The cost of physical Nintendo games is not going up, but we are going to start paying less for digital versions of its first-party titles

Sometimes, you get a good reminder that Nintendo is not infallible. Remember 2025's game sharing mess, made worse by some poor comms from Nintendo's corporate arm? It seems unclear official communication has struck again, and this time it's in the form of the latest update to the first-party pricing model of Switch 2 games.

Yesterday, 25th March, Nintendo announced sweeping changes to its first-party published games moving forward: digital and physical copies will now sell at different prices. The company worded the release as if digital games would become cheaper because physical ones were going up (again), and immidiate reaction to the news was - expectedly - outraged.

After some heated debate, an update (via statement sent to IGN) has cleared things up: "The cost of physical games is not going up. This means that when Nintendo sells digital versions of Nintendo published games exclusive to Nintendo Switch 2 to consumers in the US, those prices will have an MSRP that is lower than their physical counterparts. Retail partners set their own prices for physical and digital games, and pricing for each title may vary."

Indeed, what's actually happening is that digital versions of first-party games will be cheaper moving forward. Price tags may vary depending on the size or perceived "value" of the project, but the change is meant to reflect the extra expense of producing and distributing physical copies. As the adoption of the digital format continues to grow, many players will no doubt welcome the news - yet it's another worrying sign the big companies are trying to move away from physical as fast as possible.

The first game affected by these changes (it seems Nintendo isn't retroactively making Mario Kart World's digital version cheaper, for example) will be Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, which is currently set to launch on 21st May. In the US, the game will sell for $59.99 digital and $69.99 physical.

If you ask me, there wouldn't have been any confusion if we knew the locked price for both versions before this new announcement, but at least we got there in the end.