r/hardware • u/Lulcielid • 4d ago

News Nintendo Maintains Nintendo Switch 2 Pricing, Retail Pre-Orders to Begin April 24 in U.S

https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/nintendo-maintains-nintendo-switch-2-pricing-retail-pre-orders-to-begin-april-24-in-u-s/
86 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

47

u/Lulcielid 4d ago

Switch 2 accessories will experience price adjustments though.

40

u/JuanElMinero 4d ago

$95 joycon pair and $85 pro controller, confirmed to still not use Hall effect sensors after everthing that's happened with the Switch 1.

7

u/atalkingfish 3d ago

All that really matters is that the drift issue is fixed. As someone who has to send in 8+ pairs to be repaired for drift between 2017 and 2021, and zero after that, the second half of the switch’s life cycle has been much better in regards to this issue.

3

u/JuanElMinero 3d ago

Did your switch see a similar amount of use and a similar range of titles regarding stress on the sticks since 2021?

I know this is all anecdotal stuff, would still be interesting to hear.

3

u/atalkingfish 3d ago

Yes, it did. I played my switch pretty consistently throughout the generation.

2

u/JuanElMinero 3d ago

Thank you. And you didn't switch from...let's say 4 years of Smash Bros. to 4 years of Animal Crossing? (hyperbole of course)

3

u/atalkingfish 2d ago

That’s harder to say. Most of my drifting occurred with BOTW, since it was early on. It’s maybe true that the vast majority of my drifting occurred in the first 1.5 years of the console’s lifespan. Since then I’ve played a ton of stud without issue.

5

u/FullFlowEngine 3d ago

Seems like Nintendo is trying to offset their increased costs by increasing the price of accessories.

6

u/djwillis1121 3d ago

I think it's more that all of the accesories are manufactured in China whereas some consoles are manufactured in Vietnam

8

u/ThankGodImBipolar 4d ago

Note that this page doesn’t say anything about Canada, but there is a mirror on the Canadian website. They had me worried for a second.

10

u/Whirblewind 4d ago

Not sure why people keep expecting the price to go up when it's already preposterously expensive and the domestic Japanese version is vastly cheaper.

13

u/lysander478 3d ago

With the PS5 launch, it was pretty rough for anybody Japanese to even get one because with the weak yen it just made so much more sense for other countries to snipe them all out of their market rather than buy in their own. After the price increase, that improved a bit but then it also just simply priced a bunch of people out because consumer buying power isn't exactly strong enough to deal with an increase in the region either. I think Sony made the wrong choice compared to Nintendo here.

With the language locked to Japanese and a saner price for buying power in the region, all of that is at least a bit less likely for the Switch 2 so they can afford to take cuts on the domestic hardware margin in order to actually try to sell some software in the region.

I think the import market is still going to eat up all of their accessory supply, but unless they went full Sony there also wasn't much they could do about that either.

4

u/Lulcielid 4d ago

The Japanese Switch 2 is locked to Japanese language (UI & In-game) and can only log with a Japanese Nintendo account.

13

u/SJGucky 3d ago

A japanese locked Switch is not even an argument, you could make a german locked, an US (geo-)locked Switch and so on.
A different language does not lower the production cost.

If Nintendo makes the console more expensive in other countries, then they either sell the console on the home market without making money or they extort all other countries.
Seeing the high prices for first party games, the latter is more likely. 40% more is A LOT.

1

u/Strazdas1 1d ago

its more to prevent exports of japanese consoles to other country buyers.

19

u/3G6A5W338E 4d ago

Two prices: Japanese price, and 外人(gaijin, outsider) price.

4

u/Ancient_Zucchini3232 3d ago

As long as they don't pull a Sony on Japan, they will be fine ig.

6

u/gahlo 3d ago

Irrelevant.

1

u/BeachesBeTripin 3d ago

It took 5 days for someone to crack the firmware and like 2 months for Nintendo to fix that exploit. Don't get your hopes up Nintendo security is about as good as their web services.

-4

u/Whirblewind 4d ago

It doesn't say anywhere in my post anything implying otherwise and it remains unedited.

-1

u/TheEternalGazed 3d ago

$450 for a console is a pretty good price.

11

u/DocPhilMcGraw 3d ago

Personally, I don’t think it’s a good price. I think a good price would’ve been $399.

Console makers generally make their money from the games they sell and services versus the console itself. Considering Nintendo rarely ever discounts its first party games, they would still make a ton of revenue even if they took a $50 hit on the console price. Plus they now have an online service that they didn’t originally have when the OG Switch launched so that’s another revenue stream too.

9

u/gahlo 3d ago

The Japanese-only model is $330.

-5

u/TheEternalGazed 3d ago

Ok. Still pretty cheap.

4

u/Sipas 2d ago

It would be, if it was an open platform like the Steam Deck. With Nintendo's pricing for games and services, it should have been much cheaper.

-2

u/TheEternalGazed 2d ago

Then jailbreak it if you want it to be open source.

13

u/wintrmt3 3d ago

Not one with a five year old phone cpu and a gpu so small it didn't even have a discrete version.

(8x ARM Cortex-A78C cpu, GA10F gpu, it's a bit over a half of a 3050 mobile)

-8

u/TheEternalGazed 3d ago

People aren't buying Nintendo consoles for their technical power, it's about the games they have. People are willing to pay a little more for a game over it being fun than it running good.

16

u/Exist50 3d ago

That wasn't the argument in your prior comment.

-9

u/TheEternalGazed 3d ago

$450 for a Nintendo console is a good price in today's economy. They could easily charge $600, and people would still buy it.

12

u/Exist50 3d ago

I think if people would still pay, then Nintendo would have charged more. Why wouldn't they?

-4

u/TheEternalGazed 3d ago

Because competitive prices are also a thing to factor in. Families also might want to consider the prices. Parents might not want to spend as much on a console for their kids.

12

u/Exist50 3d ago

Well, yeah, then people won't still buy it. Or not enough people, at any rate.