| JackHandy said: Five hundred dollars for a Nintendo handheld with a pack-in? Five hundred? I think my comparison works... too well lol. |
Being a hybrid ("handheld") increases its value for many of us. It doesn't decrease it. $450 places it competitively with other handhelds of its power-level. It's roughly on par with a Asus Rog Ally Z1e in terms of compute hardware and display technology for example, and those retail for $469 (down from $700) without a dock or any of the other accessories.
Nintendo could've created a $350 system, but there would have been compromises and people would've complained that it was too weak to get third party support, the screen was trash, build quality was trash, and/or it didn't have enough storage.
In 2006 the base (20GB) PS3 was about 1.4% an average American's salary.
In 2025, a Switch 2 is about 0.67% of an average American's salary which is roughly the same ratio as the Wii's 0.64% in 2006. The Switch 2 is much closer to its competitors, on a hardware level, than the Wii was to the PS3 and 360.
