Nintendo Not Planning A Rise In First-Party Game Prices

During a recent earnings call, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa was asked about the future pricing models for the Nintendo Switch and software on the system and said some extremely interesting things about the system.

When it comes to the pricing of games, Furukawa stated the following:

"Regarding the price of software, the MSRP of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is ten dollars higher in the U.S. than its predecessor, but this does not indicate a general increase in the price of our software. Our approach is to determine the appropriate price of a product on a case-by-case basis."

This statement comes as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom releases a $70 price tag, $10 more than the usual Nintendo price tag. In the same earnings call, Furukawa spoke about how the company has no plans to cut prices for the Switch to meet any sales goals, stating that:

"With regard to hardware, prices for certain materials have fallen but overall costs remain high. We must also continue to account for the impact of factors such as inflation and foreign exchange rates.

Production was highly impacted during the previous fiscal year, so we are ensuring our parts procurement occurs far enough in advance to ensure stable production. 

Even if raw material prices decrease, it will take time for this to be reflected in manufacturing costs. Currently, there are no plans to reduce the price of our hardware during this fiscal year."