Nintendo’s Switch will make its debut on March 3 for $299. The hybrid console is Nintendo’s biggest launch in years, and one of the stories regarding its pricing has to do with the fact that it won’t offer a bundled game — a mainstay of Nintendo hardware. In an interview with GameSpot, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said that the decision to not include a game came boiled down to one
We look at every launch uniquely as to what’s the right thing to do for that launch. And I’ve been involved in launches dating back to the Nintendo DS. Each one is a little different.
For this launch, what we found is that with the range of software that’s coming–not only available day one but through April and into the summer, and including the holiday timeframe with Super Mario Odyssey–that we wanted to enable the consumer to buy the software they want, to look to get to the most approachable price point we could get to. That led us to a $299 price point, and let the consumer decide what games they want to buy.
To hit the target, Nintendo had to prioritise what it included in the box, and it decided it couldn’t bundle a game and still sell the console for under $300.
The first decision that we make is, where do we want to be in terms of the hardware price point that’s going to be approachable and hit the marketplace we want? And from a US price point, we wanted to be at $299.
Certainly, lower is always better, but at a $349 or $399 price point, we just didn’t feel that was the right place to be. So we start there. And then it’s all about, what’s going to be included? Obviously the inclusion of the two Joy-Con, critically important; all the right cables, the dock, critically important. We also have to do this from a financial perspective as well. Once we got to that bundle, it really needed to be at $299 without a piece of software.
