The $60 I Left on the Table Buying Switch Games in the Wrong Country

Blasphemous cost me $25 in the U.S. eShop, full price, the week i bought the Switch Lite. I didn't wait for a sale or check anywhere else. I just wanted the game.

I've since bought a decent pile of Switch games, some digital, a couple physical off Facebook Marketplace when the eShop price didn't move. So I went back through my receipts and lined up what I actually paid against what the same 14 games run today in a country I could realistically buy from. The answer annoyed me more than I expected.

What You Need to Know

• I paid $101.43 total for these 14 games. The same list, bought smart in a country I could actually pay into, runs $60.44 today. That's $71.99 back in my pocket, 54% off.
• Two of the countries with the best numbers on paper, Argentina and South Korea, aren't actually buyable from outside. I found that out the hard way.
• On Creepy Tale and Overcooked, I'd apparently already found a good price without knowing it. Lamentum, I came close but not quite.

The Bill I Didn't Know I Was Overpaying

$25 for Blasphemous is bad enough on its own. It gets worse next to the physical copies. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild ran me $35 secondhand on Facebook Marketplace, and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus another $25 the same way, both because neither one was ever going to drop on the eShop.

None of that was a bad decision at the time. I wanted the games, and the price in front of me was the only one I checked. What I didn't have was a second number to compare it to. That's the part that actually cost me money.

Then I Thought I Was Doing It Right

The rest of my library, I bought smarter, or so I thought. I waited for a U.S. sale, checked that the discount looked real, and felt fine about it every time. Fourteen games bought over time, each one a decision I'd have defended if you'd asked me.

Here's the thing about "smarter," though: smarter than full price isn't the same as smart. I was comparing today's U.S. price to yesterday's U.S. price. I never once checked what the same game cost in a country three time zones away. Turns out that's where the real gap was hiding.

What These 14 Games Cost Right Now, Somewhere Else

Add up what I actually paid for those 14 games and you get $132.43. Now take, game by game, whichever number is genuinely the best deal I could get today, the accessible region's price if it beats mine, otherwise just what I already paid, and that total is $60.44. That's $71.99 sitting in the difference. 54%, and every "elsewhere" figure below is what the store is charging right now, not a memory or a screenshot.

Two rows show an x instead of a percentage, and that's not a formatting error. Overcooked and Creepy Tale are the two games on this list where I'd apparently already caught a good price, cheaper than what today's cheapest accessible region charges for either one. I didn't know that when I bought them. I just got lucky.

Japan shows up three times. Hong Kong twice. Not once is it the country you'd guess by reputation, it's just where that particular publisher happened to price low this week.

The Two Lows I Know Are Real

Most of that table pits what I paid against today's live price elsewhere, which is honest but not permanent; check it again in a month and the numbers will have moved. A few games in my library get a better claim than that, because I've actually got the record pinned down.

The lowest price I've recorded for Lamentum in the U.S. is $3.99. I paid $4.79, eighty cents over that floor. In Brazil, the lowest I've recorded is $2.44.

Creepy Tale went better. The lowest I've recorded in the U.S. is $2.49, and I paid $2.99, close enough that I'm not going to complain. In Canada, the lowest I've recorded is $2.12. And Wizard of Legend, I paid full price for: $15.99, no sale running. The lowest price I've recorded for it in Japan is $3.08.

The Jackpot That Wasn't

Somewhere in the middle of building that table, I ran the same math for Argentina and South Korea, and for a minute I thought I'd found the real story. Argentina's eShop prices are absurdly low in dollar terms. South Korea's aren't far behind. I was ready to write a whole post about it.

Then I actually went and read what it takes to buy from either one, and the excitement went away fast. Argentine, Chilean, Colombian, and Peruvian eShop accounts run on local payment infrastructure. No PayPal, foreign cards bounce at checkout, and gift cards for those regions aren't something you can casually pick up from outside the country. South Korea goes further: opening a usable account needs a Korean ID and phone verification, full stop.

So the two lowest numbers on my spreadsheet were also the two I could never have spent. That's why neither one appears in the table above, and why "cheapest region" and "cheapest region I can actually pay into" turned out to be two completely different lists.

How to Actually Do This

If you want to try this yourself, check accessibility before you get attached to a number. A country's price means nothing until you know how you'd pay for it.

Canada, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Hong Kong, and Norway all worked without any special account gymnastics; a Nintendo account switched region, and a gift card or supported card for that store, was enough. Brazil takes foreign debit cards even though it blocks foreign credit cards, and its gift cards are easy to find resold. Not every country plays that nice, and yours might have quirks I haven't hit yet. Check before you buy, not after.

Small thing worth knowing: your existing purchases and save data stay put when you switch your account's region. You're changing where the storefront thinks you are, not starting over.

Or Skip the Spreadsheet Entirely

Not everyone wants to run a table like the one above every time they're deciding whether to buy something. Fair. I built a few pages specifically so you don't have to.

All-Time Lows shows games sitting at the lowest price I've recorded, in your own country, no region-switching required. Deals is the wider version: everything discounted where you already shop today. And if you're weighing a Switch purchase against the same game on PC, Switch vs Steam puts both prices side by side.

Any one of those gets you most of what this whole exercise did, with none of the spreadsheet.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it legal to buy from a different Nintendo eShop region?

Yes. Nintendo lets you set your account's country in system settings, and pricing simply follows that region. It's a standard, supported feature, not a workaround.

Will switching regions affect my existing games or save data?

No. Your library and save data stay tied to your account, not your region setting. Switching where your account is registered doesn't touch what you already own.

Why do prices vary this much between countries?

Publishers set regional prices independently, based on local market conditions and currency, not a fixed exchange rate off the U.S. price. That's exactly why Japan, Brazil, and Norway can all beat the U.S. on different games in the same list.

Can I buy from any country's eShop if I have an international card?

Not always. Most regions work fine with a major international card or a local gift card. A handful, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and South Korea, require local payment methods or local identity verification that a foreign buyer typically can't provide.

Is it always worth switching to the cheapest region?

Not always, and the math should stop you sometimes. On 31 July 2026, Figment sat at $0.61 in Japan and $0.69 in South Korea, eight cents apart, and South Korea isn't buyable from outside anyway. Chase the gaps that are actually worth chasing. Suit yourself on the rest.

I still own that $25 copy of Blasphemous. I don't regret buying it. I just wish I'd known, back then, that the same game would eventually cost $5.58 somewhere I could actually pay. Now I check before I buy. That's the whole post, really.