Nintendo Pushes Switch 2 to $499.99 in Year Two

Nintendo now asks $499.99 for Switch 2 in the United States, $50 more than the June 2025 launch price, after the September 1, 2026 rise took effect. Canada moved to $679.99, Europe to €499.99, and the United Kingdom to £419.99 on the same date. Japan had already lifted the Japanese-language system on May 25.

The company said the change answers market conditions it expects to last, then published a second-year plan with fewer consoles and more games. That is the reverse of how living consoles used to be sold.

Switch 2 Now Costs $499.99 in the United States

Nintendo of America posted on May 7, 2026 that it would lift the Switch 2 U.S. price to $499.99 from $449.99 on September 1, and that original Switch pricing in the United States is not changing in this round. Latin America, it said, would be announced later. Kyoto followed on May 8 with a global price revisions for products and services notice over the name of President Shuntaro Furukawa.

We sincerely apologize for the impact these price revisions may have on our customers and other stakeholders, and we deeply appreciate your understanding.

Nintendo Co., Ltd., May 8, 2026 notice

The Western list prices are now live. The U.S. and Canadian figures are MSRPs before tax. The euro figure is the My Nintendo Store price with tax included, and Japan’s published prices include tax.

SWITCH 2 LIST PRICES AFTER THE RISE

The UK number was not in the May 8 table. Nintendo Store UK confirmed it on August 20, 2026, twelve days before the new sticker went up, and the store page now shows £419.99 as the live price for the June 4, 2025 UK release of the hardware.

From 01/09, Nintendo Switch 2's price will be revised from £395.99/€469,99 to £419.99/€499,99 on Nintendo Store.

🇬🇧: https://t.co/iBrz0XO2jc

🇮🇪: https://t.co/IdpOnqd91W

— Nintendo Store UK (@NintendoStoreUK) August 20, 2026

One Japan SKU was spared. The notice says the Switch 2 Multi-Language System sold through My Nintendo Store will remain unchanged, a quiet pressure valve beside a ¥10,000 jump on the Japan-only Japanese-language box.

THE STICKER DATES

1. May 7, 2026: Nintendo of America posts the U.S. MSRP change and leaves original Switch pricing alone in that market.
2. May 8, 2026: Nintendo Co., Ltd. issues the global notice covering Switch 2, Japan’s original Switch family, Switch Online, and playing cards.
3. May 25, 2026: Japan hardware list prices take effect.
4. July 1, 2026: Japan Switch Online rates take effect.
5. August 20, 2026: Nintendo Store UK confirms £419.99.
6. September 1, 2026: United States, Canada, Europe, and UK Switch 2 prices take effect.

Nintendo also said Switch 2 and original Switch revisions would roll out in other regions through local subsidiaries, so the May 8 grid is the floor, not the full map.

Year Two Used to Mean a Cut

For most of the modern console business, the second year was when the box got cheaper. Factories found cost, the install base needed a push, and a $50 drop was how you sold the next wave of machines into living rooms that had waited. Nintendo itself sat on the Wii’s $250 U.S. launch price for about three years, then cut it to $200 in September 2009, and later sold a $129 bundle as Wii U arrived.

The original Switch broke that habit in the other direction first. It launched in the United States at $299.99 in March 2017 and stayed there for years while rivals eventually marked hardware down. In August 2025, with Switch 2 already in shops, Nintendo of America left the new console alone and raised the old family instead. The May 2026 U.S. notice then froze those original Switch prices again and moved only Switch 2.

Switch 2’s own hike lands 15 months after the June 2025 launch, in the same fiscal year Nintendo is calling the system’s second. The old script said year two was for growing the install base with a lower sticker. This script says year two is for collecting more money on the hardware that is still left to sell.

People who bought at $449.99 locked the launch price. People who waited for the usual cut got the opposite. That is a small transfer, $50 a unit, but it is also a signal that the waiting game Nintendo customers used to play on hardware no longer pays.

A 100 Billion Yen Hole in the Hardware Bill

Nintendo did not hide the bill. In its English results deck for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026, it said the year ending March 31, 2027 factors in an about 100.0 billion yen cost impact from higher prices for parts such as memory, plus U.S. tariff rates in force at the end of March 2026. At the 150 yen per dollar rate Nintendo used in that same forecast, that is about $667 million sitting in cost of goods.

The first year was huge on volume and rough on mix. Switch 2 sold 19.86 million units in FY26, and original Switch hardware fell 64.8% to 3.80 million. Net sales nearly doubled to 2,313.0 billion yen. Gross margin dropped from 61.0% to 39.3% because the new, lower-margin box was such a large share of sales, and operating margin fell to 15.6% from 24.3% even as operating profit rose 27.5% to 360.1 billion yen.

THE YEAR-TWO FORECAST NINTENDO ALREADY WROTE

• 19.86 million: Switch 2 systems Nintendo sold in FY26, the launch year that ran from the June 2025 debut through March 31, 2026.
• 16.50 million: Switch 2 hardware forecast for FY27, a 16.9% decline Nintendo says reflects strong launch-year sales and the price revisions.
• 60.00 million: Switch 2 software forecast for FY27, up 23.2% from 48.71 million, with the forecast excluding games bundled with hardware.
• 100.0 billion yen: extra cost Nintendo baked into FY27 for memory and tariffs, about $667 million at its 150 yen per dollar assumption.

Quarterly sell-in already showed the front load. Switch 2 moved 5.82 million, 4.54 million, and 7.01 million units across the first three quarters, then 2.49 million in the quarter ended March 2026. Nintendo said sales were more concentrated in the launch year than on its earlier systems, in part because many people were still playing original Switch when the new box arrived. On older hardware, it said, the second fiscal year after launch usually ran ahead of year one.

The FY27 plan still has operating profit a little higher, at 370.0 billion yen, even as net sales are forecast to fall 11.4% to 2,050.0 billion yen. Original Switch hardware is pencilled at 2.00 million units and original Switch software at 105.00 million. Nintendo called 16.50 million a solid level of adoption for Switch 2 in its second year, and it said annual playing users on Switch and Switch 2 again exceeded 100 million.

That is how a price rise and a unit drop can sit in the same spreadsheet. Fewer boxes, a higher average price, and a software forecast that assumes the people who already own the machine will keep buying games.

Japan Repriced the Old Switch Family Too

Outside Japan, this round is a Switch 2 story. Inside Japan, Nintendo repriced the whole shelf. The Japanese-language Switch 2 jumped ¥10,000, and the original Switch family moved with it, on hardware that first shipped in 2017.

JAPAN HARDWARE AND SWITCH ONLINE MOVES

• Switch OLED: ¥37,980 to ¥47,980, a ¥10,000 rise on the set that was supposed to be the cheap way to stay in the family.
• Original Switch: ¥32,978 to ¥43,980, a ¥11,002 rise that is larger in yen than the Switch 2 Japanese-language jump.
• Switch Lite: ¥21,978 to ¥29,980, a ¥8,002 rise on the smallest, oldest design in the lineup.
• Switch Online, 12-month individual: ¥2,400 to ¥3,000 from July 1, 2026, with the family plan moving from ¥4,500 to ¥5,800.
• Expansion Pack, 12-month individual: ¥4,900 to ¥5,900, and the family Expansion Pack from ¥8,900 to ¥9,900.

Nintendo said Switch Online is a globally unified service and that the Japan rates were being aligned with other regions. South Korea was named as another market for Online revisions. The May 8 notice did not publish new U.S. or European Online prices.

The Lite move is the tell if you still think this is only about Switch 2 silicon. A nine-year-old handheld does not share a memory bill with a 2025 console in any clean way, and it is not the machine Nintendo needs to defend in a tariff fight. It is leftover demand, repriced because Nintendo can still sell it and because Japan’s list prices had lagged.

The spared multi-language Switch 2 sits beside all of that as a different product on a different channel. Shoppers who can buy that SKU from My Nintendo Store keep the old tag. Shoppers on the Japan-only Japanese-language system do not.

Games Are the Answer Nintendo Is Counting On

Mario Kart World, which launched with the hardware, sold 14.70 million units in FY26 including copies bundled with the console. Donkey Kong Bananza, out in July 2025, sold 4.52 million. Switch 2 software as a whole reached 48.71 million units, a figure that includes about 12.60 million bundled copies, and Nintendo’s 60.00 million forecast for FY27 is counted without those bundles, so the two years are not a clean like-for-like.

The results deck still treats games as the thing that makes a higher hardware price livable. It said the Switch 2 lineup after launch was the largest Nintendo had ever had at that stage, and that a wider slate would “provide a solid foundation for the growth of the installed base” in year two. Sell-through on the new hardware, it added, was already higher than original Switch in its first full fiscal year.

Seven days after the Western sticker change, Nintendo of America dated The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for November 5 on Switch 2, folding a Hero of Time remake into a Zelda 40th anniversary software calendar that now has to do more work as a reason to walk into a $499.99 purchase. Nine days after the U.S. hardware rise, Nintendo of America announced a Customer Appreciation Sale. The box got more expensive. The catalogue is being asked to feel more generous.

That pairing is how the $500 number is being used in public. Every exclusive is now a test of whether the new list price is worth swallowing, and a 1998 remake dated onto the new machine reads as both a carrot and a shove. Console makers have always sold the door with software. They used to cut the door in year two while they did it.

Why Is a $50 Rise the Smallest Move in the Room?

Nintendo’s $50 U.S. increase is modest next to what Microsoft has already done on Xbox. On June 25, 2026, Team Xbox said worldwide prices would rise on August 1 by $100 on 512 GB models and $150 on 1 TB models, with the 2 TB model dropped, after an earlier U.S. increase of $20 to $70 last October.

Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027. The entire consumer electronics industry is struggling with the current components crisis, but the effects are particularly hard on consoles.

Team Xbox, Xbox Wire, June 25, 2026

Xbox also said consoles are typically sold for less than they cost to make, a claim Nintendo did not repeat. Nintendo’s own language stayed vaguer, “changes in market conditions,” while the IR deck named memory and tariffs. Sony has raised PlayStation 5 prices more than once in this cycle too. Against that, a Switch 2 that now lists at $499.99 is still the cheaper current home console in the United States, which is cold comfort if you were holding out for the historical markdown.

Xbox’s note on storage and memory prices up 2.5x is the industry’s blunt version of the same shock Nintendo folded into 100.0 billion yen. The difference is timing and doctrine. Microsoft is marking up a generation that launched in 2020. Nintendo is marking up a generation that launched in June 2025, after already selling 19.86 million of them, and it is doing so on a forecast that treats 16.50 million second-year units and 60.00 million games as the way through.

The September 1 sticker is in force. The FY27 plan already includes it. Nintendo is not waiting to see if shoppers flinch before it counts the year; it counted the flinch, raised the price, and pointed at the software slate as the reason to pay it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Nintendo raise the original Switch price in the United States this time?

No. Nintendo of America said in the May 7, 2026 notice that pricing for the Nintendo Switch system is not changing in this round. The original U.S. Switch family last moved on August 3, 2025, when the standard set went to $339.99, the OLED model to $399.99, and Switch Lite to $229.99.

Is the Japan multi-language Switch 2 getting a price rise?

No. Nintendo said the Switch 2 Multi-Language System available from My Nintendo Store will remain unchanged. Only the Japan-only Japanese-language system moved, from ¥49,980 to ¥59,980 on May 25, 2026.

Are Nintendo Switch Online prices rising in the United States?

The May 8, 2026 notice listed new Switch Online rates only for Japan, effective July 1, 2026, and said revisions are also planned in South Korea. It did not publish new U.S. or European Online prices.

Do the new Switch 2 prices include sales tax?

In the United States and Canada, the listed MSRPs do not include tax. In Europe, the My Nintendo Store prices include tax. All Japan prices in the May 8 notice include tax.

What else did Nintendo reprice in Japan besides consoles?

Nintendo moved several Japan-only playing card and hanafuda/kabufuda lines to open pricing from May 25, 2026, citing higher material costs, and said Nintendo Standard Playing Cards that had listed at ¥660 would no longer carry a set MSRP.