BODY: After weeks of speculation that tariff pressure and a weaker yen would force Nintendo's hand, the company has quietly resumed direct sales of the Switch 2 — at the same ¥49,980 it launched at, not the higher number many retailers had been bracing for.
The relaunch landed on May 19 through the My Nintendo Store, Nintendo's first-party online shop and historically the hardest place in Japan to actually buy a console at MSRP. The store had paused Switch 2 orders earlier this spring as global supply tightened and Nintendo reassessed pricing in light of new U.S. tariffs on consumer electronics imports.
Alongside the Switch 2, the storefront has been quietly restocked with legacy hardware too. The original Switch, Switch OLED, and Switch Lite are all listed again, giving the My Nintendo Store one of its broadest hardware lineups in months. For families and lapsed players who never made the jump, that matters: the original Switch library remains fully playable on Switch 2, and the older units now serve as a genuinely cheaper on-ramp.
What Nintendo has not done is reopen the floodgates. Purchases through the My Nintendo Store still require a verified Nintendo Account with Japanese address and payment details, and stock is being released in waves rather than as an open queue — the same dampening mechanic Nintendo used to manage the launch window.
The insider take
Holding the ¥49,980 price is more political than commercial. Nintendo knows that any yen-denominated price hike on a Japanese-made console sold in Japan would read, domestically, as the company passing American tariff pain onto its home audience — a narrative Kyoto is very allergic to. Expect the pressure to surface instead in overseas pricing and in how aggressively bundles get discounted later this year; the ¥49,980 sticker is a line Nintendo wants to defend on the Japanese-language internet, where it gets quoted endlessly.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).