Switch Video Game Quality Will Cost Players More To Buy And Developers To Make

The launch reception of the Nintendo Switch wasn’t perfect, but many analysts agree that it could have been so much worse. Right now, the overall consensus is that the Switch is a console worth buying, but that gamers should temper their expectations. On the matter of the quality of the games, the lineup has been impressive, thus far. Unfortunately, it’s beginning to look like the quality will also result in more expensive games.

In a recent piece by Eurogamer, it was discovered that the Switch cartridges housing its excellent video games are more expensive to manufacture compared to the Blu-ray discs that the PS4 and Xbox One is using. This resulted in the price discrepancy found with the game Rime by Tequila Works since it costs $10 more to get for the Switch than other consoles.

This is already worrisome enough, but it seems that developers are going to have an even harder time developing games for cross platforms since the cartridges get more expensive the bigger their memory capacity. Basically, if a game’s size is more than 16GB, the developers will have to choose the bigger 32GB version. This would cost more to produce, BGR reports.

What’s more, it would seem that Nintendo has a policy that the prices of the games on the cartridges and the digital copies should be the same, which means that downloading the titles won’t cost less for gamers. This could result in a significantly higher expense once the discrepancies stack up over time.

Although some may argue that this is all for the sake of quality, such a difference in price can be a barrier to what Nintendo is trying to achieve with the Switch, especially with regards to third-party developers. If the Japanese company wants to make its console into a powerhouse, it will need the support of other industry giants like Ubisoft. However, as Forbes points out, this price difference is a huge barrier that might end up hurting the Switch, in the long run.