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How much will Nintendo Switch 2 games cost? Heres what weve learned so far.

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Nintendo fans experienced a bit of sticker shock following the Switch 2 Direct on Wednesday, April 2, when the iconic gaming company announced via its website that the price for some marquee Nintendo Switch 2 titles would be $79.99. The company omitted any discussion of game prices during the livestream, but shortly after its conclusion, the internet was confronted with the new price tag on the Mario Kart World landing page.

The new MSRP reflects a $20 increase from what we saw throughout the original Nintendo Switch generation and a $10 increase from what we are currently used to when buying games for other consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. But will this be Nintendo's new norm? It's likely, but we aren't entirely sure just yet, because it would appear that the $79.99 asking price won't necessarily apply to Nintendo's entire slate of Switch 2 titles — currently, Donkey Kong Bananza is listed at $69.99 for the digital edition, which is more in step with what other platforms are charging today.

Will physical editions cost even more?

Things got more interesting when Nintendo's Spanish website posted EU prices for Nintendo's Switch 2 launch games. A visit to the site reveals that not only will digital editions of Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza cost €80 and €70, respectively, but their physical editions will cost an extra €10 on top of that. That's €90 for a physical copy of Mario Kart World, which is a pretty staggering price hike from the original Nintendo Switch's physical editions, which cost the same as their digital counterparts in most cases. We can't confirm that US prices will end up being the same, but this change indicates that pricing differences between digital and physical games in the Nintendo Switch 2 era could be likely.

Nintendo Spain website game pricing screenshot


Credit: Screenshot: Nintendo

Other big Switch 2 titles announced during the Direct, including The Duskbloods and Kirby Air Riders, have not yet published their retail prices.

What about Nintendo Switch 2 game upgrades?

Amongst the Switch 2 announcements, Nintendo also revealed that select original Switch games — including Super Mario Party: Jamboree, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond — will receive Nintendo Switch 2 edition upgrades for those who want to experience them at higher quality on the new console. We don't know exact pricing on those yet, but we do know that those who already own original Nintendo Switch copies of those games won't have to pay full price for the upgrade. Instead, they'll pay a smaller fee to access the titles on the Switch 2. Unfortunately, we don't know what that upgrade fee will be yet, either.

A new industry standard?

While the Mario Kart World pricing news was a shock to many in the gaming world, we've been expecting an industry-wide price increase on games for some time now. The $59.99 base price for both digital and physical copies of games hasn't changed much over the past few decades, with some new-gen games only recently donning a $69.99 price tag. But, with inflation and increased game development costs, it was only a matter of time before we'd see increases like the ones we're seeing with the Nintendo Switch 2.

What remains to be seen, though, is whether other platforms will follow suit. Will $79.99 games come to the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in the near future? We think it's likely.

Are Trump's tariffs to blame?

Naturally, President Donald Trump's new tariff policy came up in conversation following the Switch 2 game and hardware pricing news. Will they have an impact on the new Nintendo Switch? The answer is yes and no. Games industry expert and Director of Research and Insights at Niko Partners, Daniel Ahmad, posted his take in a thread on X, saying, "This isn't because of tariffs by the way. Nintendo games are manufactured in Japan and tariffs don't apply to digital goods."

It's a different story for Switch 2 hardware, though, which includes the console itself and its compatible accessories like Joy-Con controllers and the Switch 2 Camera. Nintendo has manufactured some of its products in China, and with the 34 percent tariff that Trump just slapped on the country's exports, we wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo hardware prices increased even more. In fact, on April 4, Nintendo announced that it would be delaying preorders for the Nintendo Switch 2 until they could assess the potential impact of the new tariffs, so a pre-release price hike could potentially be incoming. The Nintendo Switch 2's June 5 release date remains unchanged.

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Stop your AI subscriptions and get an all-in-one tool for life

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TL;DR: Access dozens of top AI tools in one platform — 1min.AI bundles content, chat, design, audio, video, PDF, and more under a single lifetime license for just $79.97.



1min.AI Advanced Business Plan Lifetime Subscription

Credit: 1minAI

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Whether you’re a solo creator or running a small team, 1min.AI simplifies your stack. You’ll have access to multiple flagship models like GPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama, plus unlimited brand voice slots, unlimited prompt storage, and 4,000,000 credits/month to spend on whatever you want to make.

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Get lifetime access to the 1min.AI Advanced Business Plan for just $79.97 while you can and streamline your digital tools forever.

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Anthropic reportedly cut OpenAI access to Claude

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It seems OpenAI has been caught with its hands in the proverbial cookie jar. Anthropic has reportedly cut off OpenAI’s access to Anthropic’s APIs over what Anthropic is calling a terms of service breach.

As reported by Wired, multiple sources claim that OpenAI has been cut off from Anthropic’s APIs. Allegedly, OpenAI was using Anthropic’s Claude Code to assist in creating and testing OpenAI’s upcoming GPT-5, which is due to release in August.

According to these sources, OpenAI was plugging into Claude’s internal tools instead of using the chat interface. From there, they used the API to run tests against GPT-5 to check things like coding and creative writing against Claude to compare performance. OpenAI allegedly also tested safety prompts related to things like CSAM, self-harm, and defamation. This would give OpenAI data that it could then use to fine-tune GPT-5 to make it more competitive against Claude.

Unfortunately for OpenAI, this violates Anthropic’s commercial terms of service, which ban companies from using Anthropic’s tools to build competitor AI products.

“Customer may not and must not attempt to access the Services to build a competing product or service, including to train competing AI models or resell the Services except as expressly approved by Anthropic,” the terms read.

OpenAI responded by saying that what the company was doing was an industry standard, as all the AI companies test their models against the competing models. The company then went on to say that it respected Anthropic’s decision but expressed disappointment in having its API access shut off, especially considering that Anthropic’s access to OpenAI’s API remains open.

A spokesperson told Wired that OpenAI’s access would be reinstated for “benchmarking and safety evaluations.”

It’s not the first time this year that Anthropic has cut off API access. In June, the company cut off Windsurf’s API access after rumors that it was being sold to OpenAI. That deal ultimately fell through, but Anthropic’s cofounder, Jared Kaplan, told TechCrunch at the time that “it would be odd for us to be selling Claude to OpenAI.”

Anthropic has also tweaked its rate limits for Claude, which will take effect in late August, with one of the reasons being that a small number of users are violating the company’s policy by sharing and reselling accounts.


Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

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Amazon is toying around with putting ads in Alexa+

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It’s the end of another quarter, which means it’s time for yet another earnings call with concerning ideas for generating more revenue. This time around, it's Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who told shareholders on Thursday that there’s “significant financial opportunity” in delivering ads through Alexa+, the company’s new AI-powered voice assistant.

“I think over time, there will be opportunities, you know, as people are engaging in more multi-turn conversations to have advertising play a role — to help people find discovery and also as a lever to drive revenue,” Jassy said, per the investor call transcript.

Since launching earlier this year, Alexa+ has reportedly reached millions of users. Unlike the original Alexa, which mostly turns off lights and sets timers, Alexa+ is designed to be more conversational, context-aware, and AI-driven. It can help you plan your date night, entertain your kids, and even dabble in basic image and video generation — all under the banner of your $14.99/month Prime subscription.

But so far, Amazon Alexa has been an ad-free experience. It's also more than 10 years old, and it doesn't make money; thus, it's been deemed a "colossal failure" by those within the company.

Of course, Amazon isn’t alone in trying to figure out how to make AI pay for itself. Both Google and OpenAI have explored ad integration in their AI products as a way to generate revenue. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in particular, has made a notable pivot: once firmly against advertising in his chatbot, he’s since reversed course, possibly opening the door for ads in future versions of ChatGPT.

Whatever the motivation, injecting ads into Alexa+ would mark a major shift in both user experience and Amazon’s strategy, especially given the assistant’s long history of being expensive to maintain and hard to monetize. Ad-supported Alexa+ could be Amazon’s attempt to finally turn its once-money-burning smart assistant into a revenue machine, without hiking the subscription fee (at least for now).

Alexa+ is still new, and what an ad-supported experience would actually look like remains unclear. According to Jassy, the idea is to frame ads as helpful, something to assist customers in discovering products they might be interested in buying.

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