What's causing the "Switch tax"?

This stuff is hard to understand as a consumer, mostly because we don't have all the data, but there are likely a couple reasons for it.

While I'm willing to believe it's largely the cost of carts, it's hard to say what the deciding factor is. For instance, Vita/3DS games might have similar issues, but they have lower storage requirements. Vita/3DS games cap at around 4 gb, where as Switch games have been shown to go as high as 32 gb, so you the storage part might be more costly than before, thus increasing it. Another might be the distribution size discount.

Typically, only smaller/more niche games do the $10 more thing, so it might have to do with them making fewer overall and that raises the overall cost. They're mostly making the physical edition for collectors and that makes them cost more.

It could also be that the amount isn't enough to outright justify the $10, so they add something to lighten the blow. These would be things like the Cave Story keychains.

Just some theories, but I'm sure there is a legitimate reason over hoping their product fails on the Switch.

/r/nintendo Thread