I like how this article does not talk about the anti consumer practices engaged in by Nintendo, that might push some customers away from their consoles. /s Nintendo can disable your Switch 2 for piracy in the U.S., but not in Europe, as confirmed by its EULA. There is already a switch in my household, but the price along with the ability to remotely brick the device, is what made our household pass on the switch 2. We bought a second steam deck instead.
Nintendo shot themselves in the foot by aggressively going after the modding and archival communities.
They will never get another cent of my money and I own over a dozen Nintendo consoles.
I own or owned every one of their consoles other than the Wii (though can play the games on the wii u). No more, between their pricing (especially on recycled content), wastefullness (all that excess plastic for a case that holds a tiny cart because a small box makes their prices even harder to stomach), and legal bs (going after modders, emulators, and the used game market via anti-piracy bricking depending on what the previous owner of the game did), fuck them.
Three reasons: 1) It’s too bloody expensive. 2) Most people are scared to spend money right now. 3) The USA as a global superpower, is morphing into something decidedly more sinister.
people should be buying guns and armor for their family and boycotting all this submissive entertainment culture until something changes. otherwise i kind of blame them for the current state of America. funding the enemies they claim to hate keeps them a cog in the machine the hurts humanity.
We’ve never been great. It’s just removing the veneer of respectability we gave ourselves and doubling down on the shittiest parts.
- The USA as a global superpower, is morphing into something decidedly more sinister.
Nintendo is a Japanese company…
That sells to the USA…
Which means exactly what?
Nothing counts, unless it sells, I guess.
…with a big customer pool in North America.
Which means exactly what?
nintendo is having its PS3 moment
a comically overpriced console with few interesting exclusives made by an arrogant company high on the success of its predecessor
Don’t forget that rents their old games back to you, which is why they’re so against emulation.
Which is why I’m so for it
When I got my PS3 as a gift, I thought it was beautiful in its time, but no, it’s like the Switch 2 xD
Isn’t the Switch 2 is cheaper in today’s money than the PS3 was without a decade of inflation?
Edit: PS3 was 600€, adjusted for inflation (by some random online calculator) that’s about 900 today. So yeah, the Switch 2 is about 60% as expensive as the PS3 was.
How relevant is inflation when cost of living has gotten so inflated that the idea of home ownership went the way of renting. So if anything in today’s money eating costs can hurt the wallet even more with how essentials are eating up more disposable income.
People bring up inflation as though salaries have kept up like NBA salaries have kept up due to their strong union. But, for every day people salaries have stagnated in relation to cost of property, rent, utilities, and food.
“How relevant is inflation, considering there is so much inflation that…”
Inflation is the measure of how much buying power your money is worth. Wage stagnation is wages not keeping up with inflation. They are not the same thing.
Wage stagnation isn’t a result of inflation because inflation happens first. So yeah when working out the equivalent price of a product inflation needs to be taken into account but so does how much money everybody has.
If $1 in 2005 is worth $15 today, but I still only get $6 an hour then it isn’t correct to say that a product that cost $15 today is effectively the same as a product costing $1 in 2005 because it’s not taken into the fact that I don’t get more money.
Well… while the price of the Switch 2 certainly causes sticker shock, when you adjust for inflation it’s only about as expensive as the SNES was at launch… and is in fact cheaper then the NES was at launch. However, in the PS3’s case when adjusted for inflation it was about 1.5 times as expensive as the SNES at launch (for the 20 gb version, the 60 gb was double).
Now adjust for wage stagnation.
This tired old argument completely ignores the fact that consumer purchasing power was much higher back then. Everything costs a higher portion of our paychecks now, especially housing, healthcare, and education.
I would think what you can get today from a competitor for the same price or less is much more would be much more relevant than anything that occurred 40 years ago
(yes, the NES is 40 years old)
Personally, I prefer not to be Nintendo because of Nintendo’s behavior, but the price is why they still struggle to sell these.
They sold a ton right out of the gate. Everyone that really wanted one already got one. After that, they need parents and grandparents to get them for the kids and that isn’t going to happen as much.
Nintendo was basically a “toy”. You could, for the most part, safely buy a Nintendo console for your kids at a somewhat reasonable price. (I know the OG consoles were a bit pricey).
You could buy your kid a handheld console for ~$200 or less. The Switch 1 was $300, but you could still get your kid a Lite for $200.
Now, the only option is a $450 Switch 2.
Switch 2 desperately needs a TV-only version. I imagine the manufacturing cost would be drastically lower.
No dock, no joycons, no battery, no LCD.
Just a console, power supply, controller and HDMI cord.
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Fuck Nintendo
I was a Nintendo kid growing up, so I’m biased. But I can’t even defend them anymore. Their uncompetitive prices and anti-consumer practices are completely out-of-touch. I hope they either start listening to their fans, or go away and allow their games to be sold on other platforms…
I didn’t buy it because fuck Nintendo. They treat their customers with such disrespect and disdain, a company that’s only bring held together by nostalgia alone. They’ve gotten into a cycle of seeing just how much money they can get while putting in no effort.
especially with pokemon games, its unforgivable how expensive they are for such a sloppily made genre, since swsh.
Hardly any exclusives. Hardware is more and more meh with every release. We broke. Steam and GoG are so convenient I don’t even think about it. Nintendo will die a patent troll death.
I like how this article does not talk about the anti consumer practices engaged in by Nintendo, that might push some customers away from their consoles.
The average consumer does not care about this. The biggest reasons for people to not buy a Switch 2 are 1) people don’t have money and 2) lack of major first-party games. I waited months until I found a MKW bundle for $450 at a black Friday sale.
Once we get the next 3D Mario or Zelda, you can bet they will sell a lot of consoles.
Also steamdeck is amazing, and a lot of people who want a handheld just chose that one
steamdeck and switch 2 don’t address the same audience at all imo
Since I’m one of the people who is on the fence about whether or not to pick up a Nintendo Switch 2 or to get myself an ROG Ally (I have $250 of gift cards for Target which don’t sell the Steam Deck) so that I can play steam games on a handheld. I heartily disagree.
And it’s Nintendo’s anti-consumer policies that is making me hesitate on the Switch 2.
Not exactly, but overlap is significant. A bunch of people want Nintendo because they always did Nintendo and that’s all they know, a bunch of people know that switch is something that kids want and so they get one, sure. But a bunch of people want to play some games lying on a couch or riding a metro or sitting in a queue at a dentist, and those people will at least google what exists on the market. This is an overlapped audience, and for a lot of them steam deck will be the obviously better choice.
I got a Switch because of handheld gaming and then I stopped using my Switch because I got a Deck, and my library became playable on it without having to rebuy them. And I can get cheaper games, bundles, and giveaways than on Nintendo to play on my Deck or PC. And if ARM support for steam frame makes its way to Android then I’ll be able to play those same Steam games on my phone too.
They can if you install Linux on it and run a switch emu.
It already comes with Linux installed, and an emulator can be setup with five button presses and thirty seconds of waiting.
The base system is setup as immutable, but /home isn’t, so aur isn’t available out of the box, but flatpacks are for exampleThat’s pretty rad. I don’t have one to know the nuance.
I heard it was possible to install bazzite on the SteamDecks
SteamOS is an Arch Linux, basically, with some stuff pre-installed. The only big difference is that it’s installed in immutable mode, but even that is not a big deal
Thanks for the clarification. I really want to pick one up. Might wait a bit for a SD2 I’m sure is a year or two out.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my Steam Deck but it’s an extension of Desktop build not a direct Switch competitor.
It’s not a direct competitor, but they occupy the same niche while being a vastly superior product.
I don’t think that’s had much of an impact when Nintendo sold more Switch 2s at launch than Valve has manufactured Steam Decks over its entire lifespan. The Steam Deck is still an enthusiast product for a niche crowd, and will likely never be in direct competition with the big three.
It’s a comparatively new product, but it’s not like it’s something unsuccessful. It’s attached to Steam, that everyone who ever had a computer knows about, and everyone has a couple of games there, it’s being talked about very positively everywhere, and they’re repeatedly gained positive reputation over pro-consumer practices they regularly employ, and they somehow evading being put on blast for the child gambling industry they operate.
They’re known among gamers, which is indeed niche crowd, but also a crowd that is important here. They don’t have the cultural grasp on humanity as Nintendo, or other two, but all of them shitting the bed constantly and publicly, while Valve is catching wins all over the place.The real point here is that they don’t have the ability to manufacture at the scale of the big three. It literally can’t be in direct competition.
It’s not set in stone. They have money, they have demand. Scaling production is a bitch and a half, but it’s not impossible to do
i suspect it also pokemon being popular, but hasnt been producing anything but slop has something to do with it too.
what does the switch 2 do that the first one doesn’t? other than have the ability to brick the device on you
Better performance and new exclusives.
I’m waiting until they get cheap on the second-hand markets before even considering buying one.
Better performance, mainly because the first one performed horribly.
Are there any exclusives that are worth it? The new Mario Cart got a soso rating for becoming another empty open world and other than the new Donkey Kong I can’t think of anything worth buying a new console.
And mouse controls which seemed like a useless feature, but proved to be a really awesome one!
We’re broke
Plus Nintendo anti consumer practices, fuck them for that
Also even for people who want they can just get a gaming handheld and then gain access to a bunch of games which rarely cost $80 even when they’re brand new. Buying a Switch 2 just isn’t a financially sensible decision for anyone regardless of how much money you have in your bank account
I’d argue it is financially sensible if you want one. Current price may be the lowest it’s ever been, with increasing prices for RAM and storage. There’s only so much stock they have bought previously.
They ain’t that broke.
No one cares about this console.
The biggest issue is the price. I remember a time when even the poorest kid in class had a Nintendo because it was cheap.
The last cheap Nintendo was the 2DS over a decade ago. Most parents are looking for cheap hardware with entertainment and there isn’t anything which comes close to it.
Even the switch lite is the same price as the PS3 bundle back in the day. And it came with 2 real controllers and a game.
i bought my 3ds(latest version) 10years ago, for ultramoon and sun. and never bought a swithc after that.
I bought the Switch 1 on launch and loved it, it was everything I was looking for on a console. However, every single joystick broke. I bought several joy con packs and they all drift heavily. Even the pro controller drifts. Nintendo Iberia refused to even repair them. They gave me the option to either replace them with a 20 euro discount or pay 20 euros for them to ship them back.
Awful product quality, awful support, zero accountability. Guess what, I’m spending my money elsewhere.
Doesn’t the new switch still use a control stick design that can suffer from drift, despite it being a solved problem?
looks it up Ah ffs, they probably didn’t because they thought replacing the mounting rack and slide with magnets was more important, and powerful magnets might interfere with the other sensors (though if the magnetic field isn’t moving, I think any effects could be compensated for).
They don’t want the controllers to have hall effect joysticks because they would out last the console, and they wouldn’t be able to sell replacements. Its not a cost issue in my opinion, the controllers are already in the high end price range.
You can test your theory though, you can replace switch joysticks with hall effect sticks. I found multiple sellers in a web search but haven’t used them myself.
I would be okay with defective controllers if Nintendo bothered to fix them. Through the entire lifespan of the console they sold controllers that would eventually drift. I own 3 pair of joy cons, they all drift. When sent for repair they were all deemed unrepairable, even those under warranty. That’s inexcusable.
In the new iteration of joycons they STILL don’t use TMR or hall effect sticks.
I don’t want to support this company.
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Gee could it possibly be because there’s absolutely nothing compelling about the product? Everything about it is just crap.
It’s overpriced for what it is, pretty much all of its features are gimmicks and do not demonstrably improve on the original, everyone knows their games are overpriced and never reduce in price, and if you breathe on it in the wrong way Nintendo will sue you for 1100 quadrillion dollars. What’s not to love?
The main thing holding me back is the fact that it doesn’t have an OLED display. With the price hike between the original and 2, in my opinion it should’ve launched with an OLED as standard. When even cheap phones come with it, Nintendo has no excuse not to include one.
And the game prices also aren’t helping, I imagine. Not when the games themselves are lacklustre as well. The new Mario Kart should’ve been a system seller. But the people I know who own it, have reverted back to playing the previous version. That’s a baaaad look.
I’ll likely buy the Switch 2 when they launch an OLED and release a new Animal Crossing.
Nintendo has no excuse not to include one.
They do have an excuse.

they are banking on 10 and under nagging on thier parents to buy the game cosole, they may only play few times a year. this was pretty much the craze of YUGIOH cards early 2000s, and pokemon in that same time period.
















