Yes, and no. Depends on the games. If you recall, the Switch was a horrible piece of garbage that desperately needs a replacementin November when Pokémon released in a very buggy state but become a wonderful hardware when Metroid Prime Remastered released.

Switch's power will always be the lazy excuse to justify the laziness of some devs

I'm not convinced the switch 2 is coming anytime soon.  Time will tell.  Those expecting the switch 2 to be a high powered device competing with the steam deck are going to be disappointed...  just my opinion.  We shall see.  It just isn't Nintendo's audience imho.

And unless I'm mistaken the steam deck has sold a couple million.....  it isn't exactly being widely adapted.

I agree with your overall sentiment, but the Switch 2 wouldn't have to rely on raw power to deliver perceivable steam deck/PS4 level visuals thanks to DLSS, which is likely a major factor in Switch 2's design.  If Nintendo's next system is indeed another Switch and arrives next year, it should be able to deliver a nice generational upgrade over the current system for $349-$399.

Nintendo shouldn't risk pricing their system more expensive just for more power to get 3rd party support. A vast majority of Switch owners purchase a Switch solely for Nintendo games, and 3rd party games are just looked as a supplement but never the main intent on why people purchase the Switch.

Plus, the current Switch is super underpowered and if we're being real most of the 3rd party support on Switch has been rereleases of older games or indie titles. There aren't many current gen ports on Switch but it's still far from hurting Switch sales. Switch is missing pretty huge current gen franchises like Call of Duty, GTA 5, Madden,Resident Evil, other big games like Elden Ring and more and it still isn't hurting the Switch. Even if the Switch 2 was underpowered as well, it'll still get the older 3rd party games and missing out on some current gen franchises won't hurt the Switch 2. Most people would rather pay cheaper just to play Nintendo games.

The pool of people willing to pay for a system only to play Nintendo games is not as big as you think. Switch would never be close selling 150 million with Nintendo games only. Not being able to play even the PS4/Xbone games would lead to major deficit in software side. Enough to make Switch 2 flops? No, but 60-65% of Switch lifetimes sales is likely to be the roof for such device 

In other hand raising 50 or even 100 USD is not going to hurt Nintendo in any way. If people bought OLED and its ancient chipseat for 350 USD, 400 USD in a new machine is totally doable  

Just keep selling the Switch Lite for another 10 years.

I don't really see the pressing need to phase out hardware to be honest. I wouldn't mind if Nintendo was still selling 3DS hardware frankly. In the past you had to phase out the hardware to make retail space for games for the new consoles (ie: N64 phasing out SNES because where else are the N64 games supposed to go) .... but in today's day and age with digital store fronts you should be able to keep selling hardware and just offer the software digitally so it doesn't have to take up a ton of retail space.

The only reason the PS2 has this record is because Sony just continued to sell the PS2 forever at $99 (also in part due to the PS3 selling like crap out of the gate which is not exactly something to be proud of), to be honest in my view the Switch is more impressive than the DS or PS2 ... it's going to hit at least 140 but at a much higher average price point. 

They could even honestly redesign the Switch Lite a bit and increase the size of the screen and maybe up the battery size a bit (to keep battery life the same) ... there's plenty of wasted room on the Switch Lite due to fat bezels. That would be a fine entry level device especially for kids for say $169.99 or something. 

Thing is it's not 1999 or 2004 anymore. 

The majority of the Nintendo buyer base and even the main reason the Mario movie is performing through the roof is the fact that the majority of the buyer base are now *adults* with a high level of disposable income. 

You don't want to cheap out on the hardware as it will disappoint early adopters. People are willing to pay more for hardware in this day and age and we've seen even from things like the XBox Series S ... people would rather pay more for a PS5 or XBox Series X. Ditto for Switch Lite versus Switch OLED/Base. People *want* to be excited about the hardware they're taking home from the store, not "well it's kind of a piece of crap hardware, but at least it was cheap" ... that's not enticing. 

Your POV is 15 years out of date IMO. Nintendo is like Marvel now, once upon a time characters like Spider-Man and Captain America were considered "for kids" properties, but today because those IP have huge fan bases that are now grown up, they simply outnumber any single generation of children.

But power and features are more important than price, provided the cheaper edition doesn't exceed $400 in today's money. Obviously, beyond some point, price will be more important than specs, but this point (the sweet spot) is climbing.

Power and software support are correlated. PS5 is massively popular (among casuals and core gamers alike) and will be the lead platform for most AA/AAA 3rd party games. The Series S will more often than not be the lowest common denominator for the same "next gen" games. A $300 Switch would be much weaker than the Series S and closer to the base PS4, this risks a number of big games skipping it that would have otherwise made it on a powerful Switch 2 that isn't far behind the Series S in some respects (maybe more comparable to PS4 Pro overall).

I don't think being stuck with a weak Switch 2 for another 7 or so years is something that many core gamers would prefer (I know I don't), especially not those who can't afford or don't wish to buy multiple platforms. In addition to better 3rd party support, all 1st party games would look and play better on a more powerful Swtich. SteamDeck has no exclusive software and is only around as powerful as a base PS4.

Switch wasn't underpowered at launch by handheld standards. $300 in 2017 is the equivalent of today's $400 in terms of what the average gamer is willing to spend on a console. If pricepoint was all that matters, then the Switch Lite would have outsold the standard and OLED models, but it didn't, they weren't even close. And the crazy-low Series S prices aren't stopping it from getting curbstomped by the "expensive" PS5. $400 and in some cases even $500+ are just not deal breakers to most gamers (certainly not early year adopters). Those who won't buy an "expensive" Switch 2 can either wait for a pricedrop/deals or go with the barebone edition.

In my opinion, they should make two models at launch, and only push the cheaper one when the standard/expensive edition meets demand. This is basically what Sony is doing with PS5 and PS5DE.

While still a decent advantage when reconstructing from lower resolutions, DLSS2 is not the game changer that it was before FSR2 released. SteamDeck supports FSR2. But even at $300-$350 and without DLSS factored in, Switch 2 might still be more capable than the PS4.

If the Switch had these games, it could have sold notably better, so them missing is indeed hurting Switch sales. But otherwise I get it... you can't tick all the boxes, and going cheaper comes with advantages of its own. I just don't think going too cheap is the right move for Nintendo right now.

Most people don't care that much about specs at all, the last time the most powerful console won the generation was the SNES and that was 30 years ago, and people didn't buy the SNES because it was the most powerful, it was because it had the most and best games from both 1st and 3rd party developers that Sega didn't offer as well. Every 

Every generation after the SNES, from both consoles and handhelds, the most UNDERPOWERED system won every generation. The PS1 was less powerful than both the N64 & Saturn but outsold them pretty easily cause it offered the most games, PS2 was less powerful than GC and Xbox but outsold them by even more for the same reason, the Wii was the most underpowered but won cause of its cheap price, games, and innovation. And now the Switch is beating both the PS4/Xbox One and even the PS5 and Xbox SX to this day despite being the most underpowered. Same goes for handhelds, the underpowered Gameboy destroyed the Sega game gear, the underpowered DS killed the PSP and 3DS as well killed the Vita. All these examples should be more than enough evidence that people don't really care how powerful the system is as long as the games are there. 

We've seen bad price points for a console kill a console WAYY more times than the underpowered specs kill a console, like the PS3,Saturn,Xbox One at launch, and others. To be real the only underpowered device we saw flop was the Wii U, but nearly literally every other mainstream underpowered console has sold very well, showing that people much rather care about the price of a console than how underpowered it is.

You used the example that, "people are buying the more expensive Xbox Series X more than the S which shows that people would rather pay more for an expensive experience." but there are problems with that argument as I'll list below:

1.That is just one example of a more powerful console outselling the weaker console VS the 10+ other examples I listed where the underpowered console easily beat its more powerful counterparts

2.The main reason why people are choosing the Xbox SX is because it has a disc drive, and many gamers to this day still want the option to have physical media as proven by the physical/digital game sales distribution, where a large 60% of game sales for the major consoles are still from physical games, so many gamers would want to pay more for physical media.

3.If that were the case that people would rather pay more for more powerful iterations/consoles, than why didn't we see the Xbox One X or PS4 Pro outsell the regular PS4 and Xbox Ones in any week outside of launch? The answer is that people would rather pay less to play the same games and most people don't care enough for specs to upgrade.

I don't know about that. I am an adult with lots of disposable income and quite frankly I don't care at all about hardware specs anymore. Graphics have become good enough for me to simply not care anymore. I have 3 switch consoles here but neither a PS5 nor an Xbox. Because those consoles have far to few compelling games even 2 years after launch.

I care about graphics so little that I am playing Skyrim on the Switch right now, even though I have a PC with an RTX 3070 sitting under my desk. For the sole reason that I can turn on the switch and be right inside the game without waiting for the console and the game to boot or some stupid updates and stuff. That is quite important for me as an adult with lots of disposable income but quite little time to spend on gaming nowadays. 

(Theoretically that scenario would also be possible with my Steam Deck, but for some reason Skyrim always crashes when I wake up the device, lol =P)

In other words, I don't think specs are too important. Of course the next Switch should be more capable. But it doesn't need to compete with the PS5 or Xbox. Modern engines scale very well and on top of that, 3rd parties aren't as important as the used to be anyway. If you ask me EA, Activision and the likes just keep releasing the same shitty games over and over again and most people I know play Indie games anyway. And those won't have a problem to run on whatever the hell Nintendo releases next.

But anyway, I can only speak for myself of course.