Nintendo Has No Plans to Cut the Price of the Switch - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 June 2023 / 5,771 Views
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa earlier this week stated that Nintendo's forecast to ship 15 million Switch units during the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024 is "a bit of a stretch."
"Sustaining the Switch’s sales momentum will be difficult in its seventh year," said Furukawa. "Our goal of selling 15 million unit this fiscal year is a bit of stretch. But we will do our best to bolster demand going into the holiday season so that we can achieve the goal."
Furukawa has now added Nintendo has no plans to cut the price of the Switch to help boost sales.
"With regard to hardware, prices for certain materials have fallen but overall costs remain high," said Furukawa (via VideoGamesChronicle). "We must also continue to account for the impact of factors such as inflation and foreign exchange rates.
"Production was highly impacted during the previous fiscal year, so we are ensuring our parts procurement occurs far enough in advance to ensure stable production.
"Even if raw material prices decrease, it will take time for this to be reflected in manufacturing costs. Currently, there are no plans to reduce the price of our hardware during this fiscal year.
"On the other hand, while we also have no plans to raise prices, the yen continues to be weak, and procurement costs remain high, so we will continue to monitor the situation carefully."
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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Sounds like some attractive bundle deals are in order.
Price cuts are seemingly a thing of the past...
Sony hasn't cut the price of the PS4 Slim. They didn't cut the price of the PS4 Pro before it was discontinued.
I do think PS5 Slim will feature a price cut from the Standard Edition, but might be as much as the DIgital Edition. And again, it probably won't get a permanent price cut,
I do think price cuts are indeed dying out for video game hardware.
@Wman1996: I totally agree, and I feel that really cost Sony a ton of potential sales in the twilight years of PS4 before PS5 came out. I think it had a shot of overtaking PS2 lifetime, but only if Sony had gone for the traditional price cuts: first $199 PS4 Slim with $299 PS4 Pro, then a couple years later down to $149 PS4 Slim and $249 Pro. Instead, as you said, we had $299 Slim and $399 Pro right up until Pro was discontinued, and PS4 Slim TO THIS DAY is still $299 MRSP (!).
I don’t believe in holding back support for the devs that put work into the games I am enjoying. And given that most people who use emulation are pirating the game, your argument is rather weak in that regard. So no, that isn’t what emulation is for.
Lets be real, most people are not buying the games they emulate, let alone ripping it from their own copy.
I'm not sure if a $50 price drop would have much effect if any on the number of consoles sold over the next year or two. A hundred dollar price drop might help a bit, but I'm not sure how many people have held off on the Switch at this point waiting for a price drop.
I mean a $100 price cut would lead to a huge boost. Thats an enormous drop. There's no maybe about that. You'd probably have loads of people getting Switch for the first time plus loads up people upgrading to OLED with a $100 price cut. But no way they are doing a $100 cut so it doesn't matter.
A $50 price drop for most or all of the Switch varieties would probably only add 1-2 million more units sold in a fiscal year. Not enough increased units to justify the price cut unless those people are buying tons of games right away.
What might make the most sense to Nintendo is to discontinue the normal Switch (hear me out haha) and drop the OLED model down to $299. The actual BOM between them is less than $20, at this point maybe less. So, it would still spur on some sales while very, very minimally affecting Nintendo's profit margins and revenue. All of the LCD panel production just goes to the Lite at that point. Also reduces overall supply chain complexity by having one fewer model to maintain stock with, which again helps N's bottom line.
I only speak for myself but I'm currently waiting for the Switch successor. If Nintendo dropped the price by $100, I would buy a Switch right away.
Nintendo has to keep reiterating this because some people cling onto Nintendo doing a price cut.
"On the other hand, while we also have no plans to raise prices..." Thank you Nintendo :|
There won't be a price cut till the day the next nintendo launches. Imagine the frustration of a switch owner, finding out they paid full price , when they could have bought a switch 2.
Switch 2 will likely be more than 300
In australia the switch oled is at $549. I'm prettu sure that is still launch price lol. Crazy. And crazy I paid 500 for it. But I had no choice, it was for zelda. I guess atleast I can find some added value in the paint job.
If you don't want to cut the price then maybe bundle a game for free at least? May even be digital version
For a long time they've been bundling super mario kart , digital.
At $300?
While this is a unique case in gaming history, it's not surprising at this point.
I guarantee Nintendo could have these prices...
Switch - $249.99
Switch Lite - $169.99
Switch OLED - $299.99
and still make a profit, just a smaller one.
But for a platform still selling so well, Nintendo has no motivation to drop the price yet.
Nintendo is more interested in cash flow than they are in having bragging rights that they outsold the PS2, I think, especially when outselling PS2 is a pretty tall order.
I totally agree. People that do only buy consoles at discounted prices likely do not buy a lot of full price games.
Well considering console prices are going up. Nintendo keeping it the same price means that covers their discounted future price.
Yea, we can tell. The oldest Switch games are still full price.
I mean they sold the Wii U at 299$ until the very last minute despite being it a flop, so not a chance
Drop it to $99.99 and you've got a sale from me.
Well, if people are going to keep paying launch prices six years in, you can't really argue against Nintendo changing anything.
