The price of the console is not the challenge. That's a one time purchase. It's the price of the games.

It reminds me of the N64 era. The game pricing was a bit off putting. They really needed to have new gaming experiences that you did not get anywhere else to convince people.

Luckily in the N64 era there were games that where truly innovative like Mario64, Zelda OoT and offcourse 4 player (splitscreen) play. These sold well. Other offerings on the system not so much.

In 2025 it's much harder to really define gaming new, as in you HAVE to try this. Much of the games that come close are indies, those are affordable and perfectly playable on Switch1.

Its the price of both IMO.  Remember demand is directly related to price.  You can't escape that.  It is not a mistake that the console that had the best deals sold the best during the season of deal shopping. 

It seems we agree (I think?). The higher price is justified when demand is there. e.g. Innovative new gaming experiences. When there is not enough innovation the higher price price becomes a problem.

You kind of have to wonder if Nintendo is just getting fed up with iterative hardware upgrades ... they're always a pain in the ass seemingly, lol.

Even the Super NES, probably not a lot of people will remember this but the launch of the system was kind of a mixed bag. Sales were good relative to what the market was of course and it was a very desired item among kids ... but the sales initially weren't as red hot as Nintendo would have hoped I believe (the Super Famicom launch in Japan was much more of a hysteria).

In the US you had lots of parents complaining about why they have to upgrade, a lot of people saying Super Mario World is not a big enough leap from Super Mario 3, and the Genesis suddenly becoming a legit competitor whereas Sega was kind of a joke only about a year earlier.

Yes, this is what I always said would be Switch 2’s issue. The console price is honestly perfectly fair and reasonable all things considered. I think most consumers would also feel that way when they start to consider all the factors as well. Everything else from Nintendo for the console is absolutely overpriced though. And when your games are too much, that’s a big problem because next to no one wants to buy a console just to pay one time for a game.

Most want a console they can buy multiple games for over several years, and people aren’t so dumb as to not realize how $70 and $80 games start to add up to a huge additional amount spent so much quicker than $50 and $60 ones. Then that’s not even mentioning accessory prices… 

According to Circana's Piscatella, most console gamers in the US buy 1-2 new games every year, which means it makes no difference for the average console gamer if a game cost 70 instead of 60 because they don't reguarly buy any games. Its mostly core gamers that buy new games every month that gets a bigger impact from games costing 70 instead of 60, which is why its a topic that reguarly comes up in gaming forums, because those forums consist of people that buy new games all the time.

For the average gamer, games costing 70 instead of 60 take their yearly game expenses budget up from 120 to 140.

When every major third party publisher price their games at 70, its ludicrous to think Nintendo should be the odd one out with permanent 60 priced games, does anyone really believe Sega, Atlus, Capcom etc should price their games at 70 and the much bigger Nintendo should go permanently below them in price? When Nintendo is a vastly bigger publisher than them? Sure, give us 60 games, but why single out Nintendo? Shouldn't the argument be that everyone should price their games at 60 instead of only complaining about Nintendo while everyone else are free to price their games at 70 with no criticism?

1. Other publishers did get a lot of criticism for the $70 price point. The first being Activision, Take Two, and Sony iirc.

2. Nintendo's physical games jumped from $60/€50-60 to $70/€80 or even $80/€90 (Mario Kart World) overnight. This was bound to generate negativity. Now the main reasons they're raising prices that much are cartridge costs and poor digital sales, but most people are ignorant of these details or just don't care about them.

3. Nintendo's game are perceived to not cost as much to develop as most AAA games. And many of them sell gangbusters and retain their prices extremely well. By comparison, most AAA games get multiple discounts a year, Cyberpunk's price for instance often goes down by 80%. Nintendo doesn't do this partly because many of their games are highly desirable, and many/most fans are simply conditioned to accept it. But lots of gamers including some fans find it exploitative. So the rising prices add insult to injury.

Paying 70 USD for most of publishers is optional. For Nintendo is mandatory since their games almost never go on sale. I wouldn't mind Nintendo games prices if they decreased over time like any other publisher. Even the re-releases of their Wii U games released originally ~13 years ago are still 60 USD

Edit: You're also misunderstanding the statistics, because they are inflated by people who mostly play GaaS like Fortnite and spend all their money of them. Push for live services free to play games has a correlation with high entry prices for games. There are subscriptions like Game Pass and PS Plus to give away free games for a monthly fee

There are no similar option on Nintendo systems, hence pricing for gaming purchases are even more important for Nintendo than other consoles 

Problem though is that Nintendo only does discounts on a timed bases and not by that much. Third party publishers often give big discounts after a while. Including for games that initially cost $70. 

I won't complain about a $70 price for a game I'm interested in, if I know I can get it for half or less by being a little patient.

That is also just a myth, Nintendo games go on sell both digitally, but have bigger sales at retail 1-2 years after release. Sure, Nintendo games never go down to Steam or Ubisoft prices, but if you don't want to buy Nintendo games at 60-70, you can find retail deals that take the price down to 30 for Nintendo games. But core gamers generally lack the patience to wait for price drops, which is why they instead complain about 70 priced games because they can't wait to buy the game later down the line when the good retail deals start to happen.