Who is ready for a $650 USD Switch 2?

My dream of spending less on the Switch 2 launch than I spent on the Wii launch is over.

I assumed the high Switch 2 price was in anticipation of tariffs.  So even if it was, did they underestimate what they would be?

As much as I hate it as a physical game buyer, I think they have to price digital and physical games differently.  Most of the outrage about the price has been over the game prices.  Tariffs don't affect digital sales.  Make the digital versions lower and at least a customer only has to deal with a high price for the hardware.

Or do they play chicken?  The launch is in June.  Will these reciprocal tariffs blow up in America's face fast enough that they'll be repealed by then?  The average American citizen is not going to notice the prices for a videogame system that hasn't been released yet but they will notice if their grocery bill goes through the roof.  So is that going to happen and if so, how soon?

I'd hate this as a physical buyer, but I'm starting to be afraid you're right. If physical is driving up the game prices due to tariffs AND manufacturing costs, and their principle of not undercutting their retail partners is trapping them in this awkward situation, there is the easy option of simply... breaking their promise (to themselves? to retailers?) that there will be price parity.

My brother suggested a rather amusing idea.  Nintendo takes the systems they allocated for the US and put them into Canada and Mexico instead at a reasonable price point.  There is no tariff to import the hardware or physical games into those countries.  The idea is for American buyers to take any tariff hit by importing the system themselves, either through the mail or if they live near the border, crossing to pick it up themselves.

I think the US is far too large of a market to essentially sacrifice in favour of everywhere else but it's a funny idea.

Oh I can guarantee they did.  After Trumps tariffs back in his first term, Nintendo moved a lot of their production from China to Vietnam in part to avoid any future tariffs on China.  They probably thought at worse Vietnam might get a 10-20% tariff so raising prices on games $10 to $20 would easily offset that. 

Well now Trump literally slapped Vietnam with a 46% tariff.  That is far beyond any worse case scenario they could have planned for and one of the reasons they invested so much in Vietnam this last generation in the first place.  There's no way a company like Nintendo is going to eat that cost.  So yeah the hardware is about to get a major price increase in America.

Either that or it's a small increase in America and they do a small increase in the rest of the world to offset it.  That could get messy though since they've already been taking Pre-Orders in other countries already.  Maybe they might have to delay the launch as well in a few weeks to replan things.

I've been thinking about what Nintendo could do.  Now it is possible that their pre-order delay is more to see what happens.  Trump has been putting tariffs on Canada repeatedly and it tends to follow the cycle where he announces some big tariff and Canada either threatens to retaliate or gives him a call and it goes away in a few days, though usually some new threat comes up a few weeks later.  Vietnam has already been in talks with the US about the 46% tariff so it is possible that it gets negotiated to a lower amount that is more what Nintendo was preparing for and then Nintendo can just continue as they planned.

But if it doesn't the assumption would be that Nintendo has to change the Switch 2 price, so how do they do that without it completely sinking the system?  Now the price is already higher in Europe and Canada where the tariffs are not applicable and the idea seems to be that Nintendo wants price parity across regions.  They may have to abandon that idea and have the US price be higher.  Now they have reportedly been stockpiling Switch 2's in the US in anticipation of this.  So they're not going to get hit by the tariff until the new systems start arriving.  I'm going to regard the existing systems as the core unit.  They can sell these at the existing price point.

So for the new arrivals that will have to sell at a higher price they need to increase the perceived value to American customers and need to do so with something that does not get added to the system until after it arrives in the US.  It would probably have to be something digital.  So it would be software bundles.  Obviously they have one with Mario Kart and I'm sure they were always going to have others as new games came out.  That might not be enough to cover the difference so they need to think of something that will add value.  Perhaps online vouchers for extra games but Nintendo doesn't necessarily want to give away new games.  But the Switch 2 is backwards compatible.  So the solution might be that post-tariff systems are bundles that come with the new Switch 2 first party game of the day and vouchers to download a certain amount of Switch 1 games.  Nintendo should probably not expect to sell as many Switch 1 games after the Switch 2 launch so it seems like the best place to take some of the tariff hit.  And if a person gets some free Switch 1 games with their system maybe they'll want to pay to upgrade to the Switch 2 version.  A free year of online play is also something that could be thrown in, which might also benefit from encouraging people to then pay for online once their trial is up.

Now I don't know how many Switch 2's are already in America.  Ideally they would want to hold on to those and spread out their distribution so they can still give the perception of offering a cheaper core model but the numbers are such that stores don't have that many and most of the Switch 2's in American stores are the more expensive bundles.  And in terms of time, the Switch 1 lasted 8 years but Trump will only be president for 4.  The priority should be surviving in the American market and building up a userbase with the intention of getting the real money from that market in the later half of the system's life, when presumably the tariff situation will have improved.

I've been similarly thinking about this on and off as well IanSane.

I think they have to raise the price on the system as we know it now... but introduce a lower priced SKU with the dock, HDMI cable, and charging grip stripped out. There can still be a "Complete" SKU at some eye-watering higher price, but this "Core SKU" would be able to preserve some lower price as an introduction to the ecosystem. A handheld Switch 2 is still a complete system, and you can always buy a dock separately. Pre-tariff the price of an extra dock was $109.99... so that'll still hurt, but at least you get your foot in the door.

As for the games... honestly I have no answer for that. Physical games will get hit hard if these tariffs stand. And there's no wiggle room as to what goes in the box. So... maybe the solution is to go *SIGH* all digital, which makes me cry as a person who prefers physical copies, but it's the only way I can see to mitigate these painfully high prices.

Won't this also impact the MSRP on Playstation and XBox consoles? Does a company like Microsoft have more influence here or does that even matter?

If these tariffs stay EVERYTHING is going up.  There's a reason the stock market is literally imploding right now.  Nintendo was just the first one to be unlucky and announce a new product literally on the same day the tariffs were announced.  No company is eating an extra 30-50% tax that wasn't on their products before.

Maybe for the games Nintendo brings back the gold point program, but of course only for digital games.

Do you think the Switch 1 price will go up?  Nintendo has avoided a price drop the entire time so you figure they already have quite a bit of wiggle room there.  Could their equivalent of a Switch 1 price drop simply be that the price stays the same?  And if it does stay the same while everything else goes up in price I wonder if the Switch 1 will have longer legs than originally expected by being the most affordable option.

Of course I'm also worried about Switch 1 physical game prices.  The tariffs will presumably affect those carts too so will we see a price increase there?  I've got some games I'm keeping an eye on for sales and I wonder if I wait too long they'll instead go up in price or quickly become obscure because the publisher doesn't want to do any more print runs.  Will Switch 1 physical games that are going to be released within the next few months have short print runs and be harder to come by?

The Switch 1 has been around for so long that gives Nintendo some flexibility since it's much cheaper to product then it was back in 2017.  So they could easily still keep the price of Switch 1 the same.  The Switch 1 being the more affordable console was probably always in the cards, which is why it's still getting good support.  Pokemon Legends ZA is the sequel to a game that sold over 15 million copies.  So they literally have a 10 million plus seller still coming to the Switch 1 as it's big holiday game.

Nintendo of Canada just announced that Canadian pre-orders are being delayed as well.  Not that I was going to get a Switch 2 at launch anyway but it sure sucks that our country, for which the tariffs do not apply, is also having its pre-order delayed.

So does the price go up for us too?  It's already $700 for the Mario Kart bundle!  I see pre-orders for games that are $100.  They go even higher and they might as well not release the damn thing in Canada.

I feel for Canada after all that Canada has done in the semi recent fires in LA is being punished by a man who has no clue what he is doing and is taking account emotions and how he was wrong to affect the US allies. 

In  the past gens were the prices of games lower or higher than US prices Ian?

Prices were usually higher but the USD has been more valuable than the CAD most of my life.  During the Wii years the two dollars were about par and the prices were actually identical between the two countries.  But we don't think of the value of our money in comparison to the American dollar.  We think of a buck as a buck, it just doesn't usually go as far in Canada.  The last games I saw with $100 price tags were 16-bit era RPGs.  I remember seeing Phantasy Star games in the Sears Christmas catalog that were $99.99.  There is a psychological element of a game price going into three digits.  You cross a threshold there.

I am seeing pre-orders open on some select Switch 2 games as Best Buy in the US.

Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion $70 regular, $100 limited edition
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma $70
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar $60 regular, $80 premium edition


Rune Factory is even listing a release date of 6/5/25.
Link

Apparently, they just announced a 90 day pause on the tariffs outside China, so I expect we'll start seeing some finalized pricing and preorder dates now.