The Price of Switch 2 Games Sucks

Even If Things Do Cost Money

Finally, after years of rumor, speculation, and no end of hardware leaks, the Switch 2 has finally been revealed in all it’s glory, and like the rising sun in east, Gamers are NOT happy.

Their gripe, this time, is the price.

The Nintendo Switch 2 is coming in at $450 US dollars, if you’re lucky.

If you’re unlucky, you should probably move out of the Europe as whole. Or Australia. Or basically anywhere with a small market. Nintendo will be Nintendo and price at it at whatever they feel will sell.

For all me, I think $450 is fine. Now, I am single, live with a cat, and don’t really spend that much money to begin with, so my perspective might be a little skewed on this. The price is on par, and in many cases lower, than other PC handheld consoles in the space. And with DLSS the Switch 2 will likely out perform most of them. I was expecting the system to be $399, so $450 is not a stretch on a luxury gaming item. Some people spend more than $50 eating take out in a week. The price of the console at least for me, is not really that glaring or anything out of the ordinary.

Personally, seeing Breath of the Wild run side by side compared to Switch 1/Switch 2, sold me on the system instantly. Monolith’s next game is going to blow everything else they have made out of the water, and they got Xenoblade Chronicles X running on the WiiU. No, I won’t raise my brow at the price of the system.

I don’t think this will be a launch 3DS deal either. There was no way the launch 3DS was going to be the success that it eventually became at the price it launched it. It took Nintendo six months to course correct. To say “Our bad, we’re cutting the price, ” bow their head, and offer first adopters some treats to send them on their way. There will never be another CEO like Iwata. Nintendo was still a business then, but they were headed by someone who understood what being in the trenches was really like. The current CEO is a businessman to his core, and he will make businessman decisions. Which brings us to the games.

The games are a different matter entirely.

With Mario Kart World being Nintendo’s first $80 dollar game in almost thirty years, things are coming to a head in the gaming market. This was, of course, inevitable. We have been heading this way for years. If it wasn’t Nintendo, it would have been Sony, who are sure to follow, or 2k, with GTAVI (which is not coming out this year by the way).

We do live in a world where the next Grand Theft Auto can cost $100 and make a billion dollars in a day. But is that acceptable?

When does necessary price hikes become consumer extortion. It doesn’t matter if GTAVI cost a hundred dollars or not. The point is to make GTAVI the only game you justifiably buy. Some people will say extortion is too strong a word, but I disagree. You want to escape the horrors? Pay up.

In Nintendo’s case this is purely a business decision. They have spent four or five years making this game, they want it to recover its cost, fund future DLCs, and business operations for the next few years. They have marketing analyst that get paid way more than the most people make in their entire lives to tell them exactly the pain point consumers can take before they flat out won’t buy. They know that these prices will price a few people out, but the difference will be in thousands, versus the millions that will grumble, but will still pay the cost.

We have spent years, begging on our hands and knees for games to cost more, be shorter, and take less time to make. We should be ecstatic that finally, games are going to cost what they are really worth, and developers that make the game get to continue doing a great job making magic from lines of code.

I, of course live in the real world and know exactly what is going to happen. Instead of devs seeing any of that money, it is going to go into the pocket of some C-suit exec who had no meaningful hand in the creation of the games that we loved, and those who made it unceremoniously laid off at the end of the month and lose access to their employer provided healthcare.

Yes things cost money.

Things are also getting more expensive at a rate that is frankly unsustainable, and rich are squeezing everyone else dry.

There is no reason for a billion dollar company to encourage other billion dollar companies to make the hobby worse for everyone involved. And make no mistake, Sony at least, will follow suit. Either the price of PS+ will go up (again,) or they will think they are Nintendo and start charging $80 for whatever live service slop they spent years making that will have no hope of surviving the month.

This pricing is intentionally high to cover the cost of predicted tariffs, without even the trade off of digital games being even slightly cheaper. They don’t have to pay duties on digital goods, and yet the price is the same. No matter how you choose to buy, or play, you’ll be paying more to do it, for no reason other than the line going up.

Nintendo, of all companies, who have had numerous best selling consoles ever, and best selling games ever, will not have to worry about running out of money any time soon. And yet, they need that line to go up. Heaven forbid you make a few shareholders less likely to buy another McMansion. Are they worried about getting bought out by the Saudis? Not likely. They aren’t SEGA. They are NINTENDO. They are a ubiquitous household name. Strangers on the street will not know who Nathan Drake is, but will absolutely know who Mario is, even if they have never played a game in their lives.

And the pricing isn’t even consistent. The most expensive game on the Switch 2 library at the start will be Mario Kart World. Everything else will be $70 or below. And perhaps the most damning thing in all of this is the price of the Switch 2 version of Breath of the Wild had a price INCREASE. I have never seen anything like this.

It’s not even a remaster. It’s the same game. It just cost more now. An eight year old game. That rarely goes on sale. Why? Why do this. I know the answer is to get more people to buy Nintendo Switch Online, but CHRIST bumping the price of Breath of the Wild is so dire. Pay the toll to play your favorite game on a real system, I guess.

I doesn’t even come with the DLC!

Admittedly, the Zeldas do look pretty good, but how much of that are the games, and how much of that is the system doing all of the work. Does it matter which is which?

Is this just going to be the price of games made by big publishers forever? Are we going to enter an arms race of who can price their game the most to see what happens? The game industry will not crash because of this, indie game, and publishers with brains will still exist, but WAY more people at Microsoft, Sony and other pillar companies will be laid off when oops, no one wants to pay $120 dollars BASE for a videogame.

Especially with the cost of literally everything else costing 30% more, companies fighting tooth and nail to not pay people what they are worth to make the things we enjoy, not to mention turning a pile bunker on any unions that try to form. Rights? For making VIDEOGAMES? Not on my McYacht.

This is just the hell that we live in. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and at the end of the day, we all pay the price.

Your hobbies are now making money for someone else.

Maybe the French had some good ideas after all.