If I may play a little armchair quarterback here, I think this holiday season is a huge opportunity for Nintendo to do some really cool stuff, especially with the Switch 2 or whatever its called on the way. Now, I'm not a CEO of a major corporation, and I don’t know how much money this stuff makes for them, but it seems like a lot, and they seem like a sensible company, all things considered, that knows the value of good will. Sure, they aren’t exactly having a hard time selling Switch consoles, but I’m going to go ahead and offer my unsolicited advice anyway. 

First thing’s first, it’s time to lower the price. Yes, Switch consoles sell just fine at full price, so why bother lowering it? Well, A couple of reasons. First and foremost, it’s tough out there! There are a lot of families struggling to make ends meet right now, and while $300 isn’t a crazy amount of money for a lot of folks, something less expensive sure would be nice. Especially this far into the system’s life. I have a hard time believing they couldn’t still turn a profit with a lower price point for the Switch. 

Also, they have a whole new system coming soon, and if they want to be aggressive with the pricing, the Switch as-is really makes that a hard sell. So here’s what I’d love to see happen. The Switch Lite drops to $99. The Switch regular drops to $179. The OLED drops to $199. Then when the Switch 2 launches, it can be $299 just like the Switch that’s already selling now. $299 is the sweet spot for selling a console right now, and there has to be a decent price disparity between the old and new to make sure everyone knows its value. They could potentially sell plenty of Switch successor units at $399, but can you imagine how quickly the install base would blow up if it launched at $299? It would be incredible. 

ElectronWarp HD Adapter for Wii - Electron Shepherd

$29.99

ElectronWarp - Wii This is the new name for the Wii2HDMI! It is the same product!The product you receive may have the old logo and...… read more

But if you’ll allow me to don my tinfoil hat for a moment, dropping the Switch price would be beneficial for another reason. Yes, it would be great to be able to claim the top spot for best selling video game system of all time, and that kind of price drop would absolutely achieve that, but hear me out. What if the Switch 2 has an optional dual screen mode, sort of like the Wii U but, you know, actually functional? What if you can use your original Switch as a second screen for the Switch 2? That sounds like a crazy thing to do unless of course everyone already has a Switch! The Switch Lite already segments the market for Switch with some games not even being playable on the darn thing thanks to the lack of joy cons, and it’s doing just fine! Imagine a return to good dual screen gaming where it isn’t a requirement! The Switch Lite just became an optional $100 controller, which isn’t exactly a whole lot more expensive than regular controllers cost now. 

Dropping the price on the Switch lets a lot more people access one of the best systems of all time, and as long as the Switch 2 comes out of the gate with a lineup of games that can only be played on Switch 2, the consoles won’t cannibalize one another. It’s perfect. 

Next, it’s time to bring back Nintendo Selects. I’m all for Nintendo maintaining the value of their properties. It’s how they’ve remained a successful business for all these years, and I firmly believe this race to the bottom in terms of pricing and subscription services has done an extreme amount of damage to the rest of the industry. That being said, it’s been YEARS! The line doesn’t have to be huge or anything, just the ones that really define the platform. In a perfect world, I’d love for these games to be $20, and I think Nintndo could easily afford it, but if we’re being realistic, they’d be $29.99. But let’s get something available at lower prices, especially when there’s other stuff still available at full price that follows them up. Super Mario Odyssey, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Breath of the Wild, Splatoon 3, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Metroid Dread, Pokemon Sword & Shield, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Drop the price on all those games to $29.99 permanently, and watch them soar. Then push some of those B and C tier first party titles out at $19.99. Clubhouse Games, Nintendo Switch Sports, Big Brain Academy, ARMS, Everybody 1-2 Switch, get them on store shelves for a pittance and give them a new life as well. That’s to say nothing of Super Mario Maker 2, Pikmin 3 Deluxe, and the countless other great first party and third party releases out there. The bottom line though is, make the software lineup super affordable now that you’ve got the new stuff on the way. Especially if the Switch 2 is backward compatible. The new games will hold the higher price tags, but not higher than the standard $60. (I know Tears of the Kingdom is $70, but it appears to be an outlier, thank goodness). Keep it so the prices that are currently making you a ton of money stay intact, and it’ll go a very long way in making sure the Switch’s successor is a success. 

Finally, a strong software lineup out of the gate is a must, but more importantly, it has to be obvious that that software can not be played on Switch. Backward compatibility would absolutely be clutch here. Bring over the NSO catalog of retro games in full without hitting the reset button, 100% backward compatibility with all physical and digital Switch software, or at least the vast majority of it, and boom. Instant library for anyone looking to upgrade, and it also allows developers to continue making simple games capable of running on Switch with optional upgraded versions on Switch 2. But if there isn’t new software that can’t be done just fine on the original Switch, they risk running into the PS5 problem. That’s a platform that seems to exist on hype alone, as the vast majority of its games are perfectly playable, and not even all that different on PS4. PS5 is making Sony a metric ton of money, but I’m not sure I’d call its ecosystem all that healthy. That’s a whole other ball of wax though. Nintendo needs to focus on not repeating the Wii U’s mistakes, and a clear delineation between it and its predecessor is paramount. 

But one or two games isn’t going to cut the mustard either. There has to be a strong and steady lineup of new experiences built specifically for the Switch 2. I’m confident Nintendo knows this. They’ve been talking about making sure there’s plenty of stock to go around to combat scalpers, and I can’t shake the feeling that they've already got a handful of projects completed and ready to go for the thing right now. They’re waiting until they can produce enough stock to go around, and have enough games to fill at least the first few months of the system’s life with certified sellers. 

The Switch 2 isn’t a guaranteed hit. There’s so much that could go so very wrong with that platform, and if it doesn't get that Switch crowd just right, it could very quickly turn into a real bad situation for Nintendo. I’d like to think they’ve learned that lesson the hard way over the years, and that they are going to need to be both very aggressive at offering a good value while also making sure that people know the new system is worth paying the premium prices for. Again, I’m no marketing expert, but I’ve been around this industry for a very long time, an with the exception of that time when I swore Pokemon was just going to be a passing fad and wouldn’t stand the test of time, i’ve been pretty spot on with my assessments on what makes a successful console. (Okay, I’ve been wrong a few more times than that). I believe in my heart of hearts that this is a winning strategy. Only time will tell how very wrong I am.