Nintendo is raising the price of the Switch 2 by $50 to $499.99 in the United States, effective September 1. Canada goes up the same amount to $679.99, while Europe sees a slightly smaller bump of €30, landing at €499.99. Japan, however, gets hit harder and sooner—a ¥10,000 increase takes the Japan-only Switch 2 to ¥59,980 on May 25, alongside price hikes across every model of the original Switch.“We sincerely apologize for the impact these price revisions may have on our customers,” Nintendo said in a statement alongside its annual earnings report.
A global memory shortage is driving up hardware costs everywhere.
The culprit isn’t hard to pin down. The global shortage of computer memory—driven largely by surging demand from AI data centers—has sent RAM and solid-state drive prices into the stratosphere. Some DDR5 RAM sticks are several times pricier than they were in 2024. Nintendo had held out longer than its rivals, but the math eventually caught up.Sony raised the PlayStation 5 by $100 in April. Microsoft bumped Xbox Series consoles twice in the past year, with increases ranging from $100 to $200. By comparison, Nintendo’s $50 hike looks relatively restrained—though restrained doesn’t mean painless.The new US price means the base Switch 2 now costs exactly the same as the Mario Kart World bundle did at launch, before Nintendo discontinued it last December. Timing-wise, American, Canadian, and European buyers have until the end of August to grab the console at its current price—a considerably more generous window than Sony gave its customers.Japan’s Nintendo Switch Online subscribers face additional increases from July 1, with a 12-month individual membership climbing from ¥2,400 to ¥3,000. No word yet on whether those subscription hikes will spread globally.
Nintendo expects Switch 2 sales to slow in year two despite a strong start
The price hike lands as Nintendo braces for a sales cooldown. The company has moved 19.86 million Switch 2 units since its June 2025 launch—outpacing the original Switch at the same point in its life by roughly five million units. But Nintendo now forecasts just 16.5 million units for the coming fiscal year, a 17% decline.The company also delivered an operating profit forecast of ¥370 billion for the current year, well short of the ¥480 billion analysts had expected.
