It looks like Nintendo is doing funny stuff on its official website with price listings to make its games look cheaper.
Via Hachima, here is the official Nintendo Japanese site:
OK, so as people are pointing out online in Japan, Nintendo is listing the “tax not included” prices for its games. In Japanese, “tax not included” is “zeibetsu” (税別).
But! The prices for all the third party games on Nintendo’s Japanese Wii U page are “tax included”. In Japanese, “tax included” is “zeikomi” (税込). Obviously, Japanese people know the difference between “zeibetsu” and “zeikomi”, but if you are scanning through the page, it makes Nintendo games look cheaper.
Splatoon is listed as 5700 yen (tax not included), next to Dragon Quest X (tax included), which is 4104 yen. And next to that is Xenoblade Chronicles X for 7700 yen (tax not included). There is an 8 per cent sales tax nationwide in Japan, so tax will certainly impact the final price and, in turn, how Nintendo’s pricing is seen.
If Nintendo was listing the prices fairly and including tax for all of them, the listing would be: Splatoon for 6156 yen, Dragon Quest X for 4104 yen, and Xenoblade Chronciles X for 8316 yen.
This isn’t only for the Wii U. Nintendo is doing the same kind of crap for the Nintendo 3DS. On Nintendo’s official Japanese page, third party games are shown priced with tax:
While Nintendo games are priced without sales tax:
Is it me or is this messed up? Makes me worried about how they will approach mobile gaming.
Comments
9 responses to “How Nintendo Makes Its Games Appear Cheaper In Japan”
How does this make you feel worried about mobile gaming approach?
I guess he is worried that if they are willing to do this deceptive practise with their premium full game store, what kind of deceptive practises are they willing to implement in their upcoming mobile games, which is in a sub-industry where deceptive practises are far more common.
That’s what I assumed, but would rather hear it from the ‘article’ ‘author’
Not really a valid concern though, as the mobile stores are run by Apple and Google, as opposed to these stores which Nintendo runs directly.
Nintendo won’t have a choice as to whether these games are labelled as inclusive or exclusive of tax.
I think he means issues like this (i.e. same level of scumbaggery) not this issue in particular.
Australia has single pricing laws for precisely this reason: https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/prices-receipts/price-displays
It’s not just Nintendo, a large number of companies do this. One example is Uniqlo. Their price tags used to include consumption tax, but when the consumption tax increased from 5% to 8%, they and many other companies started excluding tax from price tags.
I agree, it’s sad to see Nintendo do this but they aren’t exactly the first.
Yeah and the excuse they use to justify this is because the consumer tax will increase again in 2017.