I recently pre-ordered a Switch 2 and will get it end of this week and now is the time for getting games.
However, I noticed that digital is overall more expensive than physical even when the games are new from retail stores. For example;
- Mario Kart World is €72 digitally, €68 physically.
- Tears of The Kingdom €78 digitally, €70 physically.
- Ocarina Remake €70 digitally, €65 physically.
Might be a stupid question but is this a normal thing for consoles? I have not purchased any games for consoles since I went over to PC gaming in 2019-2020. Can’t remember anymore how it was on PS4/5.
I like having the game physically, sort of owning it (if it still can be called owning). But the loss of easily switching games will be a sad ‘loss’ lol.
The games I’m planning to purchase in the long run are:
- Mario Kart World.
- Tears of The Kingdom.
- Some Yoshi games.
- Breath of The Wild (already played though)
- Newer Kirby game (2027 one).
To add to other comments here, new Nintendo games were supposed to be more expensive physically - say, $80 instead of digital $70 for the new FE - but it turns out, retailers don’t want to be undercut by digital sales. So at least at launch and for some time, the physical price is slightly less than physical, so people want to buy them more. (I assume Nintendo asked for more money to provide physicals though, so the retailers get ~10 bucks less per sale)
Remember that retailers with an unsold copy lost money on it, while Nintendo loses nothing from not getting a digital sale (though they still prefer selling digital, so they get all of the money)