Nintendo president responds to Switch 2 price increase fears amid Trump tariff fallout
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TL;DR: Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser discussed with Wired the impact of new tariffs on the Nintendo Switch 2, which may increase its price from $449 to $600. The tariffs affect manufacturing in Vietnam, Cambodia, and China. Nintendo is assessing the situation, having already moved some production out of China.
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TL;DR: Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser discussed with Wired the impact of new tariffs on the Nintendo Switch 2, which may increase its price from $449 to $600. The tariffs affect manufacturing in Vietnam, Cambodia, and China. Nintendo is assessing the situation, having already moved some production out of China.
I wasn't even going to pay $449, let alone $600. I figured it would have been somewhere between $300-400, with 400 being on the high end of reasonable.
$449 I would have waited a bit. But $600??? I get it's because of tarrifs, but that's really going to hurt the systems long term sales numbers the same way covid hurt PS5's lifetime sales numbers.
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I wasn't even going to pay $449, let alone $600. I figured it would have been somewhere between $300-400, with 400 being on the high end of reasonable.
$449 I would have waited a bit. But $600??? I get it's because of tarrifs, but that's really going to hurt the systems long term sales numbers the same way covid hurt PS5's lifetime sales numbers.
Yeah I'm not in it at either price point. I'll for once be a patient gamer and wait until it's reasonable or I'll skip this one. I'm betting there's lots like us.
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Yeah I'm not in it at either price point. I'll for once be a patient gamer and wait until it's reasonable or I'll skip this one. I'm betting there's lots like us.
You can’t be a patient gamer and a Nintendo fan. Their prices never fucking come down lmao
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I wasn't even going to pay $449, let alone $600. I figured it would have been somewhere between $300-400, with 400 being on the high end of reasonable.
$449 I would have waited a bit. But $600??? I get it's because of tarrifs, but that's really going to hurt the systems long term sales numbers the same way covid hurt PS5's lifetime sales numbers.
New PS5's and other consoles will also get way more expensive. So relatively the switch is still the same price at 600, compared to everything else.
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TL;DR: Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser discussed with Wired the impact of new tariffs on the Nintendo Switch 2, which may increase its price from $449 to $600. The tariffs affect manufacturing in Vietnam, Cambodia, and China. Nintendo is assessing the situation, having already moved some production out of China.
Nintendo surely wouldn’t do something anti consumer would they?
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TL;DR: Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser discussed with Wired the impact of new tariffs on the Nintendo Switch 2, which may increase its price from $449 to $600. The tariffs affect manufacturing in Vietnam, Cambodia, and China. Nintendo is assessing the situation, having already moved some production out of China.
So something that I wonder about with the MSRP is how much of that is a Nvidia tax that inflated the price? The Nvidia GPU market has been so absolutely screwed by Nvidia's lack of competition pricing model.
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So something that I wonder about with the MSRP is how much of that is a Nvidia tax that inflated the price? The Nvidia GPU market has been so absolutely screwed by Nvidia's lack of competition pricing model.
nVidia genuinely does not care about gaming. It is just a way to have a few extra bins to increase effective yields for their datacenter/AI chips. If Nintendo wants to buy in bulk they'll sell in bulk. And if Nintendo doesn't like nVidia's prices they can talk to AMD... like the other consoles did. Jensen will just sell those chips as mobile devices or cars or whatever.
Most speculation was around 400 USD for the switch itself for the given specs, tooling, etc. The Steam Deck is a different process but their LCD model is pretty indicative. 450 was a bump that would account for economic uncertainty and give them room to drop back down for regular discounts and the like.
Then trump trumped the bed and the previously expected buffer zone just isn't enough. Which is why we are seeing the massive price hike.
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New PS5's and other consoles will also get way more expensive. So relatively the switch is still the same price at 600, compared to everything else.
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Nintendo surely wouldn’t do something anti consumer would they?
Nintendo is a shitty company and companies in general do shitty anti consumer things, but passing along tariff costs isn't one of these.
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nVidia genuinely does not care about gaming. It is just a way to have a few extra bins to increase effective yields for their datacenter/AI chips. If Nintendo wants to buy in bulk they'll sell in bulk. And if Nintendo doesn't like nVidia's prices they can talk to AMD... like the other consoles did. Jensen will just sell those chips as mobile devices or cars or whatever.
Most speculation was around 400 USD for the switch itself for the given specs, tooling, etc. The Steam Deck is a different process but their LCD model is pretty indicative. 450 was a bump that would account for economic uncertainty and give them room to drop back down for regular discounts and the like.
Then trump trumped the bed and the previously expected buffer zone just isn't enough. Which is why we are seeing the massive price hike.
Backwards compatibility means they might not be able to talk to AMD unfortunately, depending on how the software is set up I'd assume.
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You can’t be a patient gamer and a Nintendo fan. Their prices never fucking come down lmao
There is the used games market, if you are willing to engage with it, though that does need you to be really patient.
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Backwards compatibility means they might not be able to talk to AMD unfortunately, depending on how the software is set up I'd assume.
I and many people with a Cool PS2 can attest that AMD hardware has no problems running Switch games.
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There is the used games market, if you are willing to engage with it, though that does need you to be really patient.
That’s what I’m referring to. Even used, even 10 years old, their physical games hold 80-90% of their value. Some even go up. Their hardware retains like 70%+ of value used.
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Nintendo is a shitty company and companies in general do shitty anti consumer things, but passing along tariff costs isn't one of these.
Right. The only difference between a tariff and a VAT, is that the VAT applies to all products indiscriminately, where as a tariff only applies to imported goods.
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You can’t be a patient gamer and a Nintendo fan. Their prices never fucking come down lmao
The games don't drop in price, but the consoles do. There's even a chance the price could go down for the holiday season, even if it's something miniscule. This launch price is the early adopter tax.
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New PS5's and other consoles will also get way more expensive. So relatively the switch is still the same price at 600, compared to everything else.
Until MY pay goes up, that just means everything is more expensive, and I won't be buying new things.
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I and many people with a Cool PS2 can attest that AMD hardware has no problems running Switch games.
Never heard of that, I assume it's an emulator. Emulation is different from running a game natively. Yeah, Nintendo probably could get AMD hardware to work as a replacement for Nvidia hardware, but I would guess either compatibility would be imperfect, there would be a performance hit, or both.
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I wasn't even going to pay $449, let alone $600. I figured it would have been somewhere between $300-400, with 400 being on the high end of reasonable.
$449 I would have waited a bit. But $600??? I get it's because of tarrifs, but that's really going to hurt the systems long term sales numbers the same way covid hurt PS5's lifetime sales numbers.
You can hope there will be a sudden price drop in about 5 years...
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Nintendo surely wouldn’t do something anti consumer would they?
That one is on America.
