There is no "pricing disaster".
What many of you fail to understand is that it's about value and not about production costs. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. Would you pay 100$ for a terrible game because it cost 500 million dollars to make? Nintendo games are among the highest quality in the industry. They don't drop in price because their perceived value is so high that they don't need to drop in price for people to buy them. The reason other publishers sell their games at steep discounts shortly after release is because people aren't ready to pay more money for them.
I vividly remember the days of the early Switch reveal, when the exact same b*llshit was being thrown around. The Switch was doomed, the price was too high, nobody wanted Nintendo games, etc. Nintendo was going third party. Look how that turned out. To anyone who thinks the consensus was any different: Dig out the old threads! They regularly get necro-bumped anyway, because they are so funny to read.
Also, I've been here since 2007 and there is a never-ending cycle that starts all-over again with every new console release: What people never seem to understand is that it's about the games, the games, the games. Games sell a console! And it's not about some sleeper hit a small niche of gamers wants to play. It's about the break-out games:
- The Vita was going to be a huge success because it had such a great screen and great technology. But where were the games? It flopped.
- The Wii U was going to sell at least 50m units because it came off the back of the Wii (Yes! People believed that would be the case!). It flopped, because it didn't have many great games (Nintendo focused their efforts on the 3DS and shifted development resources to that platform)
- The 3DS was going to sell like the DS did at first (it had 3D!) but it launched without good games at a high price and so it bombed at first. Then it was doomed to fail... but it didn't because it got good games.
- The DS was going to fail (despite being way cheaper than the PSP!) but, surprise, it got a truckload of great games and sold like gangbusters.
- The Gameboy was on the decline, but then it got Pokémon.
- Xbox Series X/S looked way more promising than Xbox One, but then what happened? Oh yeah, Microsoft didn't release a lot of exclusives for it and went third-party.
If the Switch 2 fails it'll be because the quality of the games isn't there. The console is more expensive than the Switch 1 was, but it's certainly not in a "PS3 600$ in 2006" situation. The games will determine its success. And the game's prices will get adjusted according to demand and perceived value. Again, it's about the games and the value of the games. That's what determines a console's success.
(Edit: Same goes for graphics, by the way: Every generation we have this stupid discussion about a console being "too weak", despite this never having stopped any console from being a success. And yet, we constantly argue about a console not being powerful enough. I vividly remember never-ending discussions in... I don't know, 2021?... about the Switch successor being imminent because the Switch was "underpowered". But the length of a console generation depends on perceived value, not graphics or horsepower).
Last edited by Louie - on 09 April 2025
