To be up front about this: I have no horse in this race. I'm not buying a Switch 2. Not because I hate what it is (I actually like it from a hardware point of view) but because I am entirely priced out of it. In fact, this is why I sold my original Switch, primarily because I couldn't afford to keep it fed with games anymore.
Thinking back, I can't help but feel like the original Switch led us into this. Sure, it was cheaper than its contemporaries (kind of, it wouldn't beat the Xbox One S on price until the launch of the Lite) but the game pricing would present an issue later on: They'd never, ever, ever go on sale. Breath of the Wild would never see anything resembling a significant discount over its lifespan, unless you bought used from some kid on Craigslist who just wanted the game gone and to recoup something from it.
All of Nintendo's 1st party titles were like this. The only significant discount you could find from authorized retailers and Nintendo themselves was on the DLC (because I remember paying damn near nothing for the BotW DLCs). I'm sure if you really knew where to look you could find discounts, but my main point is that sales on 1st party Nintendo games were harder than usual to find, if they were even able to be found.
(To be fair, this does present an advantage, in that you could buy in at launch and know you're not going to miss a sale and regret what you paid. But for the lower income folks like myself who didn't mind waiting for a sale, this sucked.)
The Switch, though, was a novel concept, so we just nodded and went along with this.
Until Nintendo decided to join everyone else and Tears of the Kingdom launched at $70. Normally, this would be no big deal! But coupled with what we now know about Switch game pricing, this was a nasty surprise. Because again: the prices never go down significantly.
But, hey, the Switch was still cheaper than a full fledged console, right? (Even though the system was very much past its prime at this point.)
It was...until the Switch 2.
The Switch 2 feels like a full on betrayal to those who felt like Nintendo always held up the low end of the market. Consoles typically (again) ran cheaper than the competition, and up until the Switch, games did actually depreciate and could be found in, say, GameStop for pennies on the dollar compared to full MSRP. (Hell, back when Hollywood Video was around and they had their in-house game store, I remember buying Metroid Prime in damn near perfect condition for like, $5!)
The Switch 2's MSRP (before tariffs, potentially) is $449. That's more expensive than a PS5 slim digital (which as of this writing has a bundle deal where you get Astro Bot for free). To make matters worse, the Switch 2 doesn't even come with a pack-in game like the PS5 does. Yeah, there are free-to-play games on console storefronts, but none of those show off what the console can do like, say, Wii Sports or Astro's Playroom did.
The Switch 2 does have a game intended to be something you'd pack in...but they want you to pay an extra $10 for it.
It gets better, believe it or not: Nintendo has raised the prices of their games! They used to say $70 was only going to be for exceptional titles like Tears of the Kingdom, but now $70 is the base price for everything, with $80 being the normal price for the "big" games. They'll also graciously let you upgrade Switch games to Switch 2 versions for $10 (which is in line with what Sony charges, so not bad).
But the best part: Say you don't own Breath of the Wild yet. Say you wanted to jump in with the Switch 2, because hey, better performance means you won't go into slideshow mode in the Korok Forest! You'd think Nintendo would be nice like, say, Sony and since BotW is eight years old just include the DLC with the Switch 2 edition right? Ha. NOPE.
So if you don't own BotW and want the DLC and you want it all on Switch 2, you're paying $90 for the full game. Unbelievable.
But again, none of this would be an issue if Switch games depreciated like games do on all other platforms! Both Sony and Microsoft's digital storefronts have frequent sales with significant discounts on even their big games. That's really the crux of the pricing issue here. When Nintendo puts up a game for $80, we know from the Switch that $80 is pretty much going to be the normal price for the foreseeable future and it might see a $5 discount rarely but that's it.
Given how well voting with your wallet works I fully expect enough people to just roll over and take this that it'll soon become the norm. But I really hope that the Switch 2 has a 3DS moment where the pricing pushes so many people away that Nintendo has to respond. Especially since the handheld gaming console market actually has competition, now. Nintendo no longer solely owns this space.
If you asked me, I don't even mind paying the $450 for the console itself! It's the games. The games are where it hurts. The lack of depreciation is where it hurts. Indies exist, but why would I buy a Switch for that when I could just buy a Steam Deck and enjoy the frequent sales + have a full-fledged Linux handheld console that can run anything I want on it, too? (I realize the Linux bit is really a nerd thing, but you could avoid all that and just stay within the Steam walled garden and still have a better experience pricing wise than a Switch 2!)
(Hey, Nintendo? You could also bring back Player's Choice/Nintendo Selects! That'd be cool too.)