Don’t expect Nintendo Switch to become cheaper this year.
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has said Switch will remain at its current price point despite entering its seventh year on sale, due to inflation and foreign exchange rates.
As for the potential of a price rise – as Sony did for PlayStation 5 last summer – Nintendo did not entirely rule it out.
Speaking to shareholders this week following the company’s latest financial results, Furukawa said that while Nintendo had “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”.
Production issues and component shortages that plagued console production over the past few years are now easing, but Furukawa said this would still “take time” to have an impact on manufacturing costs.
Nintendo’s president also discussed the $10 US price increase for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom compared to launch title Zelda: Breath of the Wild. (Both games are the same price – ~£50 – here in the UK.)
“This does not indicate a general increase in the price of our software,” Furukawa said. “Our approach is to determine the appropriate price of a product on a case-by-case basis. It is true that development costs are on the rise due to the enhanced breadth of content and the requirement of more advanced technology to support online play, so the pricing for our new titles going forward is something that we will continue to consider thoroughly.”
Earlier this week, Nintendo said it expected to see Switch console sales decrease yet again this year, as the console reaches the latter stages of its life cycle. That said, Nintendo is still shifting a near-record number of Switch games – and clearly plans for Switch itself to last at least another year.
Indeed, Nintendo has no plans to launch a Switch successor before April 2024, Furukawa has said.
So, when will we hear more about Nintendo Switch 2? It sounds like we’ll get an announcement much closer to its eventual release than with the current Switch.
Back in the dark the days of Wii U, Nintendo teased its next-generation “NX” hardware for two years before the Switch finally arrived. This was a “special case”, Furukawa said, suggesting it was unlikely to be repeated.
Furukawa said this long announcement and wait period was because Nintendo had also announced its plans to develop smartphone games at the same time – and believed it had to mention its next-gen console plans so fans knew it wasn’t pivoting entirely to mobile.
“I believe that the timing of the Nintendo Switch announcement was a special case,” Furukawa concluded. “We will provide information about hardware and software at the appropriate time for each product and strive to reach a wide range of consumers.”
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