The Nintendo Switch Won't Be Seeing A Price Cut Anytime Soon

When the sales for the Nintendo Switch looked like they were slowing slightly during the middle half of 2018, some gamers and analysts suggested that perhaps Nintendo needed to cut the price of the system down to $249, which has been a sweet selling spot for a lot of home consoles. However, according to Nintendo's president, the Switch won't be seeing a price cut anytime soon.

Nintendo Everything is reporting that, during a discussion with Sankei News, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa weighed in on the Switch's success and answered a question about the company's ambitious goal of shifting 20 million SKUs globally throughout the fiscal year. Furukawa noted that the company is maintaining this goal and there won't be any price cuts for the Switch in its attempt to reach said goal...

It makes sense given that people are still buying the Switch in droves. The console is a sales monster not just in Nintendo's home region of Japan, but also abroad. The console was the best-selling system in the United States and the rest of North America for 2018, capping off the year by moving close to 2 million units throughout the month of December alone due to the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

And, speaking of which, the game managed to shift more than 5 million copies during the first week of release, making it one of the biggest games to launch in the history of a Nintendo platform. It was also the 5th best-selling game of 2018, even though it only just released in December, putting it up alongside other big sellers such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.

Furukawa also reiterated several other successes for the Switch, such as Super Mario Party for the home console, which launched in the crowded month of October, but still managed to move more than 1.5 million copies out of the gate. This even while going up against heavy-hitters from Ubisoft like Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

The Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee games also moved millions of copies across the Switch, totaling more than 3 million during the first week of release, which is extremely impressive.

Basically, Nintendo is relying on the old tried and true model: software moves hardware.

So, the company is focused on putting out quality software to keep people buying the hardware. This is also why Nintendo recently announced that Metroid Prime 4 was being delayed due to having development restarted under Retro Studios. According to the company, Metroid Prime 4's development was simply not quite up to par and did not meet Nintendo's quality seal of approval.

Given the fact that when games do meet Nintendo's quality seal of approval, they end up shifting millions of copies and making the company lots of money. So it's easy to understand why it's so stringent on maintaining certain standards. And so long as quality software keeps being released, gamers will keep purchasing the hardware even if it doesn't get a price drop, as evident with the current sales momentum of the Nintendo Switch.