To say people aren't exactly thrilled with Nintendo right now would be an understatement. The excitement of our first extended look at the Switch 2 was tempered heavily by the price tag attached: $450 for the console itself is rough as it is, but they also made the unprecedented move of raising the price of each individual game to as much $90. It's called the Switch 2 because you Switch 2 a cheaper hobby, clearly.
Complicating matters are Trump's tariffs, which have caused Nintendo to postpone opening preorders of the Switch 2 in the United States. While the general economic certainly isn't helping Nintendo's margins, certain steps the company is taking are still seen as a bridge too far. Take, for instance, the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, which is a fairly dry tech demo/interactive manual to get you acquainted with your new hardware, lacking much of the more cohesive gamification of similar pack-in titles like Wii Sports or Astro's Playroom. The problem is that this isn't a pack-in title – it's being sold separately for its own price tag. The decision to paywall what may as well be system software is emblematic of the issue – tariffs are one thing, but they do not excuse blatantly anti-consumer practices. Indeed, combing through Nintendo's YouTube and social media pages reveals nothing but concentrated backlash.
There is a glimmer of hope, however. Nintendo's 3DS, released back in 2011, suffered a similar rocky launch thanks to an initially massive price point. The fan outcry was a fraction of what we're getting now, but the stalled sales spoke for themselves, and that same year Nintendo slashed the price by a third. At the very least, there's precedent – and with every new bit of info revealed about the Switch 2 coming with a price hike, it's hard not to imagine the price tag turning customers away. I'm certainly not getting a Switch 2 at launch anymore, despite planning to since it was first confirmed.
The most we can hope for is that Nintendo remembers the lessons of their past – and that other companies don't follow suit. $90 games cannot become the standard, or I'm going to have to go into debt with the yakuza.
