It’s only “outrageously” priced compared to its predecessor, and only if you don’t think about it too much. Considering under the hood it’s basically a phone or tablet, it’s very fairly priced considering the specs.

The Switch 1 is basically a tablet from 2017 being sold for $300. It never received a price drop despite it using 8 year old technology, it actually received a price increase with the OLED model. An iPad 5th Gen from 2017 sells for $50 on eBay, for comparison purposes. Not like for like as that has a way higher res screen and less RAM, but it’s fairly close.

As it’s a new chip with an expected 10 year lifespan, it’s likely on 3nm process which means it has to fight for manufacturing time with TSMC because they’re the only ones who can fab that sort of chip.

All that, plus the expectation that they will be absorbing some tariff costs for now means it will likely never see a price drop, and honestly doesn’t seem that bad in terms of pricing. It’s the cheapest console on the market with the exception of the very underpowered and useless Series S, and it’s competitively priced in terms of the tech under the hood.

So if it will be the cheapest console of its generation, is already cheaper than its ancient competition, is cheaper than a mid range GPU by itself, and is cheaper or comparably priced with similarly specced devices, then how is it so overpriced?

The only argument I’ve heard yet has been “consoles are sold at a loss because the games are expensive” but that hasn’t been true for the industry since the PS4 era, and it’s literally never been true for Nintendo consoles, they always make a profit right out of the gate. So I honestly don’t get it.

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I guess that would be the case if you bought it, beat it and sold it, but most people in that scenario would already own it and then they would just buy the upgrade pack. This $90 option is only for people who don’t own the game in any form yet.

The idea that any significant contingent of people would not own it in any form, then suddenly want to play it on Switch 2 but would balk at the asking price seems unlikely, certainly not enough to cut the price in half.

If they wanted a cheaper option they could always just buy a used Switch copy and then just buy the upgrade pack. I would prefer cheaper Nintendo games too but the reality is this won’t cost them that many sales.

They really wouldn’t. They would have to triple or quadruple sales to take that sort of a hit. As it stands it’s one of the best selling games of all time already, basically everyone interested in it already owns it.

Financially, they made the right decision. As annoying as it is from the consumer side.

Article is 10 days old, which in Trump tariff terms is like a year. Just noting for anyone who thinks this is relevant to the current situation.

We lost that in the PS4 era, seems weird to mourn it now.

Except that was about internet connectivity and this is about price. Telling people to go with the old console because they can’t due to a bullshit restriction is crazy, saying it about price is pretty fair. If you can’t afford a current gen console, then the last gen would be the best option. At $450USD it will still be the cheapest console on the market other than the Switch 1.

I’m honestly shocked people are so up in arms about the price. Doesn’t really seem like Nintendo is gouging here, a comparable phone or tablet with the same specs comes in around the same price or higher. It has pretty much every feature people were asking for at about a $100USD premium over the existing Switch.

Raising standard game prices, charging for the tutorial app, and charging for next gen upgrades, that I get the pushback on.

I doubt it. Why wouldn’t it just be a modified Pro controller like every other classic controller they’ve released. My guess is they are just managing expectations that it won’t be automatically usable with every game and mapped correctly.

I doubt I’ll ever connect this to my Switch 2, it’s going to be a replacement for the aging used WaveBirds that are hooked up to my Wii. With BlueRetro as the receiver, my guess is they’ll work day 1 or shortly after. For that, they’re awesome options.

That’s actually the main reason most left, Lemmy has never seen a bigger increase in MAU before or after the death of 3rd party apps.

Not to say the other stuff isn’t important, but for me Reddit WAS Apollo. Without it, it didn’t even feel like the same service. Enough people felt the same about their preferred apps that they left en masse in 2023.