 So Nintendo had a shareholders meeting they do this every three months to go over the latest financial reports from the previous quarter We have the first fiscal results in for the current fiscal year 1920 which ends in March or at the end of March of 2020. So yes, technically animal crossing will be part of this fiscal year But here's the deal We're not just going to go over the sales data I actually want to have a deeper conversation because I've seen this brought up a lot every single time one of these sales Videos comes out and that is why the heck are Nintendo's games still listed at 59 99 So many years after launch like Breath of the Wild want to switch etc Why doesn't Nintendo do what the rest of the industry does and lower their sales including playstation and Sony now? I'm obviously going to be taking the stance here that I think Nintendo is very smart business wise and that they should Keep their games priced to where they are as long as the sales are there and I also think that there is a trade-off for what Nintendo is doing and It actually is a good thing for the video game industry Now you're gonna scoff at me because obviously what went lowering prices of games be pro consumer But let's just get into some numbers because the numbers I think are very telling So Yeah, they have all this various other you know the revenue and the profits and all that we're not really interested in that data That's for Nintendo as a company to worry about more But it is interesting looking at things like Harbor units, you know this past quarter They sold 2.13 million Units for a grand total so far of basically 37 million switches out in the wild By the way, PlayStation and Sony actually had their financial briefing as well And they are now north of a hundred million PlayStation 4s officially So let's put this in perspective because we are gonna do some comparisons of Sony again. This isn't about fan wars this isn't to put Sony down, but They're gonna be part of this conversation because they're the only other company that has I feel enough Exclusive games to actually have this conversation about all right obviously through DS hardware 75 million You know barely sold 200,000 units of past quarter down a surprise 3ds is essentially dead Software-wise we saw 22.62 million units for 210 million total There's actually over a billion pieces of software moved on PlayStation 4 so far not surprising but on the market a lot longer 1.48 million 3ds software was still sold so they don't that's approaching up on 400 million or so there So cool, right? Everything's looking all hunky-dory there Get down to game sales This is where things get really interesting. This is the nintendo's top 10 It's the only thing they really report although they did tell us that Mario maker 2 for launch sold about 2.5 million units It's not in the top 10 yet. Probably will be next quarter But it was only out for like a day like literally like one day of data. So there you go All right, so Mario Kart 8 deluxe is at 17.89 million pretty much 18 million units All right Super Mario Odyssey is at 14.94 so pretty much 15 million units Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is at 14.73 which is very very close to also being at 15 million units The rest of the wild is that you know 13.61 so starting to get more to 13 and a half more so than 14 million But if you combine in Wii U sales, it's actually at 15 million itself Man, that's that's almost twice as much as the next best-selling Zelda games. That's crazy Yeah, let's go beach. Let's go Eevee basically at 11 million units You have Splatoon which is now crossed 9 million units I don't know if it's a gonna quite get to 10 especially now that they're done with all the Splatfest, but I Mean it has a shot It has a shot if Splatoon 3 is not coming for a while It has a chance with long tail sales to potentially especially if Nintendo keeps supporting it at tournaments I think the 10 million Super Mario Parties at 6.99 aka 7 million Super Mario Mario Bros. U Deluxe is at 4.1 million 1-2 switch is that still in the top 10 at 3 million and then you get Mario time is aces at 2.75 which I think Is going to be passed by Super Mario maker of the next turnaround if it's not gonna be passed with Fire Emblem or other games too So it'll be interesting because these some changes at the bottom part of this top 10 I think these top from Splatoon 2 and up maybe even Mario partying up. They're pretty safe for a little while now New Pokemon games are probably gonna have something to say about that. Here's the interesting look at the sales for this quarter 1.2 million copies of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold this past fiscal quarter I mean there's only about 2 million console sales 1.2 million Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold You know what that means why the hell would Nintendo reduce the price from 59.99? This is a Wii U port Why the hell would they reduce? Why would they voluntarily give up money? That's my question. Why would they voluntarily give up money? Well, because it could sell better if it was cheaper sure But they also theoretically because of the cost of cartridges on the physical version could end up losing more money than they make so if they might actually be making more money and In keeping the game at that price it also helps maintain this the second market value for us If you ever want to resell the game someday There's actually gonna be a higher market for it than there is for other games That's sink prices in a month. Some some even do it in within weeks of release. It's crazy. Super Mario Odyssey sold 500,000 units Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sold 920,000 units as past fiscal This is just the last three months Breath of the Wild launch game folks a launch switch game 840,000 units What let's go beat you. Let's go Evie, you know 350,000 spittoon to 30 320,000 Super Mario Party 590,000 more than Odyssey it's an outsold Odyssey this past quarter Super Mario Bros. You'd elect 790,000 40,000 units a one-two switch sold for crying out loud another launch game Then we had 110,000 units of my tennis ace if you ever wonder why Nintendo doesn't reduce prices Look at this. Look at this list my current eight deluxe 2017 Odyssey 2017 breath of the wild 2017 Osprey tuned to 2017 One-two switch 2017 egg look at Yeah, let's just look at the rest. You got more intense aces 2018 This is my brothers you deluxe that came out this year awesome my party last year Let's go beat you. Let's give you last year Smash Bros last year and there's keep selling all this I mean look at that software. This is insane Why would Nintendo ever reduce the price of their games when they keep selling like this like it's dumb It would be a stupid business decision But I think it's a good thing because you know as consumers We talk about oh how we want to get games cheaper and if you're honest with yourselves You can go on Amazon right now. You can find breath of the wild for 45 bucks brand new So even though MSRP is still 59 99 you can get a lot of these games cheaper now Especially the ones have been out for a while. Well, that's not you know there Nintendo's official MSRP is still 59 99 and You could talk all day long about how they should reduce prices and make it cheaper for consumers But I want to show you something because Sony has a lot of exclusive games It's among all their best-selling games and they also reduce prices Now remember Sony is a hundred million PlayStation 4's in the market and it's been on the market a lot longer Here are the best-selling PlayStation 4 games Uncharted 4 at the East End 15 million units again very good not as good As Mario Kart 8 Deluxe right around Mario Odyssey in Smash Bros level. However, this is on a system that sold a hundred million units So let's you know that sales for Uncharted 4 are probably dipped off significantly I don't think there's a long tail of sales here with Uncharted 4 if you send to you I mean a hundred million PlayStation 4's versus, you know, 37 million switches and it's basically Hasn't even outsold Mario Kart. It's selling the same as Odyssey Yeah, I don't think the long tail of sales is quite there for Sony 10 million for God of War fantastic came out early last year Yeah, didn't didn't do better than let's go beat you. Let's leave you. That's been out even longer. I know okay It's Pokemon fine. So it's doing like Splatoon kind of numbers Not really seen a long tail of sales there again on us on a platform that has sold a hundred million units Horizon Zero Dawn sold 10 million again platform that sold a hundred million units last of us remastered a PlayStation 3 port That's probably even more comparable to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe or something 10 million units Marvel Spider-Man 9 million now That's actually to me pretty solid. I don't know what the long tail of sales is on that But there you go 9 million Gran Turismo Sport 8 million the Witcher 3 4.8 etc. Then you start getting some third-party games and all that jazz and What you see is that Sony all of these games from Sony are very very cheap right now Let's just look up God of War and PlayStation 4 right God of War ps4 Let's just see what it's running running for right now Let's go to the official PlayStation store because this is where you're gonna get the MSRP So we're not getting like discounts from retailers By now See what this game is running We're not getting the stow mason edition Or the digital Lux or the collectors. Let's just go standard edition. Let's buy digital See what they're gonna charge me 39.99 so $20 cheaper today than it was at launch All right Now you'll see them do this because the sales of the game have slowed down That is the logic behind price reduction Is it not that the games are no longer able to sell at that 5999 price at a level of profitability That's acceptable to consumers now one thing you'll notice and I'm not gonna accuse SOTY of this This is definitely more of a third-party thing is that there is this infinite race to the bottom, right? The goal is to release your product like right now Madden 2020. It just came out and it's releasing at like three different times Depending on which version you bought. Thanks EA Anyways, it's releasing at all these different times and it costs 59.99 or More if you get the special editions of deluxe editions and all that jazz. Okay, fine So you pay that price madden a month from now is only gonna be 40 bucks a month after that might only be 20 But you know what they have done to games instead of maintaining the price points all this race to the bottom stuff You know what's happened. They know it's a race to the bottom What does the race to the bottom mean the race to the bottom means who can lower their price? the fastest To reach a pinnacle point in sales that is therefore made up by the number of people participating in micro transactions Folks the reason that games don't hold their value at 59.99 for most companies is because of micro transactions and loot boxes They have replaced the 59.99 launch price point with look Let's get this in as many hands as possible so we can get as many people buying micro transactions and loot boxes as possible Now again, this is a me accusing Sony. I think Sony does it the more traditional route where it's a Look the game's not selling that well everyone bought it at launch now. No one's buying it two months later Let's reduce the price. I think that's Sony's methodology That is what it used to be before micro transaction loot boxes were in everything We accepted that companies with lower prices of games over time even if it was six months to a year out Once people kind of stop buying it, but that's not really what's happening with games like Madden and all the stuff They'll still be top-selling games But we'll keep reducing the price to get more and more people into participate in Madden ultimate team and Micro transactions and loot boxes and all this stuff This is a tactic that all these companies are using that race to the bottom is how close can we get to free to play? Where everyone's gonna buy money and spend a little bit of money on this and then participate in all the micro transactions? That is the race to the bottom. Ideally you have something like fortnight and apex legends Which is free to play which ensures Essential essentially that's going to be popular as long as it's a good game and it's full of micro transactions and loot boxes now Nintendo doesn't care about the race to the bottom. There are very few first-party Triple-a franchises coming out of Nintendo on switch that participate in micro transactions and loot boxes In fact, I don't even know if any of them participate in the loot box category and micro transactions are a little hit or miss You can buy individual characters from the DLC pack in smash or just buy the entire smash pack You can consider that a micro transaction if you want, but You know, if that's like the only example you can come up with then that's not much right Nintendo is Maintaining the price points of their games because the games themselves are holding that value The price of a video game should be determined by the market, right? so Market demand and pricing is all about capitalism people are willing to buy things at a certain price and If they maintain that price, it's because people are still willing to buy a breath of the wild So almost a million copies over the last three months one million copies over the last three months You know how many companies wish their game could sell one million copies period and breath of the wild did that over the last three months 1.2 million copies of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe a port from like five six years ago So one point two millions over the last three months So you wonder why Nintendo doesn't reduce prices the attach rate of Nintendo's games for their install base is insane insane Basically every other person that owns a switch owns Mario Kart Did you realize this every other person owns a switch owns breath of the wild every other person owns Mario Odyssey Own smash bros like it's crazy the insane attach rate Nintendo gets and you wonder why they don't reduce their prices now Yes, it would be nice as a Nintendo fan to see prices reduced It would make things easier on my pocketbook But it also means that the games are devaluing for some reason and my my question to you is and I always bring this up when people talk about pricing is Breath of the wild 59 99 at launch. Is it any less of a game today than it is then? Or was that I should say is breath of the wild a worse game today than it was back when it launched The answer is no, it's actually better to have performance updates and free content emissions and obviously now the DLC is out That's an additional purchase, but No, it's not So why should the game be worth less money? That's always been like my my grander point is like why are these games worth less money? Like are they suddenly not as good as they once were just because they're not new? I mean this switch still sells for 300 bucks. Is it not worth 300 today? Like it wasn't launch Obviously it is because people keep buying it. I Prices come down Nintendo selects exist once it reaches a point that no one's buying the games anymore But people are buying these games in the hundreds of thousands every single quarter So why would Nintendo reduce the pricing? Why would they participate in a race to the bottom of the barrel to get all their prices comparable to all these other games that? Deserve attention as an example someone brought this up. I think on a thread on reset era, which is right here Where somebody was like hey look, you know if breath of the wild reduced this price to 30 bucks would suddenly Cadence of Hyrule when it comes out look as appetizing at its price point in comparison to breath of the wild That's not only like five ten dollars more expensive. The answer is no Obviously if you have somebody who just bought a switch and they go to the shop and they look up Zelda They see cadence of Hyrule and they see breath of the wild right next to each other price point wise They're gonna jump with the breath of the wild They're not even gonna bother with cadence of Hyrule So by keeping the games at that premium price It actually helps highlight some of the lower price games that deserve to be lower priced and should be lower priced and kind of signal Boost them Nintendo is able to keep their game separated from those smaller games by keeping those price points high So not only is it better for the indie developers out there and all that jazz. It's better for Nintendo's bottom line It's better for consumers It's better for everyone the only thing the only argument out there that I that I can kind of see is that because Everybody else does it it feels weird that Nintendo doesn't Microsoft reduces prices their game Sony does it as the sales trail off, but here's the thing Sony For all the people that want to add that Nintendo does this are agreed by the way Nintendo's a for-profit business, of course They do it out of greed or some some form I greed they want to make the most amount of money possible, okay? You think Sony reduces the prices under games out of the goodness of their heart Is that like an argument people believe people believe that the God of War on PlayStation 4 is 3999 out of the goodness of Sony's heart to save you a few bucks No, it's because nobody was buying it anymore at 5999. They lowered it to a price point that met market demand Nintendo doesn't need to lower the price of their games because the market demand is still there Even one to switch, you know a game that most of you guys would laugh off and say is dumb So 40,000 units at $60 a pop over the last three months Why would they reduce the price? From of that game what so they can reduce it to 20 bucks and maybe get more people to buy it Oh, what a sales go from 40,000 to 60,000 is that 60,000 gonna make up from the $40 profit loss per version on You know 40,000 units. No do the math. No, it doesn't make up for it This is not even including the fact that because a lot of people buy things physically You end up with a cart that takes up a huge chunk of the cost of that game. So at 20 bucks the profit margin is dinky Guys Nintendo knows what they're doing. I know it's frustrating. I know it's everyone else is doing something So Nintendo should do it too. I but sometimes it's good If Nintendo participated in the race to the bottom because there are companies that reduce the price of their games and the sales haven't even trailed off It's just preemptive You know NBA 2k mad sales aren't gonna trail off as we get closer to the NFL season They're gonna keep increasing But the price of the game will come down because they want people that more people to get in to do micro transactions and loot boxes They care more about getting people playing the game and they do about that initial price in they just want to use And abuse people at launch and then cut the price and then you know gauze you later with in-game stuff That's what these companies want to do I don't want Nintendo to get to that point where they're doing that They don't reduce the prices like Sony because their games are selling better over time than Sony's do if Sony was seeing Mario Kart 8 deluxe sales for say Oh, I don't know unchartered for like if they sold 1.2 million in the last quarter By the way unchartered for a thief's and only sold like 10,000 units over the last three months So it already doesn't have the same tale of sales. But hey, you know, what do I know, you know, I'm just a guy looking at the data Folks the $60 price point is good And I'll say this as someone who's been gaming for a long time and people who think 60 to $60 is a lot of money And I understand it's expensive compared to phone games and free-to-play and all that Indie titles, etc. There's some great games you can get that are that are much cheaper my thing is Dude, I was paying 60 bucks back in the late 90s for games 60 bucks back then could have got me like four tanks of gas or something like that was crazy now I can get like one and Maybe a quarter tank of gas out of 60 bucks Video game pricing hasn't really moved. They've they've instead the industry has kind of gone towards a look We're not going to change the prices of video games The fact we're gonna try to make video games feel cheaper But it's really more expensive on the back end with the microtransactions and loot boxes You get a worse game because of it I would much rather Nintendo keep their prices where they're at keep having these long tale of sales from people like me and you and all the other Nintendo fans out there and Not practice this stuff in their games Because that's what's gonna happen. Nintendo's not gonna cut the price out of the goodness of their heart Sony doesn't do it. Nobody does that but They will cut the price if the end result is more people doing microtransactions and loot boxes if Nintendo ever realized The billions of dollars they left on the table of Mario Odyssey by not making all of those Costumes in the game microtransactions and loot boxes I mean if they had done that with those costumes of Mario Odyssey You realize Nintendo could have made multiple billions of dollars extra off of Mario Odyssey, but they didn't they kept it That's at 59 99 kept it at that premium price sold 15 million copies of the game at $60 like think about that you see these sales for PlayStation 4 games and it's like oh it's sold 15 million How many of those 15 million were sold at 59 99 for maximum profitability? How many 8 9 Well, when you look at Nintendo's chart, you can confidently say every single one of them Anyways, I guess I'm gonna think I'm down the council. I know it's kind of a controversial opinion It's not it's kind of pro-business, but I think it's kind of pro-consumer, too I think we are getting artificial benefits of Nintendo keeping the prices at this and that is that we don't have to deal with the rest of the industry Bullshit, let's just call it what it is. So thank you guys for tuning in I'm Nathan de Robe dance from the center prime if you enjoy this video drop a like I will know that there probably isn't going to be a prime news episode today There is a lot of news out there But I've just got a lot on my plate and a lot of things to take care of I you can follow Nintendo Prime.net I'll put a bunch of the news up there as well There will be at least at one more video coming today, but thank you guys for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next one