Former Nintendo exec explains why the company doesn’t tend to put its games on sale

Reggie Fils-Aime, former president at Nintendo of America, has spoken about why the company doesn’t tend to put its games on sale.

Speaking at the NYU Game Centre Lecture Series, Reggie brought up the “Nintendo mentality” of making the best games and shipping them complete. He said that while the company does sometimes do big day-one updates, apparently the company hates doing so. But because of this mentality, that’s why Nintendo sales can be tough to come by.

Reggie explained in his answer:

“This concept of shipping out a game, whether physically or digitally, and then day one there being a massive update to make it feature-complete… while Nintendo does that occasionally, philosophically, the company hates doing it… the Nintendo mentality is, we’re shipping a game complete. It’s ready to play. There’s no day one update that’s gonna take three hours. It’s a different mentality, right? That is their thinking. I’d liken this to this idea of Kyoto craftmanship. The company is headquartered in Kyoto… a city known for its fine craftsmanship…

I’m convinced that Nintendo as a company has that same type of mentality. We are going to build the best games. We are going to send them out feature complete. And as a result, this is sometimes where customers push back, we don’t discount our games. We don’t discount our games. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild never received a price discount from the day it was launched. Never was discounted. Occasionally retailers might decide to do something, but the company never discounted. And it’s part of this process – we’re gonna make it the best we can, we’re gonna send it feature complete, and we’re gonna charge a fair price and that price is never gonna change.”

Reggie is very much right about Nintendo not putting its games on sale that often. However, it does host special sales on the Nintendo eShop a few times a year. In the case of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, what Reggie said was actually incorrect – the game did receive an official discount a couple of years after launch.

That said, Nintendo doesn’t typically offer huge discounts when a game does go on sale. Typically you’ll see a title going for around 30 percent off at most. This is in contrast to other publishers.

Reggie also recently shared some interesting insight into Nintendo’s relationship with Amazon during the Wii and DS era, including the retailer’s “illegal” demand. We have more on that here.