Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#151

Post by __s » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

JeremyNT wrote: post #139

metadat wrote: post #112

I bought a Steam Deck earlier this year and haven’t touched my Switch since. Nintendo hardware and games were already obscenely overpriced imo, so this is essentially a nail in the coffin for folks who were already questioning Nintendo’s prices and value proposition. Does Nintendo intentionally make its hardware really underpowered and cheap in terms of chips to juice profits? In the past this was more the case, but…

> Does Nintendo intentionally make its hardware really underpowered and cheap in terms of chips to juice profits? In the past this was stronger but with the Switch 2 the hardware bill of materials is actually more costly relative to previous products like the Switch 1. They know that the combination of extremely high quality first party exclusives combined with hugely popular IP is going to move units even if they're…

You can run Ship of Harkinian on steamdeck

Twilight Princess soon

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#152

Post by InsideOutSanta » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

metadat wrote: post #112

I bought a Steam Deck earlier this year and haven’t touched my Switch since. Nintendo hardware and games were already obscenely overpriced imo, so this is essentially a nail in the coffin for folks who were already questioning Nintendo’s prices and value proposition. Does Nintendo intentionally make its hardware really underpowered and cheap in terms of chips to juice profits? In the past this was more the case, but…

By "a nail in the coffin", do you mean that people will stop buying Switches? Because I would be very surprised by that.

It's not like most people even know what a Steam Deck is. At the moment at least, the two devices mostly don't compete for the same audience. And if you want to play Nintendo's games - which a lot of people do, they're usually quite good - you don't have much choice anyway.

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#153

Post by chocochunks » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #137

metadat wrote: post #112

I bought a Steam Deck earlier this year and haven’t touched my Switch since. Nintendo hardware and games were already obscenely overpriced imo, so this is essentially a nail in the coffin for folks who were already questioning Nintendo’s prices and value proposition. Does Nintendo intentionally make its hardware really underpowered and cheap in terms of chips to juice profits? In the past this was more the case, but…

Does anyone really find the Switch 2 to be underpowered? Is the Steam Deck really that much more powerful, and is it worth the extra 100 grams of weight? Metroid Prime 4 looks amazing, and you can choose 4K@60 or 1080p@120. I don't really care about generated frames or whatever AI magic the console is doing to pull it off, it looks great.

It's not really. The CPU in the Switch 2 isn't the most amazing and the Steam Deck has 4GB extra RAM (but it's also got a lighter OS), but the GPU is worse on Deck. Switch 2 offers pretty comparable performance in handheld mode, better in docked and devs are more likely to tailor games for Switch 2. FF7 Rebirth looks like trash on Deck, even on my faster 780M handheld it was pretty ugly, I had to hack in FSR3/4 support for it to look remotely decent. Switch 2 by comparison looks better. Star Wars Outlaws is another example.

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#154

Post by bschwindHN » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

bzzzt wrote: post #147

kyrra wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a switch 2 for one main reason: speed. Switch 2 is backwards compatible with switch 1. Switch 2 has better FPS for Switch 1 games. Like BotW stops having terrible FPS drops in certain scenarios. Switch 2 loads games faster. There are test videos out there, but it's up to twice as fast. I like the joycon 2 controllers ergonomics more.

I've played BotW on Switch 1 and the Switch 2 upgraded edition. While some scenes are a bit choppy on Switch 1 it's never in the way of gameplay and even on Switch 1 one of the best video games of the last decade. Of course Switch 2 is faster and the better console (it should be), but if you're focussing on raw performance you're in the wrong crowd. Even on PS5 you have load times and performance tradeoffs. There wil…

> but if you're focussing on raw performance you're in the wrong crowd.

I read it as "I enjoy the Switch 1 games, but I want to enjoy them even more with faster load times and better frame rates"

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#155

Post by bsimpson » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:34 PM UTC

jgbuddy wrote: post #123

Funny the European and US models have the same price. effectively a 20% discount buying it in europe.

The EUR is often worth more than the USD, which leads to complaints when they are given the same nominal price (500 bucks, in this case). Europeans think they're getting overcharged.

One big difference is sales tax. If you remove the 20% VAT and apply the currency conversion, a European Switch would cost an American $472 after these changes. Tax is added here, so it could cost an American as much as $550 back home.

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#156

Post by InsideOutSanta » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #137

metadat wrote: post #112

I bought a Steam Deck earlier this year and haven’t touched my Switch since. Nintendo hardware and games were already obscenely overpriced imo, so this is essentially a nail in the coffin for folks who were already questioning Nintendo’s prices and value proposition. Does Nintendo intentionally make its hardware really underpowered and cheap in terms of chips to juice profits? In the past this was more the case, but…

Does anyone really find the Switch 2 to be underpowered? Is the Steam Deck really that much more powerful, and is it worth the extra 100 grams of weight? Metroid Prime 4 looks amazing, and you can choose 4K@60 or 1080p@120. I don't really care about generated frames or whatever AI magic the console is doing to pull it off, it looks great.

It's an odd criticism to begin with. The Switch is a toy, it's not a PC. Apart from a few shitty PC ports, it runs its games just fine, so in what sense is it really "underpowered"? Would Super Mario Bros. Wonder be a better game if the Switch 2 could push twice as many polygons?

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#157

Post by InsideOutSanta » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #98

harimau777 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, a significant part of the enjoyment in gaming for me is the community aspects of talking about the latest popular game. Unfortunately, that means that while games on the previous cycle's console are often still good, they innately lack one of the biggest parts of gaming as a hobby for me.

I grew up in a time when we got one or two games a year, if we wanted more games, piracy with double deck tapes, or programming our own games, were the only options available. Thus it is hard to feel the need to be talking about the latest popular game.

But you're also describing the social aspects of gaming, meeting with friends to swap games to copy, trading the few games we had, and so on.

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#158

Post by nothercastle » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

hectdev wrote: post #124

SwtCyber wrote: post #94

The Switch 2 price bump isn't too surprising, but increasing the price of the old Switch models this late is pretty wild...

If it is a matter of cost of manufacturing and shipping going up, doesn't that make sense? Can't speak to the digital services going up, however.

Profits must be maintained at all costs

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#159

Post by nothercastle » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

SwtCyber wrote: post #96

pjmlp wrote: post #45

Switch 1 still has more games than I have time to play, plenty of them around to get.

That's probably the strongest argument against rushing into Switch 2

At some point they will upgrade hardware and improve battery life. That’s the biggest argument for waiting. All first Gen Nintendo handhelds had terrible battery life

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#160

Post by dragontamer » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:41 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #137

metadat wrote: post #112

I bought a Steam Deck earlier this year and haven’t touched my Switch since. Nintendo hardware and games were already obscenely overpriced imo, so this is essentially a nail in the coffin for folks who were already questioning Nintendo’s prices and value proposition. Does Nintendo intentionally make its hardware really underpowered and cheap in terms of chips to juice profits? In the past this was more the case, but…

Does anyone really find the Switch 2 to be underpowered? Is the Steam Deck really that much more powerful, and is it worth the extra 100 grams of weight? Metroid Prime 4 looks amazing, and you can choose 4K@60 or 1080p@120. I don't really care about generated frames or whatever AI magic the console is doing to pull it off, it looks great.

> 4K@60

Parts of Samus's gun and some parts of the UI are 4k.

I'm a Nintendo fan but this 4k@60 claim from Nintendo is incredibly laughable. The vast majority of the screen is upscaled.

I think there were a bunch of 4k Hatsune Miku games that came out. It turns out that 2D renderings at 4k can be accomplished with very low end hardware.

The game looks good because Nintendo has excellent artists. So I guess it's worth the money. But the technical specs are completely baloney.