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Nintendo will be changing their pricing so that first party games will be cheaper than physical copies. Other places have posted that it will be a $10 difference. Hopefully we'll see others follow suit, like Sony, as digital being the same price as physical has always seemed ridiculous.

Information

Beginning in May 2026, and starting with preorders for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, new Nintendo published digital titles exclusive to Nintendo Switch 2 will have an MSRP that is different from physical versions.

Nintendo games offer the same experiences whether in packaged or digital format, and this change simply reflects the different costs associated with producing and distributing each format and offers players more choice in how they can buy and play Nintendo games.

As always, retail partners set their own prices for physical and digital games, and pricing for each title may vary.

I mean... not really. If anything they're undoing a bad thing given they launched $10 more expensive but even then....

The point of pricing physical copies equal to digital is keep your distribution in business. You can obviously make them cheaper since there's no production costs or profit sharing. By undercutting direct sales you've basically told retail they're no longer worth supporting. That might be true at this point but it's not exactly a welcome sign.

I'm generally the farthest thing from a Nintendo hater and honestly this has been coming since the XBOne nonsense. I'm not sure video game retail NEEDS to exist anymore, but it does mean the industry is really only supporting its corporate leadership and not really any tertiary jobs.

 LunarSol wrote:
I mean... not really.

Yes, really. Not earth shattering, sure, but it is a small step in the right direction. To be honest it probably wouldn't even be newsworthy if Nintendo didn't seem to be shooting themselves in the foot so often recently.