Chrkeller said:
Kyuu said:
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. |
If that's the case, why releasing new hardware? Just sell Switch again
Nintendo needs to release a new machine that match at least some standards of power of they want to keep non indie third party support. Half of Switch software is third party, most of them are indies or ports from older generations, so Switch 2 needs to at least match PS4 power to ensure it will get ports of last gen
Nintendo can survive with only their own games, but this leads to software droughts. A couple of bangers will make Switch 2 successful enough even with weaker third party support, but if they want to avoid to compromise their current level of popularity they need to avoid the scenario where no third party can port their games.
If this means increasing the price of Switch 2 by 50-100 USD they should do it. Otherwise I predict Switch 2 to have a N64 situation, sell well specially at the start of its life but with a decrease of ~40% in lifetime sales
