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Teardown reveals Nintendo Switch costs $257 to build

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

The Nintendo Switch game console costs about $257 for Nintendo to build, according to a report by Japanese teardown firm Fomalhaut Techno Solutions.

That’s pretty close to the console’s retail price of $300, and it leaves very little margin for Nintendo, considering that the retailers also get a profit margin. While Nintendo may still make money, it is moving closer to the razor and razor blade model, where it makes money on the software.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.