With the PlayStation 5’s price increase going into effect today, lots of us are concerned about the rising cost of video games in general. Xbox has already increased its Series X and S prices, but the Switch 2 has remained static since its launch last year.

But, in an interview on the Kit & Krysta podcast (below), a former Nintendo sales lead simply referred to as Sean believes that “unfortunately” Nintendo will eventually have to increase the price of the console.

Speculating on the potential of a price increase (from around 29:47), Sean believes that “there’s things that they can and seem to be doing to try and mitigate that, but I also look at this move on on software as, if I’m reading it correctly, a way to make a hardware price increase a little bit more palatable.”

A combination of inflation, tariffs, and recent memory price hikes due to AI demand are all factors, but the recent issues with oil prices are also a potential part of the problem, which Sean addresses.

“When oil goes through the roof, that’s not just shipping costs that go up… there’s other things that people may not realise. Helium is a by-product of producing oil. Helium is a key and unreplaceable ingredient in making semiconductors, which means hardware prices go up.”

It also affects cartridge manufacturing, too: “It’s an unreplaceable by-product of making silicon wafers, which means if you’re Nintendo and you’re producing cartridges, that’s going up as well.”

All of these ongoing factors and events are affecting each other, and Sean thinks that even though Nintendo “are able to make concessions in some areas, hardware prices are going to go up I think, eventually.”

The price decrease in digital software may be one way Nintendo is trying to offset the cost, Sean suspects, referring to the recently announced pricing change of Switch 2 exclusive games in North America and Canada, but that’s only a temporary fix, as there doesn’t appear to be an end to many of the issues hitting the industry right now.

“We’ve been through various phases with Nintendo through various economic turns and things,” Sean acknowledges, “but it does really feel like this time in particular, there’s just so many outside forces that are kind of forcing their hand in a way that they probably aren’t really used to in the past.”

Nintendo has been relatively coy about pricing the Switch 2 and potential price changes. Of course, multiple accessories, including the Switch 1, received a price increase in August 2025 in the US,

Since then, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has tried to stay cautious on price increases, saying Nintendo would “carefully consider” an increase, which will depend on things such as sales trends, costs, the market environment, and “other factors.”

What do you think of Sean’s comments in the podcast? Let us know down below.