April 2023 Circana: PS5 Locked in Fierce Battle with Nintendo Switch

I’ll have to eat crow about The Last of Us Part 1. I didn’t anticipate that much success. Maybe the Horizon Zero Dawn PS5 Remake isn’t such a crazy idea after all.
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…okay, yeah it is, but people will still buy it.

It'll be interesting to see if the Zelda bump gives Nintendo May as well.

Absolutely amazing how well the little-hybrid-that-could continues to perform after 6+ years on the market.

Oh! Dead Island is still doing well.

@Ralizah Apparently the usual suspects are just dominating the eShop as well. It really looks like Nintendo might have shifted a ton of hardware for Zelda, then managed to just sell the Nintendo classic yet again. It's seriously impressive how those games hold their price and just keep selling and selling and selling.

@SplooshDmg It's interesting, isn't it? A few third-party companies are able to do that (games like GTA, Minecraft, etc. seem to sell in perpetuity), but Nintendo owns a surprising number of IPs that just never seem to lose out too much in popularity.

It's like: "Yeah, I just bought a Switch. I'mma go spend $60 on a six-year-old game." And because Nintendo has conditioned people to not expect price cuts, they do it without even blinking.

It's basically the opposite of what Ubisoft is conditioning people to do!

@Ralizah I think Iwata was kinda onto something, really. Not that I like paying more for games, but I will absolutely just buy Nintendo games day one because I know there's no real reason to wait. I slept on FE: Engage for a minute and got it used from GameFly for $40. In my mind though, I knew that $40 was basically rock bottom, but it still took months to get there, and that deal was easy to miss. It's basically still just holding onto full price everywhere. Lol

@SplooshDmg Me too. Nintendo's games are the only ones I consistently buy day one. Although I'll still support a few third-party series I really like, even if I know the price will come down soon, like a bunch of Atlus series.

I think there's a rational consumer response aspect to it ("why wait if it won't drop in price much anyway?"), but I also think your pricing strategy actively influences the way the consumer perceives your product. That is to say, many people don't mind paying top dollar for Nintendo products because they perceive them as top-dollar products, and a lot of that is down to the company maintaining price integrity. When your product goes into the bargain bin a year after launch, or even months in the case of the most aggressive price craterers like Ubisoft and Sega, you're helping to spread the perception that your products are less premium, and fewer people are willing to pay full price for it going into the future.

In general, I believe in following market incentives. If a company is rewarding people for waiting by massively dropping the price of the product, in general, I'm going to wait. But once you've waited long enough, you leave that launch window hype bubble, and it becomes easier to just not buy their product at all because your attention is elsewhere.

So yeah, I agree the Nintendo strategy is a smart one.

@Ralizah There's a lot of truth to it. Years ago when I managed a liquor store. Our rep from Diageo came in and told us that George Dickel whiskey was going way up in price. We asked why, and he told us, "Because it's cheaper than Jack Daniels, and because of that people think it's just low quality knock off Jack, so we're raising the price to be more competetive." They literally raised the price to make potential customers think it was the same perceived quality as Jack Daniels, and therefore sell more whiskey. That sounds crazy, but it works. You lower the price too much and people just think it's cheap. I'd tell you Dickel tastes a heck of a lot better, but that's a different story. Lol.

Somehow though, I feel Nintendo has managed to do this thing, and they just sort of command this super premium price tag that even companies like Sony could never get away with. I kinda think it's largely possible because Nintendo IPs are just that insanely powerful. Heck, look at the Mario movie. People expected it to be successful, but lord have mercy. They could probably have entire marketing courses based on the Nintendo Switch. Lol

TOTK is a good reason to blow dust off THAT hybrid console.

@SplooshDmg @Ralizah If memory serves, the E-shop has substantial discounts on first party titles about twice a year, which is when I tended to pick them up. The Japanese E-shop has some good deals too on occasion. For me, the best thing Nintendo did this generation is unify versions of games sold through the different E-shop regions. I wish Sony would do the same.

@Amnesiac They run sales of course. But it's usually more like 33% off, then of course the sale ends and they go back to full price. They had most of the Mario games for $40 right when the Mario movie launched. But really, the two game vouchers are a good way to go too. $100 for basically any two 1st party games any day of the year, works for me. I like those. Lol

Definitely due to tears of the kingdom's limited edition switch. I don't even really use the switch all that much anymore and hate botw, but even I purchased one of them to sit on the shelf with the rest of the series and finally move up to an oled system. I'm back to playing playstation and steamdeck.