Nintendo president explains Switch 2 price rise

Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa said a recent Switch 2 price increase was necessary to protect the company’s hardware margins after rising memory, component and market costs pushed up expenses. Furukawa made the comments in a May 8 earnings Q&A published by Nintendo this week and cited pressures including higher memory prices, foreign-exchange moves and oil costs. Nintendo had already disclosed that the Switch 2 price in the United States would rise to $499.99 from $449.99 on Sept. 1. Furukawa said the company judged those pressures were likely to last rather than fade quickly, making a price increase harder to avoid. ### What exactly did Furukawa say about the price increase? Shuntaro Furukawa said in Nintendo’s published Q&A that the company believed “the profitability of our hardware would suffer significantly” if it kept existing prices. He said Nintendo could have pursued other options if the cost increase looked temporary, including improving productivity and expanding the installed base while holding prices steady, but management did not view the current pressures that way. (nintendo.co.jp) The May 14 reports by Game Developer and GamesIndustry.biz both highlighted the same point: Nintendo was framing the increase as a margin-protection measure rather than a short-term reaction. Furukawa said maintaining “a healthy earnings structure” across the business was important for the company’s dedicated video game platform business, according to those reports and Nintendo’s published remarks. (nintendo.co.jp) ### Which costs did Nintendo point to? Furukawa said recent increases in memory and other component prices, along with foreign-exchange trends and oil prices, were expected to continue over the medium to long term. Game Developer reported that Nintendo linked part of the pressure to a broader market environment that had made key components more expensive. Nintendo also indicated the burden was not uniform across markets. (gamesindustry.biz) Furukawa said price revisions differ by region because each market is affected to a different extent, according to the company’s Q&A and follow-up trade coverage. ### How big is the Switch 2 price change? Bloomberg reported on May 8 that Nintendo would raise the U.S. Switch 2 price to $500 from $450 on Sept. 1. Other markets were also included in the broader increase, with Game Developer and other trade outlets listing Japan, Canada and Europe among the regions facing higher prices. (nintendo.co.jp) Trade coverage published after the earnings briefing said Japan’s higher prices were set to begin on May 25. (nintendo.co.jp) Video Games Chronicle reported the console would rise by €30 in Europe to €499.99 and by C$50 in Canada to C$679.99, while noting that Japan would see earlier increases across Nintendo hardware. (bloomberg.com) ### Did Nintendo say the increase would solve the problem? Furukawa said the increase would not fully absorb the company’s higher costs, according to trade reports summarizing the briefing. That means Nintendo is describing the move as a partial response rather than a full pass-through of cost inflation to consumers. (videogameschronicle.com) Game Developer also reported that Furukawa acknowledged the higher price would create a barrier for some buyers. He did not quantify the likely effect on demand, but said Nintendo would try to support hardware sales with software releases. ### What is Nintendo’s plan for keeping sales up after the increase? (videogameschronicle.com) Nintendo said Switch 2 sold 19.86 million units through the end of March 2026, above both its initial 15 million forecast and its revised 19 million forecast. Furukawa said the company sees software as a key tool for sustaining the transition to the newer console, and pointed to the contribution of Pokémon Pokopia to hardware sales. (gamedeveloper.com) For the current fiscal year ending March 2027, Nintendo forecasts Switch 2 hardware sales of 16.5 million units, according to the May 8 Q&A. The next concrete milestones are the May 25 price changes in Japan and the Sept. 1 increase in the United States, where the console is set to cost $499.99. (nintendo.co.jp)