Does Nintendo intentionally make its hardware really underpowered and cheap in terms of chips to juice profits? In the past this was more the case, but with the Switch 2 the hardware bill of materials is actually more costly relative to previous products like the Switch 1.
Poor timing of market forces (Sam Altman spending VC money to purchase all the world’s memory chips). Ouch.
It's not like most people even know what a Steam Deck is. At the moment at least, the two devices mostly don't compete for the same audience. And if you want to play Nintendo's games - which a lot of people do, they're usually quite good - you don't have much choice anyway.
The Steam Deck doesn't cut into Nintendo's core audience, but it does draw away people who would have bought the Switch 1/2 for those reasons -- the audience that made the Switch 1 such an overwhelming success. Anecdotally, I've had multiple non-techies bring up the Steam Deck unprompted, usually with an impression of 'the Switch but better' and/or 'more adult-oriented'.
Historically, when the market they created starts to become saturated, Nintendo starts looking to pivot. So the Steam Deck might not kill the Switch 2, but I'd be very surprised if it doesn't kill the Switch 3.
Steam basically is PC gaming at this point, which is still a massive market that is almost as big as the entirety of console gaming.
I know there are those out there, but I would be slightly surprised if a PC gamer didn't know what a Steam Deck was in 2026.
As someone who has pretty much every console system and most handhelds, I didn't spring for a Switch 2, and it is for the exact reason the thread parent mentions. I do like Nintendo games, as they are consistently high quality, but they are not usually graphics reliant for fun, and the Switch is good enough still, and I don't love paying $90 USD for a single game when I can buy $5-20 games on Steam and play them across multiple devices.
I'm in the same boat as you, I also don't feel the need to buy a Switch 2 yet. Also, game sharing on Steam with my kids is just so much more pleasant. Having multiple kids and multiple Switches was such a shit show of what felt like manual license and provisioning management that I'm not really keen on giving Nintendo more money at this time.
I have neither devices right now, only a PC.
They know that the combination of extremely high quality first party exclusives combined with hugely popular IP is going to move units even if they're "overpriced" as devices to play any other games.
When my daughter's Switch 1 died, I had the choice between the 2 and the Steam Deck, and I chose the Deck. It's got a ton of games and the cheap Steam back catalog is great, but... no Mario? No Zelda?
I won't pretend I wasn't tempted to own both.
80 Dollar just to play Mario Kart?
Even older switch titles are barely ever on sale.
I never buy games at full price so the economics don't add up for me. I guess it works for the kind of person that buys games on release. If someone has that much money to burn they don't need to care about hardware cost either I guess.
Always has been:
https://gamerant.com/mario-kart-game-launch-price-adjusted-i...
It's also the best game in its category (which Nintendo basically invented), offers terrific local multiplayer on a single console, and is something you can enjoy for years with friends and family.
Twilight Princess soon
Yes! Famously so, in fact. Look up Gupei Yokoi and "Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology".
There's a reason Nintendo targets and wins with very casual gamers. It would take a lot more than a $50 price increase to be the 'nail in the coffin' for the Switch.
The steam deck is more expensive as well, and the switch 2 is much more powerful than the steam deck.
I don't think it will matter much. They live off the exclusives.
Adults are VERY MUCH the target market: See page 10 of Nintendo's investor relations doc.
It's true that fewer people will be buying fewer consoles as a whole, but gaming is a pretty competitive market. I'm sure Nintendo will take a hit regardless, but probably no more than the likes of Sony, MS, Valve, etc.
Like any gold rush, the only people who win are the ones selling the shovels (in this case, Nvidia).
I feel that Nintendo should really become just a software company. All consoles are converging towards using more or less similar PC hardware anyway, so having your own hardware platform doesn't seem very useful anymore.
Nintendo also pushes gaming innovation in different directions, enabling interesting experiences. It's not always successful, but is rarely boring: virtual boy (proto-VR), dual screen gaming (DS, 3DS, Wii U), asymmetric multiplayer (Wii U), split controller with motion controls (Wii, Switch), advanced haptics (Switch), screen-free gaming (1-2 Switch), glasses-free lenticular 3D (3DS), hybrid cardboard gaming (Labo/Switch), slab handheld (2DS), hybrid handheld/TV gaming (Wii U, Switch), asynchronous network interaction and game data sharing (3DS street pass), moderated social networking (Warawara Plaza and MiiVerse on Wii U and 3DS), etc.
The consoles are carefully designed. Game Boy had a non-backlit, reflective display that enabled it to be used in broad daylight and helped it achieve a 50-hour battery life. GBA SL and Nintendo DS/3DS were attractive and functional clamshell designs. GameCube (a compact and rather charming purple cube design) had a handle to encourage people to move the system to different TVs or bring it to friends' houses. Switch has a kickstand and a dock system to enable quick switching between handheld, tabletop, and TV-attached gaming, all without restarting the game.
I would pay 50 more dollars for the same experience if thats what it took. I do think Nintendo should provide a little more value at the new price, but it's not a huge gap.
Nothing against those $1 game sales on Steam or gog.com (or "free to play"/live service games – for those who can tolerate their monetization schemes), but fun/benefit per dollar for {Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros., Animal Crossing, Ring Fit Adventure, etc.} has been huge for me, even accounting for the cost of the console and additional controllers.
Being able to pop in a physical game card and play the game immediately (even if you are offline) is another thing I appreciated about the Switch (though unfortunately some Switch 2 games are not available as real game cards.)
> Does Nintendo intentionally make its hardware really underpowered and cheap in terms of chips to juice profits? In the past this was more the case, but with the Switch 2 the hardware bill of materials is actually more costly relative to previous products like the Switch 1.
Underpowered and cheap, yes, but not really "to juice profits". See "lateral thinking with withered technology":
"his strategy demonstrated Nintendo's belief that graphical advancement is not the only way to make progress in gaming technology; indeed, after the Wii's overwhelming success, Sony and Microsoft released their own motion control peripherals."
Insane.
Metroid Prime 4 looks amazing, and you can choose 4K@60 or 1080p@120. I don't really care about generated frames or whatever AI magic the console is doing to pull it off, it looks great.
Parts of Samus's gun and some parts of the UI are 4k.
I'm a Nintendo fan but this 4k@60 claim from Nintendo is incredibly laughable. The vast majority of the screen is upscaled.
I think there were a bunch of 4k Hatsune Miku games that came out. It turns out that 2D renderings at 4k can be accomplished with very low end hardware.
The game looks good because Nintendo has excellent artists. So I guess it's worth the money. But the technical specs are completely baloney.
I have bad news for you, friend. You just described AAA gaming on anything less than a 5090 (and not even then, at all times). Without DLSS or FSR many modern games won't run smoothly at 4k on typical hardware (such as a 5070, which costs more than a Switch 2, or a 5060, which costs about the same).
It more than gets the job done, the job I hired it to do is make the games impress me visually and allow me to experience the thrill of technological progress, and it does that very well.
They’re not “shitty PC ports”, they’re ports that people tried, likely managed to one platform and then when they tried on switch 2 realised just how far behind it is.
Well this comment down below brings it about really quickly:
"Switch 2 has better FPS for Switch 1 games. Like BotW stops having terrible FPS drops in certain scenarios."
If you need a newer-gen piece of hardware to run an older-gen FIRST PARTY title at acceptable speeds without issues then I'm going to say you are ABSOLUTELY and PURPOSEFULLY selling underpowered hardware (and Nintendo has been doing it since the days of the NES. So many first-party titles with slowdowns because the hardware was not up to the task.)
It provides incredible value for its price (hours of fun per $) when compared to basically any other form of entertainment
