Nintendo Has No Plans to Raise the Price of the Switch in Japan Amid Weak Yen - News

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A weaker yen this year has meant several tech products has seen a price hike in Japan including iPhones, refrigerators, and everything in between. However, one exception to this is the price of video game consoles.

A new report from Bloomberg says that consoles are now up to $100 cheaper in Japan than anywhere else due to the weaker yen.

Nintendo in response to Bloomberg has said it has no plans to raise the price of the Nintendo Switch, while Microsoft declined to comment. Sony Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki last week declined to comment on whether it would raise the price of the PS5 in Japan.

The report says no gaming company wants to raise the price of its console as it could lead to losing players and game developers to rivals, and Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony believe they can recoup losses with international software sales. However, this thinking could be changing as some people are buying consoles in Japan to resell them overseas.

"Consumers in Japan are getting used to price hikes," said Morningstar analyst Kazunori Ito. I don’t see them getting upset if game consoles followed suit."

The Nintendo Switch OLED is priced at $350 in the US, while in Japan it is available for 37,980 yen (Around $290). The PS5 is priced around 55,000 yen in Japan, which comes to about $420 in the US. The PS5 is regularly resold for 80,000 yen (Around $610) or more.

A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.

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VAMatt (on 02 August 2022)

I feel like it would be hard to raise the price of the Switch at this point in its life cycle.

• +9

VAMatt VAMatt (on 02 August 2022)

Maybe they'll lower prices in the rest of the world soon.

• +1

NextGen_Gamer VAMatt (on 04 August 2022)

Yeah, if anything a $50 chop the base and OLED model would be nice. That would create a smooth $199 Lite, $249 Base and $299 OLED lineup going into the holiday season.

• 0

billyboy (on 02 August 2022)

The weak yen is great for Nintendo. They sell 2/3 to 3/4 of their systems outside of Japan. a $300 switch today is 39,915 yen where as a $300 switch in the 2020 holiday season only equaled 30,900 yen so they saw an extra 9k yen extra profit per unit now. If they have to take a slight hit on profit at home they still make out much better

• +1

Shatts (on 02 August 2022)

I wonder if these consoles are still sold at a profit with this?

• +1

Wyrdness Shatts (on 02 August 2022)

Switch at this point would be as it's heading towards its sixth year, don't forget that they would have also got a good deal on the hardware from Nvidia who had a load of Tegra chips just lying around with no way to offload them.

• +2

Pemalite Wyrdness (on 02 August 2022)

You make it sound as if nVidia had a warehouse full of Tegra chips going unused... Which just isn't true, Fabs still had to be brought online to build these chips from the very start.

And then nVidia revised the chip with the 16nm variant requiring the chips to be built on a new process as well.

They also have their Shield and Drive devices anyway which are doing okay.

• +2

VAMatt Wyrdness (on 02 August 2022)

The switch doesn't use surplus chips that Nvidia needed to unload. It uses stuff that isn't cutting edge, which makes it relatively inexpensive. But that that isn't the same as buying 100 million chips in a clearance sale or something.

• +1

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