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The story
As semiconductor prices keep climbing, users on 5ch’s console hardware board have been debating how this will affect the timing and design of the Switch’s successor and next-gen consoles. Some pointed out that LPDDR5X memory prices jumped from about $30 to $70 per unit in just a year, and opinions are split on whether the Switch 2’s lifespan will end up longer or shorter than the Switch 1’s roughly nine years.
With PS5’s monthly active users reportedly reaching 125 million, and Roblox seeing a drop in paying users also factoring in, the thread became a broader read on where the console market is headed.
What people said
· The Switch 2 won't last anywhere near 9 years like the original Switch did
· Any full new titles currently in development for the Switch 2 should, if possible, be shifted to launch alongside the next-gen console
· The next-gen console should launch as soon as possible — ideally within 3 years
· The Switch 2 should pull back to a core-gamer positioning, something like a 'Switch 1 Pro' that lets you play Switch games
at higher resolution on a gaming monitor
· The next-gen console should drop the 'Switch' branding entirely to create a sense of renewal
· The next-gen console must be priced so parents can buy one per kid (under ¥30,000 in Japan) as a baseline,
with specs built to fit that price
· To make up for the lower specs, differentiate the hardware with gimmicks (watch-style, phone-style, etc.)
· Since all users really want is Nintendo's own software, make it a Nintendo-first-party-only machine,
with third parties sold more like an OEM arrangement
If anything, the slowdown in hardware performance gains is only going to get worse from here, so the Switch 2's competitive window will end up longer than the Switch 1's.
Why assume the Switch 2 won't last 9 years like the Switch did? Spec-wise it's set higher relative to its era than the original Switch was, so at least in Nintendo's own thinking, it should be designed not to get left behind quickly.
They'll keep extending the Switch's life too, and sell it alongside the Switch 2 for a long stretch — and they'll make a cheap Famicom Mini-style unit for younger kids.
Once prices go up, they don't really come back down.
I wasn't trying to sound like AI, though.
Fair point. The Wii U's total lifetime sales were about that same number.
If they try to stretch the Switch 2 out for 10 years, that's game over for them.
The dock is basically just an expansion port, so it's not costly to make. What really drives the cost is the LCD panel and the SoC.
The Joy-Cons must cost a fortune, huh 🥺
I think the Switch 2 stays relevant only until the current wave of low-to-mid-spec PCs gets swept away — how long do you think that'll take? If anything, I'd guess the price surge is actually slowing down the general PC upgrade cycle.
Because the price is too high and doesn't match Nintendo's actual customer base. It's ended up priced and specced more for core gamers. For giving to a kid, what matters is being safer and cheaper than a smartphone, having location tracking/parental monitoring, being easy to carry, and being affordable enough for one per child — that's essential.
That same Roblox just posted a huge drop — about a 20% decline in users.
https://www.4gamer.net/games/036/G003691/20260824001/
Because they threw away that entire 150-million-unit Switch install base, reset everything, and started over from zero.
Well, of course you start from zero units when you release new hardware.
Given the Switch 2's specs, they'd have been better off releasing it as a 'Switch Pro' or a 'Switch 4K model.' The reason Q1 earnings looked decent was Tomodachi Collection selling 10 million copies on the Switch 1, plus Trump-tariff refunds — that's really it.
That's the risk though, isn't it — PCs can raise their specs while keeping backward compatibility.
Even after a 20% drop, it's not even close — Switch's entire yearly active user count loses to Roblox's monthly numbers alone lol
The article you linked is literally about Roblox 'crumbling from the foundations up.' Monthly paying users dropped from 37 million to 27 million — that's exactly why the stock crashed.
Since theirs is releasing later, they're probably locked into higher-priced component contracts than Nintendo…
Sony has the PS Portal. If they sell that as a 'PS6P,' a ¥29,800 price point is possible — plus a handheld that uses PSSR3 to run PS6 games locally at a lowered internal resolution.
It's not even selling at that price right now, is it?
Why would that make it cheaper…
'We're fortunate — we're in the later stage of the PS console's life cycle. That means we don't need to aggressively push console sales right now. Instead, we're focusing on ongoing revenue from our existing user base.'
The idea is that, with a large enough base of people already on PS5, there's less need than before to price the hardware low just to attract new buyers. As of June 30, PlayStation had 125 million monthly active users, and Sony is increasingly focused on revenue from existing players through services like PS Plus.
The bigger price hikes in Japan are down to the weak yen. Elsewhere they've kept it at round numbers like $499 or €499, which suggests they deliberately landed on clean price points.
https://www.apple-hacks.com/entry/apple-samsung-lpddr5x-100-percent-hike-iphone-supply
This is about the 12GB LPDDR5X module — its price reportedly went from roughly $30 in early 2025 to around $70 now.
That's plenty high already.
How many more units do they need to sell to satisfy you? It's already around 97 million units —
that's already more than 4x the Switch 2's install base lol
It's already been 7 years, so the early units are going to keep breaking down one after another.
The actual active user count worldwide is like a tenth of that number, and you're bragging about it — that's genuinely hilarious.
You could predict its adoption curve will be gentler than the Switch 1's, but it's hard to imagine it ending up short-lived.
It's dead in Europe, though.
Nintendo has no intention of competing with Sony and third parties over core gamers — it's a company where first-party software makes up 83% of sales. What Nintendo wants to protect is the family segment, and nearly all its first-party titles are aimed squarely at that. The point is that by pricing the Switch 2 high, they've left an opening there that's getting eaten into by smartphones, Roblox, and NEX.
Background and Key Points
Nintendo’s console generations have historically run long: the original Switch launched in 2017 and remained the company’s flagship for roughly nine years before the Switch 2 arrived, a run that survived one global chip shortage already (2020–2022) without a mid-cycle price cut. That history matters because Nintendo, unlike Sony or Microsoft, has always leaned on a single low-cost, high-volume box rather than competing on raw specs — first-party software reportedly accounts for around 83% of its hardware-attached sales, which is why the “Switch 2 priced for core gamers” framing in the thread reads as a departure from form. The memory-price numbers cited (LPDDR5X roughly doubling from about $30 to $70 per module in a year) are real and tied to a global DRAM supply crunch, but the thread never states the actual driver: that crunch is being caused primarily by AI data-center demand for high-bandwidth memory diverting fab capacity away from consumer-grade chips, not by console-industry demand itself or simple yen weakness.
The actual fault line in the thread isn’t whether prices are rising — everyone agrees on that — it’s whether slower generational leaps in chip performance make hardware cycles longer (so Switch 2 outlasts Switch 1) or whether Nintendo’s own pricing and positioning choices will force an early, disruptive pivot regardless of chip trends.
One number worth flagging for readers: Sony’s “125 million” is monthly active users, not units sold — PS5 unit sales sit near 97 million lifetime. Conflating the two, as parts of the thread do, makes the installed base look larger than it is and skews any comparison with Switch’s software attach rates or Roblox’s user counts.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread ‘Rising semiconductor prices will affect the release cycle and design of Nintendo’s next-gen console’.
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