Nintendo Switch 1 Price to Increase in the US on August 3 Due to 'Market Conditions' - News

There have been many firsts this console generation, and none of them particularly good lol

As great as its initial sales are I struggle to see that happening with its higher price point.

Even the NS2 will have issues. Prices have been going up for consoles for 2 gens now, this is the trend.
At $450-$500 launch price for any console you lose a shit load of casuals. The opportunity to sell more than PS2 was the gen right after PS2, too many changes in the proceeding generations have made selling 160 million units impossible.

Canada did too?

USA elections are rigged. Your vote only counts for president if you live in a swing state. The senate filibusters guarantees that 40 senators representing 20% of the populace can block any legislation.

You mean the one Trump and Musk openly admitted to rigging?

but like, not /s at all tho haha. That's literally the reason. I mean to be fair Nintendo I'm sure makes a boatload of money on every system sold so they could easily have not changed the Switch price and just treated it as a price cut given the tariffs. A long overdue price cut. But they really just refuse to give it a price cut even after 8 years and it is replaced, so like every company is gonna do in the US, prices going up thanks to the crazy tariffs.

I'm sure they could sell it well under $200 at this point and still make a profit. Tech production drops quickly in price and it only cost an estimated ~$265 to produce at launch, after 8 years it's probably like $150 now. Whatever the exact number is, they are taking home bags of profit on every system sold.

Honestly I remember the Nvidia Shield cost like 199$ with a decent profit margin.... years lateron, Nintendo make the Switch using the same chips (which they got tons off for cheap because nvidia couldn't sell them to cars as planned). I was surprised it released at the price it did. I thought it was Nintendo being greedy, and selling their hardware at large profit margins instead of break-even or loss ( which is the norm) and then recoup costs via games.

They're trying to navigate a turbulent U.S. economy that is flapping in the wind from an asinine administration that has concepts of a plan.

I don't think they cared about that. They're just trying to deal with American grievance politics.

They were literally never trying to reach 160M. If they wanted to hit 160M their only real chance was to do price cuts back in 2023 when sales started to peter off. This late in the game, when the system has already been replaced and sales are extremely low, probably only a $100 price cut would have given the system any chance at maybe hitting 160M. They've literally never taken a single step to boost sales of the system. Not selling 160M was a choice, and it's a choice they made long ago. I think at this point it's safe to say they've adopted the pricing strategy of a premium priced brand that will never have price cuts (and will never be affordable started with S2). It's a tactic to get people to not wait for a discount because consumers know a discount is never coming, so you may as well just buy (if you can afford it).

Upping the price will have the opposite effect. These are gonna sit until a steep discpunt (possibly black friday deal). Nobody's paying close to switch 2 pricing for an almost decade old console when switch 2s are in stock everywhere in the usa

at this point? why not just get a Switch2 instead lol.... the price difference isn't that big.

Nobody is going to eat tariff costs.

Try telling that to shareholders.

Never "officially" discounted with a sticker price reduction.

But the value of the console did "reduce" thanks to inflation even if the sticker price remained static.

Yes we could blame the pedo who's fault this is.

Of any product that exists in the market today, the 8 year old Switch that has never had a price cut and sold at a nice profit from day 1 could absolutely have eaten the tariffs and still be making lots of money on every unit sold, and just treated it as their first price cut. But this is just what happens when an idiot comes along and makes tariffs the center of his economic policy: all prices on everything is gonna go up. Tariffs are awful for economies, worse for trade, and the worst for consumers, so expect these sort of price jumps on everything in the US.

The median cost of a home in my area went from 250k to 400k in the last 5 years...5 years!

Did you miss the last 5 years of inflation? They have eaten the inflation costs for years, and the tariffs tipped it over the edge. I'm guessing they didn't raise prices because the YEN dropped so much over the years that the exchange rate from the dollar was beneficial. The US dollar has dropped significantly in value this year and that adds up as well.