The Road to 160m+ for Nintendo Switch

[Chrkeller]

Kyuu said:

Chrkeller said:

No doubt.  Anybody who knows Nintendo and knows their audience is likely to expect a $300-$350, max (absolute) is $400.  Those getting excited about a $500 powerhouse switch 2 are going to be disappointed.  Nintendo gave up the power game a long time ago.  The DS, 3DS, Wii, Wii U and Switch were never powerhouses.  Those who want power need to go Sony, MS or PC.  

The original Switch at launch cost as much as a brand new PS4 (It actually cost more because PS4 got a lot of free-game-bundles and holiday price cuts). Millions of people including Nintendo fans were pretty much dooming it, thinking the price was too high. So Nintendo already broke from the success x price association in 2017. The OLED model saw a price hike like 5 years later and continued to sell very well.

Fastforward, and now Sony is proving that gamers are less price sensitive towards consoles than before, and I don't see any strong evidence of that not carrying over to Nintendo's systems. PS5's average price is higher than the PS4, and unlike the PS4 which got a $100 price drop during its 3rd year, PS5 instead got a price hike and crap ton of forced bundles (not free). Unless the recession significantly hurts gaming, gamers across the board are clearly willing to spend more for more.

A profitable Switch 2 at $350 or lower would certainly be disappointment, and lead to a much weaker 3rd party support in the long term. $400 should be the minimum (for the standard model), and I hope Nintendo realizes this.

Rather than launch a $300-$350 Switch 2 and lock the price throughout the generation, they should launch a $300-$400 (stripped-down) and $400-$500 (standard) Switch 2's and pricedrop them both in the middle of the generation. They'd still be fine with $300-$350, but the core gamer community would not receive the system as well as they would a more-expensive/more-capable Switch 2 with better and longer 3rd party support.

Where we disagree is bolded.  I don't see any evidence of that.  The switch is grossly underpowered and nobody cares.  Logically nobody is going to care if the switch 2 is under powered.  Fact is most people do not care about power on a Nintendo system, they care about software.  If people cared about power the steam deck would be selling better than the switch, it isnt.