If you’re a gamer who has been on Facebook or YouTube in the past week, there’s probably a good chance you’ve seen people arguing about the Nintendo Switch 2’s pricing. My Facebook algorithm has interpreted my interest in the system as a sign that I want to see a constant stream of angry memes about how much it costs. While I’ve seen concerns over the hardware itself dying down, the one complaint that’s stuck is the price of its games. My feeds are filled with engagement memes daring commenters to justify Mario Kart World‘s $90 price tag.
There’s just one problem: Mario Kart World does not cost $90, at least based on what we know right now. No currently announced Nintendo Switch 2 game appears to either, but it hasn’t stopped that detail from spreading on a fundamentally broken internet.
If you’re confused about that claim because you’ve heard the price repeated as fact 100 times by now, I can’t blame you. In the immediate chaos following the Switch 2’s reveal, players were left to dig up information themselves. Last week’s Switch 2 Direct didn’t even state the console’s price; I only found out about it through an email after the stream ended. That was confusing enough, but Nintendo’s lack of transparency caused even more confusion around games. It didn’t take long for players to discover that Mario Kart World and some Nintendo Switch 2 Editions of original Switch games will retail for $80. Variable pricing for games only made matters harder to understand, as heavy hitters like Donkey Kong Bananza will cost $70 instead.
Somewhere in that rapid learning process, word began to spread that the physical editions of some Switch 2 games would cost 90 Euros. That fact quickly mutated into a different one entirely: That physical Switch 2 games cost $90. It’s hard to pinpoint where exactly that jump originated from, but it’s easy to see how someone could have misinterpreted it. Maybe they assumed the Euro symbol was a dollar sign. Maybe they mistakenly assumed that those two things are 1:1. Whatever happened, it should have been a detail that was debunked within a day.
Instead, it spread like wildfire. And it has yet to stop.
How does something like this happen on the internet, a repository of readily available information? After all, it’s not hard to find Mario Kart World‘s official price. Its website has listed an $80 MSRP since day one. That question leads to an unfortunate answer: The internet is becoming more harmful than helpful by the day. Social media platforms built to drive engagement through outrage and an increasing reliance on inaccurate AI tools to source our news are making us dumber, and the Switch 2 pricing rumor is only one small example of that.
Let’s break down the misinformation pipeline here. A quick Google search along the lines of “Switch 2 games $90” will inevitably bring up a Reddit thread from /Games titled “Nintendo Switch 2 Games Will Cost $80 For Digital, $90 For Physical.” The post includes a link to an article from Insider Gaming, a website known as a source for video game leaks. Insider Gaming was among a small handful of sites to run with the story that physical Switch 2 games cost $90 early on. Websites like Forbes reported the same information on April 2 in an article that includes no source for the claim and even mentions the 90 Euro detail. The article has not been corrected in the week following its publication.
Insider Gaming, on the other hand, did change its article. If you go into that Reddit thread and click the linked story, you’ll instead land on “Nintendo Switch 2 Games Will Cost Up To $98 For Physical Games When Converted From Euros.” There’s a correction midway down the article now, but that change isn’t reflected in the Reddit thread that now dominates search results on the topic.
That telephone game only gets worse. Exacerbating the confusion is Google’s own AI overview, a tool that dominates the top of the page when it populates. If you were to Google “how much are Switch 2 games?” right now, there’s a good chance you will get an AI overview that tells you that physical games either could or do cost $90. In my current search results, Google says “Nintendo Switch 2 games are expected to be priced higher than previous Nintendo Switch titles, with many games potentially costing $79.99 or even $89.99.” Other results I’ve seen cut the “potentially” entirely and say they “will” cost that much.
That information comes with a few links, citing where the news came from. A link on a blurb about the $90 price point goes to an article from Indy100, which says outright that Mario Kart World costs $90 with no source to back it up. Other cited links point to articles from Mashable and CNET. The latter actually debunks the $90 claim, but that hasn’t stopped Google’s AI for using it as a source to back up its faulty information.
In sleuthing around to find who else misreported the price, I searched “Digital Trends Switch 2 $90” to see if we had mistakenly published it. The results turn up an AI overview that says “Yes, there are reports that some Nintendo Switch 2 games will be priced at $90 for physical copies and $80 for digital.” It does not link to Digital Trends, but rather a video from YouTuber DreamcastGuy complaining about the made up price. The second source? The Reddit thread linking a now corrected Insider Gaming story. Scroll down past the overview and you’ll find that Reddit thread surfaced first before a Digital Trends article explaining the hardware price. It is followed by the false Forbes article, one from Game Rant, and a NeoGaf forum post — all of which state the unconfirmed information as fact.
This is the world we’re currently living in. The internet has always been loaded with misinformation, but it used to be that sites like Google would weed out the bad information and surface reputable sources first. That last line of defense has gone away in the wake of constant algorithm changes that prioritize sites like Reddit and AI tools that then regurgitate what’s on those sites and spits them back out as facts. That then bleeds back out into angry social media posts and YouTube videos that are designed to rack up views and engagement, and then fed back into Google’s AI tools to complete the cycle. There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle once information like that becomes accepted. I’ve had conversations with people offline where I’ve been asked what I think about the $90 games. It’s just something people believe now and it will continue to be reinforced by the tools that we rely on to inform us. We’re all left a little angrier for it.
The Nintendo Switch 2’s pricing woes are very real. The console’s $450 price tag is a big leap over its predecessor, $80 for Mario Kart World is still steep, and even the system’s glorified digital instruction manual meant to act as a Switch 2 tech demo costs $10. You might even end up spending $90 if you buy The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — Switch 2 Edition and then throw in its additional DLC. And who knows, physical games could end up costing $90 once launch day actually comes. President Donald Trump’s current tariff roulette means that everything is in flux. We will update this article if the game pricing does in fact change.
But as of right now, there’s no hard information indicating that Switch 2 games actually do cost $90, no matter how many Facebook memes tell you they do. Be vigilant about where you get your information. Do your research when you come across something that sounds wrong. Knowledge isn’t just power in today’s world; it’s your only defense.
