If Nintendo hoped last week’s announcement of a price increase for the Switch 2 would be enough to un-spook its shareholders, that’s now been entirely dashed. Reuters reports that the company’s share price has fallen 7 percent since markets opened in Japan Monday 11, while it’s come to light (via VGC) that the $50 increase still isn’t going to be enough to match increased expenses when producing the Switch 2. Without a big new game anywhere on the 2026 horizon, investors are really getting the jibblies.
Last week’s price hike announcement was intended to calm market nerves after Nintendo had seen five months in a row of falling share prices and long-term concern from its investors, alongside lowering its sales expectations for the Switch 2 over the next year. This was despite simultaneously announcing that the new console had sold 20 million units and 50 million games in its first nine months, but of course when it comes to the deranged world of market capitalism it’s only ever about what’s going to happen next, and never what actually just happened. As a consequence, today’s trading saw a colossal 7 percent wiped off Nintendo’s value, while Sony saw its own price leap up 10 percent.
It’s now been made more clear that even the year-one price increases on the Switch 2 aren’t actually enough to meet the increased costs of production for Nintendo, and that’s despite the rises within Japan being far more steep than those due to hit the rest of the world this September. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa reportedly said that the higher price “does not fully account for all cost increases,” referring to the higher price of computer components being caused by the ridiculous AI race and the current spike in oil prices.
Grieving a loss
Nintendo historically does not sell its consoles at a loss, whereas this has been standard practice for Sony and Microsoft for years, which instead view the machines as loss-leaders for the profits made from games sales. So, as Reuters says, Sony can impress investors by signalling an intention to sell fewer PS5s but at a better margin, while having a massively diverse company of many parts to back it up. But Nintendo, which aside from its third share of Pokémon is primarily a video games business, has fewer flashy objects with which to distract from a squeeze on margins.
This is being made all the more difficult by the peculiar absence of big-name games on its 2026 release list. Pokémon Pokopia has been a massive success, but again, that’s already happened—investors only care about what’s coming up, and with the next mainline Pokémon game now not appearing until 2027, that’s an awkwardly blank space. A refresh of Star Fox, yet another Splatoon game, and Yoshi and the Mysterious Book aren’t the all-conquering titles backers will be hoping for, and without even a hint at a new 3D Mario or any word on what’s next for The Legend of Zelda, those gambling on game sales are perhaps reasonably spooked.
Nintendo has never been a company that’s moved by external forces, endlessly dancing to the beat of its own unsyncopated drum, but even it might now have to suck it up and push out news on whatever is happening with its big licenses. And ideally something of major note that will appear before the 2026 holiday season. Clearly FromSoft’s The Duskbloods is the big third-party hope, but Nintendo really needs to make clear what’s coming from inside its own house.
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