| Sephiran said: It makes sense, dominance in Japan is important for Nintendo to maintain. And the US has been the biggest market for Nintendo since the 80s. Europe on the other hand is a market that PS will always have a stranglehold in, so Nintendo would mostly be content to play second fiddle there after PS and instead work to maintain their positions in the US and Japan. |
I feel Europe is very important to Nintendo but I think they are trying more premium pricing in Europe because its less of a risk if it fails as the market isn't as important in many ways but still despite the population being 2-3x that of the USA, Europe still buys about the same number of Switches so surely as important with regard the numbers although perhaps logistics is more expensive. Ultimately though it seems like Europe is paying more so the USA their most important market pays less.
Japan loves portable gaming, the culture of Japan of lots of commuting by train and small living spaces means they seem to like smaller gaming devices. I believe (I haven't checked) that the Switch lite makes up a greater preportion of Switch units sold there than other markets. I.e. the Switch itself sells more but the lite is a higher number of overall sales. I think a Switch 2 lite will be important to Japan sales. I know a lot of people in Japan (foreign residents) really dislike the fact they have to buy the international version despite being the exact same hardware yet priced much, much higher. So we know Nintendo is pricing hardware for their own commercial reasons rather than for cost reasons. The normal japanese only language version is £300 and the international version where you can change the language is £350. So £50 extra just to get a firmware where you can select a different language. So even in Japan, foreigners are paying more. Basically if you are not Japanese they want more money out of you.
