After COVID-19 hits, everything in our life has been affected by it, the way we travel, the way we sell products, even the gaming industry. In my country, Nintendo Switch's price almost hits 10 million Indonesian rupiahs, that about 1,000 in US dollars. This is caused by the exchange rate, and also a limited amount of the console itself. I guess, people staying at home for a long time thought that buying Nintendo Switch is a good idea. I cannot judge them for it, Nintendo Switch has a lot of games to play after 3 years it's been released. Especially after CD Projekt Red decided to port The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt to it, everything is getting more and more possible to play on Switch.
The price increase first happens in March 2020, around the same time with the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizon, an exclusive game developed and distributed by Nintendo. Original Switch and Switch Lite was 2 times the previous price. For comparison, I bought mine, a regular Switch, back in 2019 for 4 million rupiahs and in March 2020 the price was 8-9 million rupiahs, while Switch Lite's price was 4 million rupiahs, the same price of regular Switch back in the day. That was not a good price deal at the time, with Switch Lite's lack of features to enable the players to "switch" from handheld to console mode, gamers might want to wait until the price dropped.
Today, if you look at Tokopedia.com, one of the largest e-commerce in Indonesia, like Amazon.com for the US, the price of regular Switch decreased to 6-7 million rupiahs, while the price of Switch Lite decreased almost fall close to the previous price, around 3 million rupiahs.
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| The "new normal" price of Nintendo Switch |
This might not be going to change any time soon, even if the vaccine for COVID-19 is found, other factors like exchange rates and distribution factors might affect the price.
