New Super Mario Bros. 2 is $69.95 on the Australian eShop
The usual Thursday night eShop update has gone live and with it the price for New Super Mario Bros. 2 on the store has been revealed. It’s not available yet, it’ll be available on Saturday morning when it goes on sale at retail.
The damage? The game is on the eShop for $69.95, the full retail price of the game here in Australia. If you’ve been reading Vooks this week and following our bargain guide you’ll know the game is available cheapest at Big W this weekend for $54 and a dollar more at Target. Most other retailers also have the game under $60. This of course is a special price for the opening weeks, we have no doubt it’ll be back up to $69.95 at retail for the next few years too.
So is the convenience of a digital download and the sacrifice of a nice box and manual worth paying retail? We’ll leave you that to judge in the comments and with your wallet.
That royally sucks. They don’t incur the same expenses as having to produce an actual game card and box and yet they want to charge $15 more for the digital version? Nintendo is crazy.
I was really looking forward to downloading games on my 3DS (it’s one of my more favored things about iOS and to a lesser extent Vita) – but if this is going to set the trend for the going rate I’m deeply disappointed. Maybe later or for something I’ll play for ages like Animal Crossing or a 3DS Pokemon, but not this kind of Mario game.
Oh well.
I really don’t see what the big deal is. Just look at the Games on Demand service on the Xbox 360. Even new release games on PS3 cost the exact same SRP as the shops. Often it takes weeks or months for the games to even be discounted when most retailers are selling them much cheaper.
Give Nintendo a break guys and girls. Everyone’s doing the exact same thing!
And that’s why I don’t buy Xbox Games on Demand. It’s a bad business tactic because it screws over consumers. The point of digital is it should be cheaper because it saves Nintendo money in not needing to manufacture anything – bandwidth is cheap comparatively.
I would support a more replayable game like Animal Crossing or Mario Kart, but not NSMB2. Besides, my pre-ordered Gold Coin EB Games Edition is on its way to me right now! 😛 (as a birthday present too) 😀
Eh, price of convenience.
Seriously, you were crazy to think it would be cheaper. If they didn’t sell it at that price, retail would not be able to compete. And that is there current main market for selling games. Once digital downloads take off then you might start to see lower prices on Eshop. I like my box and whats left of the manual/instruction booklets. Im hugely bitter about digital instruction booklets, not that I ever read them but they were pretty..
What I would be more interested in is being able to buy the game at retail and get a code to also download the game so I could have the game card and a digital copy thats always with me.
I would like something like that. It just gets a bit complicated to implement.
It comes down to how will they stop someone from:
buying the game,
getting the download,
returning the game/selling it second hand/gifting it/sharing it
…
profit
eh I find that excuse flimsy – “to not upset retailers”.
I find it a rubbish excuse actually.
I really can’t see people going fully 100% download if digital version becomes cheaper. People still want physical cart cos of the case, manual, possible extras that might come with it. You get NONE of that with a digital version.
This full price for download is a complete turn off. I was considering getting the download version of Paper Mario or Luigi’s Mansion, but if this is how it will be priced, no thanks.
Not upsetting retailers is less of a rubbish excuse when you consider how few retailers would sell their console if they went to download only on the games. The consoles don’t have great profit margins for those retailers at all. If you weren’t able to get repeat customers coming in to buy the games for a console, since you’ve been undercut by their online sales, you’d dump that console and encourage your customers to buy the ones that give you better returns.
It just seems really pointless in the end.
I don’t think I’ll be buying any digital downloads now at all.
And I find the excuse “to not upset retailers” really flimsy.
Hey Vooks, I found this… No one has confirmed though.
http://ds.mmgn.com/News/get-new-super-mario-bros-2-early-cheaper
It’s even cheaper if to switch to the German store ($52), however I’m not sure if it’ll be in English that way. But it shouldn’t be.
I updated the bargain roundup with this as well.
apparently it’s been confirmed that it’s english if you download it from the german store.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=41101630&postcount=121
What annoys me more is that games retail for $70 in the first place, when they’re $30-40 in the states!!!! Our dollar has been at parity for the past 2 years, surely they can reduce the price or at the very least reduce the price of the download version!!!
I’m more upset about how eShop purchases are locked to the ONE system than the price. If we could link our eShop accounts on multiple systems (eg. If one had both a 3DS and 3DSXL) I would be more than happy to pay rrp for DD, as it would be worth it!
Unfortunately cartridges are of more value at this stage as you can swap and play them on any 3DS system.
I imagine this is coming for the 3DS with the Wii U. But I’ll play it safe and buy carts until accounts are confirmed.
I’m not holding my breath. Wii U will prolly have different Mii profiles once again 🙁
Nice try Nintendo of Australia, no, I won’t be buying this on the eShop. What’s with the exorbitant Australian eShop price anyway? Is it pandering to Australian retailers? For comparison, in America the price of New Super Mario Bros. 2 at retail is the same price Nintendo of America are charging for the eShop download which is $40 USD.
I find it hilarious how the Australian eShop price for NSMB2 is $1 USD less than the price of NSBM2 in Brazil ($73 USD vs $74 USD), a country which is widely known to have extraordinary and ridiculous prices on their entertainment goods.
Something has to change and soon. I know they are just rumours and nothing is confirmed, but the touted Wii U price at EB Games is worrying, $598 AUD for a console which is rumoured to be receiving a price point of $300-350 USD in the land of the free?
To be fair, the retail price for NSMB2 is $69.95. Some retailers decide to sell at prices lower than that though. Nintendo isn’t charging higher than the RRP for eShop downloads. However I do agree that the prices are way too high to begin with.
Well I downloaded it. Twice actually. One for me and one for my son. While I do think that a sub $50 would be more suited to this particular game, I wouldn’t mind paying the $69.95 for other premium games like if Project X Zone were to be released in the west, and JRPG’s that might not make it out of Japan in boxed form. I think it’s great having it on my system as its a game that I will always be playing on and off for years to come, especially with the DLC to come at a later date.