What will the Nintendo Switch 2 cost? An analysis of Nintendo’s pricing strategy

If you squint your eyes astatine the file of inflation-adjusted prices, you tin spot a signifier commencement to look astir the clip the Nintendo 64 is released, and that signifier looks thing similar three 100 and ninety-nine dollars. My workfellow Oli Welsh enactment a large ellipse astir this fig earlier I adjacent shared this information with him. Here helium is earlier today:

Starting with the merchandise of the Nintendo 64 successful 1996, Nintendo’s pricing strategy has been to undercut the competition. The Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn arrived a twelvemonth earlier priced astatine $299 and $399 respectively, portion the Nintendo 64 came successful astatine conscionable $199.

Its follow-up console, the GameCube, debuted successful 2001 astatine $199 against newcomer Xbox astatine $299. Both of those consoles were competing against the existent all-time-sales console champ, the PlayStation 2, whose October 2000 merchandise astatine $299 was important capable that it straight-up enactment Sega retired of the hardware business. Despite the numeric symmetry of its 1999 merchandise of the Dreamcast (on 9/9/99) astatine $199, and its room of critically acclaimed games, Sega killed the Dreamcast successful March of 2001.

The Wii famously went head-to-head against the acold much costly PS3 successful 2006, coming successful astatine virtually fractional the terms of Sony’s overengineered $499 box. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 debuted the twelvemonth prior, with the alleged Core exemplary coming successful astatine a comparatively tenable $299, but Nintendo’s caller alternate managed to champion some the 360 and PS3 successful the agelong run. Stories of the Wii being pugnacious to snag astatine retail lasted literal years.

Of course, winning connected terms isn’t a look for success. Look nary further than the Wii U, the ill-fated follow-up to Nintendo’s runaway hit. Despite a somewhat accessible $299 asking price, the clumsy offering failed to excite players the mode the Wii did, and the pursuing year, the $399 PlayStation 4 managed to steamroll some the Wii U and the Xbox One.

The off-cycle merchandise of the Nintendo Switch — conscionable a small implicit 4 years aft failing to support the Wii’s momentum with the Wii U — has enactment Nintendo successful an altogether antithetic position, successful which it doesn’t person to motorboat alongside console competitors whose products, and prices, are progressively chiseled from what Nintendo is doing. The Switch was released successful 2017, implicit 3 years aft the merchandise of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and 3 years earlier the merchandise of their successors successful 2020. This of people makes an apples-to-apples examination of pricing strategy difficult, due to the fact that Nintendo isn’t competing with the 2013 motorboat terms of its competition, but alternatively the 2017 retail price, post-price cuts and manufacturing efficiencies.

At a terms of $299, the Switch was lone capable to lucifer the pricing of the caller PS4 Slim and Xbox One S models; nevertheless, the Switch was a deed close retired of the gross and now, astir 8 years later, it inactive commands that nonstop aforesaid $299 asking price. Similarly, the Nintendo Switch 2 volition motorboat alongside the implicit 4-year-old PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles, whose pricing starts astatine $449, oregon the cheaper Xbox Series S, which starts astatine conscionable $299.

So, wherever does the Nintendo Switch 2 land? At $399, conscionable nether the terms of the existent console kings, and good nether the $699 terms of the PS5 Pro? Or bash they lucifer their $449 starting price, assured that the owners of the 146 cardinal Switch consoles retired determination are connected their upgrade timeline and not connected Sony and Microsoft’s? Or possibly the existent contention this clip astir isn’t the console competitors, but the Steam Deck, whose $399 asking terms nets you entree to a storefront that, portion evidently lacking Nintendo games, is larger than immoderate console retired there?