(Credit: Nintendo)
UPDATE: Nintendo is denying that it's raising the price of physical game copies. Instead, the company says the change is about lowering the cost of digital game versions.
The company told IGN: "The cost of physical games is not going up. This means that when Nintendo sells digital versions of Nintendo published games exclusive to Nintendo Switch 2 to consumers in the US, those prices will have an MSRP that is lower than their physical counterparts."
Original story:
If you prefer to purchase physical games for Nintendo’s Switch 2, get ready to pay more.
The company is changing the price of first-party titles for the console. "New Nintendo-published digital titles exclusive to Nintendo Switch 2 will have an MSRP [Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price] that is different from physical versions," it said in a Wednesday announcement.
Nintendo didn't specify how prices will change. However, the company points out that the change is first being applied to preorders for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, which arrives on May 21. If you go to the preorder page, you’ll see that the digital copy costs $59.99, while the physical copy costs $10 more. The preorder page previously listed the game at $59.99.
“Nintendo games offer the same experiences whether in packaged or digital format, and this change simply reflects the different costs associated with producing and distributing each format and offers players more choice in how they can buy and play Nintendo games," the company says.
The other wrinkle is that MSRP is merely a suggested retail price. Nintendo notes it’s ultimately up to retail partners to set pricing. It’s why the physical copy of Pokémon Pokopia was briefly selling for $79.99 on Amazon, rather than $69.99, earlier this month.
The policy only applies to future titles. Previous first-party games such as Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza still maintain the same pricing for both digital and physical on Nintendo.com.
The higher price isn’t exactly a surprise, considering physical copies require Nintendo to place the title on a game cartridge, which uses flash memory. The ongoing memory shortage is driving up the costs of both RAM and NAND flash storage.
Going digital makes games easier to obtain, as they require only a download. But there are drawbacks too. For example, it prevents you from reselling a game or building a physical collection you can easily show off to a friend. Users have also reported losing access to their digital games after Nintendo banned their accounts for apparent rule violations.