Nintendo is Nintendo, and no, they are not pulling a “we hear you, we’re reversing course” with its recent, hugely controversial pricing of Mario Kart World at $80, with some regions higher than that.
Nintendo is now offering various executives for interviews attempting to justify this, but it’s unlikely that many fans are going to be satisfied with what they’re saying. Here’s Nintendo of America’s Vice President of Product and Player Experience, Bill Trinen speaking with IGN:
“I would say it’s less about the strategy of pricing Mario Kart World, it’s more just whenever we look at a given game, we just look at what is the experience, and what’s the content, and what’s the value?” Trinen said.
“But honestly, this is a game that is so big and so vast and you will find so many little things in it to discover. And there’s still some other secrets remaining that I think as people end up buying and playing the game, they’re going to find this to be probably the richest Mario Kart experience they’ve ever had.”
This is essentially just saying “this is a really big, good game, so we feel like it’s worth $80.” I mean yes, obviously we knew that’s what they were thinking, but it does not answer key questions. How often are they going to deem a game “good and big enough” for this price? Now that they’re doing this, how might it empower a whole slate of other publishers to start doing the same thing with major releases? No, this may not be a blanket increase to $80 across the industry, but it’s crossing a line all the same.
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There’s a separate interview with Doug Bowser at Wired where he also addresses the big question that’s been asked this week about how Trump’s new enormous tariffs might affect Nintendo Switch 2 pricing. Some believe these tariffs may have already been priced into the high $450 price ahead of time, but that’s not true.
Bowser says that the tariffs “weren’t factored into pricing” before this reveal and says that it is “actively assessing” the situation which “creates a challenge” and “it’s something we’re going to have to address.”
If you have to “address” that, it likely means one of two things: A) Nintendo takes a larger hit than they were planning to on the Switch 2 profit/loss at that $450 price or obviously B) they raise the price of the hardware even further for consumers. Neither are good options, but that’s also the situation across countless other industries right now due to how far-reaching these tariffs are, and rivals like Microsoft and Sony may have to do the same thing.
Nintendo has still not said when pre-orders may go live for the US, postponed because of these tariffs. They say the release date of June 5 is unchanged, but the longer this goes, the less likely that may be.
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