It’s part of Nintendo’s modus operandi. I mean, the history speaks for itself: the SNES sold less than the NES, the GameCube sold less than the N64, the WiiU sold less than the Wii, the 3DS sold less than the DS, and the GameBoy Advance sold less than the GameBoy. And in all of these cases, the successors had better hardware.
On the other hand, you see Sony, which is also a Japanese company, learning their lesson with the PS3, which they sold at a significant loss. As a result, their launch prices for the PS4 and PS5 have been spot-on, and now the price for the PS5 Pro doesn’t seem ridiculous anymore, especially with the Switch 2’s $450 price-tag.
Nintendo doesn’t even sell their consoles at a loss and the exclusive $330 price in Japan just goes to show how much mark-up they are charging worldwide. Switch 2 barely runs Cyberpunk 2077 at 40 FPS, equivalent to extreme low-quality presets on PC - a feat that a $399 Steam Deck achieved back in 2022.
So, if a 2025 system that costs $450, can’t run a 5-year old game like Cyberpunk 2077 properly, what the hell are they charging such a high-price point for? Definitely greed.
Oh man, don’t get me started on Nintendo exclusives and their prices. While I support the idea of exclusives because they help sell the systems, I don’t like what they are doing with the prices.
Back in the day, Nintendo would come up with ‘Players Choice’ or ‘Selects’ line-up (similar to PlayStation Hits or Xbox’s Platinum Hits) of games, where full-blown $40/$50 games would get re-released at a cheaper $20. This allowed people to create their collections without costing a fortune.
They ditched this consumer-centric practice with the Switch, because it sold so well and people were buying basic dog-water remasters (looking at Skyward Sword and Luigi’s Mansion 2) for $60, all thanks to the pathetic Youtuber’s climate that we’re in.
Nowadays, a Switch 1 copy for Breath of the Wild, that came out in 2017, still costs 3K INR - doesn’t matter if you buy used or new.
Just further proves the point that Nintendo’s greed has no end.
Honestly, don’t see Nintendo matching Switch sales with this kind of pricing. At least for those not in US, most should expect the price to come down later in the year.
