Technology

It's because Nintendo executives don't really understand the Western world.

Apparently Nintendo of Europe and Nintendo of America are constantly at loggerheads with Nintendo of Japan over their various brain dead, ultimately self-defeating, schemes.

For starters I cannot imagine that having two product lines with minor differences can be economically viable, and secondly what's the point in pissing your customer base off? There is zero logic behind this decision.

Unfortunately game console price drops are pretty much gone for the foreseeable future and have been since we started getting to the 7nm-ish node sizes.

The main reason for price cuts in the PS3/360 era and earlier was technological advancement in terms of shrinking the node. This gave instant massive price reductions to the company, and allowed them to then redesign the console to be much smaller with less cooling since the chips now are smaller and generated way less heat.

That doesn’t happen anymore. There’s no shrinking to be done.

When you add in the cost increases for RAM and SSDs, it’s a match made in hell for customers.

The incentive to buy one comes from the expectation it‘ll be even more expensive this time next year. Not sure it‘s working, though.

If I ever do buy one, you can bet I'll be specifically searching for one of those Euro-spec ones with replaceable batteries.