It’s Halloween season. Aside from cooler weather and pumpkin spice everything, that also means a deluge of horror movies and video games.
Among the multitude of horror releases this year is Resident Evil Triple Pack for Nintendo Switch. It’s a compilation of Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5, Resident Evil 6, and all of the DLC for those games. 5 and 6 will also support online modes.
While Resident Evil 5 and 6 are often considered something akin to step-children in the beloved survival-horror franchise, Resident Evil 4 still has a warm, fuzzy place in my heart. So even though this is not a new, original offering in the long-running series, getting the chance to play these games on the go will be cool.
What’s not cool is the price. Capcom is slapping a $60 MSRP on the cover. These are games that came out in 2005, 2009, and 2012, respectively. They’re all either last-gen games or – in the case of RE4 – from two generations ago.
To put this in perspective, these same games can routinely be found in Steam sales for under $10 a piece. Granted, a physical Switch title comes with manufacturing and shipping costs, but they could still release these old games bundled together at a discounted price.
I don’t mean to single out Capcom here either. Bethesda released 2012’s Elders Scrolls V: Skyrim and 2016’s Doom on Switch for $60 each. Skyrim is still going for $45 on Nintendo’s handheld-console hybrid while Doom is $55. Doom, by the way, is under $20 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. I’ve seen it as low as $10 on those systems during sales.
Look, I appreciate that publishers are supporting the Switch. I even recognize that physical versions of Switch games should be assumed to cost a little more due to the storage medium involved. But let’s be real here. Some of these games are overpriced.
Of course, the value of something varies from person to person. The fact that publishers keep releasing these high-priced ports suggests that people are buying them. When there’s demand, prices can stay high. If you’re tired of overpaying, it might be time to pass up the next overpriced Switch port.
It is technically a great value (hundreds of hours of content if you do it all,) but with only re4 being on a card while re5/6 are downloads makes me not interested in buying this bundle.