Nintendo Switch Players Now Won’t Have To Spend $10 More For Rime

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Grey Box, publisher of Tequila Works’ upcoming game Rime, declared a few changes to the price of the game on the Nintendo Switch on Wednesday. It comes as no surprise, as potential customers were unhappy with the price increase, and they showed their displeasure via social networking sites. The publisher had no option but to find a solution to this problem, so it removed the $10 increase on the digital copy.

Grey Box offers some respite to Nintendo Switch users

In March, it was revealed that the highly-anticipated indie title would arrive later and cost more on the hybrid console than on other platforms. Nintendo Switch players and fans of the adventure game were pretty upset by the news. However, now the digital copy of the Switch port will carry the same $29.99 price tag as on the Xbox One, PC and PS4 editions.

In a blog post, Grey Box announced that the digital version of Rime on the hybrid console will now cost €34.99/ $29.99 / £29.99 and not the originally stated €44.99 /$39.99 /£39.99 price point.

“The reason for the higher price was due to the additional development, manufacturing, and publishing costs involved with [the Switch] port,” the blog post said.

But now, the game publisher is hoping to make a bargain to keep the price in lines across all the platforms.

“At Grey Box, we are determined to provide a fair deal for everyone around. And so we discussed how we could do that, without simply selling at a loss, all while also being fair to our retail partners,” the publisher said.

Physical copies of Rime still cost $10 more

If the publisher had done the same with the physical copy of the game, it would have suffered a loss. Hence, the physical copy of Rime will still cost $10 more because of the realities of putting out a packaged product. But to offset that price, the publisher will include a free code for David García’s complete original soundtrack, which is being sold separately online as a $10 download, notes IGN.

Increased prices have become an issue for the physical copies of Switch games from third-party publishers. Retail copies of gaming titles like Sega’s PuyoPuyo Tetris and Telltale Games’ Minecraft: Story Mode: The Complete Adventure cost extra on  the Nintendo Switch as well, even when the amount of content is identical across platforms, notes Polygon.

According to the Japanese company, the prices of the games are determined by the third-party publishers, leaving gamers in suspense about the reasons for a price inccease. According to Polygon, the rise in cost can be attributed to the cost of producing the game cards the Switch uses. Physical games on platforms like Xbox One, PC and PS4 come on discs and not cartridges. Game cards that have higher storage capacities cost more to produce; hence, it could be more costly to make physical versions of bigger Switch games.

Rime will come out on May 26 on the PS4, Xbox One and PC, but there is still no official launch date for either the digital or physical Switch versions. However, Grey Box did say that it hopes to make a Switch-related announcement soon.

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