Will the Nintendo Switch ever see a price drop?
Will the Nintendo Switch ever see a price drop?

    
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    They won't switch the price
  

    

    

    
      The best-selling console has sat at $299.99 for an unprecedented five-plus years.
    

    

    
            
              
            
          

    
  



  

  
      
    
    
                      
                      
          
In a recent interview with Nikkei Asia, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said the company has no plans "at this point" to increase the price of the Switch. Despite "rising production and shipping costs" for the system, Furukawa said Nintendo wants to "avoid pricing people out" of its console ecosystem (a worry apparently not shared by Meta, which recently raised the asking price of its Quest 2 VR headset).
While some are overreading the "at this point" phrasing as suggestive of a future Switch price increase, all this talk has us focused on some different questions. Namely, why haven't we seen a price drop for the Nintendo Switch in the last five-plus years? And can we ever expect Nintendo to offer the system for less than its launch price?
A historical anomaly
When it comes to consistent console pricing, the Switch is truly in a class by itself. As of this writing, the Switch has been available in North America for over five years—nearly 2,000 days—yet it's still being sold in the US for the same $299.99 you would have paid when the system launched in March, 2017.

    
              
                
              
                Accounting for inflation, the $300 Switch is still one of the cheaper consoles.
                              
            
                  
          
    
    
      Accounting for inflation, the $300 Switch is still one of the cheaper consoles.

          
  
        
            


    
              
                
              
                While most consoles see a distinct downward pricing trend shortly after launch, the Switch has sat still for five years.
                              
            
                  
          
    
    
      While most consoles see a distinct downward pricing trend shortly after launch, the Switch has sat still for five years.

          
  
        
            

To say this is unprecedented in the game industry is an understatement. 
Data doings
Data for the graphs in this piece comes from official price drop announcements or, when those aren't available, archived advertisements and store catalogs. In the case of multiple console bundles or storage capacities, we tended toward the highest-end version available.
Only permanent price drops were accounted for, not temporary sales (e.g. Black Friday). If a console dropped in price more than once in the same year, we took the lowest price available in that year.



Looking back through the history of game console pricing, we found that the vast majority of consoles see their first price drop within a year or two of launch. It's a pattern that encompasses successful systems like the PS2 (which dropped from $300 to $200 about 17 months after its US launch) to stinkers like the Wii U (which saw a $50 price drop just 10 months after launch), and almost everything in between.

          
                      
                  
                    
        
          
    
    
          
          
The few consoles that do make it out of their second full year without a price drop almost invariably see some sort of reduction in year three. The Switch, on the other hand, has now shot through years three, four, and five at its original price.

    
              
                
              
                We know there's a lot going on in this graph, but it's still pretty easy to identify the Switch as a major outlier.
                              
            
                  
          
    
    
      We know there's a lot going on in this graph, but it's still pretty easy to identify the Switch as a major outlier.

          
  
        
            


    
              
                
              
                If the Switch were an "average" console, it would be selling for around $150 to $180 today.
                              
            
                  
          
    
    
      If the Switch were an "average" console, it would be selling for around $150 to $180 today.

          
  
        
            

After five years on the market, the average game console (that hasn't stopped production entirely by that point) sells for an average price that's about 50 to 60 percent of its nominal launch price (depending on whether you look at the mean or the median). The Switch, which is still at 100 percent of its nominal launch price over five years after launch, is a huge outlier.
The only previous console that's really in the same price-stability ballpark as the Switch is the Nintendo Wii. That system finally dropped from $250 to $200 in November of 2009, just over 1,100 days after its late-2006 launch. The Switch, for its part, is now threatening to double that record.

Low supply, high demand
So why has the Switch been able to buck history and not just survive but thrive at its original launch price for so long?
Part of it is simple demand. The Switch has now sold well over 100 million units, including nearly 11 million during the 2021 holiday quarter. That outpaces even the Wii, which needed a price drop to sell about 96 million units at roughly the same point in its lifecycle.
Part of it is the lack of significant price pressure from the competition. At its $300 launch, the Switch was already price-competitive with the PS4 and Xbox One, which had already seen a few price drops of their own by then and were starting to show their age. The $300 price point was also lower than the high-end competition from the PS4 Pro or Xbox One X, not to mention subsequent competition from the PS5 and Xbox Series X. And what the Switch lacks in hardware power compared to that competition, it makes up for partly in its portable form factor.

          
                  
                    
        
          
    
    

        
        
          
          
The Switch has already seen somewhat of a stealth price drop, too, thanks to the 2019 release of the Switch Lite. While that $200 system can't hook up to a big-screen TV, it does give potential customers a cheaper way to get into the Switch software ecosystem. And there's some evidence this is serving as a kind of price pressure relief valve, with 18.4 million total Switch Lite sales as of May (meanwhile, the Switch OLED helps fill in the higher end of the market).

    
              
                
              
                Inflation has chipped away a bit at the Switch's value, though not as much as actual price drops have for other systems of similar age.
                              
            
                  
          
    
    
      Inflation has chipped away a bit at the Switch's value, though not as much as actual price drops have for other systems of similar age.

          
  
        
            


    
              
                
              
                High inflation alone isn't enough to explain the Switch's pricing resilience.
                              
            
                  
          
    
    
      High inflation alone isn't enough to explain the Switch's pricing resilience.

          
  
        
            

Then there's inflation, which you may have noticed has been a bit higher than normal in recent months. The $300 you would have paid for a Switch in early 2017 would be worth just north of $360 in inflation-adjusted July 2022 dollars. In other words, inflation has already lowered the "real" cost of a Switch by nearly 20 percent, even as the nominal price has stayed the same. Given that, maybe we should just be happy that most Switch games aren't yet $70.
Make more chips!
The biggest reason the Switch still hasn't seen a price drop, though, comes down to supply. Despite all the conspiracy-minded talk of "intentional" Wii shortages back in the day, the Switch is facing actual production shortages due to a worldwide semiconductor bottleneck.
After more than five years, Nintendo is still having trouble keeping retail shore shelves filled with new consoles. In that kind of environment, why would Nintendo want to make the supply issues worse (and make less revenue) by lowering the console's asking price?
So, while Meta Quest-style price increases may not be in the works, a full-fledged Switch for less than $300 will probably last at least as long as those semiconductor supply issues persist. If and when those issues diminish, though, the availability of the Switch Lite and inflationary pressures may mean the original Switch stays at its current price for quite a while longer. Who knows, we might have to wait for the next Nintendo console to come out before the company starts clearing out Switch inventory at relative clearance prices.


          
                  

                  
          


  
    Listing image:
    Mark Walton
  




  
  
          
  

  
    

    
      Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.
    
  



  
    
    
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