This is what people don’t consider when complaining about pricing. I see dozens of posts along the lines of “How dare Nintendo charge money for a remaster of an old game! It should be prohibitively cheap/free!”
Work has still had to be put into developing, producing, manufacturing, marketing, transporting and selling these products. That’s all costs that have to be covered and are only ever increasing, especially with the world still picking up the pieces from COVID.
Well all i can say as I saw it working in retail for a decade is that the retail percentage is no longer 30%. It was closer to 7 when i quit 5 years ago. I doubt it has gotten any better
So Nintendo sells a game (33.1% charge), publishing their own game (15.1%), using their own storefront (29.8%), and the developers are Nintendo subsidiaries (4.6%).
Nintendo’s digital games – using a VERY old model – 82.6% of the purchase. Combined with Nintendo’s storefront so incredibly rarely going on sales, even years later, it’s an insane margin.
Add on third party games, plus any microtransactions and DLC. They’re making some good money.
I feel like this will be heavily upvoted, with half the comments trying to defend games increasing in price, and the other half being people wondering why the first half are crazy.
I still don’t get why people make it their mission to defend these companies and their prices. Do you work for them? They’ve been making record profits year over year. Obviously they knew a thing or two.
A modern breakdown would have marketing damn near closer to 50% or more. Wild.
Also, this breakdown seems to be lacking a very important cost: Manufacturing. NES cartridges aren’t cheap to make. Unlike digital, which has virtually no manufacturing cost (technically servers cost money to distribute the games).
This is what people don’t consider when complaining about pricing. I see dozens of posts along the lines of “How dare Nintendo charge money for a remaster of an old game! It should be prohibitively cheap/free!”
Work has still had to be put into developing, producing, manufacturing, marketing, transporting and selling these products. That’s all costs that have to be covered and are only ever increasing, especially with the world still picking up the pieces from COVID.
Stuff costs money. Deal with it.
The entire bottom half of that is Nintendo charging themselves for Metroid, with an additional 5% up top?
Well all i can say as I saw it working in retail for a decade is that the retail percentage is no longer 30%. It was closer to 7 when i quit 5 years ago. I doubt it has gotten any better
So Nintendo sells a game (33.1% charge), publishing their own game (15.1%), using their own storefront (29.8%), and the developers are Nintendo subsidiaries (4.6%).
Nintendo’s digital games – using a VERY old model – 82.6% of the purchase. Combined with Nintendo’s storefront so incredibly rarely going on sales, even years later, it’s an insane margin.
Add on third party games, plus any microtransactions and DLC. They’re making some good money.
4% marketing? lol
What is “Duty”?
I feel like this will be heavily upvoted, with half the comments trying to defend games increasing in price, and the other half being people wondering why the first half are crazy.
And yet we pay JUST as much for a completely digital copy as a physical these days.
If only the developer had some more leverage.
Nowadays Marketing is more like 30-40%
Where’s the manufacturing cost in this?
I still don’t get why people make it their mission to defend these companies and their prices. Do you work for them? They’ve been making record profits year over year. Obviously they knew a thing or two.
Never ever show me a cutted snes cartridge again, please. It hurts
Slightly misleading, given that *costs* are included somewhere in there.
So if a retailer’s margin is 29.8%, why then is digital games with no retailer still the same price?
Anyone know what the original source for this is? Clearly some UK gaming magazine but I can’t place it.
Lovely to read all the confused non UK people here. This is what Reddit is like for us most of the time
While that’s neat, the fact that they had a rectangular reference object and chose to divide it like a pie chart is infuriating.
Vertical slices would have made so much more sense and been easier for the average person to visually parse.
Hehe…. Duty.
Good Ole vat of duty
Nintendo makes the biggest portion on a game they dont even make
Ty op for the post it’s very interesting.
What about now, could you do the same with cyberpunk for example ?
Manufacturing is free?
Back when VAT was only 14.8%.
It’s 20% now
So roughly Nintendo games should be 33% cheaper on a digital platform they own since there’s no freight, duty and retailer margins and yet…..
Funny that back then Retailers were still a thing. And 4% Marketing? Nowdays its likely 120% marketing for big Games.
For anyone interested, Nintendo reports their earnings and financials pretty much the same way all companies do.
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/en/index.html
We can safely chop off around 25-30% from these figures and everyone would be fine
What year is this from? It’s a pretty awesome infographic.
~~So wheres production costs? These things aren’t just free to make.~~ Ah whoops bottom left.
Developers Royalty: 4.6%. This is why I pirate non-indie games.
*profit*
Duty- %1.7
VAT?
A modern breakdown would have marketing damn near closer to 50% or more. Wild.
Also, this breakdown seems to be lacking a very important cost: Manufacturing. NES cartridges aren’t cheap to make. Unlike digital, which has virtually no manufacturing cost (technically servers cost money to distribute the games).
Note that the retailer margin is 29.8%. All of the digital app stores, Apple, Google, Xbox, Sony, Steam charge exactly 30%. This is not a coincidence.
4.6% to the developer. But remember kids its the bootleg games that screw developers.
So game dev gets 0%? Working for royalties, I guess.
Oh man, I feel like the developer gets totally screwed here.
This is why retail sucks, too high a markup