The Nintendo Switch Has Finally Dropped In Price
Fans of Nintendo should run to Walmart, Best Buy, and Amazon, as the Nintendo Switch has finally gone on sale, with a significant price drop.
After selling more than 107 million units and releasing an updated model, Nintendo Switch has finally dropped in price — for the second time — months after the UK and Europe saw a similar reduction in price. The hottest selling console among the last-gen and current-gen competitors remains at the top of the sales list five years after its debut, and with the recent price drop, it’s likely to remain the King of the Playground for the foreseeable future, at least when it comes to console gaming.
According to IGN, gamers who were previously unable or unwilling to afford Nintendo’s latest console can now obtain the original Switch at Amazon, Walmart, and GameStop for a cent shy of $260 — which is a solid $40 price drop from the standard $300. Nintendo hasn’t revealed whether the price drop is permanent or not, but the interested parties might want to obtain their model just in case we’re discussing a sale and the supplies last.
However, considering that the original Nintendo Switch got a permanent price drop in the UK and Europe might mean that the recent price drop in the United States is permanent as well. The previously mentioned price cuts happened in September 2021, in light of the Switch OLED release, with previous speculations about the price drop in the US, but Nintendo as a company discouraged those ideas by saying that there aren’t any scheduled price drops for the US market.
Nintendo confirmed that it sold over 107 million Nintendo Switch consoles since launch and more than 235 million games for Switch in financial 2021 alone — the highest number of sold releases in a single year in Nintendo’s history. All three switch models sold 23 million units in financial 2021, which is more than double the sales Sony made with their PS5 in the same period. To be completely honest, though, the COVID-19 pandemic and the semiconductor shortages it caused had a massive impact on Nintendo’s sales numbers.
The gaming industry was one of the greatest beneficiaries of the pandemic, witnessing a 23% growth in 2020. Console gaming, in particular, saw massive growth and brought in more than $50 billion in revenue in 2021. However, the pandemic had a negative impact on the console manufacturers due to the still ongoing semiconductor shortages, which aren’t likely to end soon either. Nintendo apparently coped well with the chip shortage, but then again, its gaming hardware is small format compared to the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
Thus, the company managed to outsell both Sony and Microsoft in console sales. Sony canceled its plans to discontinue the PS4 extending the system’s life through 2022 to keep the company afloat, and Microsoft discontinued its Xbox One production and prioritized the production of Xbox Series S over the Series X since the smaller Xbox requires fewer semiconductor components in its build — which admittedly gives the company an advantage over Sony. That still doesn’t change the fact that Nintendo Switch is the top seller.
Taking this price cut into account, Nintendo Switch will likely remain the top seller in the foreseeable future. Considering that the average lifespan of a hardware generation is about six years and that we’re already one-third of the way towards the new generation, it’s highly unlikely for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S sales to ever catch up with Nintendo Switch (which is a last-gen console). Not unless Sony and Microsoft start handing them out for free.
