Five reasons why I am not bothered by Nintendo's Switch 2 hardware and software pricing

[The_Liquid_Laser]

RolStoppable said:

Norion said:

I might've missed this but what's your general expectation for how the Switch 2 will sell Rol?

TBD.

Trump's tariff chaos may not affect only the USA, which is the single-biggest console market, but can potentially have a rippling effect on the world as a whole.

Ignoring Trump, Switch 2 is set up to sell as much as Switch 1. The hardware price may be a bit steep depending on the country, but the Mario Kart World bundle softens this. Switch 2 is also backwards compatible with controllers, so that too lowers the barrier of entry. The release schedule for 2025 is more than solid, and given how consistent Nintendo has been on Switch 1 with their schedule, there's no good reason to expect large gaps between first party releases all of a sudden. Microsoft's withdrawal in combination with Sony's inability to benefit from it means that more third parties will have to include Switch 2 in the multiplat mix; not that I expect these games to move the needle for hardware sales much, but it's a net gain for the system as a whole nevertheless.

The biggest X-factor is the direction and execution of big Nintendo games, because those are the real drivers for hardware sales; there's the possibility that Nintendo turns some of them disappointing or lame, but there's no way to know right now what's coming in 2026 and beyond.

But since Trump is real and since there's no guarantee that he will be gone in 2029, it's more sensible to expect Switch 2 to sell less than Switch 1. I'd go with something like 120 million, because the thing about Trump is that it's always worse than expected and almost always even worse than could be imagined.

No way.  I'm expecting a situation like the DS -> 3DS transition.  They'll come up with some solution to salvage the system next year once they realize how badly they've screwed up.  Switch 2 will still sell well in Japan, but it won't come close to Switch 1 sales in any other region.  The screwed up launch year will do permanent damage to hardware sales, much like it did with the 3DS.