It’s only “outrageously” priced compared to its predecessor, and only if you don’t think about it too much. Considering under the hood it’s basically a phone or tablet, it’s very fairly priced considering the specs.
The Switch 1 is basically a tablet from 2017 being sold for $300. It never received a price drop despite it using 8 year old technology, it actually received a price increase with the OLED model. An iPad 5th Gen from 2017 sells for $50 on eBay, for comparison purposes. Not like for like as that has a way higher res screen and less RAM, but it’s fairly close.
As it’s a new chip with an expected 10 year lifespan, it’s likely on 3nm process which means it has to fight for manufacturing time with TSMC because they’re the only ones who can fab that sort of chip.
All that, plus the expectation that they will be absorbing some tariff costs for now means it will likely never see a price drop, and honestly doesn’t seem that bad in terms of pricing. It’s the cheapest console on the market with the exception of the very underpowered and useless Series S, and it’s competitively priced in terms of the tech under the hood.
So if it will be the cheapest console of its generation, is already cheaper than its ancient competition, is cheaper than a mid range GPU by itself, and is cheaper or comparably priced with similarly specced devices, then how is it so overpriced?
The only argument I’ve heard yet has been “consoles are sold at a loss because the games are expensive” but that hasn’t been true for the industry since the PS4 era, and it’s literally never been true for Nintendo consoles, they always make a profit right out of the gate. So I honestly don’t get it.
It’s only “outrageously” priced compared to its predecessor, and only if you don’t think about it too much. Considering under the hood it’s basically a phone or tablet, it’s very fairly priced considering the specs.
The Switch 1 is basically a tablet from 2017 being sold for $300. It never received a price drop despite it using 8 year old technology, it actually received a price increase with the OLED model. An iPad 5th Gen from 2017 sells for $50 on eBay, for comparison purposes. Not like for like as that has a way higher res screen and less RAM, but it’s fairly close.
As it’s a new chip with an expected 10 year lifespan, it’s likely on 3nm process which means it has to fight for manufacturing time with TSMC because they’re the only ones who can fab that sort of chip.
All that, plus the expectation that they will be absorbing some tariff costs for now means it will likely never see a price drop, and honestly doesn’t seem that bad in terms of pricing. It’s the cheapest console on the market with the exception of the very underpowered and useless Series S, and it’s competitively priced in terms of the tech under the hood.
So if it will be the cheapest console of its generation, is already cheaper than its ancient competition, is cheaper than a mid range GPU by itself, and is cheaper or comparably priced with similarly specced devices, then how is it so overpriced?
The only argument I’ve heard yet has been “consoles are sold at a loss because the games are expensive” but that hasn’t been true for the industry since the PS4 era, and it’s literally never been true for Nintendo consoles, they always make a profit right out of the gate. So I honestly don’t get it.