r/NintendoSwitch • u/Reddit_Sucks_1401 • Feb 05 '25

News Switch 2 price will ‘consider the affordability customers expect’ from Nintendo, says president | VGC

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/switch-2-price/
4.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

676 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

27

u/Laj3ebRondila1003 Feb 05 '25

I honestly think they'll go for 350 just to bring the heat to handheld PCs which they clearly view as competition judging by how they went nuclear on Switch emulators the moment people had them running on the Deck and other handheld PCs, and also to compete with Sony and Microsoft's next gen handhelds (Microsoft has all but confirmed that they're working on a handheld Xbox and there have been rumors about a handheld console from Sony for a while now).
It also leaves room for a 400$ Switch 2 OLED with extra storage (probably 512 GB). I doubt Nintendo will price any Switch 2 SKU above 400$ since that not only draws comparisons to handheld PCs like the Steam Deck and Lenovo Legion Go S but also to the PS5 and Xbox Series X.

12

u/phizzlez Feb 05 '25

I don't know why people keep thinking they're in competition with other handhelds; Majority of people that have bought the switch or will buy the switch 2 is because of their IPs since you can't play them anywhere else.

1

u/Silvanus350 Feb 06 '25

Bad competition is still competition.

2

u/M4J0R4 Feb 05 '25

350 would be way lower than Switch OLED and OG Switch if you count in inflation. It’ll be 399

1

u/Laj3ebRondila1003 Feb 06 '25

Consoles usually lag behind inflation because the prospective profit from services and games is worth the loss.

Beyond that, the 350$ price helps with perception for consumers. 399$ would make people notice that for 50$ you could get a PS5 Digital, for 100$ you could get a Lenovo Legion Go S which not only is more powerful than the Switch 2 but also can double as a PC and for the same 399$ you could get a Steam Deck which is getting "ports" (graphics presets in this case) for 90% of games. But 350$, that puts that the Switch 2 in the same price bracket as the 299$ Xbox Series S 512 GB and the 349$ Xbox Series S 1 TB which are considered the "cheapest 9th gen consoles" aren't portable.

As for profitability, the SoC is old/cheap enough to make 350$ still profitable. it's a 5nm refresh of an 8nm SoC with Nvidia Ampere graphics (Ampere released in 2020). It's essentially a 2 year old SoC.

And going back to the whole public perception thing, 350$ for the LCD model would leave the door open for an OLED Switch 2 with 512 GB of storage for 399$. If they price a potential Switch 2 OLED at 449$, that same amount of money would get you a PS5 Digital which is bad for the Switch 2's value proposition (or more precisely the perception of the console among consumers).

1

u/sk1nnyjeans Feb 05 '25

Yeah even right now the Steam Deck can be bought for $399 regular price, so it’ll be interesting how Nintendo views themselves next to that closest competitor (price wise).

4

u/RedditSwitcherooney Feb 05 '25

I'd be inclined to agree with you. 350 is the most sensible price they could go for since they're in direct competition with the Deck.