And a open digital market place too. If I don't buy a game on Steam for pc, I could always buy it on GOG, EA Origin, or humble bundle. So it harnesses a similar competitive playground to physical.
It’s kind of sad how console makers seem like they’re MS/Xbox and Sony/PS are aiming for digital when physical has too many benefits. They are guarenteed to last long after online shop support AND free up more storage; especially useful if somebody would play more western developed titles, because we know how they’re bloated more than necessary. Thing is, Steam and other PC stores work well because the software can be transferred to other devices, and PC’s are easier to upgrade memory and make workarounds on where to store memory; PS5 still doesn’t support an easy external drive for PS5 games. IDC if physical games take up more physical space, especially if my shelf can seem to store more megs, gigs or ters(?) than the storage of a PS5.
I was actually curious about this, and the answer seems to be a concept called "Minimum Advertised Price". Essentially, in much of America a company can just tell retailers to "stick to the script" pricing wise as a soft terms of doing business with them. To answer the next question, this is highly illegal in the UK and EU, so there we go.
As a French student who has to try and save as much euros as possible, these different prices make all the difference, especially as buying my games for 45 instead of 60 tehnically makes the fourth game bought free. With how many interesting games and remakes are coming, it really helps me not having to make as many sacrifices
There's some weird exceptions though. Octopath Traveler for exemple can be found below 60€ but is often more expensive than other games (around 55€ most of the time).
As someone who is actually trying to save the most... I buy mine used. Usually wait around 3-8 weeks after the game launched. I got TotK for 30€ 1 month after it dropped. Xeno 3 for 27€. Metroid Prime Remastered for 20€. Diamond/Pearl for 29€ each. Dread for 25€. And alot more almost all within that time frame. 3rd party games come to me all temporarily. Sold after I finish them. Usually all for the same or higher than what i paid for. (Some games especially Indie titles tend to increase in value cause of their limited production)
Meanwhile here in Canada, its the worst of both worlds. As expensive/more expensive than US, little to no sales or sales that arent worth it. Sucks being a gamer here
10% off e-shop cards at Costco to buy game vouchers on the e-shop is the most cost effective way I've found to buy first party Nintendo games, if you don't mind digital. For physical games I want, I order from a store in a different province so I at least save on taxes.
If Microsoft won't make some sort of external disk reader for the series S/X refresh, then they will have really given up on many markets. If Series S supported disks, I'm sure it would have been the most popular current gen console. It just doesn't make sense to save money on the console to then need to pay more on digital games.
@@jonnyeh It has been announced, just not to the public. The internal presentation is essentially an early announcement for the higher ups. They're already too deep into it to backpedal on the refreshes. The "changed plans" you might have heard about were more about things like the next gen Xbox console that are still being designed.
Xbox is already doing miserably compared to their competition but their problem is they have an infinitely deep wallet so they're going to just keep trying and jump from underwhelming product to underwhelming product
I moved to Indonesia last year and was wondering if they would even sell games here. To my surprise, not only do they sell them, but they’re usually $10 to $15 cheaper than in the US. It’s been great.
Have you thought to compare that to the minimum wage in indonesia? Which monthly is about 200-300$? So yeah, games might be 10$ cheaper when compared 1:1 but for most they're unobtainable anyway.
@@PatManDX that’s not what I’ve been hearing for years in the comments section of videos. In certain eastern countries it’s like double or triple the price to get a console because it’s hard to deliver things there.
I said this to Jon on Twitter, but in Portugal there's this store that not only does 15% discount on all pre-orders but they also make "Buy 2 Take 3" promos, which can include pre-orders. So with careful arranging of the "packs" to maximize the discounts, I bought Mario Wonder and Pikmin 4 for 34€ and Pikmin 1+2 and WarioWare Move It for 28€.
This makes a TON of sense as to why Nintendo continued doing the £85 for 2 game code on the Eshop but NOT America! Since they have no need to do it over there! I still buy my first party Nintendo games from the Eshop using those vouchers if I end up needing to buy. 😁 awesome video!
@@Whirlwhind1that was always the case. They took them off the American e shop for years and only brought them back when tears of the kingdom released.
EB Games Australia keeps the same price as the eShop. JB Hi-Fi, Target & Big W charge less because they buy more stock & pass the saving to the customers. A new game from a distributor costs AU$64-78 for the retailer & the RRP is AU$80-125, depending on platform & publisher for 1st party & AAA games.
This actually used to be a thing in the states too, where amazon best buy and walmart would have a game discounted up to 20%. Unfortunately, about 2 years ago that all stopped, which is a shame because it means my collection is slowly moving more digital to save money since digital sales are much more common
Man I loved that deal! I even had games up to a year or so after that membership was discontinued pre ordered and managed to still get some of them, but Best Buy ended up cancelling those pre-orders lol
Huh, here in Darwin, most games are are around same price as digital or slightly more expensive, JB Hi Fi here barleys stocks switch games and the only dedicated games store, EB Games, usually marks the prices up a bit! Big W, which is a “general” store, they usually make the games slightly cheaper than digital
As an American, it all comes down to a scumbag's favorite words: *_Profit Margins_* I used to go back and forth over whether digital or physical should be cheaper. Digital, you don't get the case/tangible item, but companies think it's "convenient" to use up my internet data instead. Physical, unless I'm shipping it to my address, I have to check their availability, leave the house, and for what? The "privilege" of owning a copy of media? 😒
Up until last year, in the US, I bought all of my new games in-store at Walmart. They'd sell $60 games for $50 on day 1. But then Kirby and the Forgotten Land came out and they haven't done it since.
Don't forget one other important factor with the states, at least for the vast majority of the country that besides the price not budging much, they also have to deal with additional tax at checkout which is foreign to us in the UK
This kind of thing used to happen occasionally in the US, but not to this degree. Walmart used to have a roughly 20% price reduction on new games (59.99 games were 49.88, 49.99 games were 41.88, etc.) but in around 2022 they stopped and sell games at around MSRP. Usually deals like this are instead bundles, like Target having a buy two get one on preorders. Gamefly will undercut the hell out of other retailers, but you usually have to wait a month or so after the game releases
As an American - Walmart used to sell new games for $50 (down from $60) but they actually stopped doing this around 2021 :( Now, the only real deal over here is the B2G1 (so a "3 for the price of 2" at Best Buy, but that's ONLY with a $50/yr membership 😭)
here in the US, Walmart used to sell new games for $10 cheaper, even physically, so i ALWAYS got my games there. i think the first game where i noticed they stopped doing this was kirby and the forgotten land, so now i just get them from wherever is most convenient since the price doesn’t make a difference now
As someone who lives in Brazil it's actually the opposite. See Brazil's currency (called Reals(the way it's pronunce is equal to "hey-all")) is worth one fifth of 1 US Dollar (in simpler terms since i probably didn't word it well(english isn't my first language) essencially 5-4 reals("hey-ice") equal 1 US dollar). So take a normal switch game at 60 dollars, here in Brasil it would be around 240-300 reals.
There is not much competition anymore in the US for physical retail copies. It's all Amazon/Walmart/Best Buy/Game stop/Target. Which one of those you buy from has more to do with what you have access to and less with price. Would not be shocked too if that list shrinks in the next few years. GameStop is perpetually threatening to go bankrupt and Target seems to be phasing out physical media.
same thing here in denmark, i almost always use the same two online shops, because i get bulk discount, frequent buyer discounts all with price matching
As an American viewer the closest we have to getting deals like the one u are getting in the UK was by shopping at Walmart. For a hot minute brand new releases on the switch were being sold at Walmart for 10 USD less than the other retailers, including the eShop. Unfortunately they have since stopped doing this, or at least they have slowed drastically as more and more switch games are being sold at the full 59.99 MSRP now at Walmart. It was fun while it lasted... I guess.
It's true, I happened to be in Australia when Tears of the Kingdom got released and was worried I'd have to pay even more for it, but I got it for 70 AUD (44 USD) which was insane to me lol
Currys used to have this bananas deal where you could use a code for free next day delivery. It would knock £5 off the total price which is the price they set for next day delivery fee (so it would offset that additional cost). It would also auto select the next day delivery fee in the checkout options. However, having inserted the code, you could then switch checkout options to free in store collection. The £5 reduction would remain in place and you would no longer have the delivery fee offset against it. I did it so many times.
This makes me think of the Japanese Nintendo eshop, where game prices are all over the place. For example, Xenoblade 3 is like 8700 yen, while tears of the kingdom might be 7400 yen, and Pikmin 4 might be 6300 yen (not actual prices but you get the idea). In america, almost every game has a standard price of $60 or $70, but in Japan there are so many different prices even for first party Nintendo stuff on their own eshop for new or recent games not on sale
Thank you for acknowledging the majesty that is Australia’s JB Hi-Fi. They don’t sell the quantity of games that an EB Games (GameStop) would, but it’s almost always cheaper. Love the accent too.
Over in Portugal, most stores now offer a 15% discount on basically ALL game pre-orders. It's basically got me into the habit of buying most games through pre-orders. Sometimes they get even cheaper later on, but it's still enough to rope me in early.
Outlier to this situation in Europe is Switzerland, where game prices are extortionate, be it physical or digital. My brother lives there and has to ration his purchases because you'll pretty much never see physical games discounted/on sale, and the digital prices are mad.
Switzerland is overall really expensive. I think cause they just earn more money there xD We once were there and saw the restaurant prices. A Schnitzel with Fries for (I think it was) around 60€ ^^" We then drove a few minutes more to Austria and there the Schnitzel was 12€ x'D
In Canada, next gen games are 89.99. It cost over 100$ with taxes. It's getting just a tad expensive. For Capcom to say games are not expensive enough when they fill their game with overpriced micro transactions is just an insult to gamers.
I'm from the US but have been living in Japan for a few months now and was shocked at just how much cheaper games are physically here. Honestly the official Nintendo retail stores are probably the worst places to buy Switch games since they're literally always selling at the highest price around.
In Brazil it's the opposite. The already very expensive digital copy is cheaper than physical copies which can be 10%, 20%, or even more % expensive. Even the copies manufactured in the country. Digital is the way to go for a lot of people here simply because they can't afford. Steam and PC is also the most accessible here since Steam uses it's own price convertion rate and has constant sales. A triple AAA game can be cheaper on steam compared to other consoles (unless the publisher demands specific regional pricing). When applied to double AA or Indie games, the difference on steam compared to other platforms is much greater. There is also the fact that if you want to pay subscriptions or microtransactions for any games that allow us to pay with the steam wallet, the platform let us pay with our currency going by it's own conversion rate again, which you can imagine, makes it way more manageable. Because of that, other online stores here strive on selling keys, were you buy the game on their website, and activate on Steam for example.
Sometimes we can get games for cheaper here in Australia like JB HiFi and Big W, but for the most part, the actual prices are ridiculous. New PS5 games are $100-130, even Sonic Superstars on Switch is $95-100 here! That's not even the special edition. Mario Wonder is $80 at RRP, but Superstars is $15-20 more for no reason, because I guess they're following the multiplatform prices instead of the Nintendo standard that's usually no more than $80 AUD (except for Zelda). Steam used to just be the USD prices here, until they added official support for AUD, which meant that companies could just arbitrarily increase the prices for us here. We used to pay the same prices but just had to convert them, but now they can make the prices *more* than the conversion amount. You can't even gift a game from overseas to an Australian account because Steam *knows* that the prices aren't fair. It sucks.
Agree with ya. PS5 games are the biggest offenders I feel. A massive chunk of PS5 games physically can reach $100+ which is about the price they sell it digitally. Really only a handful of stores do sales here and there. For example, Persona 3 Reload is about $109 to pre-order both Physically and digitally (before tax mind you), which is pretty hard to cough up these days. Hell, even switch games are being priced up as well. I remember back when games used to be sold for maybe $70/$80 tops but had many discounts that pushed it down to $60 AUD. These days, you'd be lucky to get games at $70 or less (unless you wait a long time after the games release).
I live in the UK and had no idea about some of these stores. Definitely gonna be using these in the future. I much prefer getting games physically so this is huge for me!
I think in America companies can basically tell retailers to keep to a minimum price whereas elsewhere that's very illegal so here it's a race to lowest price they can sell at (before making a loss) to get the most pre orders
This isn't the case in Colombia and Argentina. Usually nintendo games are $10-$15 dollars more. Electronics are usually more expensive in Latin America due to import taxes.
Ireland definitely sucks for physical games right now. Both Argos and GameStop closed here over the summer and now only Smyths remains, and they are decent, but they don't tend to do big discounts really. We also have Currys over here, but they don't do any of the sort of discounts you'd see in the UK. CeX can have decent prices, but you obviously can't buy pre-order games there. Then Hit and Game Collection used to ship to Ireland but not anymore after Brexit made that a financial impossibility, and even Amazon charges extra to Ireland, most of the pre-order prices are over standard RRP(Sonic Superstars on Switch for example is £56!). It just sucks not having many options, and most friends just buy digital so that they can just play games at release. I can't blame them really, even though I'll always prefer a physical copy.
The same in Japan. Packages tend to be cheaper. Although, for Nintendo published games we still have the Nintendo Catalogue Ticket (the Nintendo Switch Game Vouchers) which at times can be the better way to get a big Nintendo game.
I've never really thought about how game prices are outside of the UK, for me it's been a given that a pre-order from Game or Currys is just less than 40
Amazon Prime used to have a flat 20% off all preorders that ended about 5 years or so ago I think? That's around the time I started to just go digital because the price benefits began to disappear. I honestly think the big reason is that the big retailers just care about profits over everything else.
This reminds me of how much I miss Best Buy's Gamers Club Unlocked here in the states. It was $30 for 20% off all games for 2 years. Thing paid for itself in no time and you got rewards points to use on $5 vouchers too. Shame that we'll probably never see a deal that good here again for a long time, if ever.
Meanwhile in Canada, we almost never get sales, especially not for pre-orders! I buy a lot of games from Asia as they are often less expensive and many have English.
I live in Switzerland. As is the case in the UK, retail prices are lower here as well: from 78 francs on the eShop to 70 francs in stores. And in the case of BOTH open-world Zelda games, the game goes from 90 on the eShop down to 80 in stores. The most confusing part about this whole thing is that the dollar is actually stronger than the Swiss franc, and despite that, games are fundamentally more expensive here than in the UK or the US. Even the Switch itself was 330 francs at launch compared to the 300 dollars in the US. 1 USD = 0.82 GBP / 0.92 CHF 1 GBP = 1.21 USD / 1.12 CHF 1 CHF = 1.09 USD / 0.89 GBP Here's another funny one: the pricing for NSO's memberships… NSO: 20 USD / 18 GBP / 28 CHF NSO+EP: 50 USD / 35 GBP / 52 CHF These prices always looked insanely illogical to me: An increase of 85.7% and 94.4% in Switzerland and the UK respectively cannot even compare to the absurd 150% price increase that the States had to deal with. I still have no idea how these prices were decided and I guess I'll never find out… Something that also still confuses me is that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have the same price in pretty much every region except the Americas. Did people in the UK actually talk about the fact that BotW was 60 pounds instead of 50 back in 2017? Because I don't remember a single person complaining about the higher price point and it boggles my mind as to how that didn't happen back then. Is there any other region/country beside the Americas where TotK is more expensive than BotW? I would love to know…
I'm an Aussie and I bounce between amazon au(sometimes amazing deals with prime not to mention free postage), ebgames, target, bigw and jb. Eshop for me is a last resort if a game is digital only and there is no limited run edition.
I brought this up under a video where the topic of TotK being $70 US came up. In NZ it BotW was $110 on the eShop and at most chain stores (Except JB-HiFi which was $100). TotK got a bump up to $120 on the eShop, but JB had it for the same as BotW at $100 (collectors ed was still full price though). Hilariously, our "gaming store" EB Games had it for MORE than the eShop. This is just one of the reasons I shop at JB HIFI here. Not only that, but they are the primary supplier of physical copies of anime here.
I'm in the US, I'm pretty jealous of you guys in the UK now 😅. I buy all digital but I would definitely buy physical if it was that much cheaper. Like you said, why pay more, for less?
Sweden here! TOTK is 689SEK on the eshop and 645SEK in the store here, which is a 3 pound difference. In general digital is more expensive then physical here. Especially when it comes to Nintendos games. And taking into account that digital games don't have any resale value, it is always a bad deal 😁Unless you don't really care.
Any Australian who bought ToTK up to and after launch would know how good it was. $89.95 AUD RRP, while Amazon and JB were selling it for $74 (Amazon is now even cheaper at $69). Switch first party games have been pretty good value in Australia for awhile now relative to other countries. PS5 titles get discounted too but the base price is mich higher where its up to $125 AUD RRP and the best discounts are around $100 (Spiderman 2 can be found for $98).
As a German resident, I would often shop at Smyth’s Toy Store as they would drastically undercut games. I think I got Bayonetta Origins for 35 or 40 euros.
And then there's México, when only Amazon is cheaper, but the main retailers are usually more expensive. And to think that we used to have the Argentina eshop...
@@Cyanide_03 Y el ahorro luego sí es bastante significativo, creo que depende un poco con los juegos, para un TotK no me hubiera esperado una semana, para Fire Emblem: Engage, sí.
In Portugal, most of our shops have a 15% discount on pre-orders. Then, we have one, called Worten, that has 3 games for the price of 2 many many times, and sometimes they allow you to pre-order games with that discount. So, you can pre-order 3 games by paying 85% of two new games. That's our best bargain
Brazil might be even worse than plain old USA. Oficial eshop prices tend to be R$50 per US$10 paid for a game... so the official digital price is R$300 for a full US$60 (Tears, that was US$70, was R$400) official physical games, meanwhile, are always R$50 more than their eshop prices. So a game that costs R$300 digitally costs R$350 physically... if you go through the official channels. You can find them slightly cheaper in other stores, or for older Switch games.
In the Philippines, Super Mario Wonder right now cost $44 original price. I pre-ordered with 30% discount and will get it at $30. Glad we didn't have to pay $60 for games as they adjusted the prices to the cost of living here. We don't have dedicated eshop though, so digital games we still hop on different regions
It hurt to learn that when I bought a physical copy octopath traveler for $60 on Amazon and got little Nintendo points back. I learned that digital copies get you more points but digital can disappear easier than other.
In Sweden we paid equivalent of 75 ish dollars for new games before msrp prices were raised to 70 usd. Now I’m glad we can get a lot of deals on most games, nowadays I don’t spend more than 40 on fairly new games and 55-60 for new games
Games are also cheaper in general in some countries outside of the US. I bought a download code for Mario Wonder for just under 6000 JPY, or less than $40 USD
My local Walmart here in the US used to sell all new switch games at a $10 discount. I got Metroid Dread for $50 and WarioWare for $40. Kirby and the Forgotten land was $60 and they have been ever since…Used to be an awesome incentive to shop at Walmart
I remember when i first started using Amazon (something I don't do anymore) they had $20 free credit for the next game upon preordering the current game. I remember rolling over this $20 for a good year or so. Nowadays I don't buy too many games day 1 anymore, just too expensive. It also helps that having a 4 year old curbs a bit of the spending.
Here in Belgium, some physical stores can decide themselves whether to cut prices if they need to move stock. Bought Xenoblade 3 some time ago for €22. Sometimes you just have to get lucky!
Xenoblade rarely goes on sale, if ever. But neat to know in other countries, at least you have options Honestly Nintendo titles definitely need to go on sale more often. Always full price has never made sense. But on occasion if its a special date related to a series, something might be planned
Actually, where I live (Southern Illinois), the Walmart I usually frequent sells full-price ($60) games for ~$50 in-store, and lesser-priced games are also sometimes a bit cheaper. And I've lived here my entire life, so I assumed that was just kind of the norm. So it's interesting to me that most of the U.S. doesn't do this. I've always been used to it.
Considering the amount of big releases this year, I feel blessed that I randomly came across The Game Collection last year. They also often ship pre-orders early, had ishin turn up 4 days early in the most extreme case 😂
Walmart used to do a thing where if you go in-person, Switch games were 10 bucks off. Seems to be gone now, but I got a lot of games physically for that reason.
American speaking. This is the wildest case of whiplash I've ever seen. These kinds of deals for brand new nintendo games? Thats nuts. I wonder how possible it would be for me to get Switch games shipped to the US.
Great video for those who may not be aware of non-Amazon shops. You're gag about hanging around too many Americans hits truer than you might think though Jon, I heard you say "Mul-tie-player" rather than "Mul-tee-player" like an actual Brit on a video recently! :P (Edit: That being said "I'm going to save my five pounds and buy some quavers!" might be the most British sign-off ever, so I guess it evens out...)
It's usually because the American copies of games are worth more compared to the European or Japanese versions of the same exact game. Collectors and fans prefer to have the American NTSC of Nintendo games and because of that it seems like Nintendo games hold their value more compared to the European version of the same exact game.
Here in Portugal there's a store that usually makes a deal around one per 3 months. The deal is: choose 3 games, but pay only for 2. The cheapest of the 3 games is free. So, if you choose 3 games that costs 59,99€ each, you'll pay 119,98 instead of 179,97. That means you're getting 3 games of 59,99€ each, for 39,99€ each. Sometimes they also allow ppl to use the deal with pre-order games. And I dont know how the pre-order system works in other countries, but here when you pre-order a game, you pay for the price with a 15% discount. So, a 59,99€ game being bought as a pre-order, It's gonna cost 50,99€. Now, if you only buy 3 games as pre-orders with the Pay 2 Get 3 deal, you are paying 101,98 for 3 games, which means each game basicly costs 33,99€. I did that recently. With that deal, I got games already pre-ordered for 33,99€ each (games that will launch for 59,99€) such as Super Mario RPG, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Sonic Superstars and Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol.1. That's also how I got games like Pikmin 4, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Octopath Traveler 2, and much more. And there's also the ocasional discount for a single game, although the discount isn't usually worthwhile. Still, some good deals I had was buying games like Pikmin 3 Deluxe, Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening and New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe for 29,99€ each, and the best deal that I ever had was buying a brand new copy of The Outer Worlds for Switch, for 19,99€.
For living in the USA, I feel like we don't see retailers undercut each other is because of using FOMO sales, and the biggest one being Black Friday. I also don't see store credit for buying games. Unless it's gamestop, store credit only really exists as gift cards or refunds. Stores don't really refund in cash, sadly.
I spend the summer is Paris. New games were about the same, but used switch games were super cheap. Here in America used switch games are sometimes 5 bucks off, but I saw a ton of used first party switch games in Paris like 20, 30 bucks off.
What bothers me is that physical is literally more expensive to distribute than digital. So the retailers are actually losing _more_ money than just the discount.
Before Brexit I ordered most of my games from the UK for that very reason. Our big retailers in Germany do a lot of discounts as well, but the online retail market was never that diverse. Luckily, I found a shop called netgames that always sells games 5-10€ cheaper. And it’s the PEGI version so no ugly USK logo is a neat bonus.
amazon prime used to have a flat 20% discount on all pre-orders in the US! they stopped it with spider-man in 2018. the actually wouldn’t even let you pre-order the game for months after other retailers opened theirs until the policy ended
In the US, retailers typically have two or three Buy 2 Get 1 sales each year. As of the current generation, there have been a lot of exceptions (no new releases, no first party Switch), but that's how I get most of my third party games. I refuse to pay $70 for a video game.
I buy digital games because I realized I had a pretty unhealthy relationship with collecting stuff, but if the discount was this good in the states, I’d kinda HAVE to go back to buying them physically.
I usually just wait out a few months and the price goes down to 40 to 50 USD consistently here in Colombia, if I'm buying from specialized stores. If I'm buying from big retailers, it's far more expensive than US prices, because they charge you for every step in the importing process. Agree btw, SPYxAnya is a must-have GOAT.
A testament to the importance of physical games in the market.
And a open digital market place too. If I don't buy a game on Steam for pc, I could always buy it on GOG, EA Origin, or humble bundle. So it harnesses a similar competitive playground to physical.
@@skycloud4802Too bad they cost the same on every storefront.
Being a UK resident this is why i almost always buy physical games as I just save so much money
I buy most games as digital copies
It’s kind of sad how console makers seem like they’re MS/Xbox and Sony/PS are aiming for digital when physical has too many benefits. They are guarenteed to last long after online shop support AND free up more storage; especially useful if somebody would play more western developed titles, because we know how they’re bloated more than necessary. Thing is, Steam and other PC stores work well because the software can be transferred to other devices, and PC’s are easier to upgrade memory and make workarounds on where to store memory; PS5 still doesn’t support an easy external drive for PS5 games.
IDC if physical games take up more physical space, especially if my shelf can seem to store more megs, gigs or ters(?) than the storage of a PS5.
Same
legit sometimes argos takes a full £10 off a games full price on physical release
Facts
I was actually curious about this, and the answer seems to be a concept called "Minimum Advertised Price". Essentially, in much of America a company can just tell retailers to "stick to the script" pricing wise as a soft terms of doing business with them.
To answer the next question, this is highly illegal in the UK and EU, so there we go.
So much for 'land of the free'.
Looks like MAPs are always universally awful.
land of the corporations @@SonicRooncoPrime
The USA always has those huge sales. Like buy 1 get 1 free.
As a French student who has to try and save as much euros as possible, these different prices make all the difference, especially as buying my games for 45 instead of 60 tehnically makes the fourth game bought free. With how many interesting games and remakes are coming, it really helps me not having to make as many sacrifices
There's some weird exceptions though. Octopath Traveler for exemple can be found below 60€ but is often more expensive than other games (around 55€ most of the time).
As someone who is actually trying to save the most...
I buy mine used. Usually wait around 3-8 weeks after the game launched. I got TotK for 30€ 1 month after it dropped. Xeno 3 for 27€. Metroid Prime Remastered for 20€. Diamond/Pearl for 29€ each. Dread for 25€. And alot more almost all within that time frame. 3rd party games come to me all temporarily. Sold after I finish them. Usually all for the same or higher than what i paid for. (Some games especially Indie titles tend to increase in value cause of their limited production)
@@HalfpennyTerwilligeri got octopath 1 in Germany by Media Markt for 10€
Meanwhile here in Canada, its the worst of both worlds. As expensive/more expensive than US, little to no sales or sales that arent worth it. Sucks being a gamer here
As a Canadian myself this is very true
Yeah it's awful
Mexican here, same from this side, at least for PS and Nintendo, Xbox is more cheaper.
10% off e-shop cards at Costco to buy game vouchers on the e-shop is the most cost effective way I've found to buy first party Nintendo games, if you don't mind digital. For physical games I want, I order from a store in a different province so I at least save on taxes.
@@bobbybananas703 not a bad idea the province thing cuz I'll be real, 15% sales tax in QC is fucking awful. 79.99$ becomes 93$
Wonder how the adorably all digital series X will fare outside the US
If Microsoft won't make some sort of external disk reader for the series S/X refresh, then they will have really given up on many markets. If Series S supported disks, I'm sure it would have been the most popular current gen console. It just doesn't make sense to save money on the console to then need to pay more on digital games.
Please keep in mind that it hasn't actually been announced yet!
@@jonnyeh It has been announced, just not to the public. The internal presentation is essentially an early announcement for the higher ups. They're already too deep into it to backpedal on the refreshes. The "changed plans" you might have heard about were more about things like the next gen Xbox console that are still being designed.
Xbox is already doing miserably compared to their competition but their problem is they have an infinitely deep wallet so they're going to just keep trying and jump from underwhelming product to underwhelming product
@@leonroThose documents were not supposed to be seen by the public, so no we cannot say it was already announced yet
I moved to Indonesia last year and was wondering if they would even sell games here. To my surprise, not only do they sell them, but they’re usually $10 to $15 cheaper than in the US. It’s been great.
Why did you move to Indonesia
Have you thought to compare that to the minimum wage in indonesia? Which monthly is about 200-300$? So yeah, games might be 10$ cheaper when compared 1:1 but for most they're unobtainable anyway.
Aren’t consoles like $800 there though due to import taxes?
@@TheDreadedZero Nah most stores sell consoles for more or else equivalent to their US dollar price.
@@PatManDX that’s not what I’ve been hearing for years in the comments section of videos. In certain eastern countries it’s like double or triple the price to get a console because it’s hard to deliver things there.
I said this to Jon on Twitter, but in Portugal there's this store that not only does 15% discount on all pre-orders but they also make "Buy 2 Take 3" promos, which can include pre-orders. So with careful arranging of the "packs" to maximize the discounts, I bought Mario Wonder and Pikmin 4 for 34€ and Pikmin 1+2 and WarioWare Move It for 28€.
What store is this? Can people in North America order from them?
@@jaschan2006 it's called Worten, but I doubt you can order stuff outside Portugal sadly. Maybe to Spain it would work.
This makes a TON of sense as to why Nintendo continued doing the £85 for 2 game code on the Eshop but NOT America! Since they have no need to do it over there!
I still buy my first party Nintendo games from the Eshop using those vouchers if I end up needing to buy. 😁 awesome video!
Nice
They brought it back recently iirc
They do sell vouchers on the E-shop, but you have to be an NSO subscriber to buy them.
@@Whirlwhind1that was always the case. They took them off the American e shop for years and only brought them back when tears of the kingdom released.
walmarts in the states used to sell switch games $10 cheaper all the time but they stopped now :(
EB Games Australia keeps the same price as the eShop. JB Hi-Fi, Target & Big W charge less because they buy more stock & pass the saving to the customers. A new game from a distributor costs AU$64-78 for the retailer & the RRP is AU$80-125, depending on platform & publisher for 1st party & AAA games.
The thing with EB games though is that they have a much wider variety of games and they tend to sell more pre owned games compared to jb HiFi.
This actually used to be a thing in the states too, where amazon best buy and walmart would have a game discounted up to 20%. Unfortunately, about 2 years ago that all stopped, which is a shame because it means my collection is slowly moving more digital to save money since digital sales are much more common
Man I loved that deal! I even had games up to a year or so after that membership was discontinued pre ordered and managed to still get some of them, but Best Buy ended up cancelling those pre-orders lol
Huh, here in Darwin, most games are are around same price as digital or slightly more expensive, JB Hi Fi here barleys stocks switch games and the only dedicated games store, EB Games, usually marks the prices up a bit! Big W, which is a “general” store, they usually make the games slightly cheaper than digital
As an American, it all comes down to a scumbag's favorite words: *_Profit Margins_*
I used to go back and forth over whether digital or physical should be cheaper. Digital, you don't get the case/tangible item, but companies think it's "convenient" to use up my internet data instead. Physical, unless I'm shipping it to my address, I have to check their availability, leave the house, and for what? The "privilege" of owning a copy of media? 😒
As an Australian, yes, most game stores are cheaper than the eShop price, but the one store that doesn't do this is EB Games.
1:49 - That stress ball though!
Up until last year, in the US, I bought all of my new games in-store at Walmart. They'd sell $60 games for $50 on day 1. But then Kirby and the Forgotten Land came out and they haven't done it since.
Don't forget one other important factor with the states, at least for the vast majority of the country that besides the price not budging much, they also have to deal with additional tax at checkout which is foreign to us in the UK
This kind of thing used to happen occasionally in the US, but not to this degree.
Walmart used to have a roughly 20% price reduction on new games (59.99 games were 49.88, 49.99 games were 41.88, etc.) but in around 2022 they stopped and sell games at around MSRP.
Usually deals like this are instead bundles, like Target having a buy two get one on preorders.
Gamefly will undercut the hell out of other retailers, but you usually have to wait a month or so after the game releases
As an American - Walmart used to sell new games for $50 (down from $60) but they actually stopped doing this around 2021 :( Now, the only real deal over here is the B2G1 (so a "3 for the price of 2" at Best Buy, but that's ONLY with a $50/yr membership 😭)
Granted the membership costs as much as a switch game
@@JeskidoYT True, but you can do as many B2G1 deals as you want during that year. Taking the membership into account, I’ve saved $120 so far.
best buy killed that deal its jover@@bubbledoubletrouble
Don't worry. You always get those huge sales of 10-20$ game's on new game's and 2 for the price 1 on Nintendo game's.
here in the US, Walmart used to sell new games for $10 cheaper, even physically, so i ALWAYS got my games there. i think the first game where i noticed they stopped doing this was kirby and the forgotten land, so now i just get them from wherever is most convenient since the price doesn’t make a difference now
As someone who lives in Brazil it's actually the opposite. See Brazil's currency (called Reals(the way it's pronunce is equal to "hey-all")) is worth one fifth of 1 US Dollar (in simpler terms since i probably didn't word it well(english isn't my first language) essencially 5-4 reals("hey-ice") equal 1 US dollar). So take a normal switch game at 60 dollars, here in Brasil it would be around 240-300 reals.
There is not much competition anymore in the US for physical retail copies. It's all Amazon/Walmart/Best Buy/Game stop/Target.
Which one of those you buy from has more to do with what you have access to and less with price.
Would not be shocked too if that list shrinks in the next few years. GameStop is perpetually threatening to go bankrupt and Target seems to be phasing out physical media.
Jon makes so many videos. Like wow.
It’s so great
And they're always the most random topics but it's never not interesting!
He’s one of, if not the only, GVG member to be doing it full time
This was really helpful. I'm from England myself, and I thought we had it bad until I saw this. Gave me a lot more options to choose.
same thing here in denmark, i almost always use the same two online shops, because i get bulk discount, frequent buyer discounts all with price matching
As an American viewer the closest we have to getting deals like the one u are getting in the UK was by shopping at Walmart.
For a hot minute brand new releases on the switch were being sold at Walmart for 10 USD less than the other retailers, including the eShop.
Unfortunately they have since stopped doing this, or at least they have slowed drastically as more and more switch games are being sold at the full 59.99 MSRP now at Walmart.
It was fun while it lasted... I guess.
It's true, I happened to be in Australia when Tears of the Kingdom got released and was worried I'd have to pay even more for it, but I got it for 70 AUD (44 USD) which was insane to me lol
Currys used to have this bananas deal where you could use a code for free next day delivery. It would knock £5 off the total price which is the price they set for next day delivery fee (so it would offset that additional cost). It would also auto select the next day delivery fee in the checkout options. However, having inserted the code, you could then switch checkout options to free in store collection. The £5 reduction would remain in place and you would no longer have the delivery fee offset against it. I did it so many times.
This makes me think of the Japanese Nintendo eshop, where game prices are all over the place. For example, Xenoblade 3 is like 8700 yen, while tears of the kingdom might be 7400 yen, and Pikmin 4 might be 6300 yen (not actual prices but you get the idea). In america, almost every game has a standard price of $60 or $70, but in Japan there are so many different prices even for first party Nintendo stuff on their own eshop for new or recent games not on sale
Thank you for acknowledging the majesty that is Australia’s JB Hi-Fi. They don’t sell the quantity of games that an EB Games (GameStop) would, but it’s almost always cheaper. Love the accent too.
Over in Portugal, most stores now offer a 15% discount on basically ALL game pre-orders. It's basically got me into the habit of buying most games through pre-orders. Sometimes they get even cheaper later on, but it's still enough to rope me in early.
Outlier to this situation in Europe is Switzerland, where game prices are extortionate, be it physical or digital. My brother lives there and has to ration his purchases because you'll pretty much never see physical games discounted/on sale, and the digital prices are mad.
Switzerland is overall really expensive. I think cause they just earn more money there xD
We once were there and saw the restaurant prices. A Schnitzel with Fries for (I think it was) around 60€ ^^"
We then drove a few minutes more to Austria and there the Schnitzel was 12€ x'D
In Canada, next gen games are 89.99. It cost over 100$ with taxes. It's getting just a tad expensive.
For Capcom to say games are not expensive enough when they fill their game with overpriced micro transactions is just an insult to gamers.
Yeah that’s very annoying for game that’s 100 bucks
Some are even more. I've seen some PSN games for $93.50 before tax. Crazy
I'm from the US but have been living in Japan for a few months now and was shocked at just how much cheaper games are physically here. Honestly the official Nintendo retail stores are probably the worst places to buy Switch games since they're literally always selling at the highest price around.
I also collect lego and buying directly from lego can ble like 40% more expensive than buying from other retailers
In Brazil it's the opposite. The already very expensive digital copy is cheaper than physical copies which can be 10%, 20%, or even more % expensive. Even the copies manufactured in the country. Digital is the way to go for a lot of people here simply because they can't afford. Steam and PC is also the most accessible here since Steam uses it's own price convertion rate and has constant sales. A triple AAA game can be cheaper on steam compared to other consoles (unless the publisher demands specific regional pricing). When applied to double AA or Indie games, the difference on steam compared to other platforms is much greater. There is also the fact that if you want to pay subscriptions or microtransactions for any games that allow us to pay with the steam wallet, the platform let us pay with our currency going by it's own conversion rate again, which you can imagine, makes it way more manageable. Because of that, other online stores here strive on selling keys, were you buy the game on their website, and activate on Steam for example.
Sometimes we can get games for cheaper here in Australia like JB HiFi and Big W, but for the most part, the actual prices are ridiculous. New PS5 games are $100-130, even Sonic Superstars on Switch is $95-100 here! That's not even the special edition.
Mario Wonder is $80 at RRP, but Superstars is $15-20 more for no reason, because I guess they're following the multiplatform prices instead of the Nintendo standard that's usually no more than $80 AUD (except for Zelda).
Steam used to just be the USD prices here, until they added official support for AUD, which meant that companies could just arbitrarily increase the prices for us here. We used to pay the same prices but just had to convert them, but now they can make the prices *more* than the conversion amount. You can't even gift a game from overseas to an Australian account because Steam *knows* that the prices aren't fair. It sucks.
Agree with ya. PS5 games are the biggest offenders I feel. A massive chunk of PS5 games physically can reach $100+ which is about the price they sell it digitally. Really only a handful of stores do sales here and there. For example, Persona 3 Reload is about $109 to pre-order both Physically and digitally (before tax mind you), which is pretty hard to cough up these days. Hell, even switch games are being priced up as well.
I remember back when games used to be sold for maybe $70/$80 tops but had many discounts that pushed it down to $60 AUD. These days, you'd be lucky to get games at $70 or less (unless you wait a long time after the games release).
I live in the UK and had no idea about some of these stores. Definitely gonna be using these in the future. I much prefer getting games physically so this is huge for me!
damn jon you're on a roll with these back to back video releases
Why can’t we have something like this in US/Canada?
I think in America companies can basically tell retailers to keep to a minimum price whereas elsewhere that's very illegal so here it's a race to lowest price they can sell at (before making a loss) to get the most pre orders
This isn't the case in Colombia and Argentina. Usually nintendo games are $10-$15 dollars more. Electronics are usually more expensive in Latin America due to import taxes.
Ireland definitely sucks for physical games right now. Both Argos and GameStop closed here over the summer and now only Smyths remains, and they are decent, but they don't tend to do big discounts really. We also have Currys over here, but they don't do any of the sort of discounts you'd see in the UK. CeX can have decent prices, but you obviously can't buy pre-order games there.
Then Hit and Game Collection used to ship to Ireland but not anymore after Brexit made that a financial impossibility, and even Amazon charges extra to Ireland, most of the pre-order prices are over standard RRP(Sonic Superstars on Switch for example is £56!). It just sucks not having many options, and most friends just buy digital so that they can just play games at release. I can't blame them really, even though I'll always prefer a physical copy.
The same in Japan. Packages tend to be cheaper. Although, for Nintendo published games we still have the Nintendo Catalogue Ticket (the Nintendo Switch Game Vouchers) which at times can be the better way to get a big Nintendo game.
I've never really thought about how game prices are outside of the UK, for me it's been a given that a pre-order from Game or Currys is just less than 40
I got 25% off TOTK and Mario Wonder on Curry's. Paid £45 and £37.75 for each game before they even came out. Absolute bargain.
Amazon Prime used to have a flat 20% off all preorders that ended about 5 years or so ago I think?
That's around the time I started to just go digital because the price benefits began to disappear. I honestly think the big reason is that the big retailers just care about profits over everything else.
“Pack your things, we’re leaving”
The same applies here in Brazil, we have Nuuvem that gives drops or discounts that make other purchases chaper.
This reminds me of how much I miss Best Buy's Gamers Club Unlocked here in the states. It was $30 for 20% off all games for 2 years. Thing paid for itself in no time and you got rewards points to use on $5 vouchers too. Shame that we'll probably never see a deal that good here again for a long time, if ever.
Meanwhile in Canada, we almost never get sales, especially not for pre-orders! I buy a lot of games from Asia as they are often less expensive and many have English.
I live in Switzerland. As is the case in the UK, retail prices are lower here as well: from 78 francs on the eShop to 70 francs in stores. And in the case of BOTH open-world Zelda games, the game goes from 90 on the eShop down to 80 in stores.
The most confusing part about this whole thing is that the dollar is actually stronger than the Swiss franc, and despite that, games are fundamentally more expensive here than in the UK or the US. Even the Switch itself was 330 francs at launch compared to the 300 dollars in the US.
1 USD = 0.82 GBP / 0.92 CHF
1 GBP = 1.21 USD / 1.12 CHF
1 CHF = 1.09 USD / 0.89 GBP
Here's another funny one: the pricing for NSO's memberships…
NSO: 20 USD / 18 GBP / 28 CHF
NSO+EP: 50 USD / 35 GBP / 52 CHF
These prices always looked insanely illogical to me: An increase of 85.7% and 94.4% in Switzerland and the UK respectively cannot even compare to the absurd 150% price increase that the States had to deal with. I still have no idea how these prices were decided and I guess I'll never find out…
Something that also still confuses me is that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have the same price in pretty much every region except the Americas. Did people in the UK actually talk about the fact that BotW was 60 pounds instead of 50 back in 2017? Because I don't remember a single person complaining about the higher price point and it boggles my mind as to how that didn't happen back then.
Is there any other region/country beside the Americas where TotK is more expensive than BotW? I would love to know…
I can confirm that in Spain is way cheaper. you can easily buy Mario Wonder for 47€ vs the official 59,99€
I'm an Aussie and I bounce between amazon au(sometimes amazing deals with prime not to mention free postage), ebgames, target, bigw and jb.
Eshop for me is a last resort if a game is digital only and there is no limited run edition.
I really love these non-American views on the game industry!
I brought this up under a video where the topic of TotK being $70 US came up. In NZ it BotW was $110 on the eShop and at most chain stores (Except JB-HiFi which was $100). TotK got a bump up to $120 on the eShop, but JB had it for the same as BotW at $100 (collectors ed was still full price though). Hilariously, our "gaming store" EB Games had it for MORE than the eShop. This is just one of the reasons I shop at JB HIFI here. Not only that, but they are the primary supplier of physical copies of anime here.
Here in Ireland in terms of retails we really only have Smyths beacuse gamestop and argos (RIP) left ireland a few months ago
Games a cheaper here in Australia than the states! $60 usd is $93 aud but mario wonder is selling at $70 aud, thats awesome!
I'm in the US, I'm pretty jealous of you guys in the UK now 😅. I buy all digital but I would definitely buy physical if it was that much cheaper. Like you said, why pay more, for less?
Some ebay sellers will take advantage of these discounts and sell to Americans. Was able to get an EU Pokémon Scarlet for $46 new!
Some ebay sellers will take advantage of these discounts and sell to Americans. Was able to get an EU Pokémon Scarlet for $50
Your salaries are a lot higher than us, though
Sweden here!
TOTK is 689SEK on the eshop and 645SEK in the store here, which is a 3 pound difference. In general digital is more expensive then physical here. Especially when it comes to Nintendos games.
And taking into account that digital games don't have any resale value, it is always a bad deal 😁Unless you don't really care.
Any Australian who bought ToTK up to and after launch would know how good it was. $89.95 AUD RRP, while Amazon and JB were selling it for $74 (Amazon is now even cheaper at $69). Switch first party games have been pretty good value in Australia for awhile now relative to other countries.
PS5 titles get discounted too but the base price is mich higher where its up to $125 AUD RRP and the best discounts are around $100 (Spiderman 2 can be found for $98).
A potential bonus with Hit is that sometimes games arrive a day early. On the other hand, sometimes a day late so it's a gamble.
As a German resident, I would often shop at Smyth’s Toy Store as they would drastically undercut games. I think I got Bayonetta Origins for 35 or 40 euros.
And then there's México, when only Amazon is cheaper, but the main retailers are usually more expensive.
And to think that we used to have the Argentina eshop...
El problema con amazon es su logística para preventas, aunque personalmente no me importa recibir un juego días después tras ahorrar dinero.
@@Cyanide_03 Y el ahorro luego sí es bastante significativo, creo que depende un poco con los juegos, para un TotK no me hubiera esperado una semana, para Fire Emblem: Engage, sí.
In Mexico Nintendo is cutting their prices already and physical copies on retailers are also seeing multiple price cuts
In Chile, physical Switch games are costing between CLP 60,000 (USD 66) and CLP 70,000 (USD 77)...
In Portugal, most of our shops have a 15% discount on pre-orders. Then, we have one, called Worten, that has 3 games for the price of 2 many many times, and sometimes they allow you to pre-order games with that discount. So, you can pre-order 3 games by paying 85% of two new games. That's our best bargain
Curry's has been coming in clutch for years on Switch pre-orders, ive not bought a first party game full price for ages because of them
Brazil might be even worse than plain old USA.
Oficial eshop prices tend to be R$50 per US$10 paid for a game... so the official digital price is R$300 for a full US$60 (Tears, that was US$70, was R$400)
official physical games, meanwhile, are always R$50 more than their eshop prices. So a game that costs R$300 digitally costs R$350 physically... if you go through the official channels. You can find them slightly cheaper in other stores, or for older Switch games.
In the Philippines, Super Mario Wonder right now cost $44 original price. I pre-ordered with 30% discount and will get it at $30. Glad we didn't have to pay $60 for games as they adjusted the prices to the cost of living here. We don't have dedicated eshop though, so digital games we still hop on different regions
It hurt to learn that when I bought a physical copy octopath traveler for $60 on Amazon and got little Nintendo points back. I learned that digital copies get you more points but digital can disappear easier than other.
In Sweden we paid equivalent of 75 ish dollars for new games before msrp prices were raised to 70 usd. Now I’m glad we can get a lot of deals on most games, nowadays I don’t spend more than 40 on fairly new games and 55-60 for new games
Games are also cheaper in general in some countries outside of the US. I bought a download code for Mario Wonder for just under 6000 JPY, or less than $40 USD
My local Walmart here in the US used to sell all new switch games at a $10 discount. I got Metroid Dread for $50 and WarioWare for $40. Kirby and the Forgotten land was $60 and they have been ever since…Used to be an awesome incentive to shop at Walmart
I remember when i first started using Amazon (something I don't do anymore) they had $20 free credit for the next game upon preordering the current game. I remember rolling over this $20 for a good year or so. Nowadays I don't buy too many games day 1 anymore, just too expensive. It also helps that having a 4 year old curbs a bit of the spending.
In Brazil, Nintendo games costs (officially) R$50 more at retailers in comparison to the e-shop... Sales or cupons are super rare at launch
Here in Belgium, some physical stores can decide themselves whether to cut prices if they need to move stock. Bought Xenoblade 3 some time ago for €22. Sometimes you just have to get lucky!
Xenoblade rarely goes on sale, if ever. But neat to know in other countries, at least you have options
Honestly Nintendo titles definitely need to go on sale more often. Always full price has never made sense. But on occasion if its a special date related to a series, something might be planned
Actually, where I live (Southern Illinois), the Walmart I usually frequent sells full-price ($60) games for ~$50 in-store, and lesser-priced games are also sometimes a bit cheaper. And I've lived here my entire life, so I assumed that was just kind of the norm. So it's interesting to me that most of the U.S. doesn't do this. I've always been used to it.
I'm from south america and it's the same thing, games are around 80 usd in the eshop but if you look around you can find them for 65-70 usd.
Considering the amount of big releases this year, I feel blessed that I randomly came across The Game Collection last year. They also often ship pre-orders early, had ishin turn up 4 days early in the most extreme case 😂
I always used to get games from ShopTo 2 days early, but it hasnt happened in a while.
Walmart used to do a thing where if you go in-person, Switch games were 10 bucks off. Seems to be gone now, but I got a lot of games physically for that reason.
American speaking. This is the wildest case of whiplash I've ever seen. These kinds of deals for brand new nintendo games? Thats nuts. I wonder how possible it would be for me to get Switch games shipped to the US.
Great video for those who may not be aware of non-Amazon shops. You're gag about hanging around too many Americans hits truer than you might think though Jon, I heard you say "Mul-tie-player" rather than "Mul-tee-player" like an actual Brit on a video recently! :P (Edit: That being said "I'm going to save my five pounds and buy some quavers!" might be the most British sign-off ever, so I guess it evens out...)
It's usually because the American copies of games are worth more compared to the European or Japanese versions of the same exact game. Collectors and fans prefer to have the American NTSC of Nintendo games and because of that it seems like Nintendo games hold their value more compared to the European version of the same exact game.
I need a year to year breakdown. Like 10 plus of this being done.
Here in Portugal there's a store that usually makes a deal around one per 3 months. The deal is: choose 3 games, but pay only for 2. The cheapest of the 3 games is free.
So, if you choose 3 games that costs 59,99€ each, you'll pay 119,98 instead of 179,97. That means you're getting 3 games of 59,99€ each, for 39,99€ each.
Sometimes they also allow ppl to use the deal with pre-order games. And I dont know how the pre-order system works in other countries, but here when you pre-order a game, you pay for the price with a 15% discount. So, a 59,99€ game being bought as a pre-order, It's gonna cost 50,99€.
Now, if you only buy 3 games as pre-orders with the Pay 2 Get 3 deal, you are paying 101,98 for 3 games, which means each game basicly costs 33,99€.
I did that recently. With that deal, I got games already pre-ordered for 33,99€ each (games that will launch for 59,99€) such as Super Mario RPG, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Sonic Superstars and Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol.1. That's also how I got games like Pikmin 4, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Octopath Traveler 2, and much more.
And there's also the ocasional discount for a single game, although the discount isn't usually worthwhile. Still, some good deals I had was buying games like Pikmin 3 Deluxe, Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening and New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe for 29,99€ each, and the best deal that I ever had was buying a brand new copy of The Outer Worlds for Switch, for 19,99€.
Amazon Germany sold Splatoon 3 for 42 euros before the game even released
Wal-mart here in the states, at least the Midwest will often have 10 dollars off games. Not brand new, but after a month or so.
For living in the USA, I feel like we don't see retailers undercut each other is because of using FOMO sales, and the biggest one being Black Friday.
I also don't see store credit for buying games. Unless it's gamestop, store credit only really exists as gift cards or refunds. Stores don't really refund in cash, sadly.
I spend the summer is Paris. New games were about the same, but used switch games were super cheap. Here in America used switch games are sometimes 5 bucks off, but I saw a ton of used first party switch games in Paris like 20, 30 bucks off.
Physical games are usually at least a little cheaper, it's really cool.
What bothers me is that physical is literally more expensive to distribute than digital. So the retailers are actually losing _more_ money than just the discount.
I discovered this by accident while buying games off Amazon, but I had no idea it was this common
Before Brexit I ordered most of my games from the UK for that very reason. Our big retailers in Germany do a lot of discounts as well, but the online retail market was never that diverse. Luckily, I found a shop called netgames that always sells games 5-10€ cheaper. And it’s the PEGI version so no ugly USK logo is a neat bonus.
amazon prime used to have a flat 20% discount on all pre-orders in the US! they stopped it with spider-man in 2018. the actually wouldn’t even let you pre-order the game for months after other retailers opened theirs until the policy ended
In the US, retailers typically have two or three Buy 2 Get 1 sales each year. As of the current generation, there have been a lot of exceptions (no new releases, no first party Switch), but that's how I get most of my third party games.
I refuse to pay $70 for a video game.
I buy digital games because I realized I had a pretty unhealthy relationship with collecting stuff, but if the discount was this good in the states, I’d kinda HAVE to go back to buying them physically.
Here in Brazil the games costs around R$300 (aprox. U$59) but keep in mind that our minimal wage is U$260, so yeah pretty expensive.
I usually just wait out a few months and the price goes down to 40 to 50 USD consistently here in Colombia, if I'm buying from specialized stores. If I'm buying from big retailers, it's far more expensive than US prices, because they charge you for every step in the importing process.
Agree btw, SPYxAnya is a must-have GOAT.
In Australia it always always works out cheaper to get a Nintendo game physically than digitally.
I moved to the UK from states 2 weeks ago. I am glad I haven't bought anything from the eshop. Was not aware of any of this so thank you.
Remember Zavvi back in the late 2000s? They were selling PS3 games for like 10 bucks one week after release