Nintendo of America raised the Switch 2's price from $449.99 to $499.99 on September 1, 2026, and the stated reason, shifting market conditions, traces back to an AI-driven shortage of the DRAM and NAND chips every console needs.
Read the full story: Nintendo Switch 2 Hits $499.99 as AI Chip Demand Drains DRAM →
Transcript
Nintendo just raised the Switch 2's price from $449.99 to $499.99, fifty dollars overnight. The official line is market conditions, but the real story is memory chips. AI data centers are buying up so much DRAM and NAND that prices have nearly doubled in months, and console makers can't outbid them for the same supply. Japan saw this first. When its price rose in May, weekly hardware sales crashed eighty-seven percent, from two hundred forty-seven thousand units down to just thirty-one thousand. Canada and Europe are seeing similar increases. Nintendo's own president has already warned investors that memory costs are squeezing profits. This isn't really a Nintendo problem. It's every gadget maker competing with AI infrastructure for the same chips, and shoppers are the ones footing the bill.