Nintendo has weighed in on the possibility of lowering the price of the Nintendo Switch. The Nintendo Switch is one of the most successful consoles of all-time which may come as a bit of a surprise given the Wii U was a total bomb. The Nintendo is more or less hit or miss with its hardware, as the GameCube floundered, but the Wii is one of the biggest pieces of gaming hardware ever released. The Nintendo Switch managed to achieve something really remarkable by creating a home console that people could take with them wherever they wanted and while not all of the games on it run at the highest fidelity, it’s still something that has found a very strong audience.
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With that said, the Nintendo Switch has been out for six years and has largely remained the same price. Usually, at this point in a console’s life span, the manufacturer will reduce the price as the cost to produce it lowers and can hopefully entice anyone who has been holding off on the hardware. With that said, Nintendo doesn’t seem to be interested in this approach with the Nintendo Switch. During a Q&A tied to the company’s financial results (via NintendoEverything), Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa noted that different market factors have Nintendo hesitant to slash the price of the console.
“With regard to hardware, prices for certain materials have fallen but overall costs remain high,” said Furukawa. “We must also continue to account for the impact of factors such as inflation and foreign exchange rates. Production was highly impacted during the previous fiscal year (ended March 31, 2023), so we are ensuring our parts procurement occurs far enough in advance to ensure stable production. Even if raw material prices decrease, it will take time for this to be reflected in manufacturing costs. Currently, there are no plans to reduce the price of our hardware during this fiscal year. On the other hand, while we also have no plans to raise prices, the yen continues to be weak, and procurement costs remain high, so we will continue to monitor the situation carefully.”
As of right now, we have no idea if the Nintendo Switch will ever lower its price. There’s already a lot of talk about the Nintendo Switch’s successor, which means if a Switch price cut comes, it could be after the next Nintendo console releases. Either way, it doesn’t seem to be stopping people from picking up the console, especially with killer apps like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomย being a lucrative draw.
