The price of the Switch 2 will be €469.99, confirmed Nintendo, which did not want to reveal the bad news during the Direct dedicated to the presentation of the console. A price eagerly awaited by all the players who could not wait to find out what sauce their wallet was going to be eaten with! This price is a surprise, it is in fact higher than what the rumors said.
At At this price, is the Switch 2 still a good deal?
The first Switch with its LCD screen costs 300 euros, while the OLED version costs 350 euros (the Switch Lite, a little separately, comes in at 200 euros). The Switch 2 is bigger and more powerful... and also much more expensive, therefore.
Given the anticipation for the console, it seems futile to hope for a price drop in the coming months. Throughout its entire career, the Switch 1 has only seen one price drop (of 30 euros) in 2021. Nintendo largely prefers to play on bundles that combine a console, a game and a few months of Switch Online subscription. The whole thing is sold a little less expensive than the sum of everything in the package.
At this price, the Switch 2 is positioned at the level of high-end home consoles: the Xbox Series X (without optical drive) costs 500 euros, the PS5 digital edition is sold for 450 euros. The Xbox Series S to find cheaper (from 300 euros). The Switch does not quite play in the same league as all these boxes to pose next to the family TV, that's understood, but trade-offs will have to be made...
The "real" rivals of the Switch 2 are also to be found on the side of other portable consoles like the Steam Deck (from 420 euros for the LCD version) or models under Windows like the ROG Ally from Asus or the Legend's Legion Go S. Devices that remain expensive (respectively 530€ and 800€) but manufacturers will launch more affordable models. Above all, there is the threat of SteamOS which will equip new consoles outside of the Steam Deck, the image of the future Legion Go S.
With the Switch 2, Nintendo remains on familiar ground, but this time the competition seems to have taken the pulse of the market. The Japanese manufacturer may not have it so easy this time and the threshold of 150 million units sold — that of the Switch 1 — seems very far away, especially at this price point.
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