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Well they finally announced the release date and price for the system: June 5th and $449.99 for the console and $499.99 for the Mario Kart World Bundle.

There is a lot of misinformation and disinformation going around and it hasn't even been a day so here is some info:

Yes the game price hike is here and some are as high as 89.99, such as Mario Kart World.

"Game Key" is basically the new "code in a box" and no physical games are not gone. Most physical games will still be on the cart. Physical games having only a digital code or a cart for DRM is not new or unique to Nintendo. It is a stupid practice but it is not recent. You will be able to tell if it is actually a game on cart or if the cart is a download drm/digital by looking at the case.



Notice the banner at the bottom it has the banner that says "Game Key" just like Switch 1 "code in a box" games had a similar banner.

There are original Switch games with upgrades being sold (double dipping from Nintendo?!) on them which is why Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Switch 2 is $79.99 as it is the full price game and the upgrade patch to 4k 120fps ($69.99 + $10). If you already own Tear of the Kingdom you can just pay $10 for upgrade or get it free if you are member of Nintendo Online. The update to Kirby: The Forgotten Land is $20 as it is the performance upgrade and more levels added to the game. There are several games with performance enhance packs witch will be free to Nintendo Online users or $10-20 depending on the significance of the upgrade.

They are region free with one exception: Japan has a cheaper model that is for use in Japan and only has Japanese support. There will still be another version in Japan that is full price and region free. This information has people saying that all the systems are region locked now when that is not accurate.

Yeaaaaah, that's pretty bad. This is going to signal to the rest of the gaming industry to start hiking up the prices for games going forwards, which is not great. I know it was probably going to happen at some point eventually but it's still terrible for it be coming from Nintendo, especially since they basically never have sales for their 1st party games. Personally, I feel the environment in which the Switch 2 is being released compared to when the OG Switch first came out is quite different now that we have the Steam Deck and other ways to play high fidelity graphic games on the go. Given how the Switch 2 isn't that much different from it's original and there's a lot of nickel and diming to play upgraded versions that you've shared AND the price points they're pushing for pretty much everything regarding controllers and the games themselves, I feel like it's a really tough sell and I'm not sure how well it's going to do at launch.

I think the funniest part that shows how out of touch they are was when they debuted the "voice and video chat" section, as if it was new or innovative like it was back in the Xbox 360 era.

About the only game that seems interesting is Duskblood, but only because it feels like it feels like they're trying to make a version of Bloodborne but just for the Switch.

Either way, I never got around to buying the original Switch and it looks like I'll be skipping this one too.

 Grimskul wrote:
Yeaaaaah, that's pretty bad. This is going to signal to the rest of the gaming industry to start hiking up the prices for games going forwards, which is pretty bad. I know it was probably going to happen at some point eventually but it's still pretty bad for it be coming from Nintendo, especially since they basically never have sales for their 1st party games.

If it helps, when adjusted for inflation new PS1 and N64 games in the 90's would be between $103 to $126 today. Hell Ultima VII: The Black Gate was $79.99 in 1992 which would be about $153 today. Phantasy Star IV had an MSRP of $99 in 1995, or $209 today. Not saying we should be happy about it just adding some historic context.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
Yeaaaaah, that's pretty bad. This is going to signal to the rest of the gaming industry to start hiking up the prices for games going forwards, which is pretty bad. I know it was probably going to happen at some point eventually but it's still pretty bad for it be coming from Nintendo, especially since they basically never have sales for their 1st party games.

If it helps, when adjusted for inflation new PS1 and N64 games in the 90's would be between $103 to $126 today. Hell Ultima VII: The Black Gate was $79.99 in 1992 which would be about $153 today. Phantasy Star IV had an MSRP of $99 in 1995, or $209 today. Not saying we should be happy about it just adding some historic context.

I would be more forgiving of this if the vast majority of the current gaming market didn't also monetize the absolute crap out of most of their offerings in predatory or anti-consumer ways. For live-service titles, you are often paying to beta test an unfinished product for them and for others you have parts of the game that you would normally unlock through gameplay being paywalled for something as simple as having your armour being colored green or deliberately making the game feel grindey and giving the "option" of paying real money to use in game currencies to make the progressing through the game easier.

It doesn't affect me as much since I usually wait until sales anyways to buy the majority of games, but it's particularly bad for Nintendo when they basically never give discounts on their 1st party titles. Plus it means it will take longer for sales to bring prices down to reasonable levels, which sucks.

There 100% are some predatory profit elements going on. A basketball game with a built in real money casino (EA); Ubisoft putting paid experience and gold boosters into their AC games which are fully singleplayer experiences;


You've then a lot of micro-skins that happen in a whole bunch of games which are honestly optional visual adjustments and often sold for small amounts. Can be predatory and not - Borderlands (where its almost pointless cause you can only see your hand); AC games (where I take issue only that Ubi offers alt mounts in Valhalla but are too lazy to change the audio so your wildcat/wolf/whatever sounds like a horse); and Monster Hunter

Then you've also got changes that I feel are more positive - Warhammer Total War and a lot of the Paradox games where you get a full core game; but where they enter a rolling DLC plan. So long as sales remain above a threshold DLC keeps getting rolled out. Yes this makes for a very expensive game in the end, but it also generally makes for a vastly deeper and more content rich game than would ever be possible for a regular release. That Paradox generally put things on sales/bundles and heck Stellaris even has a monthly sub option shows that there are affordable ways into it.

You've also got EA where smaller firms can generate revenue with the risk that they go belly up/never finish/etc.... I've seen seen Steam hitting back on some of those recently.



It does feel odd because we are relying more and more on Steam and the EU (for the most part) to push legislation and policies to force developers to play honest with us.

Against all that we also have to remember that video games were an enigma that existed in a bubble that didn't have price rises for a very long time. From the 90s to the 2010s and a bit beyond games, at least on PC, didn't really move too much in price. At least not compared to inflation and everything else.

OF course I also note that EVERYTHING after the Pandemic "costs too much". The Pandemic broke a lot of things; jump up global debts but also has just caused what can be seen as an acceleration of big profiting by key firms which basically has a roll-on-effect that everything else has to go up in cost to soak rising costs

Well. I’m getting one.

Particularly looking forward to a new Zelda game, though none have been announced.

Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom and even Echoes of Wisdom were fantastically engrossing games, and I can’t wait for more.

I don't know if I'll get one at launch (moving house around then); but I want one. Gamecube games appearing is good (why can't we just buy old games nintendo - WHY!) and a few of those launch titles look fun. I might even try Breath of the Wild.


I'll be interested to see how all the ported PC games respond to the switch 2. I wonder if the way the store works is that Switch 2 compatible patched and updates require a fully separate listing on the store. So we could see a wave of very cheap/free "upgrade packs" appear.

Not sure we will be buying at this point. I don't think my youngest has turned on our Switch Lite in 18 months, and I don't think our Switch has seen much action since my eldest got gold on everything in Mario Kart. Far more into the Xbox now.

I really want to get one, been with a Nintendo console since the NES so I feel like I must The price of entry is really steep now though. The game price increase will also sting, but I'll just have to be more selective on them I guess (always have been). I don't play that much anymore anyway but I continue in part for my own collection and nostalgia, so much good times with some of those games!

I'm actually surprised that game prices is increasing only now too. Yeah it suck and I don't like it, but they've been the "same price" for well over 30 years now which is crazy when you think about it. I've been shopping games since the SNES in stores, and bought the vast majority of my N64 games myself (and up), and back then games were sometime at 69,99$, most of the time were at 79,99$ (first party and other major releases), and sometime 89,99$ or more. Especially during the SNES time and early N64, I've seen games up to 129,99$ too (mostly fighting games and sports game for whatever reasons). That's Canadian prices.

Today, games are still 79,99$ for a lot of the main releases. Taking inflation in consideration makes them actually cheaper than they were back then. At 80$ in 1998, that would be about 140$ today. So games at 89.99$ or even 99,99$ will be cheaper still. Only that the sticker price will always be a bit shocking to people.

We are used to price rises here with miniature hobby and mostly with GW. So with videogames, when you've been seeing the same price for games for the last 30 years +, any increase have people recoil in shock! But I don't know, being used to the nearly annual GW price increases, the videogames one seems quite mid in comparison.

But there's already quite a few games that really interest me from the announcement, gonna be a rough launch for the wallet if I take the plunge right away!

The main thing about old cartridge games is that they were actually fairly expensive to manufacture. When Sony flipped the industry to CD the cost of games nearly halved just because discs were so cheap to print and game prices have been rising slowly since.

Part of the reason there was a long period of time in which they didn't rise is that the audience exploded when games went mainstream. Demand increased to cover the rising costs and kept prices low. Now the demand has largely been met and there's not a lot of ways to grow the audience further, so cutting costs and raising prices are kind of the main options.

I'm definitely a bit in the camp that's surprised it's taken this long, but a lot of that is just the audience pushing back on direct price increases but being weirdly open to paying far more than $80 in additional fees. Honestly, a big reason I'm happy to pick up Nintendo's stuff is they're generally free of that. I'll spend $80 on Donkey Kong, love every minute of it and be quite happy not spending a penny more.

Overall not bad, but £400 is a bit steep for what is a hardware update that's a bit late in the day. I might consider a Switch 2 Lite if £250...

The only thing that really interests me is the FromSoftware game, but I usually don't play multiplayer online games on console.

I was able to get a preorder with little problem beyond Best Buy starting the preorders a half an hour after the actual given time. There was some goofiness but nothing that wasn't easily foreseeable. With the lingering threat that the price will go up after launch I just got the bundle with Mario Kart World ($50 seems right for MK) but no games or accessories. I've got more than enough Switch games to play for the time being so not really feeling a rush to get anything else. While I would always be happier if a console price was cheaper I don't find the console price unreasonable but it is with the gaming prices that is problematic and needs to be pushed back on. I know that the game price alone haven't kept up with inflation and in many instances were more expensive in the past the price doesn't exist in a vacuum and things like wage stagnation and living conditions play a part.

Still seeing lots of misinformation/disinformation around the different ways games are coming. Part of that is the internet sharing bad info and part of it is on Nintendo for such a stupid scheme and poorly communicating with us. In the last few days I've heard, irl and online, things like all Switch 2 games will be digital, or all Switch 2 games are Key Cards, and that Switch 2 Upgrade physical carts only have the game but not the upgrade pack on the cart (the upgrade is on the cart). It doesn't help that different regions seem to have the same game but in a different format. Japan third party seems to be almost entirely Key Card but several of those games have been confirmed to be complete on cart in NA. Not sure what the European situation is at the moment as far as that is concerned. Hopefully things will become more stable after launch when it is seen how consumers react to these shenanigans.

It feels like Nintendo was confused and thought physical collectors were buying games just for the cartridge itself and not for the full game on the cartridge so they made the Key Cards.

Wasn't able to get a preorder myself sadly. :(

Seems to be fairly easy to get over here. Unless suddenly orders get suddenly canceled we were able to get all we wanted for the family.