Japan’s most respected business newspaper Nikkei has made a bold prediction for the Nintendo Switch and its price point. As translated by Engadget, it claims that the Nintendo’s newest console will retail for roughly ¥25,000 in Japan.
Based on today’s exchange rate, that works out to roughly $213. The price could either go down to $200 or up to $250 from there, but Nikkei has only reported on the Japanese price. My guess is that it is a lowball, and it will work itself to be roughly the same yen value at $250.
By comparison, this would make the Nintendo Switch much cheaper than the current selling price of the PlayStation 4 Pro at ¥44,980, and it would even be cheaper than the Wii U’s launch price in Japan at ¥26,250.
$250 is a very fair price, and I’d pick that up in a heartbeat
Based on Nintendo’s philosophy of cheaper fun, that sounds like a very accurate estimate, and Nikkei is rarely wrong about these things. $250 gets you the latest Nintendo hardware at less than the price of the competition’s standard consoles and access to all of its exclusive franchises.
And with the Nintendo Switch, we get the added bonus of possibly not needing another generation of Nintendo DS or Game Boy. Nintendo’s portable market will be spoken for with this console, killing two birds with one stone and saving you money in that regard as well.
If $250 is the going price, it is a very fair one for a console that can play Nintendo’s exclusive games, Virtual Console favorites, and possibly high-end third-party titles at home or on a train.