@Heavyarms55 No I don't mean handhelds sell only because of their price. There's three components. People that buy handhelds because they like handhelds. People that buy the cheapest affordable console because that's what they can afford. And people that buy more consoles because they're more affordable.

A big part of Game Boy's success was it's price point. People weren't as keen to spend so much money on an NES....but the GB was a cheap alternative, and that helped it sell as amazing as it did. Also people wanted a portable console...but both it's spread, and having multiple per family (right up through 3DS) are easily affected by the price point, sure.

I still find it funny that a bunch of people including you are surprised by the Lite, what it is, or it's price point, or see it as some unexpected "Nintendo got it wrong" moment. Several of us already called this exact product, launch time (relative to Pokemon), and price point Jan 2017. It was a done deal...it was inevitable. It was just such an obvious guaranteed product that would have made no sense to not happen! The only part I underestimated is rumble. I thought it would have rumble.

I do agree that it's not that pocket able, but sometimes small size differences really do strongly change the hold-ability/feel of a device. The added rigidity without that little bit of joycon mount flex make it a little more portable friendly as well.

Overall though, just consumer thinking...if you weren't following Switch since 2017. Say you were a 3DS owner. Or still a DS owner. Or even just a mobile gamer. You don't follow Nintendo, or Switch and aren't comparing the models. You see "that new Nintendo" is $199. You see there's another model with more features for $299. You're price concious, and don't really intend to use those features...you just want something like what you had that plays the new games. That $199, just like your old one, is a lot more tempting than 50% more for stuff you're not going to use.

Plus American consumers tend to be more interested in PRICE than VALUE. That's been known since the 90's. People would rather pay $12.99 for a "cake" that's a flat one layer 6" supermarket cake than $14.99 for a nice 8" 2 layer high quality bakery cake. Because it's cheaper. A large portion of people tend to just look at the sticker price of what they're paying and not care about what they get for the money. With that, that's a MASSIVE price difference. It'll matter.

And the size/one piece body will matter for dedicated handheld players.

Heck, even just here, big Switch enthusiasts like JaxonH and Ralizah want one for the smaller form factor (not price) despite having one (or two!) big Switches already. And BlueOcean has been pretty strongly anti-Switch since it was unveiled...he was Nintendo-only before, and a big WiiU & 3DS fan, but the Switch never really appealed to him, and he wasn't happy with the WiiU port situation. He moved pretty much entirely to XBox as his new ecosystem...but now that the Lite was announced, the price point to get access to the games he does want despite not liking the Switch too much was just enough to get him to bite, and he plans to buy one as soon as he's confident the stick drift issue is not going to be a problem for it.

The price point definitely has a strong appeal, I'd say. I didn't think Blue would ever buy a Switch! And that's not the stupid mass market consumer, that's the hardcore gamers and Nintendo faithful!

Add in that a $300 Switch isn't going to be a popular choice for buying one for every kid in the house, while the $200 handheld price point is proven to do just that. And Nintendo said they intended that result back in 2017. I would be stunned if Lite didn't outsell normal Switch. Absolutely stunned. That's not to say normal Switch sales will plummet or anything. But I think a lot of the market will jump in on lite, and double, or triple dip on lite where otherwise they bought one household Switch. I think there's a fair number of existing Switch owning households that might buy 1 or more additional Switches now with Lite. Especially with NSO and cloud saves, meaning the kids can play their TV games on the go with their own Switch. In that sense it still "SWITCH"-es. They log in on the home Switch and it's on the TV, they log in on their on the go Switch and it's on the handheld. it's a lot more connected to the TV still in multi-Switch homes than 3DS ever was (I still have bad memories of MH3U data transfers....)