Rime, the colorful adventure from Tequila Works, drew the ire of Nintendo Switch owners in March when publisher Grey Box said that it would charge an extra $10 for the Switch version. That’s no longer the case: Grey Box announced today that it has brought the price in line with the PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One versions.
Now, a digital copy of Rime will cost $29.99 in the U.S., £29.99 in the U.K. and €34.99 in Europe — on all four platforms.
“The reason for the higher price was due to the additional development, manufacturing, and publishing costs involved with [the Switch] port,” Grey Box said today, reiterating previous statements. But potential customers voiced their displeasure, and the company worked to find a solution.
Dropping the price of the digital Switch version seems simple enough, but Grey Box couldn’t do the same for the physical copy without selling the game at a loss. And retail partners wouldn’t be happy at having to sell the exact same product for $39.99, an extra $10. So Grey Box announced today that physical copies of the Switch version — and the Switch version only — will come with a bonus: a download code for a copy of Rime’s original score, which was composed by David Garcia. That makes up the cost difference, since Grey Box plans to sell the music separately for $10.
This change addresses an issue for Rime that has become a worrying trend for physical copies of Switch games from third-party publishers. Retail copies of titles like Telltale Games’ Minecraft: Story Mode - The Complete Adventure and Sega’s Puyo Puyo Tetris also cost extra on Switch, when the amount of content is identical across platforms.
Nintendo has not commented except to say that third-party publishers determine pricing, leaving people to speculate as to the reasons behind the price hike. The cost increase likely comes down to the cost of producing the game cards that the Switch uses, since physical games on platforms like PC, PS4 and Xbox One all come on discs, not cartridges. Game cards with higher storage capacity cost more to make, so it could be more expensive to produce physical versions of bigger Switch games.
Rime will be released May 26 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The Switch version is due out this summer.