bonzobanana said:
I don't know if Xbox is important in France and that is quite a specific comparison. It was in the news about how French retailers were dropping the price of Switch 2 and this surely indicates over-supply of Switch 2 consoles so that retailers are worried about their build up of stock. Now I'll admit this doesn't necessarily mean its selling badly but it does mean it is selling under expectations surely. I don't think there is any mystery here, the market with the worst pricing is the market with reduced sales compared to other markets. Certainly the pricing of Switch 2 in the UK has put me off buying one and I don't feel it represents good value. I'll admit I did chew it over when Amazon had some returned models at £307 for a short time and had to resist as I really couldn't justify it, so its not like you can't get cheaper Switch 2s in the UK as it does seem to have a very high return rate perhaps because people were expecting more for the price point. I did see one review comment where the person didn't realise the Switch 2 had such short battery runtime. However I tend not to buy too early anyway and wait for more exclusive games to come out and hopefully hardware improvements. A conversion today of 50,000 yen is less than £250 uk pounds and ultimately all the Switch 2 consoles are coming out of China and Vietnam. Don't get me wrong though I'm not expecting parity with Japan as there is 10% more sales tax in the UK compared to Japan but a price of about £300 would be fair, maybe at a a stretch £320 but £370-380 I find unacceptable. There are so many discounted Switch 2 deals in the UK and we are heading for Black Friday so may improve too (or may not of course). It really does feel like Europe is paying the extra tariffs on the US for them. Nintendo seems to be sacrificing Europe to make sure it has a healthy start in the US its biggest market. I'm expecting Europe to underperform compared to the other 2 markets but totally accept we won't get the full picture until early 2026. |
But i mean Nintendo sales being weaker in Europe than in other markets is entirely normal. There is a reason why PS4 comfortably outsold Switch 1 in Europe even though Switch 1 easily outsold PS4 pretty much everywhere else. So PS5 could outsell Switch 2 in Europe easily and Switch 2 could still end up selling more than PS5 in global sales. There are always markets where a competitor has an advantage over you. And for Nintendo that is clearly PS popularity in Europe. Price is not the important factor, but brand popularity, and the fact that PS is the better place to play all the most popular gaming titles in Europe, like the yearly EA Sports FC releases, where Switch 2 runs those game 30 fps and doesn't have crossplay with the other versions. Which means if you are a normal, casual European console player that plays the kinds of games that usually dominates the European market, the Switch 2 doesn't offer at all what the PS5 offers. And Nintendo can't compensate that reality with their first party output like they can in the US and Japan to that extent in Europe.
Last edited by Sephiran - on 08 November 2025
