Topic: Problems with the price.

@rallydefault I mean, some people who are complaining about it don't spend their money on needless things they could do without. Grocery prices are abysmal across the board, even if you aren't spending that money on things like takeout. It also doesn't take into account the amount that simply having a roof over your head is going to cost you- even if you get a simple apartment. Simple costs of living count up in this economy, and corporations barely pay people enough to be able to survive. It's only getting worse when you take into account that inflation will climb higher and higher due to the tariffs- as America is reliant on imports for a majority of the things people purchase in order to live. A majority of materials that industries need in order to make goods that people require- let alone items that are luxuries that people can live without.

Every time prices will raise, I feel like it'll always be the same song and dance that it's "only ten more dollars, you can pay that surely." I was saying this last generation when they announced that PS5 games were 70 dollars. Saying that they were going to increase the games again to 80 dollars in a few years. Now we're at that point, and it's safe to assume that games are going to increase to 90 USD in a few years time. Eventually games will cost as much as people used to buy consoles for- and in the end, no one will be able to afford or justify buying into that luxury. I'm not even blaming Nintendo here, since they have no control over inflation or the economy at large. It's all on the government bodies and the companies that won't pay their workers a living wage. Health Care companies that charge tons for life-saving medicines that should be way cheaper. Procedures that people might have to undergo, or even rides to the hospital in the event that they can't afford to even have a car in the first place. The system is flawed when even people who are smart with their money cannot afford to live- let alone live while having hobbies that keep them happy and mentally healthy.

@VoidofLight
Sure, "some" people, but honestly, I'd bet the majority of people complaining about the 80-dollar price of MK world turn around and spend 10 bucks on something they absolutely don't need. And yea, whatever, but to a person like me, it's just so incongruous that I have to laugh.

Anyway, what you say about this procession of "It's just 10 dollars more": I have bad news for ya. That's how inflation works. Things are SUPPOSED to eventually cost more. That's just the way economies work. Games have been incredibly weird here in the U.S., frankly, for not slowly rising in price over the last decade or so. It's like a town that hasn't seen a tax hike in a few years because the local government doesn't want to upset the residents, but then one year when they're short on money BECAUSE they hadn't been incrementally keeping up with rising costs, they have to jack up the taxes and everybody complains. (Not that I speak from experience or anything lol)

I get your point about wages not rising along with inflation. That's a problem, absolutely. But again, not everybody is a monolith there. I don't work in the private sector, but I can tell you this: I haven't received a notable increase in my salary for eight years. Eight years. But I'm getting by, I have a family and a mortgage, and we live within our means and we're smart about things so that we can afford things we want and enjoy.

I'm just sick of the "woe is me" mentality that people put on as if everybody else in the world is responsible for their problems. And be annoyed with me, whatever, when I say: If 10 bucks is gonna break you, you're doing something majorly wrong with your finances (assuming you have a job, of course). Sometimes people are put in really terrible positions through no fault of their own, but I do not for a second believe that is the majority of people.

I'm just baffled on why people are complaining about the price so much. Is it high? Oh yeah, but you are getting a 120hz FHD 7.9" screen. As soon as they revealed that I knew it wasn't going to be cheap.

On the other hand, this sounds way premium and Nintendo should have launched a smaller screen variant with a 60hz panel for cheaper. 120hz just seems like overkill and not a lot of Nintendo games are going to take advantage of it.

Because most casual Nintendo fans are oblivious to the PC handheld market.

The direct correlation to Switch 2 are PS5 and XSX. Well, to be honest, just PS5. Folks have almost forgotten about Xbox and/or are just waiting for the next Xbox in 2027. Anywho, imagine a parent at Christmas time.

Switch 2 and Mario Kart World or PS5 and Spider-Man 2? The PS5 + Spider-Man 2 bundle is $400 between Black Friday and New Years. The Switch 2 and Mario Kart World bundle? Might be $600 once the dust settles around the tariff situation.

The average consumer is pretty clueless and just thinks "things should be priced at whatever arbitrary number I have in my head".

Nobody is looking at the specs and tech involved in this thing, or what they have squeezed within a tiny tablet, the redesigned joycons that come with it, the fact it has its own screen or the new dock.

The other day someone told me "there's no way it should cost more than [insert random price]". And I had to ask what they were basing it on, because without knowledge of the costs of production, research and development, manufacturing, parts and every aspect of the process down to distribution, marketing and everything else, I have no idea how they can think they have a better idea of pricing strategies than those with access to that information.

The games prices (more specifically Mario Kart World) are a different topic, but video games have always been a very different to other industries. How we value them seems very different and for the most part people act like a one size fits all approach should exist for prices. DLC seems like an artificial way to increase prices, as are pre-order bonuses and other special editions. Nintendo believes Mario Kart World has had so much work put into it and so much more content than any other Mario Kart game that it is worth the price tag they have given it. Consumers believe games can't get bigger and bigger and have a price increase to compensate for it, unless they carve it up and issue some of it later as DLC, of course...

@Kaisarion83 @Reprise

People are upset because the prices are elevated by the corporate mindset of pushing the limits. If the management gets the analysis saying they can push the product for a certain price, they will. Amount sold per production costs. They need to turn as much profit as they can to satisfy the investors. It is not about being fair or providing as much as they can for a fair price anymore. Hence no hall sticks, no OLED, etc. Because they calculated that the amount people that won't buy the product due to it being half - baked doesn't matter as they can save more by half - baking the product.

Prices are also evaluated by cost to manufacture the product. I am not defending Nintendo on a fan boy bases, but I definitely know a tablet with 120hz vrr HDR screen is pricey to make. I have been on so many boards scoping out responses over the years and the overwhelming vocal cries where they wanted higher tech. Now that they got it they are complaining about the price and nit picking it.

And I'm sorry to say this, OLED is not a good tech. The nature of LCDs need a slower response time for pixels to catch up in motion. Anything below the displays native HZ and it's going to stutter really bad. The Switch 2 may be 120hz but they couldn't even push out 30fps last gen. Games won't hit it and if it was OLED it would not only cost more to make, but motion would suck on it.

@Kaisarion83
The Switch 2 is confirmed to support variable refresh rates, which includes the system's 120hz LCD display, and compatible displays.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2025/04/nintendo-switch-2-i...
So thankfully it shouldn't look so bad in scenarios where the frame output can't keep up.

Looking it up though, it looks like the Switch 2 specifically supports Nvidia's proprietary G-Sync technology, it's not clear if it'll work on FreeSync compatible displays.
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/nintendo-switch-2-leveled-up-wi...
My 4K 60hz monitor supports FreeSync and I'll be sure to try it out.

@Princess_Lilly
You think the Switch 2 is “half baked”? Even after all of these performance analyses that show it being faster than expected?

And no price uptick on NSO while getting more games with it and more features? Game sharing to potentially avoid even having to buy a game? Game cards that allow you to now essentially trade digital games once you’re done with them?

This is all “corporate greed,” yes?

In my country the console costs 520€ in local stores (console only without a game). So from people I talked to just all of them confirmed that they will not buy it. They had switch 1, but probably they will seek other options. Some say Steam Deck some say they will wait the xbox handheld and then decide.

@Kaisarion83 well, OLED was something people wanted, I for one have no quarrel with LCD, but it was presented to us along with a ton of other bad news. And of course they have to take the manufacturing costs into account. That's why they have not repaired the main issue of Switch 1, the sticks. Thing that literally got them into court for low quality. What I am getting at is that they are by no means our benefactors, just another company. And one of the main principles of corporations is that they are always greedy.

@rallydefault I do think that for what price they are calling, it should be absolutely worth it. I understand your point of view, but consider this:

No hall sticks, meaning you will have to rely on 3rd party controllers or buy a joycon pair every 6 months.

No SD card support.

Ridiculous pricing on their games - if it's not a masterpiece, I won't buy it for 2x price, I like gaming but there are some reasonable limits

No price uptick for a service that has yet to become worth of its price (not that it's expensive, but it doesn't offer much, if you don't count holding online play hostage like Sony and Microsoft)

Game cards that should contain the full product and is a cheap way of saving manufacturing money by storing your product on an external server that will be turned off in the future without your knowledge or consent? I do not believe that it's an upgrade from the physical copies. And I really don't think they will be as cheap as other digital copies.

All in all, Nintendo was once known for its quality. These consoles lasted. Now they are just another "make it so it won't break in the first month of using" providers.

I am in no way bashing on Nintendo for no reason, I loved their games and I own all generations since SNES (okay without N64) but happily buying something just because it's there is, in my opinion, hurting the industry. It shows companies that they can inflate prices ad infinitum with no breaking point.

@Princess_Lilly
Are there any consoles that have first-party controllers with Hall effect sticks? Wouldn’t that be incredibly expensive, and people are already complaining about the prices?

NSO is worth it if you use it, just like anything.

Pricing for the games? You mean based on the one example we have for the 80 dollars? You’re jumping to conclusions.

And storage formats get faster. Again, people want faster loads and for their tech to be cutting edge, then complain when they have to pay for it.

The pricing doesn’t bother me at all, I’m sorry, I know it’s an issue for some people and I am certainly not going to argue that you’re wrong, because you’re not.

But even the occasional higher priced game, Mario Kart being the obvious example, to me doesn’t seem unreasonable in the grand scheme of things, I’ve paid many multiples of that price for a game in my 46 years of gaming and I’m not even talking about rare, retro games. I paid more than that for Street Fighter 2 on SNES, I paid a hell of a lot more for every NeoGro game I ever bought back in the day.

But even all that aside, it’s the kind of pricing I’ve gotten used to paying on PS5/Xbox Series X for some games. And when I think of the larger picture, I’ve probably played a good couple of hundred of hours of Mario Kart 8 over the past 11 years (Wii U included) so even at the combined price of buying the same game twice that’s somewhere around £0.30 per hour of entertainment. If I go to the cinema with my wife and watch a 2 hour film, taking into account the ticket cost, food cost and anything else, it costs me somewhere around £46 per hour of entertainment. Hell, my wife bought us VIP tickets to go see Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds last week (google it you young people lol) for my 50th birthday present that was a two hour (give or take) show, throw on the cost of everything we bought there as well and you’re looking at around £320 per person, per hour. (For the record, it was freaking awesome.)

Sure, it’s different mediums, but the basic principle is the same, it’s all just entertainment and on that principle, even Mario Kart is damn good value for money in the long term entertainment factor. For me at least.

Now you are just making stuff up, or at best, making assumptions. You have no idea if they suffer from the same issue that their predecessors had. Just because a stick isn't a hall effect stick, does not mean by default it has a drift issue. The new sticks have been redesigned from the ground up. They are not the same sticks that the Switch 1 had. You really think that Nintendo went to the effort of redesigning the sticks and didn't attempt to address the issue that has cost them a ton of money in free life time repairs and court cases?

Were people complaining endlessly about stick drift being an issue on Wii U, or Wii, or GameCube? Were those hall effect sticks?

Am I the only one who was pleasantly surprised by the console's price? I expected $500!

The $80 MKWorld is a bummer, but also... I am not too concerned. Even a $100 game, if it gives me at least 100 hours of content and I enjoy every bit of it, is worth it to me. Yes, I know some can't afford it, and I am sorry for them, but I personally at least am satisfied.

I'm not particularly worried that Nintendo aren't using Hall Effect sensors. There are plenty of other ways to mitigate against stick drift.

That said, they're neither bleeding edge tech nor expensive. The Dreamcast controller used one over a quarter century ago, and they've found their way into some very cheap handhelds like the Xu Mini M and the Retroid Pocket 2S, both of which can be had for under $100.

So, the idea that they aren't using them because they'd be too expensive or represent too much of a technological risk doesn't wash. They've just gone with another solution.

There is going to be some finger-pointing happening if serious stick drift issues emerge once more, I suppose, although I'm obviously hoping that they don't.

@Matt_Barber So they had to basically create their own based on Hall Effect without saying they are.

@Matt_Barber
You make it sound like there are no downsides to Hall Effect joysticks. Why wouldn't everyone be using them if that's the case? If it's not an increase in price, there has to be some reason why they aren't industry standard otherwise. Your post "doesn't wash," as you say lol

The Hall effect is named after the physicist Edwin Hall, who discovered it. He's been dead since 1938, so any copyrights he held would have expired by now, not that you could copyright a law of physics in the first place.

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

@rallydefault The downside is obviously the price, but we're only talking a handful of dollars per unit here, possibly just cents when your procuring them by the millions. The equation is more about whether it's worth more to Nintendo as a selling point to have them or as a minor cost reduction to have not, and they've obviously plumped for the latter.

Like I said, so long as there's no recurrence of Joy-Con drift, it shouldn't matter.

@Matt_Barber I already replaced my Splatoon recently started to drift left and TOTK with Hall Effect because I had bought 2 pair so do it right and now have to worry later on. My other Pokémon that other family has across the country that is a different story but If I can get a second Switch 2 and have them send the Pokémon OLED back and the extra joy-con I bought for it and replace all of at the same time and send the Switch 2 to them and they wouldn't have to worry about drifts.