The Switch to the Switch 2

ABLUpdated 1 week Ago6 Mins read1

I went to the Nintendo Switch 2 premiere event in New York City this week thinking about New Donk City. That uncanny-valley microcosm of the Big Apple was valued real estate at the 2017 Nintendo Direct where the original Switch’s blockbuster launch title, Super Mario Odyssey, was revealed. The company mascot burst forth from a pothole to do what he tends to do at such showcases. Dodging cabs and scaling skyscrapers, Mario gracefully expressed how the new system outpaced the last one, the Wii U. Map textures were slicker and the number of vehicles and NPCs circling the stage was impressive. But navigating New Donk when the game arrived could feel like traversing a Gotham City under chemical attack from the Joker; beyond a somewhat rectangular expanse of city, the buildings grew nondescript, trailing off into an endless, hazy azure. The city was very much a video-game level, in spite of its insinuation of a bustling life and noirish intrigue snaking past its smoke-rimmed borderline.

Mario didn’t pop in to push a mainline platformer this time around, but the Switch 2 launch title that bears his name, Mario Kart World, kept the tradition of gameplay reveal as tacit tech demo. Instead of being led down a shiny but very set pathway the latest iteration of Nintendo’s all-star drag race lets you cruise over terrain connecting raceways in an open world free-roam mode. At long last, you can terrorize Yoshis on idyllic side road walks between breakneck races. In my hands-on time with the game, whiffing a flight up a geyser and taking quite some time to plummet back to the ground felt like jumping off a mountain in a Forza Horizon. It accentuated a feeling that the game took place in a biome with purpose and activities beyond what the player character is using it for. A similar blend of absurdism and concern for physics in world-building is attempted in the smashable worlds of Donkey Kong Bananza. The titular ape returns to wash away the sins of the N64 collectathon by marrying the madcap destructibility of a Battlefield game to the intentional platforming and noise-making clatter of Astro Bot. Every demo I played howled, in its own way, that the Nintendo Switch 2 is something new and different.

This is not really how it went the last time the Japanese gaming giant launched a brand-new console with a name iterating on its predecessor. The deluge of casual gamers the Nintendo Wii lured in throughout the mid-aughts could not grok that the Wii U was something new and different. They hadn’t much cared about graphical fidelity or the capabilities of the controller being waved at the TV in the first place, as the Wii’s deep collection of low-quality shovelware with surprising sales traction bore out. So the U is widely remembered as a marketing failure in spite of a sturdy triple-A roster and cute perks. (Using a streaming app on a console with a proprietary tablet, you could, say, watch a film or TV show while perusing information about the cast.)

The Switch 2 push is steeped in awareness of these past misgivings. It drags a brand that sacrificed fidelity for interactivity in the Wii years up to the current technical standards while refining control options in the shadow of the acclaim for hit PS5 game Astro Bot’s DualSense haptics display. It sells you on what you will be able to do that you can’t with the current Switch that has become customary on other consoles. Pixels and frame rates, and chat and game-share, are competitive now. Nintendo is not just leaning into charm and polished family-friendly gameplay this time but answering the lingering question apparent in the wan textures of recent Pokémon and Zelda games: whether it could deliver those experiences in a package on par with the graphical bar the frenemy consoles adhere to. Switch 2 is bulking its way into a different weight class and touching up existing games, sometimes adding sections tantamount to a DLC — like the delightful Star-Crossed World quest that comes with upgrading 2022’s charming Kirby and the Forgotten World — and sometimes extra gameplay mechanics. But as it threads the needle carefully between console generations via upselling Switch 2 Edition upgrades and steeper hardware and software price points, the company forces the player/consumer to consider how premium some new features need to be.

Numbers didn’t come up in the nearly hourlong Direct presentation. At the New York premiere, whispers of the Switch 2’s $449.99 retail price cut through a room full of streamers and journalists. This slots it into contention with Valve’s $400 to $649 Steam Deck, another Playstation-in-a-pocket of the era. The vibe thus far among commenters has been sticker shock amid rippling international trade agreements. Chuckles erupted when Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, which does what the name promises, was revealed as a paid title. And upgrade fees are a touchy subject for gamers; Playstation 5 owners of updated PS4 games often get the new version with the juiced-up visuals for free. Enhanced for Switch 2, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild looks gorgeous, but it remains to be seen whether bonus tips from Zelda about nearby loot will excite players who’ve spent the equivalent of several work weeks in Breath and Tears of the Kingdom already. It’ll be $20 to find out.

For an extra charge, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond unlocks 120 fps and a mouse mode where you roll a controller on a surface. During the Direct presentation, I assumed the latter was another wacky waving-arm saga, akin to the Wii remote waggle I grew sick to bastard death of in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Drag X Drive — a Murderball meets Rocket League situation where sliding a Joy Con 2 rolls a wheel — looked a bit gimmicky. But when I got my hands on the Joy Con 2, hitting buckets and playing aggressive defense in Drag, and more precise visuals and shooting in Prime, felt so natural that it’s annoying that the latter gets treated like a luxury. (But Switch 2 delivers a tighter case for its capabilities than the Playstation 5 Pro, which could have made a bigger deal about selling over twice the SSD space if it intended to ask for $699.) Nintendo fans are crashing into the ninth-console-generation plight of paying your way around nagging performance-versus-quality dilemmas.

Switch 2 can run Street Fighter 6 and Cyberpunk 2077, and neither will ever pry me off my PS5 versions. I feel like I have a slicker presentation already; that’s for players who don’t. The SF6 announce is notable since you imagine Street Fighter 5 never making the original Switch because it would have looked like hell. Cyberpunk is crisper than the notoriously dicey footage of the game on other hardware (but NPC hair flows, as it did last-gen). Nintendo can finally handle Elden Ring! It speaks to industry faith in the product that FromSoftware’s The Duskbloods, Dark Souls mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki’s next opus, will be a Switch 2 exclusive.

Players are no longer hamstrung by limitations of the system, herded into titles that don’t ask too much of it. Multiplayer enjoyers of all stripes will benefit from the mic and voice-chat options, no longer resorting to workarounds like Discord servers to communicate. Mouse play hints at a world of less floaty point-and-click possibilities. In this early Switch 2 promo, Nintendo is promising its base the gaming experiences everyone else sells now — but they can’t offer you expressively oafish DK or Waluigi piloting aircraft in mariachi attire. The conspicuous absence of a 3-D Mario game implies quiet confidence in the bench of heavy hitters and a trickle of major titles. They’ll get to the plumber and the nonverbal non-elf eventually. (Veteran designer Masahiro Sakurai is working on a Kirby Air Ride sequel before a Smash Bros. follow-up. All things in due time?) Mario Kart World as lead launch title — a first for the racing franchise! — puts interconnectivity at the forefront of a player’s initial experience of the Nintendo Switch 2. It’s a beast, relaying a leap in hardware at first glance. It’s brisk even while littered with carts. Real estate off-track isn’t frothy if indistinct window dressing — no Donk. Free roam replaces yawning Mii-centric Mario Kart 8 waiting rooms. But retail seems to be $80. With Super Mario Party Jamboree – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition ＋ Jamboree TV and a Nintendo Switch 2 camera, you can shell out more for new motion controls and making faces onscreen while the dice ruin your night. Mii lovers must pony up whatever Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour costs to get their next fix. Everyone can pay a little more X for a little more Y.