Nintendo Labo FLOPS at Launch

@JayKingWrites Like they said in the report the games aren't anything special. They're really just mini-games. You are paying a premium price for cardboard and (at best) a $10 game. Yet I bought both kits and the customization bit for my Daughter and to see her brain light up at the possibilities just blew me away, I got this thinking it would be something fun for me to mess around with but my 8 year old took the reins and it's amazing. The price tag was a mild annoyance but I wanted to test what Nintendo had built and learned that it's basically a STEM recruiting kit in a box. We're modifying builds every night and trying new things. In short you're not paying the premium price for the parts or the software alone, in my opinion it's an entry gate to ensure that the end user is taking the product seriously, if they are then they will have an immense amount of enjoyment with the product well beyond it's initial cost.

@royalimpact I could see the complaint for at least the robot game, which is still a bit more intensive (and also has more moving parts which means more expensive plastic bits and less cardboard bits) than the random mini-games in the variety pack (though it could be argued that the robot game was actually a project from a Wii U game that was delayed and converted to the Switch, so we'd have to take into consideration the costs of redeveloping a game from scratch and converting it into a system while also adding the instructions). You do have to take into consideration, ignoring the parts of the Nintendo games that are basically instructions (despite being very fun designed instructions), that those games were individually programmed for motion control play ability and not just being an average mini game. They all had to be programmed to the Switch and work with the devices controls, and I haven't heard any complaints of bugs, which means intensive play testing before launch (which is really where most costs in developing a game come from, and why some games sink or swim because they didn't test it enough before production, remember Mass Effect 3). If we were to ignore the fact that they are Nintendo games, which would already have an elevated price due to the branding behind it, many VR games in the Steam store alone with motion controls (ignoring hardware costs), from $2.99-$59.99. Those are prices of extreme quality differences (though, of course there are some exceptions to the rule). Also, Snipperclips, which is also a variety mini-game price at minimum, without the new DLC, was $19.99. The included DLC makes it $29.98. No one seemed to complain at the price of that game, and it doesn't come with cardboard or the STEM recruiting kit in a box. In order to allow people the ability to create their own mods without accidentally breaking the programming of the game, you have to be very careful to solidify the coding, which would mean even more play testing (again, this is the most expensive part about designing a game, other than for intense games like Zelda and such where the game graphics have to be individually designed and populated into the programming). I will say again, I do agree that Nintendo definitely started off on a bad foot with not explaining what would happen for people who paid for the original kits. There is no way I'm letting Nintendo off the hook for not marketing the project better as more of the STEM recruiting kit in the box instead of the variety of games, but I think they were of course just trying to experiment and thought this was a good route to take for advertising (it wasn't).