I really like my Switch, although I’ve played it less since I bought my PS5. I’m a fan of Nintendo though so I’d like to support them, but not sure I’m jumping right in to Switch 2.

Feels expensive overall. The unit itself I can deal with the price of, but the $80 games.. oof. I’d definitely be less impulsive buying games than I was for the original Switch, which I have a fairly large collection of games for.

While I have no intention of getting the Expansion, I am curious, is the game enhancement upgrade like a one and done thing or if your subscription lapses does the enhancement upgrade go away?

I have a feeling that they might reverse that sooner rather than later. Tariffs are going to hit physical products and (at least as of right now) not digital products. I'm actually wondering if they priced this with tariffs in mind because at least to me, the tariff rate on Japan was way way higher than I ever dreamed. I thought maybe 10 percent. They may regret not delaying their announcement by like a day or two.

edited to add: and here we are.

I’m pretty sure it’s like the other subscription models and it goes away if you let it lapse. I’ve been avoiding the expansion pack subscription so I just outright bought the DLC for AC and MK.

That's what I figured. I am not a fan of that system and would prefer just paying whatever and locking in the upgrade.

Oh shit!

That reads like they may increase it even more, but I would wager it's more about the price of software being too high.

No issue with them catering to their home market, however they need good revenue from NA to be profitable.

If it was software, why would they need to halt pre-orders for the system?
Sounds like they need to raise the price beyond $450/500.

One thing I do find odd, is this news is coming from some dude on Twitter. Where is the statement from Nintendo themselves?

If their goal is to neuter their revenue, that's a great strategy. They have to know our market will not eat up a new handheld game console for that price while we watch our economy crater. Making it the same price as a PS5 would be insane.

Plus, their live chat for the Treehouse event is being spammed with "Drop the Price" to the point where real comments weren't getting seen. I'd imagine the same will happen today, as well.

They might not have a choice unless they're just going to bleed money on hardware (which they never do). Like I said before there's no way they could have factored in those frankly insane tariffs in their pricing model. And it might be the time to just push everyone towards digital (until they find a way to tariff that).

Selling a console at a loss and making it up in game revenue (Sony's strategy) is better than not having many consoles sold. Can't sell bloated software to people who don't buy the hardware.

They're a Gamestop editor and there is more detail in their story in the reply to the original post.

Something about Twitter's new algorithms makes it bad for people to post article links in the initial post. Rather, attach it to a reply.

This is the actual statement from Nintendo to Gamespot:


HAPPY LIBERATION DAY!!!

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/nintendo-switch-2-preorder-guide-mario-kart-world-bundle/1100-6530531/

…interesting. Why couldn’t I copy and paste it from X….

Exactly. Sell hardware for slight loss or break even. Profit on all the games sold. It is a fairly validated method based on previous generations.

Sony (and Microsoft) can have that strategy (at least in the past) because their companies are not entirely dependent on the games division, though. Nintendo has historically been very risk adverse because they have most of their eggs in this basket and can't make up revenue elsewhere. And a 25 to 50% tariff is pretty massive, for everyone involved.

Nintendo hasn’t played that game in a really long time.

Nintendo made almost 4 billion in straight profit in 2024, on over 11b in revenue. They can afford it.

I guess I need to figure out how high I am willing to go for this thing.

That's cool that you think they can just eat those costs, I guess.

Again, it's not eating cost. It's understanding that selling a console at a loss is a good thing if that same person buys a couple 8 year old games for $80 each. Both Zelda games paid off their dev cost long ago. Any sales for those games on S2 is 100% profit.

I mean the other calculation for a system that is fully backwards compatible is that the used market is inundated with these games. Yes people will have to pay the 10 dollar upgrade to Nintendo but otherwise Nintendo sees none of that money (from used game buying). They clearly still have a strategy to support the original switch for a while so maybe they can play the waiting game? I'm just speculating here.

The other part of this politically is that this may be a big enough product that this could play into whatever negotiations Japan has with the US since the tariffs are being used as leverage. It's worth it to at least investigate that avenue instead of just eating the cost outright.

The irony of this situation is insane after the "drop the price" movement yesterday and it turns out they are actually going to have to raise it.
What a nightmare scenario for Nintendo, I bet they regret waiting so long to release this thing now.

I wonder what Nintendo is going to do who registered for their pre-orders, with the price set. Do they honor that price, or do they ask for more $$$?

I mean it was just a registration to put money down in the future, so I can't believe that's a guarantee to pricelock anything, right?

FWIW, pre-orders are up basically everywhere else in the world, and they're not selling out. So there might not be as much FOMO to battle against here if you want a Switch 2 at launch (especially if the price goes even higher!).