I’ve almost always been one to wait for games to go on sale or have big price drops before picking them up. After all, why pay full price for a game at release when A) I have a huge backlog of games to play as it is, and B) I can just wait a few months and it will be half the price with updates to iron out all the bugs? I’m pretty much the textbook definition of a patient gamer (see r/patientgamers on Reddit), and the thought of paying $60 (or, the horror, $70) for a single game makes me internally shudder.
The exception to this rule has been Nintendo. When a new Mario, Zelda, or Pokémon game comes out, I tend to pick it up on release day. The enjoyment I know I will get of those games makes me begrudgingly get over my aversion to paying full price. And besides, Nintendo rarely puts their games on sale and never has permanent price drops anymore.
It extends to consoles as well. I’ve always waited at least a year or two before picking up the new generations of PlayStation or Xbox, but for Nintendo’s systems I’ve been a pretty faithful day-one or near-day-one purchaser. I lined up at midnight to get a Switch on release day, I’m one of the lucky(?) 3DS Ambassadors who bought the system before it got its early price cut, and I even bought a Wii U within a week after launch.
With that in mind, I went into Wednesday’s Switch 2 Direct knowing there was a strong possibility that I’d be picking one up at launch or close to it. And it was a generally decent showing: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond running at 4k60 or 1080p120, a new 3D Donkey Kong, Pokémon Legends: Z-A actually having a framerate, and Mario Kart World looking like a fun time as always. The upgrades to older Switch games seem significant as well – with Tears of the Kingdom running at a locked 60fps and new content being added to games such as Kirby and the Forgotten Land and Super Mario Party Jamboree.
It seems like Nintendo has cut very few corners with the hardware too: a 1080p 120hz screen that supports HDR and VRR, magnetic Joy-Cons, DLSS and ray-tracing, and actual video and voice chat native on the console (with a subscription to Nintendo’s online service, of course).
So Switch 2 has respectable hardware, a decent slate of upcoming games, and plenty of enhancements to Switch games I haven’t gotten around to playing yet or might want to revisit. Despite the price they announced being about $50 higher than I’d hoped, coming in at $449 USD for the console alone (see note below), I came out of the Direct still thinking that I’d probably pick a Switch 2 up – maybe not at launch, but probably later in the year.
NOTE: As of this morning, Nintendo has announced that preorders for Switch 2 will not, in fact, open on April 9 in the US, and that they are re-evaluating things due to the unhinged orange fascist who’s currently occupying the White House. We may be looking at a $600+ Switch 2 in the US thanks to his new tariffs that are already threatening to tank the global economy.
Then the game prices dropped…or, rather, shot through the ceiling. I had already begrudgingly accepted that I would have to start paying $70 for Nintendo games if I wanted to play them on release day, since Nintendo would obviously join the rest of the industry standard for new release pricing. I wasn’t expecting them to blow past it, announcing an MSRP of $79.99 for Mario Kart World. They even tried to hide it, buried far down the game’s website without an official announcement or even a mention of pricing in the Direct or press release.
Within literal seconds of that discovery, the mostly positive reception of the Switch 2 almost universally did a 180. There have been countless articles and videos about it, the discussion on Reddit and online forums caught fire, and the past two days of Nintendo Treehouse events on YouTube have seen their comment sections consisting almost entirely of “DROP THE PRICE.”
Not only that, but everything about the Switch 2 seems to be a premium luxury product. A fairly expensive system, $70-80 games, price hikes on accessories (controllers and other accessories are at least $10 more expensive than for OG Switch), Switch game upgrades costing $10-20, only supporting pricey microSD Express cards – even the tech demo/tutorial showing off the hardware is a paid digital product. It all goes against Nintendo’s usual philosophy of mass appeal and keeping their products within reach of a wide audience.
The game prices immediately switched me from “begrudgingly going to buy it later this year” to “absolutely no way in hell.” Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza both look really good, but not good enough to justify such an extreme expense, and I can play Metroid Prime 4 and Pokémon Legends: Z-A on Switch – just with worse performance or at 1080p instead of 4K. I’ll likely be waiting at least a year or two to get a Switch 2, when games start going on sale (for $50-60…) and there’s a more robust lineup of games that I absolutely want to play. That is, if we’re not all in a global depression thanks to…you know.
But this is just one symptom of a broader issue. Just because Nintendo was the first to jump for that $80 mark, don’t expect them to be the last. Publishers have been chomping at the bit hinting at wanting more price increases, and analysts have even been postulating the idea of Grand Theft Auto VI costing up to $100. I’m fully expecting that by the end of the year, or next year at the latest, $80 will be the new standard for game pricing now that Nintendo has fired the first shot.
When I already refused to pay $70 for new games, $80 is a bridge way too far, and I think we’ll start to see even more public pushback at the continual price hikes. We’re getting to the point where all but the wealthier people among us are going to be priced out of video games as a hobby, or at least being able to purchase new games and systems.
For me, this whole debacle simply solidifies my status as a patient gamer. I have a huge library of games both physical and digital, and this is a good opportunity to play those games I’ve never gotten around to playing. I picked up a Steam Deck earlier this year, and it’s quickly becoming my primary gaming device. Between my extensive Steam backlog, cheap and free games through Steam sales and Epic, and emulation of classics and older games, I’m set for a long time, and I have an actual PC for the games the Deck won’t run.
It’s also an opportunity to get more mileage out of my Switch. I have quite a few Switch games on my backlog, like the entire Bayonetta series, Fire Emblem Engage, and Metroid Dread. And there are plenty of Switch games that I want to play eventually but haven’t gotten around to picking up: Astral Chain, Yoshi’s Crafted World, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, among plenty of others.
The Switch 2 is just one symptom of the state of the industry as a whole. More and more, video gaming has gotten to be an expensive, luxury hobby that is becoming increasingly inaccessible to all but the wealthiest, most diehard fans. Something’s going to have to give eventually, right? Maybe, but until then, there are still plenty of ways to enjoy gaming if you can get over the need to have the latest and greatest.
Personally, I’ve been enjoying a renewed focus on my existing gaming library/backlog even before the Switch 2 announcement (hence this very site), but the pricing of Switch 2 has cemented in my brain that my time of chasing the newest hardware and games is over, at least for the foreseeable future. After all, waiting a little while for one game or system isn’t so bad when there are millions of games out there that you haven’t experienced.
