The Switch 2 is, unsurprisingly, not cheap. As revealed yesterday after the onslaught of Nintendo Switch 2 Direct news, the Switch’s successor will cost $450 in the United States, while its games are as much as $80, and analysts think they might know why.
That $450 price tag isn’t a total shock – analysts previously predicted that it’d cost at least $400, so this tracks. Looking at the confirmed price now, a number of analysts have explained to IGN the potential reasons behind the console costing so much, with Joost van Dreunen, professor at NYU Stern School of Business and author behind the book One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games, calling the pricing a “strategic balancing act.”
According to the professor, this balancing is partially about increased manufacturing costs, but Nintendo also “appears to be building in a buffer against these potential trade barriers” regarding tariffs. New tariffs were announced by US president Donald Trump just yesterday, hours after Nintendo’s big reveals. On that point, games industry analyst at Ampere Analysis, Piers Harding-Rolls, suggests that Nintendo may not have included the price in the Direct itself as it could have had “a range of pricing for the US market in play up until the last minute due to the uncertainty on import tariffs.”
Since yesterday’s Direct, people have also pointed out that there’s a bit of a difference in the pricing of the Switch 2 in Japan as opposed to overseas. Specifically in Japan, as well as a multi-language system, a Japanese-language system is being launched for the equivalent of about $340 – notably $110 cheaper than the console’s US price (and around $140 cheaper than the multi-language version in Japan) .
Acknowledging this, Omdia analyst James McWhirter points out the importance of Nintendo’s Japanese market (which he states “accounts for a quarter (24%) of the Nintendo Switch installed base in 2024”), and says: “If Switch 2 pricing in Japanese Yen was aligned with the US Dollar price, it would dramatically weaken Nintendo’s position in Japan, representing a doubling in the list price over the classic LCD Nintendo Switch model.”
Alternatively, however, “if Nintendo continued to rely on region-specific pricing that is significantly cheaper in USD terms, they would face an issue with grey imports to other territories.” Essentially, McWhirter speculates, selling the multi-language model at a more expensive price compared to the Japan-only model can “protect the Japanese market from grey imports from other territories,” discouraging international customers from importing a console at a cheaper price from Japan. “Smart considering there are no other major console markets with a not insignificant number of people proficient in the Japanese language,” he adds.
The expense for fans won’t end with the console, of course, with those upcoming Switch 2 games also set to be significantly more pricey than regular Switch releases. Another analyst, Circana’s Mat Piscatella, has suggested that this could be the “new normal of pricing” for those in the US.
Be sure to keep up with everything we know about Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders if you want to get one of Nintendo’s new consoles at launch.