| > Nintendo hardware and games were already obscenely overpriced imo Nothing against those $1 game sales on Steam or gog.com (or "free to play"/live service games – for those who can tolerate their monetization schemes), but fun/benefit per dollar for {Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros., Animal Crossing, Ring Fit Adventure, etc.} has been huge for me, even accounting for the cost of the console and additional controllers. Being able to pop in a physical game card and play the game immediately (even if you are offline) is another thing I appreciated about the Switch (though unfortunately some Switch 2 games are not available as real game cards.) > Does Nintendo intentionally make its hardware really underpowered and cheap in terms of chips to juice profits? In the past this was more the case, but with the Switch 2 the hardware bill of materials is actually more costly relative to previous products like the Switch 1. Underpowered and cheap, yes, but not really "to juice profits". See "lateral thinking with withered technology": "his strategy demonstrated Nintendo's belief that graphical advancement is not the only way to make progress in gaming technology; indeed, after the Wii's overwhelming success, Sony and Microsoft released their own motion control peripherals." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpei_Yokoi |