Will the Nintendo Switch ever see a price drop?
Enlarge (credit: Mark Walton)
In a recent interview with Nikkei Asia, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said the company has no plans "at this point" to increase the price of the Switch. Despite "rising production and shipping costs" for the system, Furukawa said Nintendo wants to "avoid pricing people out" of its console ecosystem (a worry apparently not shared by Meta, which recently raised the asking price of its Quest 2 VR headset).
While some are overreading the "at this point" phrasing as suggestive of a future Switch price increase, all this talk has us focused on some different questions. Namely, why haven't we seen a price drop for the Nintendo Switch in the last five-plus years? And can we ever expect Nintendo to offer the system for less than its launch price?
A historical anomalyWhen it comes to consistent console pricing, the Switch is truly in a class by itself. As of this writing, the Switch has been available in North America for over five years-nearly 2,000 days-yet it's still being sold in the US for the same $299.99 you would have paid when the system launched in March, 2017.