He may have just fumbled into an accuracy, but the nuance here is that what you're saying is mostly true for domestically produced things, which is why the other country you're mostly referring to is China - they have domestic production facilities for just about everything.

Something like the Switch is going to rely heavily on imported parts, and so when your currency plummets relative to others, that forces you to increase prices just to stay in the black. And yeah in looking it up, then yen has dropped about 50% against the yuan just over the past 5 years. Seems like Japan didn't learn much from the US about picking 'print money' as your economic policy. It doesn't last long when you're an economic hegemon able to export your inflation, but it's a far worse idea when you're a lesser economic power.

First, Japan doesn't make the Switch in Japan. They are made in Vietnam and China. So having a weak local currency isn't super helpful.

Second, the largest price increase is for the local Japanese market (and they are increasing the already-underpriced special 'Japan-only' model that they won't allow to be sold in other markets).

This is a large price rise in domestic (Japanese) markets, with a small rise in other countries. This is impacting Japanese consumers the most.

Nintendo is a very Japanese-centric, proud company. For those not aware, Nintendo has been avoiding repricing domestically until now by selling a "Japanese-only Switch" locked to Japan in order to prevent foreign arbitrage. But the currency pressure is too strong.

The thing is dependent on imported RAM. The flip side of this.. have you seen SK Hynix stock price lately?

You’ll notice they raised prices in Japan by A Lot, but the US price is only up $50.

It totally depends on if you need to import things to transform them or if you source mostly locally in your supply chain.

Yeah, the comment talking about currency exchange rates is missing the hardware crisis. Nintendo stock prices dropped 45% over the past year because of the hardware shortages and the inevitability of having to raise prices to account for that. I think the difference in currencies is a minor factor. Last July, Nintendo was selling for about $24 a share, and now it's down to about $12.

https://www.ign.com/articles/nintendo-under-pressure-to-rais...

Hardware is just one aspect of sales though. I assume they have much higher margin on software, especially rereleases of existing games on whatever the next platform is.

That's very simplistic. They also earn money on sales, both first-party and third-party games, so they need a large audience.

Hang on, halving your sales means doubling your price to stay even (ignoring your own cost), right?

I have a bridge to sell you …

DRAM prices increase everywhere, so it should affect the worldwide market in the same way. But Nintendo is raising prices mostly in Japan.

Japan's local currency devaluation is more about US vs Japan differences in central bank policy and interest rates (and a million other issues) and is mostly separate from DRAM prices.

Check out the US dollar index on a 5-year view: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/quote/DX-Y.NYB/

Inflation is just one factor and is not limited to one country. This shows the US dollar vs other currencies.