Nintendo Switch Developer Reveals How ‘Argentina’ Made His Game an Accidental Hit
The publisher of Nintendo Switch management simulator Let’s Build a Zoo shares its bizarre eShop policies and how “Argentina” made the game an accidental hit.
Mike Rose, company director of publisher No More Robots, said on Twitter (below) that people buying the game cheaper by using the e-shop workaround to change regions was initially a bad idea for Let’s Build a Zoo. I shared that it looked like a disaster but soon became the key to it. success.
Rose felt good when the game received a lot of pre-orders, but became worried after learning they were from “Argentina”. He said.
Let’s talk about how the tiny country of ‘Argentina’ helped launch the biggest Nintendo Switch ever.
You put “Argentina” in quotation marks, but it wasn’t actually Argentina.
Time for another classic Nintendo eShop thread. pic.twitter.com/vsVrJ12R94
— Mike Rose (@RaveofRavendale) October 13, 2022
“Obviously, they weren’t actually from Argentina. Obviously, people were doing an easy region exchange and set their eShop region to Argentina to get the lowest possible price. Due to the exchange rate, that “cheapest price” was around $1.50. “
Let’s Build a Zoo and its Dinosaur Island DLC available for $26.99 US eShopbut Rose said his company now makes less than $1 per sale. and get precise instructions on how to change regions and buy the game for a fraction of the cost.”
That quickly changed, however, as Let’s Build a Zoo began climbing the US eShop charts a few days after pre-orders opened. Rose noticed that Nintendo actually uses her one centralized eShop for the Americas. High sales in Argentina therefore put the game at the heart of the United States.
“This is due to a proper launch on Sept. 29 of the eShop in the US.[お買い得]It means it was already up pretty high on the tab,” says Rose. “And now we were getting the attention of a lot more US players.
The game was also featured in eShops in Europe and Australia, where sales were very strong, with the average price of each sale rising from $1 to over $20.
Rose has asked publishers like Nintendo, Valve, and Microsoft (because the problem is prevalent across all platforms) to rework their online stores so people can’t get games for a fraction of the price just by switching regions. I closed the story by asking them to do so.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He talks about witchers all day long.
