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Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

nintendo.co.jp

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Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#221

Post by toast0 »

Analemma_ wrote: post #196
willis936 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also most parents will scoff at the prices and tell them to pick cheaper toys.

That hasn’t been happening since the beginning of video games and it isn’t about to start now. Adjusted for inflation the NES was about $590 at launch and individual games were $90-120. Didn’t stop it from nearly wiping the American video game industry clean off the earth.

To be fair, the American video game industry had pretty well wiped itself off the earth. Nintendo came in and actively worked to present itself as different and did a fair bit of anti-competitive stuff once it got market power: can't release the same game on other platforms, limited release count per developer, strict cartridge hardware controls, etc.

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#222

Post by maccard »

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…

> While some scenes are a bit choppy on Switch 1 it's never in the way of gameplay

BOTW had issues with framerate (30fps was the baseline which isn't good to start with), and often dropped to below that in open world scenarios. TOTK has major performance issues on the Switch 1 though IME.

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#223

Post by maccard »

uncircle wrote: post #82
echelon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll wait for the Ocarina of Time remake. The leaks have been coming out for months now and say it is supposedly coming out this fall. The upcoming Legend of Zelda film sets seem to be based on Ocarina of Time, recent merchandise (LEGO sets, etc.) are based on Ocarina of Time to enhance marketing, etc. Nintendo just dropped the official Starfox 64 remake news yesterday, so this rumor is likely pretty legitimate. I do…

Entertainment companies have unlocked the infinite money glitch with remakes; not only companies but also people are afraid of trying something new, so why not profit from nostalgia. I called it years ago, but I didn’t expect how people would love to play the same story and watch the same movie over and over again. Incidentally they will be also easier to AI generate, as part of their existing data set. It truly is t…

> I called it years ago, but I didn’t expect how people would love to play the same story and watch the same movie over and over again

How many years ago? because movies have been remade since the beginning of motion pictures - the great train Robbery was in the early 1900s.

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#224

Post by Fricken »

maccard wrote: post #173
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Compared to Xbox and PlayStation it’s vastly underpowered. They’re not “shitty PC ports”, they’re ports that people tried, likely managed to one platform and then when they tried on switch 2 realised just how far behind it is.

Yeah, but does having twice the polygons make the game twice as fun? It does not. The Switch is only behind on metrics that don't matter.

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#225

Post by uncircle »

maccard wrote: post #223
uncircle wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entertainment companies have unlocked the infinite money glitch with remakes; not only companies but also people are afraid of trying something new, so why not profit from nostalgia. I called it years ago, but I didn’t expect how people would love to play the same story and watch the same movie over and over again. Incidentally they will be also easier to AI generate, as part of their existing data set. It truly is t…

> I called it years ago, but I didn’t expect how people would love to play the same story and watch the same movie over and over again How many years ago? because movies have been remade since the beginning of motion pictures - the great train Robbery was in the early 1900s.

I'm mostly thinking about video games. The problem is systemic. It's simply less risky to remake than to create a new IP

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#226

Post by einsteinx2 »

tejohnso wrote: post #131
darkxanthos wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone has a switch, gifting a steam deck isn't an upgrade necessarily. You're giving them a platform that can't play most of the games they probably love. Not because of specs of course. A switch 2 is actually an upgrade. Almost all of their current games will run better and they'll be able to play more demanding switch 2 only games as they continue to trickle out.

I should have mentioned current game play is skewed more toward steam on pc than switch. I'm definitely not getting the impression that the switch games are loved.

I have both, and if they already have a good steam library I’d definitely go with the steam deck for them. They’ll immediately have a bunch of games to play on it (and synced game progress).

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#227

Post by musicale »

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…

> Nintendo hardware and games were already obscenely overpriced imo

Nothing against those $1 game sales on Steam or gog.com (or "free to play"/live service games – for those who can tolerate their monetization schemes), but fun/benefit per dollar for {Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros., Animal Crossing, Ring Fit Adventure, etc.} has been huge for me, even accounting for the cost of the console and additional controllers.

Being able to pop in a physical game card and play the game immediately (even if you are offline) is another thing I appreciated about the Switch (though unfortunately some Switch 2 games are not available as real game cards.)

> 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 with the Switch 2 the hardware bill of materials is actually more costly relative to previous products like the Switch 1.

Underpowered and cheap, yes, but not really "to juice profits". See "lateral thinking with withered technology":

"his strategy demonstrated Nintendo's belief that graphical advancement is not the only way to make progress in gaming technology; indeed, after the Wii's overwhelming success, Sony and Microsoft released their own motion control peripherals."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#228

Post by stevenwoo »

gekoxyz wrote: post #126
stevenwoo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked and it’s $53 at Costco. Also free to rent without waitlist at local library.

your local library rents Nintendo Switch games???

I live in Santa Clara County in northern California, the county library has Playstation, XBox and Switch games for rent (you do have to take either a box or a slip of paper to the counter to get the physical game - they do not leave them out like movies.) There is a long wait period for the latest releases. I think I had to wait almost a year for The 100 Line: Last Defense Academy, and it took me two rental periods of 21+ days to play through it.

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#229

Post by evilduck »

gorjusborg wrote: post #210
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's not like most people even know what a Steam Deck is. Steam basically is PC gaming at this point, which is still a massive market that is almost as big as the entirety of console gaming. I know there are those out there, but I would be slightly surprised if a PC gamer didn't know what a Steam Deck was in 2026. As someone who has pretty much every console system and most handhelds, I didn't spring for a Switch 2…

The Switch also followed a poor WiiU cycle that caused some pent up demand and launched with Zelda BotW which was an epic title. People bought Switches just to play that game and then stuck around to buy other titles on the platform. The Switch 2 doesn't have either going for it.

I'm in the same boat as you, I also don't feel the need to buy a Switch 2 yet. Also, game sharing on Steam with my kids is just so much more pleasant. Having multiple kids and multiple Switches was such a shit show of what felt like manual license and provisioning management that I'm not really keen on giving Nintendo more money at this time.

Re: Nintendo announces price increases for Nintendo Switch 2

#230

Post by musicale »

cardanome wrote: post #209
JeremyNT wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The combination of expensive hardware AND expensive games kills the switch 2 for me. 80 Dollar just to play Mario Kart? Even older switch titles are barely ever on sale. I never buy games at full price so the economics don't add up for me. I guess it works for the kind of person that buys games on release. If someone has that much money to burn they don't need to care about hardware cost either I guess.

> 80 Dollar just to play Mario Kart?

Always has been:

https://gamerant.com/mario-kart-game-launch-price-adjusted-i...

It's also the best game in its category (which Nintendo basically invented), offers terrific local multiplayer on a single console, and is something you can enjoy for years with friends and family.

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