How much will Nintendo cut the price of the Switch?

[Slownenberg]

Price cut will just depend on if Nintendo wants to completely kill off the Switch the day the successor launches (or likely the day the successor's price is announced), or if they want to still have a market for selling the Switch for a while after the successor comes out.

There is no way Switch 2 is gonna be over $400, anyone who thinks its gonna be over $400 has not ever paid attention to Nintendo's business strategy. Switch 2 is gonna be in the $350 - $400 range. $370 or $380 would keep it far enough under the $400 price tag that they likely want to avoid for optics of not being seen as an expensive system, while giving them that extra bit of money to make it profitable day one while still providing a full generational leap in specs over the Switch.

Also if it is a very similar system to the Switch and they haven't gone and added some crazy new features that required a lot of research and expense, the R&D of it is likely much lower than past systems.

Anyway, with the successor no doubt coming somewhere in the $350-$400 range, the $300/$350 Switch original/OLED won't have a separate market from the successor at those prices, so it'll die off without a price cut.

Nintendo no doubt makes a very handsome profit on every Switch sold. Even with inflation the original probably costs close to $200 to make at this point given that chip shortages have been going away this year, and OLED I would suspect is not much more than $250. There have been zero price cuts not because of inflation, but because Switch has always sold extremely well so there has never been a market reason to drop the price.

On the extreme end, 12 months from now they could probably drop the Switch to $150/$200/$250 and pretty much cut profit to the bone, and create a separate market or the Switch from a $350+ Switch 2. On the other extreme end they could do no price cuts and kill off the Switch except for the Lite at $200. Or they could go a middle route and drop the hybrid models to $250/$300, leaving the OLED still to close in price to next gen but probably giving the original model a little bit of life left after next gen starts. Though the middle route kinda seems a bit pointless because it probably wouldn't be enough. I think what we'll probably see is Nintendo planning on killing off the Switch quickly except for the Lite, but doing that middle drop of the Switch to $250/$300 not to keep it alive but just to get the final round of stock sold once next gen has started. They'll probably have a few million original/OLED models produced for holiday 2024 and beyond and just make sure that stock doesn't get left on store shelves by doing that $50 price cut. They can then basically completely move their production facilities over to producing the Switch 2, and Nintendo will just want people to be buying a perhaps ~$380 Switch 2 that can play the next 7 years of games rather than the old system.