Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida was somewhat shocked to see that the Nintendo Switch 2 costs $100 more than he was expecting, but thinks Mario Kart World's surprise $80 price tag makes sense in the grand scheme of things.
Shuhei Yoshida is no stranger to pricing scandals, having been a top PlayStation executive during the PS3's infamous (and infamously expensive) launch, but he was still caught off guard by Nintendo's bullish pricing in an interview with the Easy Allies podcast.
"I was anticipating $399, like everybody else," Yoshida said of the Switch 2, "but they went for $499 [with the Mario Kart World bundle.] Maybe [that's because] of the cost of goods going up these days." He even had to do a double-take after: "And I realized later, 'wait, is that the price of the PS5 in the US?'"
Yoshida was perhaps even more surprised by the Japan-exclusive, region-locked Switch 2 that's essentially being sold for the same price as the OG Switch, mainly because the country's shaky exchange rates would've meant the Switch 2 would be double the price of the original console in yen if Nintendo was going to convert its US pricing.
"The price of software was a surprise I wasn't anticipating," he continued, referring to games like Donkey Kong Bananza, which is adopting the now-industry standard $70 price point for big-budget games, and Mario Kart World, which has leapfrogged the standard entirely and is being priced at $80.
Even though it came as a surprise, Yoshida said it makes sense since publishers have been struggling with ballooning budgets and infinitely expanding games for a while, but players still expect a base $70 price tag. The solution, he says, is for publishers not to be "limited to the fixed price on the shelf from the physical media days." He's not necessarily advocating for every game to be $70/$80 or more, but rather, each game should be priced "based on the value the publisher believes." I could definitely live with more $70 Nintendo games if some other upcoming Switch 2 games came out at half that price, for example.
Elsewhere, Yoshida was only "a bit disappointed that they [Nintendo] didn't disappoint everyone" by doing something totally unexpected. Though the Switch 2's directors previously said the console doesn't rock the boat with a gimmick like the DS and Wii because developers have changed in the generations since.
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