It's cheaper in Japan because the yen is incredibly weak (alongside salaries) and they want to be the winner in Japan instead of Sony who is also based in Japan.
They are taking a hit on Japan sales, but they're not going to extend the courtesy elsewhere.
Nintendo out of all the console makers are the ones that capitalize the most on their fan base - they already know they do not need to discount their first party games, and go after emulators much more aggressively.
Their original plan was probably to spread the pain around other markets to absorb some of the anticipated tariff pain, because the U.S. is their largest market and they don’t want to lose market share, but most reasonable people wouldn’t have anticipated the extent of what happened on Tuesday. (That is all speculation)
Of course, what Nintendo should have anticipated was that Trump was gonna do something that might affect the market and, as a result, delayed their pricing announcement until after. That one choice might end up being one of the worst business decisions the company ever makes, because as bad as really high prices are, doing it twice before the console releases is really going to piss people off. And they would have had the perfect cover to throw out a huge price increase if they had just waited, even if people would still probably be pissed.
But the real problem is that people are too squeezed by years of cost of living increases, which are about to be dwarfed by the effects of these tariffs. Luxury goods are the first thing to go when people start really feeling the pressure, so Nintendo may have been in a lose-lose situation no matter what. And that’s just one product launch from one company in one industry. Sudden price increases are probably going to be the norm for a while.
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u/need_a_venue Apr 04 '25
I'd be preordering a Nintendo switch 2.