We’re only days away from the Nintendo Switch 2’s price hike, as the year-old console joins the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in unprecedented price rises, adding an extra $50 to the cost. That puts the price of a new Switch 2 at $500. To coincide, the company has announced two new bundles to launch after the increase, one a return of the Mario Kart World bundle, and the other, due later in the year, set to feature a Nintendo Switch Sports Resort code in the box. The MKW version will cost $550, while the Sports Resort bundle is to be $530. Both come with a 90-day subscription to Nintendo Switch Online.
The Switch 2 originally launched both in a standalone option and as a bundle that included a digital version of Mario Kart World for a slight discount on the cost of buying each separately. That came in at $500, rather than the console’s $450 vanilla price, and helped MKW become by far the system’s biggest-selling game. That bundle was quietly phased out in the interim, now to return with a more daunting sticker price. Meanwhile, the Switch Sports Resort bundle is brand new, due to release alongside the game itself October 22. It’s worth noting that neither includes a physical copy of its respective game.
What’s new this time is the inclusion of a 90-day teaser subscription to Nintendo Switch Online, although even this is the Scroogiest possible offering. This is very much not the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack that also includes access to various pieces of DLC for Animal Crossing, Splatoon 2, and Mario Kart 8, free upgrades for Switch 1 Zelda titles Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, and access to the libraries of GameCube, Game Boy Advance, N64 and Virtual Boy games. It’s also not the Family Membership that lets you put your partner or kids on the same package. And, you know, given the situation, and that this is a service that’s essentially free to Nintendo beyond server costs, that kinda sucks.
When announcing the forthcoming price increase back in May, Nintendo alluded to “the impact of various changes in market conditions…expected to extend over the medium to long term.” Trump’s tariffs imposed on the company had just been ruled illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court the month before (Nintendo is getting all the money it lost paid back, but made clear it doesn’t intend to return any of that to the customers who paid for earlier component price hikes), and yet those increases planned for the U.S. are twice as high as those in Europe. Hopes that this $50 increase might be reduced or dismissed as a result of the tariff ruling have not been met.
Let’s at least hope this is the start of a few more bundle options. It remains bizarre that there’s no Donkey Kong Bananza bundle, for instance. Or indeed a Pokopia-including option.
