Earlier this month, it was finally confirmed that Nintendo could hold out no longer. The Nintendo Switch 2 is going up in price, with a $50 increase going into effect globally on September 1, 2026. It's a sign of Nintendo, like XBOX and PlayStation, succumbing to the combined pressures of elements like the memory shortage and tariffs, but according to veteran analyst Joost van Dreunen, this final domino falling is "the canary in the coal mine" that if even Nintendo can't stick to its traditional guns, "none of the old rules" of the video game industry are relevant.
If van Dreunen's name sounds familiar, it's likely because he was the co-founder of a leading video game industry analytics firm before selling it to Nielsen, and also potentially because we've covered his independent analysis on his SuperJoost Playlist newsletter before, the latest of which is pointed at the changing economics of video game consoles.
We've all unfortunately become used to this being the first video game console generation where console prices go up instead of down over the course of the generation. All three console platform makers have increased the price of their devices in the past six years, with Nintendo practically speedrunning the process by announcing it would be upping the Switch 2 price before the new console reached its one-year anniversary.
Again, the price increases do come from factors beyond the companies simply deciding to increase the price, but van Dreunen's point is that if "a historically conservative, financially disciplined operator that builds its own hardware, its own IP, and answers to almost no one," like Nintendo, can't hold the wall against increasing the price, paired with a declining forecast for console sales, change is coming.
Video game consoles are just going to be this expensive going forward, and that's something we'll all have to adjust to. "The question is no longer whether the pricing model needs to change," van Dreunen writes. "It is the version of the new model each company commits to."
"None of the old rules - seven-year cycles, mid-cycle price cuts, predictable refresh windows, separable device-purchase decisions - survive the current environment intact. Forecasts built on the last cycle's assumptions are already obsolete...Nintendo's price increase tells us that the existing economics for console gaming are breaking. The question now is whether the industry at large is going to recognize what it actually sells, and to whom - or whether it keeps insisting it is a technology business right up until the technology prices its customers out of the room."
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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