The Annual Festival of Corporate Benevolence
Ah, Black Friday. That hallowed time of year when the corporate titans, in their infinite wisdom and bottomless generosity, decide to loosen their grip just enough to let a few gold coins slip through their fingers and into the waiting palms of the grateful masses. And who sits atop this Mount Olympus of performative price-slashing? None other than Nintendo, the master puppeteer of our childhoods, here to offer us a deal we supposedly can’t refuse. They’re cutting prices! Up to 50% off! What a time to be alive. Or is it?
Let’s not kid ourselves. This isn’t charity. This is a purge. This is the financial equivalent of cleaning out the garage before you move into a new mansion. What we are witnessing is not a celebration of the consumer, but a meticulously calculated offloading of digital inventory that has been sitting at a frankly insulting full price for years, a price that defies all logic and market standards, just before they render it all second-tier with their next big hardware reveal.
This isn’t a sale. It’s a psychological operation.
The Gospel of Evergreen Pricing
Nintendo has spent decades cultivating an aura of untouchable prestige, a belief that their first-party titles are not mere products but timeless works of art that are somehow exempt from the economic principle of depreciation. A five-year-old Ubisoft game is in the bargain bin for $10. A five-year-old Call of Duty is a digital ghost. But a five-year-old Mario game? Why, that’s still a premium $60 experience, peasant! How dare you question it? They have conditioned an entire generation of gamers to accept this as gospel. They have weaponized nostalgia into a pricing strategy so effective it should be studied at Harvard Business School.
So when they finally, FINALLY, deign to knock $20 off *The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*—a masterpiece, yes, but a masterpiece from 2017—the internet explodes in a unified chorus of praise. People rush to their Switches, wallets open, thanking the Kyoto-based deities for their mercy. Thanking them! For what? For charging a slightly less absurd price for a game that’s old enough to be in elementary school?
It’s madness. Utter madness.
This isn’t a discount; it’s a correction. It’s Nintendo briefly aligning their prices with reality before snapping back to their own dimension of premium exclusivity. They created the disease—the artificially high prices and manufactured scarcity of sales—and now they are selling you the “cure” for one week only. And we are all lining up for our dose, aren’t we?
A Closer Look at the ‘Bargains’
Let’s break down this “up to 50% off” spectacle. The headline-grabbing discounts are almost always on third-party indie titles that are, frankly, on sale every other Tuesday on Steam for 75% off. The main event, the Nintendo-published blockbusters, see much more modest cuts. $30 off here, maybe $20 off there. A game that has sold 30 million copies is now available for the low, low price of $39.99. What a steal!
Do you feel the generosity? Do you feel the holiday spirit?
This is the equivalent of a billionaire flicking a quarter at a beggar and expecting a sonnet to be written in their honor. The cost of producing another digital copy of *Mario Kart 8 Deluxe* is zero. Absolutely nothing. Every dollar they make from it now, nearly a decade after its original release on the Wii U, is pure, unadulterated profit. Yet they hold onto that $60 price tag with a death grip, treating any temporary deviation as a monumental sacrifice.
It’s a performance. And a damn good one. They know their audience is captive, loyal to a fault, and starved for any semblance of a deal. They know that the very rarity of a Nintendo sale makes the event itself the product. You’re not just buying a game; you’re buying the *feeling* of getting a deal on a Nintendo game. It’s a manufactured thrill.
The Looming Shadow of the ‘Switch 2’
And why now? Why this sudden, uncharacteristic act of kindness? The content mentions a “Switch 2.” Let’s connect the dots, shall we? The current Switch is a technological marvel of its time, but its time is passing. It’s creaking under the strain of modern games. A successor is not just likely; it’s inevitable. It’s coming.
This sale is a liquidation event.
Nintendo needs to maximize software sales on the current platform before the new hotness arrives. They need to squeeze every last cent from the existing install base. This sale is a final cash grab, a beautifully orchestrated campaign to get you to fill up your SD card with games that will soon feel old and outdated the second the “Switch 2” (or whatever they call their next magic box) is unveiled. They’re clearing the decks. They are playing the long game, and your $40 for a 2018 copy of *Super Smash Bros. Ultimate* is just a tiny, insignificant move on their global chessboard.
They hook you now, get you invested in the ecosystem, and then present the shiny new console. And what about backward compatibility? Will all these digital games you just bought on “sale” even work? Maybe. Maybe not. Nintendo has a… let’s call it a *whimsical* history with that sort of thing. Isn’t the uncertainty thrilling?
The Church of the Red ‘N’
One must stand in awe of the brand loyalty Nintendo commands. It’s a level of devotion other companies would kill for. People will line up for hours, pay exorbitant prices, and defend the company’s most anti-consumer practices with a fervor usually reserved for sports teams or religious figures. It’s a cult. A fun, colorful cult with great plumbers and princesses, but a cult nonetheless.
Where does this come from? It’s simple. They injected the joy directly into our veins as children. Mario. Zelda. Pokémon. These aren’t just games; they are foundational pillars of our personal histories. They are intertwined with memories of Christmas mornings and birthdays and lazy summer afternoons. And Nintendo knows this. They leverage that emotional connection with brutal, surgical precision. Questioning their pricing feels like questioning your own happy memories.
So when the sale drops, the faithful rejoice. It’s a sign from on high that the gods are pleased. The fact that the gods are simultaneously planning to make your temple obsolete is a detail best left unexamined.
So go on. Partake in the ritual. Grab that game you’ve been wanting for half a decade for a price that is merely overpriced instead of criminally so. Feel the rush. But as you watch that download bar fill up, just ask yourself one question: Are you getting a good deal, or are you just playing your part in a script written for you years ago in a boardroom in Kyoto?
The house always wins. Especially when the house is a castle.
