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Nintendo to start adding a digital discount / physical premium to new first party Switch 2 games

https://lemmy.world/post/44740619

Nintendo to start adding a digital discount / physical premium to new first party Switch 2 games - Lemmy.World

Yoshi and the Mysterious Book will sell for $60 in the eShop and will have an MSRP of $70 for the physical cartridge. An opmist would say that it is $70 game and they are adding a $10 discount for buying it digitally. A pessimist would say that it is a $60 game and there is a $10 fee for the plastic cartridge.

Mar 25 at 8:01pmWeb
Show threadryper6d ago

An opmist would say that it is $70 game and they are adding a $10 discount for buying it digitally. A pessimist would say that it is a $60 game and there is a $10 fee for the plastic cartridge.

With the price of flash memory going up, they’re definitely charging a fee for the cartridge.

Show threaddual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️6d ago
These are ROM, not flash memory. Unless Nintendo is even more unhinged than we give them credit for.
Show threadryper6d ago
I’ve claims they use eMMC, which is flash memory. Closer to SD card grade than SSD, but SD card prices are up too.
Show threaddual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️6d ago

I imagine they’re using the eMMC data bus standard, but it’s pants-on-head moronic to use flash chips for what’s supposed to be permanently nonvolatile storage. Flash media is not storage stable if it’s not powered regularly; ask anybody with an old Windows install USB drive that’s more than a couple of years old and they’ll tell you all about it.

If this is so, that also opens up the inevitability of the data in cartridge games decaying and eventually becoming lost forever. Your cartridges would literally rot on the shelf.

Actually come to think of it, I wouldn’t put it past Nintendo to do that deliberately and be salivating at the very thought.

Show threadotp6d ago

Whether physical is more expensive or digital is discounted, it should’ve been like this from the start!

Keep in mind that video games are cheaper than they have been for most of history. I get that they want to raise prices. But it never made sense that physical and digital games were the same price.

Aside from not wanting to go through the effort of switching cartridges/discs (which is great for more passive/“permanent” games like say Animal Crossing or Pokemon maybe), I never understood the appeal of digital games for consoles. It feels like getting less for the same price.