Despite a holiday disappointment, the Nintendo Switch 2 has been a huge success for the company. Soon, it’ll be moving up in the world with a brand new, bigger price tag! Yay!
Oh, you’re not happy with that? …That’s fair. It’s also reality – or at least, it will be, according to an industry analyst. Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners made several predictions for the year to come, and one of them was a price hike to Nintendo’s console.
Ahmed writes, “The Nintendo Switch 2 is competitively priced compared to the PS5 and Xbox Series X, after the latter consoles witnessed price hikes last year. But we believe the Switch 2 is set to follow in Sony and Microsoft’s footsteps.”
The reason for this change is threefold:
First, tariffs. When big governments put the screws on global trade, any product with parts manufactured in multiple places is going to see pain along their bottom line.
Second, increased costs for key computing parts. Ahmad specifically cites the recent waves of AI companies driving up demand for hardware like RAM and storage components.
And third (though this one was less specific), is broader economic uncertainty. Like it or not, companies have to pay production costs long before those products actually reach the market. They can budget their costs based on what the end product will sell for, but if they don’t know what the economic landscape will look like that far down the line, they’ll plan around charging a higher price as a way to play it safe.
“While we do anticipate Nintendo to increase the price of the Switch 2,” Ahmed continued, “they may opt to discontinue the $449 SKU and only sell a $499 or higher bundle SKU instead.”
This price hike, obviously, isn’t something Nintendo has settled on quite yet, and it’s clearly something they’re inclined against doing. They resisted trends that spiked Xbox and PlayStation costs, after all. But that resistance can only stand for so long, and the analyst predicts that this year, Nintendo will cave under economic pressure.
What else is in store for 2026? More user-generated and AI-generated content.
The Switch 2’s price hike prediction didn’t come alone. That same article also predicted several other trends becoming much stronger across the industry.
It’s no secret that “live service” styled games are in a sticky situation right now. The backlash to Highguard is a recent example, but plenty more precede it. But a few players in that space are doing extremely well: your Robloxes and Fortnites of the world. And the modern day versions of those games feel very different from your traditional live service affair for one key reason: a strong focus on user-generated content. Ahmed cites Genshin Impact as an example of a live service game starting this shift, and expects more to follow in that game’s footsteps.
We see this as a shift from “UGC as a feature” to “UGC as a revenue generator,” where creator tools, discovery algorithms, and payouts become a standalone pillar of top live service games.
As for generative AI, we’ll see more of that too, especially in Asian markets. They note that, while genAI use for game development has had no shortage of controversies, those controversies are largely centered in the westernized world. “Gamers in Asia continue to be more positive on genAI usage relative to the West,” Ahmed writes, “and we expect Asia-based video game studios to continue embracing the technology this year.”
