$600+ hardware is going to become the norm. PS6 will likely be $599.99 minimum, quite possibly $699.99. 

Days of getting a ridiculous piece of kit for like $399.99 are over.

These companies have to make money off hardware too, these days your dev studio for any of these companies can maybe make like 1 game per generation that is also going to cost like 3-4x what they used to cost 20 years ago. 

You can't just rely on software to make money from, the hardware has to make a profit, and probably a sizable one at that. Gotta have money coming in, can't just sit there and wait for the Uncharted/Zelda/whatever team to take 7 years completing their next game. 

Just out of interest, who are the people in this thread who are 'living in lalaland' and what outrageous observations have they apparently made?

The vast majority of suggestions I've seen are, a slightly more modern process node, a screen that doesn't have worst in class (worse than switch 1 even) ghosting/motion blur, a bit more ram or a moderately larger battery.

You seem to be Nintendo's self-appointed press secretary. The system could have come out with weaker specs than it did and you'd be making the exact same arguments. 

You seem to start from 'Nintendo are the best' and work back from there. Your comments are exhausting. 

Not this FUD again!

€899 including taxes would be around €750 without taxes.

€750 are currently 866 bucks... so probably $849 or $899 MSRP. 

That would be $966 with a US sales tax of ca. 7.5%. Did you consider US import tariffs on top?

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. 

Dude, the people you're railing against who were downplaying Switch 2 either went quiet some time ago once it became clear the hardware was capable enough that they didn't have much ammunition, or have been banned.

You're tilting at windmills.

Actually it's funny to look back at about a year ago on this forum.

When there was a rumor of Final Fantasy VII Intergrade on the Switch 2 (which turned out to be true), a certain group of posters loudly decried this as impossible because there was no way it would be able to run the fancy pants PS5 version.

Then there was a report of Nintendo showing The Matrix Unreal Engine 5 demo on the Switch 2 ... that was met by even more sheer incredulity here and how it would be impossible and what a ridiculous assertion it was. Well having seen the final product, I would surmise that probably most people might now concede that The Matrix UE5 engine demo probably is possible on the Switch 2. 30 fps using DLSS sure, but doable.

Following this system's development was a massive headache on this board because of the "Dur Hur! I knowz Nintendo! They won't use gud hardware!" bros. that would come into every thread to shout the system down. It was ridiculous. 

Some of these people weren't tech savvy enough, or just weren't taking tech like DLSS into account. If you thought the hardware would be more so PS4 level at that time, which wasn't a terrible guess, then it would seem unlikely that SW2 would be able to do what it now can.

Another thing they likely didn't take into account, is how willing devs might be this time around, to go the extra mile to optimize their games to the max for SW2. With SW1 sales being what they are, it's no surprise that SW2 can play some games that would've seemed unlikely back then.