One of the things marring the Nintendo Switch at the moment is that sometimes the games simply cost more than they do on other platforms. Want to buy Puyo Puyo Tetris on Switch? That’ll be £35, mate. On PlayStation 4? £25, then.
The reason for the pricing difference is that the cartridges Switch games come on cost more to manufacture than discs for PlayStation 4 or Xbox One. It was for this reason, alongside additional development and publishing costs that Tequila Works and publisher Grey Box set the pricing at $39.99 / €44.99 / £39.99 for Switch and $29.99 / €34.99 / £29.99 for other platforms back in March.
However, they’ve heard your annoyance at this fact and are addressing a move that Sega took with Puyo Puyo Tetris in America – one that Deep Silver didn’t take in the EU. The game is being reduced on digital to match the price of other platforms, so it will be available for $29.99 / €34.99 / £29.99 from the Switch eShop.
At retail, however, the game will still cost more as it costs more to produce. However, to differentiate the version of the game – something we believe is needed to allow this to price split to occur – physical copies will include a download for the soundtrack by David GarcÃa (a sample of which you can find here) delivered digitally via Bandcamp. That soundtrack will be sold separately for $10 US, helping to even out the price difference.
The Switch release of the game doesn’t yet have a release date, but Rime is coming out on 26th May for PS4, XBO and PC. In the meantime, here’s our hands on video and written impression from a couple months ago with this lovely looking game.
Source:Â Grey Box
ron_mcphatty
Smart move, the music download is a clever addition too!
Eldave0
Sweet :) Been having a bit of a verbal scuffle with Sega this week re: their crazy pricing of Puyo Puyo Tetris here in the UK (why the hell is it $30 and £35?!), so its nice to see publishers stepping back from this “new console tax” they seem to be focusing on at the moment.
Stefan L
There is an increased cost in production from discs to cartridges, and it is going to be quite a significant difference when amplified across hundreds of thousands of copies. Additionally, I believe there were reports that Nintendo mandated that retail and physical pricing is the same.
The way around that is to offer the retail version as a special edition of sorts, as seen here and as with Puyo Puyo Tetris in the US. It should be said that the game is distributed/published by Deep Silver in the EU, so part of the reason why there’s no similar digital to retail split is down to them deciding to do something different.