On April 2nd, Nintendo held a Nintendo Direct for their upcoming console, the Nintendo Switch 2. They revealed things like the hardware that makes up the console and new games that they will be releasing on the Switch 2. The console will be releasing on June 5th, and will be launching with a new open world Mario Kart game, titled Mario Kart World.
The Nintendo Switch 2 will cost $450, and a bundle with Mario Kart World will cost $500. Other games that were revealed included a new game by FromSoftware, a sequel to Kirby Air Ride, and a new Donkey Kong 3D open world game.
This price, however, could potentially change. Eli Tan of New York Times wrote, “President Trump announced tariffs that sent global stock markets reeling and put the Mario party in jeopardy. The new Switch was made in Vietnam, one of the countries on the tariff list. Two days later, Nintendo said it was delaying pre-orders for the Switch 2 and possibly raising the price from $450. Just how high was unclear” (Tan, Apr. 10). Pre-orders were also delayed in Canada. There’s still around two months until the console is supposed to release, so all of the potential consumers in the USA will just have to wait and see if the tariffs do have an effect on the pricing of the console.
There was also a bit of outrage of towards the prices of the new games. The new Mario Kart game was revealed to cost $80, increasing from the typical price of $70. This upset many fans, with many saying that it was way too high of a price. However, some analysts think this is just a way of Nintendo testing the market, since they already know Mario Kart will sell well anyway. In an article for IGN, Rebekah Valentine wrote, “But the experts also told me there was more to it than that. McWhirter, an analyst for Omdia, told me that this was Nintendo taking advantage of a critical moment of change in the games industry to test the waters on what the market will tolerate as far as game pricing goes. And it’s using its most successful game series ever on that trial run, because Nintendo knows if any game can succeed at that price, it’s Mario Kart” (Valentine, Apr. 3).
