Following the slipstream of Microsoft and Sony when it comes to raising the prices of games first partyNintendo has decided to jump on the bandwagon to confirm in its Direct event that the next The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will cost $70 in the US market, an amount that represents an increase of 10 dollars over the typical price that triple A’s in Big N usually have. However, the company has come out to say that it will not be a policy that it will apply to all his great titles.
The last generation of desktop consoles, made up of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S, has already laid the foundations for an increase in the price of at least the titles first party. To this we must add the turbulent economic context in which we live, with special mention of high inflation, and, in the particular case of Tears of the Kingdom, the fact that it is the most anticipated video game of 2023.
Confirmation of the price increase for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom to $70 prompted him to asked Nintendo if it was going to apply the $10 increase to all its productions. The company responded by saying that “we determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis”. In other words, the price increase does not seem to be applied, for now, to all its productions, so we can imagine factors such as sales expectations and the cost of development.
Retailers like Best Buy and Amazon have already applied the price increase announced by Nintendo, but it remains to be seen how they will deal with the people who pre-ordered the game when it was supposed to cost $60. In the version for Spain from Amazon already sees Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom at the price of 69.90 eurosalthough the bazaar currently applies a 7% discount to leave it at 64.99 euros.
Regarding the Nintendo situation, Shuntaro Furukawa explained this week to investors that the company “did everything possible to keep both the value and price of hardware and software within our long-term business strategy”, besides that he does not believe “that no changes to this policy are necessary at this stage”. On the other hand, the latest known financial results show that fluctuations in the currency markets had contributed to a decline in sales and profits, despite sales of Switch hardware and software remaining strong.
The rise in the price of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom responds to a trend that has been seen for a long time and that we will see for how long it can be maintained, since the PC is beginning to see such catastrophic consequences that it has the year 2023 has been given up. Large productions are not exactly cheap and for now it seems that consumers have accepted the increases, but the current economic situation does not exactly invite people to tighten their pockets.
