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Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly Japan will have 2 versions, a japanese language only (+region locked to japan accounts) and a global one. Mostly because of the weak yen + the insane amount of scalping that happened previously.

Switch 2 JP Only: 49,980 Yen (~333 USD)

Switch 2 Global: 69,980 Yen (~466 USD)

https://www.nintendo.com/jp/hardware/switch2/lineup/index.ht...

And the JP only version's launch price is still almost double of the Switch 1's (30,000 Yen)

But I'm actually glad that they look after the local market!

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It's fascinating because its the reverse of the usual way to solve this problem. Typically, games would be region-locked. For the first time Nintendo has locked the console itself to a language and a region.

I guess the benefit for Nintendo is that outside of the reduced price, there are zero benefits for players to having a Japanese version. It used to be that a Japanese 3DS was cool to have.

Cripes that’s incredibly expensive for a lower spec handheld

The specs seems to exceed that of the Steam Deck. And that was barely selling at a profit for a while. I'm not really mad at the specs.

But no linux or steam

I mean, yes?. Also no Playstation or Xbox. If Linux/steam is your deal breaker nothing Nintendo did would change your mind.

The same is illegal for Apple, to sell phones and be a middleman for every app purchase. I hope the EU will do something about it.

The Switch doesn't have enough users or revenue to fall under the DMA.

Maybe game consoles will come down the road. But I'm doubtful. These consoles are ephemeral compared to the IOS platform and aren't thought of as used for general computing (even if the hardware can be used as such).

All the console manufacturers are also software developers, so I fear pushing too hard will simply mean the end of dedicated game consoles instead of the freedom of them

I suspect they also know full well that the global ones will be resold in China.

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