Even Nintendo Couldn't Hold the Line: Switch 2 Up US$50 in America, Japanese Players Have It Worse With a Straight 20% Jump
The game industry's most budget-conscious company has finally raised prices too. Starting September 1, the Switch 2's official U.S. price rises from US$449.99 to US$499.99 — a full US$50 more. Nintendo's official notice put it delicately: "the market environment has changed and is expected to persist over the medium to long term." Translate that into one sentence: costs can't be absorbed anymore. This round of increases is global; no one escapes. Canada is up CAD$50, Europe up €30, the UK up £24. Japan got the worst of it — on May 25 it had already risen from ¥49,800 to ¥59,980, a full ¥10,000, 20%, breaking straight through the ¥50,000 barrier. On the eve of the hike, Japanese stores saw lines scrambling for the last original-price units; European and American players also rushed to order before August 31, with e-commerce pages at one point counting down "price increase imminent." Why? On the surface: exchange rates and oil. Underneath: AI. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa laid it out in May: memory chip costs are "permanently rising," and the biggest driver is the AI-triggered global memory shortage. Data centers are frantically buying storage chips, and the memory chips used by game consoles ride the same tide — AI eats the meat; game hardware doesn't even get soup; it has to pay extra. Don't forget, Switch 2 launched June 5, 2025; about 15 months after release, this is its first price adjustment. Past consoles only ever got cheaper the longer they sold; they didn't get more expensive. The chain reaction had already spread. Earlier this year, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Steam Deck OLED had all quietly raised prices once; Nintendo just delivered the final cut. Gamersky also noticed that to cushion the hike, Nintendo simultaneously launched a new bundle — "offset the price-rise pot by adding value." Whether players buy it is another matter. Note: the old Switch didn't go up a cent this time; Nintendo only said Latin American pricing would be announced "later" — precision strike, only hitting next-gen players. What's funnier: price hikes and panic buying are happening at the same time. On one side, news of Switch 2 getting more expensive; on the other, the Switch 2 version of Elden Ring selling out in Japan and PS5 Pro sold out — former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra posting that he "can't buy it even though I want to." Those who think it's expensive grumble; those who can't get one are frantic. The hardware market has never been this split. Behind it lies the console world's biggest paradox this year: AI has launched chip prices into the stratosphere, console makers are raising prices in unison — yet the game players most want, GTA VI, arrives November 19, and PS5/Xbox sales are being lifted by it. Cold water from hikes, fire from blockbusters; the console market is being pulled from both ends. The extra few dozen dollars per unit, multiplied by tens of millions of units sold annually, becomes a bill no one wants to carry — and in the end it lands on players. To be fair: US$499.99 isn't absurd horizontally — under AI-driven memory shortage, no hardware maker this year escaped cost pressure. But Nintendo's brand never competed on value-for-money; it competes on all-ages, whole-family fun. When the "cheap and generous" persona cracks, every future game and every new console price has to be re-weighed. A reminder too: don't expect the increase to be temporary. Nintendo itself called this a "medium-to-long-term" market change. AI's crowding-out of memory capacity shows no end within three years; thin-margin hardware like game consoles can only pass costs to players. Curse or endure — this is probably the new normal for the next few years. My take: curse all you want; if you're buying, you're buying. Console price hikes are an industry illness, not one company's sin. The real question is — when AI can force a game console up 20%, how much say does the game industry still have in the compute arms race? Interactive: did you get on board before the Switch 2 price rise? Japanese players are absorbing +20%, which we don't feel — guess: who raises prices next?