Although Japan will be getting a region-locked version of the Nintendo Switch 2 for a far more affordable price than the rest of the world, there’s still been a fair amount of discourse about the console’s pricing going on all over social media ever since the April 2 Nintendo Direct. Is the Switch 2 overpriced or not? In pursuit of an answer to this question, Japanese users have been making comparisons to the prices of iPhones and various other things that probably have no business being compared to the price of a gaming console. But most notably, gacha games have taken the spotlight as gamers realize the horrific amount of spending they’re designed to incite.
While the global price of the Switch is $450 dollars (a significant bump compared to its $300-dollar predecessor), the Japan-exclusive version that supports only the Japanese language is priced at 50k yen, which converts to about $340 dollars (2025/4/10: edited typo). The cheaper price point is thought to be Nintendo’s effort to make up for the severe depreciation of the yen against the US dollar in recent years. The general consensus among Japanese gamers in response to this has been “Thank you Nintendo, please become the ruling party of our country next,” but that doesn’t mean casual users weren’t surprised to see an almost 20k yen increase in price between the first and second console – thus the discourse and random comparisons.
However, much hesitation about the Switch 2’s pricing was shut down by this now viral post comparing gacha game expenses to the console’s price. The table represents how much money you need to put into a game until its pity system, well, takes pity on you and gives you a guaranteed high rarity pull. Gacha games implement pity systems as a way to ensure that each player, not matter how rotten their luck may be, can get their hands on a low-odds item or character if they’ve made a specified number of pulls (in other words, if they’ve put a certain amount of money into the game). The catch is, however, that accumulating enough mileage for pity can take a lot of money.
As the post highlights, Blue Archive’s pity is roughly 50k yen, making it equivalent to the price of the Japanese Switch 2. Gakuen Idolmaster and Uma Musume: Pretty Derby are estimated at 60k, while Shift Up’s Goddess of Victory: NIKKE comes at a scandalous 120k yen. Of course, it’s important to note here that these sums are not a realistic representation of how much you actually need to spend (especially in Nikke, whose sparking system is generally considered generous) as they don’t account for free pulls or in-game currency players can earn or periodically receive for free. So, unless you have truly abysmal luck, do absolutely no dailies and ignore all handouts, you’re definitely not going to need to spend 800 dollars for an SSR in Nikke.
The fact remains though, that gacha games are an expensive pastime and practically designed to keep you spending. In response to criticism that the pricing of the Nintendo Switch 2 and its games is too inaccessible for kids, Japanese parents on X have argued that they’d be “more comfortable having their kids play Mario Kart World on a Switch 2 than gacha games on an expensive smartphone.”
