The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomis Nintendo’s first $70 game. Well, its first $70 game since $60 was established as the standard. I remember seeingMario Party 3retailing for $70 on a store shelf when I was a kid, but that was before pricing norms had settled at the point where they comfortably stayed for multiple console generations.
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Tears of the Kingdom’s $70 price point is not yet Nintendo’s new standard for triple-A games. Pikmin 4, set to launch in July, is priced at $60. But, if more Nintendo games get the $70 tag — and that seems likely if Tears of the Kingdom sells well — the voucher becomes, in my mind, the only way to buy Switch games. This is less of a necessity if games are $60. Is it worth spending $40 more than you actually want to get $20 off? It wasn’t for me. But, if I can get one game for $70, or two games for $100, the choice becomes clearer. This is especially true on Switch, given Nintendo’s unwillingness to lower prices, even years after launch.
SonyandMicrosoftshould be thinking about implementing something similar. Sony has reported thatconsumers are buying less individual games, though revenue for console and software sales are soaring. That news is a mixed bag for Sony — money is money — but it’s in the company’s best interest to encourage players to spread that cash around. If only a few games from a few studios are successful, that will make Sony’s offering smaller and less varied over time. IfFortnite,Call of Duty, and the big single-player franchises are generating massive revenue while players are priced out of taking a chance on something more experimental, that makes the Sony ecosystem weaker. Fewer kinds of games means fewer kinds of gamers.
The console manufacturers should be encouraging players to take chances on games outside of their wheelhouse, and making those games affordable is the best way to do that. I’ve never played any games in the Pikmin franchise before, but because of Nintendo’s voucher deal, I bundled it with Tears of the Kingdom. I may not like Pikmin 4 — who knows! — but it’s not a big deal if I don’t. I got it for half off.
Xbox Game Pass,PS Plus, and Nintendo Switch Online offer players the chance to experiment, to an extent, but Game Pass is the only one of those services that reliably offers new games. If gaming is going to continue to be a broad, varied medium, this kind of voucher is a good way for the publishers to put their money where their mouth is.
