Taxes are the ones to blame 

South America loves to tax electronics to death.

Still way too overpriced here.

Brazil has crazy import taxes

Falo isso como brasileiro que sou...

Preço do hardware é problema secundário, a verdadeira barreira está no preço dos jogos. A Nintendo é completamente alienados em relação a preços na loja e quase nunca faz promoção.

Enquanto isso Steam/PSN/XBL fazem promoções recorrentes com descontos de +50% em jogos da mais alta qualidade.

Resumindo, Nintendo não sabe trabalhar com o mercado brasileiro.

Sem dúvida nenhuma o maior problema da Nintendo no Brasil é o preço dos jogos nunca cair consideravelmente, enquanto um jogo exclusivo de NS1 lançado em 2017 é vendido em 2026 por 350 tem promoção por 300, um jogo exclusivo de PS5 lançado em 2022 é vendido por 350 (e nunca fica nesse preço em midia fisica) tem promoção por 50 desde 2025.

É absurda a diferença do preço dos jogos, PS tem promoção boa mesmo na pré venda ou lançamento (regularmente compro jogos na pré venda com 30-40% de desconto).

Infelizmente a Sony vai ficar até pior que a Nintendo agora, com jogos só digitais e com descontos pequenos e espaçados na loja online.

Brasileiro que não liga pra exclusivo tem que ficar no PC mesmo, não vai ter mais mercado saudável de consoles por aqui.

Pois é, meu querido.

É o fim da boa prática de comprar o joguinho e depois revender.  Espero ainda encontrar aquele "precinho camarada" do grupo do telegrama, mas também não estou otimista.

Contudo, acho que a Sony vai continuar melhor opção que a Nintendo. A loja virtual da Nintendo é um desastre, eles não tem a menor noção de como precificar os jogos ...

Can't Nintendo (or Sony or Microsoft, for that matter) make a deal with Tec Toy like SEGA did over 30 years ago or some other local company to produce a local version of the Switch (2), Playstation or Xbox in Brazil?

Tectoy is vastly outdated to produce something like the Switch 2, Xbox Series or PS5. Maybe the Switch 1, but that one already exists in abundance around here.

Recently they pretty much white labelled the Ayn Loki Zero as the Zeenix (with some few things changed) which they did not tell people was the case until they discovered it themselves and forced them to admit to not actually be producing a portable PC, even as they originally announced it as a Brazillian system, but were buying it from China because they couldn't make one themselves.

What Nintendo could do was doing like Sony and Microsoft and assembling the system nationally so they avoid many of the taxes, but Nintendo has no physical plant to do it here (or the will to). Sony and Microsoft don't do it themselves either for a long time, Microsoft dropped national assembly in 2015 and Sony in 2017, staying only with officially imported systems.

From January 2015 to September 2020 Nintendo actually dropped Brazil entirely and didn't have any physical product officially sold here, the grey market established the NS1 price at aroud R$ 1700 during that time, and when Nintendo came back the official price was set to R$ 3000. Sadly that boosted the grey market price because it now had a way higher official price reference to stores to use as an excuse. They didn't sell a thing and softly dropped it to around R$ 2300 quickly (got mine in 2021 for R$ 2000), as a sort of deal, which is common around here, and officially to R$ 2400 by mid 2022.

Even so, only around mid 2025, nearly 5 years since they came back to Brazil officially, they even started offering official translations to their games in Brazillian Portuguese, something Sony and Microsoft have been doing consistently since around 2010.

Nintendo have never shown and semblance of will to heavily investing in Brazil, and even dropped it for half a decade, when they didn't get enough profit.

Microsoft has also dropped even official imports, after stopping national assembly in 2015, for the Xbox Series X since 2023, they also massively raised the Series S pricing in the same year, from R$ 2700 to R$ 3600 (again, we have soft price decreases and I vividly remember the Series S being sold for R$ 1600 at some point), that was a Brazil exclusive massive price increase years before this AI crisis we live into made common worldwide since late 2025. 2023 also the year Microsoft stopped selling physical games in Brazil, that was actually the first from those 3 things to be announced that year, and that will be a reality here for 5 years already when what Sony announced to do worldwide happens in 2028. Brazil was Xbox 3rd biggest market only behind the US and the UK not too long ago, but even so we got the middle finger way before you all.

Sony was the only company with still decent hardware sales, breaking sales records consistently from 2023 to 2025 (at least during the holidays starting with Black Friday until New Year, but that is when systems sell a massive % of their whole year total). They've never dropped official imports since they stopped national assembly in 2017. Playstation physical games were consistenly some of the most sold products even on juggernauts like Amazon or Mercado Livre, but we know what is about to happen... I wouldn't be surprised if Sony 2028 follows Microsoft 2023, and also just stops officially selling the PS5 here, and not even bothering selling the PS6 from the get go, consideing its likely going to be insanely pricey.

So things have only been getting worse here, there is no way Nintendo chooses now to do something they never did (national assembly) or for Microsoft and Sony to go back doing it. It's not happening whatsoever.

But that is not the biggest problem, the game prices are.

Nintendo own games never dropping price is the biggest barrier for them here in Brazil. Even with the current big hardware prices (focus on current because next gen will be even more expensive), people can still make an one time exception for the hardware and pay in installments, that's what people do for everything pricey around here, but can't do it consistently when it comes to game releases, just once in a very good while.

Microsoft has no physical games anymore here for years now, but they have decent deals in their store, even so, people pretty much do not buy Xbox games here anymore, only subscribe to Gamepass, it was pretty sad to see people here when they doubled the price here last here (it was a 100% increase here, not a 50% like in the US), they reversed most of it thankfully (not all), but even Gamepass is becoming expensive too...

Sony has a very bad policy to automatically convert pricing from dollars to real in their store, which makes indies vastly pricier in their store compared to the others quite commonly, as small devs don't care to pick a regional pricing for every country, but they do also have decent deals in their store. The saving grace was physical games. Playstation physical game deals were, by very, very far, the best deals we had for gaming here outside of deep Steam sales, with the added value of onwership and collecting. As I have been discussing with Manlytears in Portuguese here, we could get a huge release like a God of War or Horizon for around 30% to 40% off the price during preorder time, or discounts from 50% to 80% within 1 to 2 years after the release with physical games, but that is already announced to completely vanish in 2028 to...

Gaming is liteally cooked around here, weak/old PCs playing free to play games, indies or older games in deep sales on Steam will be pretty much the only viable option for the vast majority of people here come 2028, nobody will care to invest in hardware assembly here anytime soon unless things wildly change.

Maybe I should not drop Genshin Impact in 2028 as I have been planning to do...

Eu tenho visto uma galera reclamar muito que os preços da Sony tão piores que os da Nintendo no Brasil, mas como não tenho PS não posso comentar. Só sei que os da Nintendo deram uma melhorada com o reajuste da alíquota do dólar esse ano e a separação entre preços digital e físico. Star Fox "só" 280, parece o que eu pagava em disco de Wii U 10 anos atrás.