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Soundwave on 29 July 2025
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Biggerboat1 said:
Soundwave said:

There are several posters who would flood every Switch 2 hardware discussion circa a year ago and loudly try to talk down the system and said it would be a hard capped at PS4 level performance only (something it's already exceeding) "because Nintendo", as if they think they're geniuses for believing that Nintendo started making hardware with the Wii in 2006 apparently. 

These posters didn't know shit, they don't even understand Nintendo's own history, most of Nintendo's consoles have actually be reasonably powered for their time period (Famicom/NES, Super Famicom/SNES, N64, GameCube, Switch 1, and now Switch 2), the only two that weren't were expressly aimed at casual audiences (the Wii and Wii U). 

Then there's a secondary type of poster that thinks Nintendo is out to screw them and they can secretly add an OLED screen, more RAM, 3nm chip with 50% more performance all for like $30 more but they chose not to. This is completely unreasonable too. For $450 in this day and age, the Switch 2 is even for 2025 about as good as you can get. There's no one out here offering dirt cheap hardware, this idea is outdated and stuck in the 90s and 2000s when companies would sometimes even take losses on hardware. No one is going to do that going forward for a myriad of reasons.  

And finally, yes, companies are entitled to make money off the hardware  they sell. There's no law that says they have to sell it right at cost or take a loss because Microsoft was dumb enough to try to make that an industry norm for 10+ years and even they have given up on that effectively. Not every company is in the business as a side hobby to their OS business. 

Can you point me to where someone said that 'they can add an OLED screen, more RAM, 3nm chip with 50% more performance all for like $30'?

Or is this another strawman? 

Companies are free to charge whatever they want, and consumers are free to criticise them for it. Just because apple can charge silly money for extra ram or larger SSD doesn't mean that we can't call them out. 

My general point is consumers in this industry have generally been spoiled. Virtually no one in any industry sells any important component at cost, let alone at a loss. 

What Microsoft was leading the industry into was only a direction feasible thing because they don't really give that much of a shit about gaming. They have an OS division that is embedded into business to the point where they have a quasi-monopoly and make billions of dollars of profit every year from that. The game business' numbers were inconsequential. 

Well since MS has generally failed miserably at trying to replace Sony in the business that setup was never feasible in the long term. We're really just seeing the game business run more sanely, this includes Sony now also. Game hardware does generally need to make a profit. It does need to adjust for inflation over time, like any other product. People who want the moon but don't want to pay anything for it are likely in for a harsh reality check in the coming years. 

The ROG Ally X is like maybe moderately better performance than a Switch 2 in practice for like $900-$1000. And for that price you still do not get an OLED. The hardware performance the Switch 2 provides is quite good for $450.