One of the main points of criticism coming away from the Nintendo Switch presentation last week was the pricing of upcoming software — and indeed peripherals — to the system. Or at least the pricing strategy Nintendo were adopting when it came to the UK. And with a non-bundled Switch requiring players to fork over £280 (which works out, at the time of writing, at around $346, nearly $50 more than its US price), it was certainly asking of some to pay an additional £60 ($74) for the likes of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at launch.
Well it appears Nintendo have had a [slight] change of heart with online retailers, including Amazon, now reducing the price of games by £10 — the likes of Breath of the Wild & Super Bomberman R (the latter case confirmed by Konami in a press release sent out only recently) now costing £50 as opposed to the original £60. The former is still being charged at its original price on Nintendo’s own official store (even with a bundled T-Shirt thrown in) as well as certain online outlets like GAME (considered one of, if not the, biggest game retailer in the country) and while peripheral prices remain similarly demanding to say the least — an additional set of Joy-Con’s alone setting you back an additional £70 ($87), not to mention the need to increase your storage space with some extra microSD cards given the console’s limited 32GB memory, which doesn’t come cheap — it’s still a step in the right direction. Albeit, a tiny step.
Anyone who’s only briefly followed World news will know the UK pound has seen a significant drop in value as of late with £1 netting you a mere $1.24 in current exchange (the days of getting nearly two dollars to the pound seem like a distant memory), with several experts claiming this is but one of a handful of reasons behind the hike in pricing for video game software in general, in the UK. Let’s hope…and hope big…the somewhat pricey affair rewards players and interested parties alike with a promising start to the Switch’s life-time when it releases on March 3.
