A new Nintendo Switch report is bad news for your portfolio. Games on Nintendo Switch are already more expensive than games on PC, PlayStation and Xbox for several reasons. On the one hand, Nintendo eShop sales are not as plentiful or charitable as sales on Steam or the PlayStation Store. In the meantime, many of the biggest and best games on the console rarely receive appreciable discounts, especially if they are published by Nintendo. And lastly, although not as common as it used to be, the Nintendo Switch fee, which refers to a game being more profitable on the Switch compared to other platforms, still exists. That said, it looks like games on Switch and Switch Lite are about to get even more expensive.
On Reddit, SMG Studio – the developer behind Death Squared, a popular indie puzzle game – claims that the Nintendo eShop has a new rule that will prevent games from costing less than $ 1.99. Of course, free games will remain free, but the developer says the days of games on sale for $ 0.99 or less are ending.
Now, contrary to this report, two games – Plague Road and HoPiko –– are currently on sale for $ 0.99, making them the cheapest games on the platform today. There are many other games on sale, but none of them violates the $ 1.99 price mentioned earlier.
On the surface, this seems to dispel the SMG Studio complaint, but as the developer notes, their game also recently cost $ 0.99, but that’s because they planned the sale in August. In other words, these two games can be on a similar boat. The fact that they are the only two games on sale below $ 0.99 suggests that this is the case. There are still many other games listed for $ 0.99, but that’s the normal price, and again, they’ve probably already acquired the right to buy.
All that said, for now, take everything here with a grain of salt. Nothing here is official and so far Nintendo has not provided any comment or clarification. If that changes, we’ll be sure to update the story. As to why Nintendo does this, who knows. It may have something to do with the eShop’s bestseller page, which is full of games falling at extremely cheap prices, but for now, this is just speculation.