The ninth generation of desktop consoles brought the biggest price increase for video games in years. It is possible that Nintendo, which prices its games very expensively, has decided to join this trend.
The case of Nintendo raising the price of games was noted by Blood user Wario64 (which regularly provides various information about games). He shared a screenshot from the eShop, showing the upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom at a premium price (by Nintendo standards). As a general rule, the Japanese giant has set the price of its AAA titles at $59.99, but for the rest of Link’s adventures, we risk paying up to $69.99. Exactly, “maybe”, because the situation is not clear.
Currently, the game’s tab in the store does not contain pricing information; it was most likely deleted. As noted by the same user the game’s price in retail stores (excluding digital distribution) is the standard $60. Why would the boxed version be cheaper than the digital version on the eShop? It cannot be ruled out that this was an error on the part of the store or the sales department (which gave the wrong price to external stores). Presumably, it could also have been market research (to test player reaction) or an announcement that Nintendo would raise the prices of Switch console games in the near future.
The new game prices have been in effect for two years, when the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X consoles debuted on the market, at which time the average price of a AAA game fell from 64 to 74 USD.