Doing a quick calculation from where I live in the third world for a price comparison: A Big Mac in the US/Europe is about $6 according to Google, which is about 13 of them for a $80 game.

Where I live that ratio turns into 36 for one of their games, its an astronomical price to ask.

I could feed myself (poorly) for a month on Big Macs for the same price.

They actually didn't explain it. Just said there's more hardware.

Ars Technica, being savvy as usual, did figure out the inflation-adjusted initial price for the Switch: $391, which is not for from the new Switch 2 price of $450, especially if you take into account tariffs.

They could have made a much better Switch 2 with better SoC had they just add $10 BOM cost to their SoC. I think Switch 2 has by far the worst hardware comparatively speaking in all of Nintendo's consoles history. Nintendo are known for using older hardware and doesn't compete with the State of art. But Switch 1 was using 3 years old tech, most other Nintendo console are similar as well.

Switch 2 is using 5 years old technology. It is not the hardware cost so much. It is not even about loss leader on console. Nintendo just decide to charge it.

Had it launch in 2023 it would have been fine.

There is no reason outside of foolish brand loyalty to get a switch 2 over a cheaper (hardware and software) and more powerful steam deck that is also an actual PC instead of a locked down walled garden. As a bonus you don't fund there next legal bulling of fan projects.

Even switch 1/2 emulation will most likely have better performance on the deck.

With 8109 employees and US$13 billion in revenue, it's hard to believe that high prices are simply because costs have gone up and it's hard to stay afloat.

don't really care about their reasoning, video games simply are not worth that much money.

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