Nintendo is likely surprised, panicked, and having a full "war room" response to the outrage over Switch 2 pricing, former marketing leads say

A woman playing a switch 2 looking at a screen with her friends displayed on the bottom alongside their gameplay, it looks like Discord — (Image credit: Nintendo)

We now know a lot more about the Switch 2 and its games, and one thing is for sure, people are not happy about how much it all costs. During yesterday's Treehouse livestream, the comments were bombarded with people spamming "drop the price" over and over again. Krysta Yang and Kit Ellis (Nintendo of America's former senior manager of creator relations and original content and former director of social media marketing and original content, respectively) say they think the company "is probably surprised by the reaction."

During the Direct, the price of the console wasn't actually mentioned, which seemed strange at the time. One analyst speculated that it could be due to uncertainty around Trump's tariffs, and that Nintendo wanted to hold off on listing a price until it had a better idea what the markup would be.

The Reactions Inside Nintendo As Fans Rage About Switch 2 Pricing - YouTube

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In their latest YouTube video, Ellis says "it shows some disrespect to the consumer" to have key information about the Switch 2 not included in the direct. Yang adds: "It's a little bit degrading, almost, to the intelligence of the consumer."

The price is a whopping $450, 50% more than the original Switch. Mario Kart World is also the most expensive standard-edition triple-A game ever, $80, and it's got gamers worried GTA 6 really will be $100. There has been a lot of outrage online. Fortunately, not all the upcoming Switch 2 games will be as pricey.

Yang continues: "One of the things that we were joking about is this thing called the war room that Nintendo usually has at these types of events and for these big sort of moments. We were joking around and saying things like 'Oh gosh, this is the worst place possibly to be,' but there actually is a purpose to the war room, is that their job is to look at what is happening out there, what are people saying, what are people thinking, what is the reaction? And come up with any solutions to any issues. They're basically not doing their jobs at all right now."

Furthermore, Yang adds that "they're definitely very aware of the situation," but notes that no solutions have been provided publicly.

"I do think that they are a bit surprised by how severe this reaction is," says Yang in response to the Treehouse being overwhelmed with "drop the price" comments. "The problem is, now they are kind of like, bad at doing this now, because they haven't had a need to do a lot of crisis communication for eight years." Ellis adds: "They just don't talk to anybody." But the pair both agree Nintendo needs to do something to regain control of the narrative.

Catch up on all the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct news you may have missed over the past couple of days.

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I'm Issy, a freelancer who you'll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I've always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you'll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I'm currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.

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