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TheMisterManGuy on 10 April 2025
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Slownenberg said:
TheMisterManGuy said:

Imagine this scenario. You're a Kyoto-based gaming corporation coming off of a massive success with your home/portable hybrid console with detachable controllers. A lot of hype is surrounding it's successor and so far everything is going well. The hardware is impressive, the games are impressive, even the price of the system is fairly affordable given the power. Everything is going well so far... Except for one problem. The biggest launch title you have, a Kart racer staring an Italian plumber, costs $80. And people don't find out about this until after your big presentation. And given that you haven't really said or shown anything so far to justify this high price tag, people are outraged. Demand on streams to "DROP THE PRICE", accusing you of being "greedy" and "anti-consumer". So your complete and utter failure to properly communicate pricing info to potential customers has now created a massive PR nightmare, and is dampening the hype of your new system.

Point being, how do you think Nintendo can turn this pricing mess around, and do you you think they can turn it around. Those saying Switch 2 will be another Wii U disaster or 3DS blunder. No. Switch 2 can easily be salvaged IMO. All Nintendo has to do is come clean and explain their pricing situation on games, and maybe even walk back pricing on some of them.

Fixing it would be very easy:

HW: Drop it to $400, or include the camera and Welcome Tour with the system at $450

SW: Standard pricing of games at $60 digital / $70 physical. Retract the $80 MKW pricing and promise no games will be $80. Also allow Zelda owners to play the upgraded Switch 2 versions free of charge as an apology for the entire pricing fiasco in the first place. Also no 'game keys' masquerading as physical games, that's absurd, or if you are gonna do that for some reason, then they should have the digital $60 pricing.

Other: Not a huge deal but drop the joycons back to $80

Mario: Immediately show off 3D Mario and give a release date for it so people at least have some confidence that Nintendo's blunder of putting out DK for the launch period instead of Mario is just a temporary screw up and that Mario will indeed be coming this year. And pack in a copy of Galaxy 2 with the new Mario as another apology (it's still crazy that wasn't included in 3D Mario All-Stars!).

Those are very simply changes that could easily make, and it would totally alleviate the huge self-inflicted mess they are in.

Switch 2 isn't gonna fail because of all these self-inflicted wounds, but its definitely gonna sell way less than it otherwise would have (maybe 90m instead of 120m, and much fewer 10m/20m/30m sellers). And Nintendo may find themselves in a situation in the coming months, or perhaps by next year, in which they have garnered all this ill will AND are still forced to drop the price due to flagging sales. It'd be much better to fix this now, so that the market stops fuming over all this before Switch 2 even launches, and have huge sales this year and onward.

The price of the system is fine. Everyone agrees that $450 is a fair price for the console. It's the $80 games that people have a problem with. And the Zelda upgrades are already confirmed to be free via NSO + Expansion Pack subscribers.

What Nintendo should've said is that $70 will be the standard price for most games, will rare exceptions being $80. And to be honest, this whole mess could've been avoided by just not talking about pricing until later. Their whole communication and PR regarding this issue has been awful, and they're going to have to really deliver on Mario Kart if they want to win back goodwill.