Following Microsoft and Sony’s slide when it comes to raising game prices first partyNintendo decided to jump on the bandwagon to confirm in its Direct event that the next The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom will cost $70 in the U.S. market, an amount that represents a $10 increase over the typical price that triple-A’s usually command in the Big N. However, the company has come out that this will not be a policy that will apply to all of its great titles.

The latest generation of desktop consoles consisting of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S has already laid the foundations for at least the titles to become more expensive first party. To this we must add the turbulent economic context in which we live, with a special mention of high inflation and, in the specific case of Tears of the Kingdom, the fact that it is the most anticipated video game of 2023.

The confirmation of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s price increase to $70 made him asked Nintendo if they were going to apply the $10 increase to all of their productions. The company responded by saying that “we determine the suggested retail price for any Nintendo product on a case-by-case basis“. In other words, the price increase doesn’t seem to be applied to all of its productions yet, so we can imagine factors like sales expectations and development costs.

Retailers like Best Buy and Amazon have already applied the price increase announced by Nintendo, but it remains to be seen how they will deal with people who pre-ordered the game when it was supposed to cost $60. In the pro version Spain from Amazon already sees Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom at a price of 69.90 eurosalthough the bazaar is currently applying a 7% discount to keep it at €64.99.

As for Nintendo’s situation, Shuntaro Furukawa explained to investors this week that the company “have done everything possible to keep the value and price of hardware and software within our long-term business strategy“, besides they don’t believe “that no changes to this policy are necessary at this stage“. On the other hand, the latest known financial results show that fluctuations in the currency markets have contributed to the decline in sales and profits, although sales of Switch hardware and software remain strong.

The price increase of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom responds to a trend that has been seen for a long time and that we will see how long it can be maintained, as the PC begins to have such disastrous consequences that it has given up on having 2023. Big productions they are not exactly cheap, and so far it seems that consumers have accepted the increase, but the current economic situation does not exactly encourage the tightening of the pockets.