Nintendo Switch 2 price increase hasn't been ruled out amid volatile memory market
Nintendo's president says the Switch 2 isn't impacted... yet
🤔 Nintendo’s president, Shuntaro Furukawa, has weighed in on whether the Switch 2 could be affected by any impending price rises
👀 He said there had been no immediate impact on the company’s earnings due to the memory shortage as yet, but that it would monitor the situation closely
🙏 It seems Nintendo has been able to negate the impact of the memory shortage due to its ability to procure components on “medium-to-long term business plans”
💰 The Switch 2’s $449.99 price has made headlines previously, as it was assumed to be caused by tariffs, which Nintendo later denied
It seems we’re in a bit of a perfect storm for price rises at the moment. First it was tariffs, and now it’s memory shortages caused by the incessant need for AI data centres. Unfortunately, the Nintendo Switch 2 may be the next affected party.
According to an interview with the Kyoto Shimbun newspaper (thanks, VGC), Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has said that the current memory market is “very volatile” and that it is something that Nintendo is going to “monitor closely”. However, he said, “I cannot comment on hypotheticals.”
Nintendo’s president said that the company procures from “suppliers based on our medium-to-long term business plans” and that the current memory situation hasn’t impacted earnings just yet.
It may be the case that Nintendo purchased the memory it needed when things were cheap and has so much around to keep up with the console’s record-breaking demand, hence why prices have remained stable for now.
As that stock is sold through and more consoles get manufactured with the individual components, the cost of memory is likely to rise dramatically, and it’s at that point that we might have to worry about potential price rises.
Furukawa went on to note that Nintendo is trying to reduce the impact of the memory shortages by “advancing component procurement over the medium to long term.”
At some point, it’s likely that Nintendo will run out of runway and that prices may eventually rise. Owing to “global market conditions, we’ve already seen both Sony and Microsoft raise prices for both consoles and subscription services.
As much as Furukawa wasn’t going to comment on potential price increases for the Switch 2, he was more open on the subject of tariffs. He stated that, as much as it’s “difficult to accurately gauge the future impact [of tariffs], our [Nintendo’s] basic policy is to recognize tariffs as a cost and pass them on to prices as much as possible, not just in the US.”
He went on to add: “On the other hand, this is a crucial period for our game business as we promote the adoption of new hardware and maintain the momentum of our platforms. We are working on this while carefully considering the situation.”
The Nintendo Switch 2 has been a runaway success for Nintendo, and took less than a month to hit 5 million sales, becoming one of the fastest-selling consoles to reach this milestone. Sales have reportedly slowed over Christmas, but it’s still been one of the fastest-selling consoles of any generation.
The console drew headlines even before it was officially released, owing to news of delayed pre-orders while Nintendo worked out how to deal with the tariff situation in the USA. The console’s $449.99 price tag had been assumed to have been set due to tariffs, although then Nintendo of America boss Doug Bowser came out and said it wasn’t the case.
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Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.