Nintendo’s shares tumbled the other day due to market concerns that the increased pricing of Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch components will erode the Kyoto-company’s profit margins. Bloomberg is reporting that the 12GB RAM modules in the Nintendo Switch 2 console increased around 41% in the current quarter and the NAND storage also became nearly 8% more expensive. The shortages are also affecting the price of the external SD Express cards for the Nintendo Switch 2 on retailers such as Amazon.
“The rise in NAND prices is starting to really impact express SD card prices. A 256GB express SD card costs $89.99 on Amazon. This is effectively a cost that Nintendo has passed on to the gamer,” said Pelham Smithers of Pelham Smithers Associates. He sees these additional storage cards as essential because of the limited storage built into the Switch 2, with third-party games from the likes of Electronic Arts Inc. effectively costing $20 more because of the storage need.

Have a backlog of 20 something games plus switch 2 games, and just a 256gb express and the internal one. Im doing just fine, Switch 2 is caoable of downloading games pretty fast ( and way way faster than switch 1) so i just archive couple ones and download another, and repeat the process. also, nitnendo games have a pretty good size. Want to play fortnite? Erase Apex… If you fancy that kind of game
glad I bought an onn 512gb card for 60$ when I heard about the shortage. should last me a long while
At least now you won’t have to worry on buying another express card for a while if it gets full.
On the subject, Micron is shutting down Crucial which is sad to hear cuz I’ve heard their products are very good at good prices.
Making each parts for the system is not very cheap to make. They have to add more chips and ram to powered their gaming system.
I can dig a dozen sd cards out of old phones…
I have over 1TB just in Switch 1 Games. When I moved my account to Switch 2 Nintendo wouldn’t let me keep all those games on my Switch 1 and I hate it. So on Switch 2, i have no games downloaded, haven’t bought a Express Micro yet but get this, my storage is completely full just from the space that updates to my physical games take up. I have 101 physical Switch 1 games and 2 physical Switch 2 games as of this writing.
I keep a ton of games on my switch 1 with 1tb micro SD. You can split your digital library by loading virtual cards on your primary switch 1 or primary switch 2.
Honestly, this situation doesn’t surprise me at all. With global memory shortages and rising component costs, it’s normal for a company like Nintendo to end up paying more for RAM and storage when building new hardware. What does matter is how this impacts players, and right now it’s clear that the increased prices are being pushed directly onto consumers—from the console itself to the SD Express cards that are basically mandatory due to the limited internal storage.
A 41% jump in RAM costs is no small thing, but it really feels like Nintendo could have planned ahead better, especially knowing how crucial storage is for third-party games. Seeing players effectively paying $20 more for some titles because of storage needs is definitely not ideal.
Hopefully Nintendo can stabilize the situation soon, because price hikes across the board aren’t exactly the best look for a new console launch.
Thanks for the info, Sickr.
Best regards,
JaimeTheHood