Quantifying the “Switch tax” (or “How much for that PC port?”)

We appreciate your business. Ya-hoo! (credit: Nintendo)

After initially struggling to attract wider support from third-party developers, the Switch library is now absolutely filled with ports of big-budget and indie games available on other platforms. However, some Switch players have started to notice that those ports often come at a pricing premium when purchased on Nintendo's console.

The folks over at Switch blog Switcher decided to quantify how much that "Switch tax" costs while building their own database of Switch games. Their analysis found that, of 471 games being sold on both Steam and Switch, the downloadable Switch versions cost just over 10 percent more on average.

That average obscures a wide range of price discrepancies, of course, including some that end up in the Switch's favor. In fact, a majority of titles listed on both platforms (55.8 percent) sell for the exact same price on both, and an additional 8.9 percent are cheaper on Nintendo's eShop.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

from Gaming & Culture – Ars Technica https://ift.tt/2wmSWnj