Honestly, I dont really care about the prices. Time is my more valuable currency right now.
There are so many games to play, and at so many different prices. But so very very very few are worth my time.
Nintendo, typically, if it's one if their products that suits what I want to play, is a pretty good bet to be worth my time.
Lately though, that has not been the case. I didnt get a switch at launch, because I was burned by the Wii u. I cashed in nintendos good faith credit they built with me and got the system at launch. I have a very small library of games I like very much. I also have a ton of missing entries I typically saw on a nintendo console. The kind of entries that made getting nintendo system a good investment for me. But they didnt happen that time. Nintendo spent their good faith credit.
When I finally decided to get a switch, it was not because of nintendo games, but because of the excellent 3rd party library that had accumulated over the years, and were good enough ports for the purpose of portability. Which I have greatly enjoyed. I have exactly two Nintendo games on my switch profile. Mario O and FE3H. It just feels like after launch Nintendo started focusing on other parts of their very diverse demographic with games that dont interest me. Which is cool, not everything needs or should be targeted to my tastes, but it's been years. It just seems like nintendo does not have the workforce to serve their entire demographic in a reasonable amount of time. One area gets games, and while that's going on the others wait for years. Meanwhile it seems like they are trying to mitigate this by firing out outsourced ports of older games. I already played these games. I still play these games. Nothing they offered in genres I typically like has any value to me, because I already bought these games. Nintendo is literally sitting on a mcduck size moneyvault. They can invest in their studios. Hire some freaking people man.
I completely disagree about Ratchet. I think Ratchet is polished enough to warrant a full asking price. The bigger mainline entries have like 90 minutes of very well animated cinematics with expert art direction and mechanics.
I am interested to see how it performs at full price though- the last Ratchet game to be full price was All 4 One I think? I wonder if there's a stigma against non Nintendo platformers not being full price.
Writer is absolutely on the money about remasters though. I think to charge full price for a remaster there should be a lot of additional content. I don't know if the value proposition's there.
If 3D All Stars were not done by Nintendo, it would've been a from the ground up remake of all four and $40. Only Nintendo has the cache to charge that much.
This is what's going through my mind right now. Good faith credit.
The thing with that is, if you dont deliver a return on that good faith trust based investment, sooner or later that trust credit is going to be shot, and people wont simply buy systems and games uninformed because of the trust they have in the company based on good past experiences.