I keep thinking about how strange this moment is, not just for Nintendo, but for anyone who still buys consoles with a bit of childlike excitement left in them.
On paper, this should be uncomplicated. The Switch 2 is a hit. It was a full-on sprint out the gate. Seventeen million units in a few months is the kind of number you usually see in retrospective slideshows, not current earnings calls. Profits are up, the audience is there and the games are landing.
And yet the mood around it feels… tense.
Part of that is the market being the market. Wall Street has the emotional stability of a toddler who missed a nap. But part of it is more structural, and more worrying. The problem isn’t demand. It’s not even competition in the traditional sense. It’s memory chips. Small, boring components that suddenly matter more than characters, creativity, or decades of brand goodwill.
We’ve been here before, or at least it feels that way. 2021 taught all of us how fragile “normal” actually is. Back then it was ports and factories and shipping containers. This time it’s AI. The great silicon land grab.
Every major tech company is buying DRAM and NAND like tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. Not to build consoles or things people love. To build vast, humming warehouses that exist mostly so we can talk to machines a bit faster. When that’s the buyer on the other side of the table, even a company like Nintendo doesn’t get special treatment. You don’t outbid a blank cheque.
What makes this uncomfortable is how real the knock-on effects are. DRAM prices jumping nearly 95% in a single quarter isn’t market noise. That’s a gut punch. Consoles already operate on tight margins, especially early in their lifecycle. The idea that Nintendo could be losing serious money on every Switch 2 sold isn’t dramatic. It’s totally plausible.
And this is where the optimism starts to wobble. Nintendo’s leadership is saying the correct things. Long-term contracts. Careful monitoring. Strategic sourcing. All sensible and familiar, but none of it changes the fundamental imbalance. Contracts end. Prices reset. And AI demand isn’t cooling off anytime soon.
We’ve already seen Sony and Microsoft quietly test the waters with price increases in certain regions. Without any big announcements or grand explanations. Just a subtle recalibration and a collective shrug. Nintendo has always tried to resist that playbook, positioning itself as the more accessible option, the console you don’t need to justify to yourself too much.
This moment threatens that identity.
As a player, it leaves you in a slightly absurd position. You’re not choosing between brands anymore. You’re competing with data centres. Your Mario Kart machine is fighting for the same components as a language model that will never feel joy, frustration, or the quiet satisfaction of nailing a perfect drift.
If you’re waiting for the price to come down, that feels increasingly naïve. The best-case scenario might simply be prices not going up. And that’s a strange thing to hope for when everything else about the Switch 2 feels like a win.
Nintendo’s challenge right now isn’t convincing people to buy its console. That part seems sorted. The real game is keeping it affordable in a world that suddenly values chatbots more than play.
