games are $15+ on the Switch.

jbverschoor 5y ago
I hear nobody complaining about nintendotax
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  Well, I complain about it by not buying a switch. Game prices on the switch is why I haven't gave in to the temptation yet.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    You say that like games aren't already kind of absurdly cheap for how much work goes into them. People used to pay $60 of 1980s money for, frankly, pretty shit[0] NES games. That's ~$150 worth of money today. $30 games are downright cheap and I'm continually impressed by how entitled gamers can be when they complain about modern game prices. People pay $30 for a decent meal at a restaurant FFS. Which isn't to say that you should by a switch. If you don't think it's a good value then obviously you shouldn't. I'm just saying that not buying it because 'the games are too expensive' seems like a pretty unjustified complaint to me. [0] Not all of them were shit of course, but the catalogue is 90% shit and people did buy a lot of shit games.
    - lnxg33k1 5y ago
      Well, consider that you could buy any kind of game first hand for $60, then after finishing it, you could be able to sell if and get some money back. Today you pay $30 (for some games, but a lot are still $60, $80, etc.) Plus the DLC, credits, extensions, registration to an account no ability to sell it or buy second hand. Game industry got pretty bad, I've enjoyed it in the past, and I have the ability to just move on and ignore anything game related, what I am upset about is that today's kids are squeezed and coerced in order to play anything, and that is why I wish we had governments trying to put a stop to the current gaming companies greed
      - eropple 5y ago
        $60 was also worth quite a bit more in the heyday of GameStop et al. What you characterize as "greed" is more reflective of general consumer desires (physical media is pretty dead, and I say this having a paper library of around 500 books) and that games are ever-more-expensive to make. For the preposterous number of person-hours that go into an AAA title, $100 isn't unrealistic. But there's price anchoring dating back to the nineties now, and that as much as anything is why games upsell the way they do. (The "complete edition" prices are probably more representative of what a sustainable price for a player really is.) Or we can do microtransactions until our souls bleed and go back to single-use codes in the game case. That's a thing too.
        krageon 5y ago
        > What you characterize as "greed" is more reflective of general consumer desires While it is hilarious that you imply that vendor lockin, half finished games, arbitrary difficulty curves meant to stimulate mtx and a lack of ownership is a "general consumer desire" I think it is more reasonable to say that the consumer has no choice. They (or we) clearly still desire to buy videogames, so folks end up buying what is essentially trash.
        lnxg33k1 5y ago
        Yes i forgot about half finished games, that's another perk of modern gaming world
    - johnchristopher 5y ago
      > I'm continually impressed by how entitled gamers can be when they complain about modern game prices > I'm just saying that not buying it because 'the games are too expensive' seems like a pretty unjustified complaint to me. That's because on this topic you are quick on making judgements on people and don't (want to?) realize their reasons for not buying a switch can be valid and these reasons are not attack or counter arguments to the reasons for why you would buy switch games. I am not an entitled gamer. edit: and FWIW I was checking the switch page for Disco Elysium and I see that the price tag is the same as Gog's (39.99) but now I don't care anymore about discussing this topic here and now. Nintendotax gone ? Just checked Life is stange:true colours, same price tags as steam.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        I guess the difference I'm trying to make is between "it personally isn't worth that to me", which is of course entirely valid, and a more objective-sounding statement of "games cost too much", which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous.
        johnchristopher 5y ago
        I wrote: > Game prices on the switch is why I haven't gave in to the temptation yet. Not: > Game prices on the switch is why it's not worth gave in to the temptation yet. > I guess the difference I'm trying to make is between "it personally isn't worth that to me", which is of course entirely valid, and a more objective-sounding statement of "games cost too much", which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous. No, you built a straw man argument. Do I go around asking for a refund because The Witness has been given for free and I paid for it in full upon release ? That would be entitlement. Not buying a switch because switch games are too expensive for me is not being entitled. I also think not buying a switch because I may think switch games are too expensive is not being entitled. > [..] , which I think any objective analysis would say is ridiculous. Yeah, way to go. First you suggest in a reply to me that people who think like you think I do are entitled and then you state your opinion is objective and then throw a blanket statement about something no one said and suggest this position is objectively ridiculous. Fitting username.
    - mastax 5y ago
      That may be true, but the switch exists in a market where games are extremely cheap. High quality free to play games, cheap indie games I play for weeks, steam sales, huge numbers of games given away by Epic Games, "free" games with prime gaming, and the insane value of Game Pass. It feels like every time I spend money on a game its free on the Epic Store or "free" on Game Pass within a few months. There's never been a cheaper time to be a PC gamer... assuming you already have a PC. I still play $60 for games because it's not a big deal for me but it's weird when I already have so much entertainment available for almost nothing. Playnite says I have 1050 games available to play, about 50 are duplicates and about 350 are from Game pass. I've apparently spent less than $600 on steam and much less than that on all other stores. Seems like the market value of the average game is about $1. (Hands waving furiously)
    - bcrosby95 5y ago
      A lot more than just inflation changed since the '80s. Off the top of my head: massively larger market, better tooling, better hardware, better distribution networks. Gaming companies aren't entitled to my money. They're allowed to offer games for the prices they want, and the market is allowed to buy them or not.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - bitofhope 5y ago
      If games are so expensive to make and sell so cheap, how come are the game companies getting bigger and making record profits year after year? Not that the median game developer seems to be much better off for it, though. Besides, many of those $10 games that are $30 on the Switch are made by smaller teams or even solo creators. Just because some video game properties have grown into giant franchises with multimedia companies pouring tens and hundreds of millions dollars and armies of people into them, that doesn't mean the majority of video game titles around are like that. Come to think of it, in the light of the countless recent stories of overwork and abuse in the games industry and the scandalous quality issues plaguing high-profile releases in recent years, I'm not even sure if we should be incentivizing games having a lot of work go into them. How come is it entitlement to not buy things that cost more than you think they are worth, anyway? Expensive things don't become cheap just because they're cheaper than four decades ago nor because they happen to be created and marketed by large corporations with lots of employees. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlfyxWaeGCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlfyxWaeGCE
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        > If games are so expensive to make and sell so cheap, how come are the game companies getting bigger and making record profits year after year? Not that the median game developer seems to be much better off for it, though. That's a fair point. My first guess is lootboxes and microtransactions being used to make up the difference, as well as underpaying employees. For big studios it is common to lay off developers immediately after a big release. Regardless, I don't think that same logic applies to smaller studios. > How come is it entitlement to not buy things that cost more than you think they are worth, anyway? That isn't what I was saying, though I admit I didn't make it very clear. If you don't want to buy something because the cost isn't worth it to you, that's perfectly fair. What I am annoyed by and think is entitled is any kind of objective-sounding judgement that 'games are too expensive'.
    - adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
      there are some major differences that mean inflation isn't the best indication for price the biggest is market size. in 1980, there were very few people buying games compared to today. also, for non-aaa games, the difficulty of making a game has in many ways gone down significantly. NES era games were at the absolute limit of hardware capabilities, and required a ton of wizardry to fit within size constraints. now graphics expectations are higher, but modern computers are so much more powerful that you can afford a lot more sloppiness.
  - krumpet 5y ago
    Consider the total hours games like BotW offer and divide that into the price. That might alter your feelings that game prices are too high. I know it did for me.
    - jbverschoor 5y ago
      It was about the nintendotax, not the games.. Just like 'AppleTax' of 30%.
- mcphage 5y ago
  I grumble about it, but I buy them anyway, because they're worth it.
- erikpukinskis 5y ago
  It’s better than the Apple tax where devs have to silently pay whatever fee Apple demands because of the gag order.
  - jbverschoor 5y ago
    Do you really think Nintendo doesn't require an NDA? And that they take less than the 30% from Apple?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
yaomtc 5y ago
Don't you have to continue paying the subscription to continue to be able to access those games?
- mcphage 5y ago
  You do—so if I like a game enough, I'll pick it up elsewhere, too. But digital games as a whole get harder to play over time. I've moved my DSi games to my 3DS, and I've got a Wii with a whole bunch of titles.
ryanbrunner 5y ago
The economics of game passes are like this with nearly all of them. The XBox game pass has several games (on both PC and XBox) where their price is multiples of the monthly price.
toyg 5y ago
But one is forever and one is only for as long as you maintain indentured servitude to the richest company on the planet.
- bzzzt 5y ago
  Forever seems like a stretch. When Switch is succeeded, how long before Nintendo shuts the Switch shop down? You can't legally move downloaded games between consoles.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    This was a big issue with WiiWare when Nintendo shut down the Wii Shop. People could keep what they had downloaded, but once the Shop shut down, you couldn't redownload anything.
    - mcphage 5y ago
      > People could keep what they had downloaded, but once the Shop shut down, you couldn't redownload anything You can still redownload things. Nintendo says at some point they'll turn that off, but they haven't said when yet.
      - colejohnson66 5y ago
        Ah. My mistake. My point still stands: you're at the whims of Nintendo.
  - toyg 5y ago
    Download is only one way to buy Switch games, and at least I'll still be able to use one console - compared to zero as soon as I stop paying my feudal obligations to Apple.
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      Not every game on the Switch Store is available on cartridge

salicideblock 5y ago

I've noticed :/ I'm hoping the Steam Deck will provide a more open portable console.

Zhyl 5y ago
If the Deck takes off, we will see lots of other handhelds following the same blueprint too.
- officeplant 5y ago
  We already have piles of handheld PC's taking off with or without the Deck at this point. I'd love an AYA NEO if the prices weren't so high.
- schmorptron 5y ago
  I wouldn't be too sure to be honest, only companies with a big game platorm can compete with Valve being able to subsidize these and sell them at cost or less, because most game purchases one them will be through steam.

bluescrn 5y ago

A wide range of indie games being available doesn't mean it's a viable business for the indies. Many are loss-making passion projects.

JAlexoid 5y ago
Passion projects cannot be described as "loss making". When passion projects become "loss making", then people loose their passion for it.

The-Bus 5y ago

Stadia also has a lot of indie games but thanks to their sales, you end up with a comparable price to Steam sales. Disco Elysium, for example, went on sale for US$18 vs. ~$23 on Switch. Steam's sale price was ~$20.

docmars 5y ago

This is the sole reason why I don't play Switch games unless I can get them on sale, or they're exclusive like BotW. I have a 14" gaming notebook (ASUS G14 2021) that's portable enough and offers decent battery life especially for lighter games with access to my Steam library offline, and plenty of key shops to find games for uber cheap when there's no demo available for me to vet the value of a title first. Win-wins all around!

fnord123 5y ago
> Win-wins all around! Do devs get more money from Steam than Switch on a per unit basis? If not, using Steam means the dev is not winning as much as they could.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  You assume that the Steam users are willing to pay the same price as Switch users, but that's not necessarily the case. Volume matters as well, maybe the number of Steam users is way more than the number of Switch users so they can make up for the lower price by selling more.
  - docmars 5y ago
    Exactly this — and devs selling on Steam have the choice to participate in sales or not.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Unfortunately, physical copies of games are not depreciating; BotW, despite being five years old, is still selling at full price. Good for them though, I mean it's a great game, and it means the games don't depreciate much on the secondhand market either. Although I'm confident people don't want to sell physical Switch games, a lot of them have a lot of life in them and become prized possessions.