The pricing on Nintendo Switch accessories is a bad, bad joke

One of the most surprising and pleasant aspects of the Nintendo Switch event tonight was the number of ways players can use the system. You can use it as a console, as a portable, in splitscreen, with the systems connected wirelessly and there are games that use four Joy-Con controllers if you want to play against a friend.

We’ve talked in the past about how useful it could be to just buy secondary or even tertiary dock so you can bring your console to different rooms and drop it right in to use another display, and of course the docks can’t be that expensive by themselves, right?

It’s $90.

“Includes a Nintendo Switch Dock, Nintendo Switch AC adapter, and an HDMI cable. (Note that one of each of these items are included with each Nintendo Switch system.)” Nintendo’s official language states. “If you’d like to use your Nintendo Switch with multiple TVs in the house, this set provides everything you need to dock your system and play in TV mode.”

I’m going to repeat this. It’s $90. What the living hell.

I checked Twitter to see if I was just suffering from a case of unrealistic expectations and nope, there seems to be some serious pushback from others about the price of these accessories.

The left or right Joy-Con controllers can be purchased for $49.99 each, and keep in mind that each controller has slightly different functionality; they’re not all the same. A bundle of both controllers is $79.99.

That’s competitive with extra controllers on the other systems but — and this may sound petty — the Joy-Con controllers are so small. It’s silly how much that impacts the expectation on how much it should cost. Nintendo is also making it seem like extra controllers are just a nice and friendly thing you should have laying around, and damn. Not at those prices.

You want a Pro controller, which is basically a standard controller for the Switch? Yeah, that will run you $69.99.

There are some people out there saying that the controllers and accessories are chock full of technology and fun stuff and these prices are understandable, but the tone of Nintendo’s event may actually be working against it in this regard; it’s strange to sell something as if it were a toy and then turn around and charge these prices for accessories.

This is going to be a hard sell, and it makes the $299 price of the system itself feel a little less ... generous? The perception of the price of these accessories is going to be an important detail as Nintendo begins to try to sell this thing to a mainstream audience, and the initial reaction isn’t positive.

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