Nintendo Switch 2 finally officially revealed
Nintendo has finally given us a first look at its next console, the Switch 2.
A Direct is announced for April 2nd to cover the games.
So much for Nintendo's previous naming conventions. I was really hoping for the New Super Nintendo Switch U.
They wanna make it very clear that this is their best-selling console ever but better, I would‘ve been surprised if they didn‘t just slap a 2 on it. There‘s so much riding on this for them.
I think that's still the DS. The Switch got close, but didn't beat it, and now that attention is on the Switch2, it probably won't.
...Cube 128
It occurred to me that this is the first time Nintendo has ever not used some new weird naming convention for a successor console. Just 2.
I'd buy a Nintendo Switchety-Four in a heartbeat
I was hoping for the Swiitch
I'll be waiting for the swivtch
Hoping they add Hall effect sensors and eliminate drift once and for all
It looks like the controllers attach to the screen magnetically, which may interfere with the sensors of Hall Effect sticks
Hall effect sensor expert here! No, the magnets in the joycons that are used to attach to the display/body of the Switch 2 would not interfere with hall effect analog sticks.
Two reasons:
Regardless, it would be trivial to place a tiny little piece of ferromagnetic blocking tape wherever necessary to prevent interference.
That Doesnt affect Hall & Oates sensors, though.
Rumors/Leaks had them and they were right about what we see in the trailer so hopefully. I'm hoping yes, nintendo must be tired of repairing joycons ^^
The joy cons were awful for that.
I updated my Joycons to the hall effect sticks and they're awesome. No drift after several months.
Can't help but be a little disappointed. The last few consoles have all been pretty drastically different, but this is just the Switch released again. Only with different connections so you need all new accessories.
Nintendo collapsed its console and handheld product lines for the Switch. We're also seeing large parts of the gaming industry adopt the Switch form factor for their products. I don't think there is anything that Nintendo could innovate on that would sell.
Yeah with Nintendo watching two Xboxes languish and consumer discontent with the recent playstations as well, there's not a real impetus for something radical in design. Some innovation would be exciting but the Switch and PC Handhelds prove people want big grippy mobile devices, even if they're only moving between rooms.
At the same time, the Switch is such a solid console that a hardware upgrade with full backwards compatibility* is really the best case scenario. People have wanted a bigger screen, better chip, and better joysticks since launch, and now we'll have them!
*the video says it's not 100% compatible, but I'm assuming that's for stuff like Labo and Ring Fit that need those exact joycon sizes/shapes.
I’m hoping that with the Ring Fit, to get around that restriction we can just pair the Switch 1 joycons to the Switch 2 console and use them detached.
In theory that might still work.
Yeah, I guess I was just hoping for more of a new generation type reveal, rather than a sequel to the Switch. Better hardware is definitely a plus though, would be nice to replay TotK or Pokemon SV with better graphics & performance. I still wonder if those two games were meant to release alongside a Switch 2 prior to the chip shortage.
They'll probably at least try to somehow make the mig switch non-functional on the switch 2, which could cause some other games to not work.
Nintendo consoles tended to be radical, Nintendo handhelds were more iterative.
The Game Boy and DS lines all built gradually on each other, seems the Switch line is following suit. I assume Nintendo see the Switch as a handheld that can be docked, rather than a console that’s also portable, so I guess it makes sense that it’s following a similar trajectory of previous handheld lines.
I mean the DS was pretty radical at the time.
I feel like Nintendo does a huge innovation, then an iteration or two(or a bunch of little changes), then back to a big change. Wii/WiiU, GB/GBA, DS/3DS, switch/2
You'd need all new accessories anyway with a complete redesign.
I've bought every Nintendo console up until the Wii U. Since they abandoned that early, I decided to skip the Switch. I'll likely pick this up. If this doesn't do well and gets abandoned early again, I'll at least get to play all the games I've missed over the years due to backwards compatibility.
The Switch has so many good games! Sure, most are available on other platforms as well, but overall it's such a great system.
I get why - the Switch was the successor of both their console and handhelds, and it did very well. Why change it?
I am hoping that the Joycon mouse mode turns out real and used in some interesting ways.
I totally missed that the first time I watched it. That'd be awesome.
I think I read that old joycons will still work with it in wireless mode.
Every single console reveal, there's a take exactly like this, and it always ages like milk. Every time.
I don't follow - is it going to somehow transform into something that isn't a switch?
Cool for Nintendo fans but the ROG Ally has changed the game for me. I’ll miss Pokémon but they haven’t been good in a while so whatever.
The Pokemon games all being the same caused me to get bored of them years ago. And now with them suing Palworld for 'capturing monsters with an object and summoning them in 3d space', a patent made after Palworld released their trailer, I find the Nintendo brand actively harmful to the state of gaming.
They actively become easier and shorter every generation. Arceus brought a lot of cool stuff into the series and there was a little bit of hope that things would improve only for them to go back to the stale old formula that wouldn’t be as bad if the games weren’t so easy now that you could beat them by mashing A. I know it’s for kids but damn, the old games were somewhat challenging.
Pokemon is literally the same game over and over, I hugely regretted my purchase of pokemon x cause it was literally a cloned game with barely any new features. It's probably Nintendo's most effective cash cow in terms of effort to capital reward.
X and Y introduced Mega Evolution, arguably one of the greatest iterative improvements in Pokémon.
With the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A in 2025, I’m thinking about replaying X and Y.
Scarlet and Violet were so disappointing that I too am hesitant about future Pokémon games. But I’ll keep my eyes and ears peeled to see how their upcoming games are. I no longer am a day one buyer of Pokémon games, after being burned badly on the rushed Scarlet/Violet games.
I jumped through a couple hoops to get Pokemon Infinite Fusion working on my Steam Deck & I've been having a blast slapping shit together to see how fucked up it looks.
Cleffa + Geodude made me giggle for a good 5 minutes.
Sub in literally any Nintendo franchise and it's the same problem, but Nintendo fans don't care.
I can play them on my Steam Deck. Just fyi.
Oh I know, I’m just not a big fan of sailing the seas these days. But I might just give it a go with the ones I own just to see how they run.
Well Windows is a no for me on that. And while the steam deck is nice and the OS runs on the ally too, it's still a pc with all it's pros and cons.
(I use both worlds BTW)
The ROG Crate software is actually pretty good. It’s not perfect but I rarely have to interact with Windows at all and once you get used to the controls when doing so not all that bad. And I dislike Windows a lot, but if I feel that it’s mostly a non issue. I wouldn’t go for a SteamOS version either, as I like Gamepass.
palworld is great
Yuzu 2 when
If it's anything like how the Wii was basically a GameCube it may not even be all that hard to rework existing switch emulators to work with switch 2 games. Given that it's going to have full back compat I bet that's why they went after switch emus so hard. They wanted to halt development as much as possible for as long as possible so it doesn't eat away at their switch 2 sales.
I recall reading something about Nintendo wanting to include Denuvo in the Switch 2. Will be interesting to see whether or not this one's games and consoles are cracked wide open as readily as before.
2zu
Looks starkly.... Non-Nintendo-y?
I dunno, changing from the full colored joycons to black with accents and more rounded corners caught me off guard. This looks like a handheld from GPD or ONEXPLAYER
Everything has to look so serious these days.
The colourful Joy Cons were part of the Switch’s identity, sad to see it reduced to an accent they seem almost ashamed of.
I'm guessing the all grey model probably sold better than the one with colorful joycons so they lead with that this time.
The original switch also had an option with grey joy cons
People said similar things about the all-white Wii after the GameCube - it’s just the natural ebb and flow of product design
My hope is that they have an inverted version
I'm sure that they'll have a billion models with more color
True theseloook rather serious. That said their customer base is also far wider than children these days.
Was kinda hoping for specs. I like the design upgrade, though.
Much like the rest of the announcement, the specs actually got leaked a few days earlier: https://thegamepost.com/nintendo-switch-2-full-specs-appears-to-have-leaked/
TL;DR: 12GB of RAM, GPU that's roughly on par with the Steam Deck. It's not the most powerful handheld out there but surprisingly not bad for Nintendo standards.
Especially considering it has access to DLSS, I‘m looking forward to see what Nintendo‘s first party studios can cook up with these specs. But I‘m waiting for the OLED model sometime in the future.
GPU that's roughly on par with the Steam Deck.
...when comparing TFLOPs, and that's not comparable across architectures (by different companies as well!).
If we take similar-performing (in rasterization) Ampere and RDNA 2 cards (say a 3080 and 6800 XT), we can see the 3080 has 29.77 TFLOPs and the 6800 XT has 20.74 TFLOPs, an RDNA 2 FLOP is worth about 1.4x as much as an Ampere FLOP.
So extrapolating the 1.6 "RDNA 2 TFLOPs" of the Deck we get 2.24 "Ampere TFLOPs" and that'd make the Deck quite a bit faster than the Switch 2 in portable mode, but slower than the Switch 2 in docked mode.
This is obviously all just wild and silly speculation, but I doubt the Switch 2 will match the Deck in portable mode. Samsung 8nm would just eat too much power for this to realistically happen in a handheld form factor.
No wonder they successfully stopped ongoing development of switch emulation on steam deck.
Wow, Nintendo really stepped up the game here.
Interesting, since we now know the size I would not have expected it to be on-par roughly with the Deck while being so much thinner and a bit smaller. Hrm.
I wonder if they’ve fallen into the same trap with not making the console powerful enough. The first switch was also not that powerful when it came out, and it’s really struggled in the end of its lifecycle. A lot of first party releases in the last couple years run like complete shit. They probably missed an opportunity here to stash an eGPU in the dock to provide a more modern experience while playing on the big screen.
I’ll wait for the OLED model, because apparently this isn’t it.
This doesn't have OLED? Yikes.
:O
Can't wait... for a Switch 2 emulator
Yuzutu?
Yuzucha?
I bought a game on switch for like 40 bucks that ended up being really bad, and tried to get it refunded within about two hours of purchase, after about thirty minutes of play time. Couldn't get the refund.
Ever since, I was VERY slow to buy anything, because, what if it's unexpectedly bad? I have to know I mean it, otherwise I shouldn't buy it. I want to buy a game, not flush money down the toilet.
So, now I kind of just don't want a Switch 2.
My girlfriend accidentally bought Minecraft because she wanted to check out whether she could pay via PayPal. There are no further confirmations. Also no refund possible even though she hasn't even installed it once. If I could be bothered, I'd sue, but in Germany that wouldn't financially make sense, even though it would not be a hard case at all
Where is refund of digital goods, which must be activated or linked outside of Steam possible? With valve it is purely a gesture of goodwill. If you buy a game in a store and remove the foil, you won't get it exchanged either. In Germany, every court would laugh at you and ask you to pay for wasting their time. Maybe you should look for the mistakes yourself? After all, you are the stupid uninformed person who blindly throws your money away. Blaming the embarrassment on the store providers is a real indictment. I'm sorry, you have completely different problems if you can't get your act together.
Steam deck?
Been tempted to get a steam deck at some point, just not sure how much I would use it and if it would justify the cost, having all my games already makes it infinitely more appealing than the switch though.
I don't get how a Steam Deck is a replacement for a Switch tbh.
You buy the Switch to play Nintendo games mostly, though it's nice that you can take it with you.
You buy the Steam Deck because you can take it with you and it has a huge library - but it has no Nintendo games, so it fails to scratch that one particular itch.
SteamOS plus the next gen of MSI Claw or ASUS ROG ally is going to be the absolutely superior gaming and customer experience in the coming years. There's no good reason to buy a Switch unless you need Nintendo exclusives (or have kids, and then it just makes sense).
Buy it on the first day, never connect it to the internet and wait for the first jailbreak. Then you never have to pay for any game.
I accidentally bought a game that didn't have English in the region I bought it in and they wouldn't refund me.
This blog post is worthless. A direct link to the official video announcement would be better.
It had worth to me, as someone who was stuck in a place where it was unacceptable to watch a video but was acceptable instead to read a summary quietly.
Mute the video?
There's also this
The summary of the article isn't even good. It buries the info in a bunch of other useless information, probably to increase word count and SEO. They could have included pictures from the video, too, but didn't.
Thoroughly whelmed
It is a video game console that I have ever seen.
Retro compatibilty probably powered by Yuzu ?
Powered by being the same as the Switch + whatever anti-Piracy they put it
Like how the PS5 can play pirated PS4 games but can’t play pirated PS5 games
The PS5 can play pirated PS4 games? That's badass.
I prefered colorful joycons, but I'm also glad that, there is audio jack port.
I really don't like the logo. I know why the logo looks that way considering the Wii U branding debacle, but still.
I‘m assuming they debated about it until the very last second until they settled with the safest option. The leaks probably accelerated things a lot towards the end and it might’ve been called something different entirely if they had more time to agree on a name.
Can't wait to play tears of the kingdom at 30 fps
Lol. I did put my money on "barely distinguishable from the Switch 1, maybe bigger". I guess I win the betting pool.
I'm mainly happy because I didn't want to be tempted to support Nintendo's lawsuit happy asses, anyway.
If they ever release a Virtual Boy Mini, my conscience will never recover from my own hypocrisy, though.
I plan on buying just the console (which they usually lose money on anyways), and then leaving it in the box not connected to the Internet until a mod chip comes out.
I don’t think Nintendo loses money on their consoles. With the original switch, and this switch 2, they specifically went with old and slow hardware to ensure the margins work out.
Ooh. I like that. Ethical, and fun!
Congratulations on your personal betting pool. Wishing you the best.
I will be buying one.
I'm an og Nintendo hype veteran from the days of N64. This is the first where I ignored all the rumors. I am not impressed also not disappointed.
It's kind of wild seeing Nintendo just make an upgraded version of the previous console. Even the Wii U was fairly transformative, even if not great.
This, from the perspective of someone who isn't huge on Nintendo, kinda feels more like a "Switch Pro" kind of thing, no?
I think the "Switch Pro" would be the OLED model as an upgrade of the original. This thing looks brand new even if it shares a lot of similarity to the original.
The rumor is that the price is going to be $450 for just the console and $500 for the console with Mario Kart bundled. May or may not be true, but it's certainly plausible given how expensive electronics have gotten since 2017. I was thinking of pre-ordering after the Apr. 2 Direct, but if that price is accurate I'll look into getting a Steam Deck instead. A lower price was the biggest advantage the original Switch had.
Imma wait for a Zelda edition. The only release title I’m likely interested in will be Metroid Prime 4 but I can be patient.
Metroid Prime 4 is already confirmed to be a Switch 1 title. Maybe it can be programmed to run better when on the Switch 2?
My question is the dock an eGPU?
Unlikely, Nintendo probably isn't bothered to boost the graphics beyond the switch 2's onboard GPU. Nintendo doesn't really care about graphics so I'd be surprised if it had an eGPU.
Almost certainly not
It ought to have been, considering how much games struggle on the first switch lately. This will have the same problem otherwise, 2-3 years into its lifecycle it will be begging for death while the PS5/XSX are still chugging along.
Considering what the SteamDeck can provide already...Not really
If anything they put some better upscaling into it.
Will this still play switch 1 games? (Physical cartridges)
Yes
From TFA:
The Switch 2 will have backward compatibility with games from the original Switch (with some unspecified exceptions).
The joycon sliding on the table, is that a mouse-mode? @1:11 in the reveal trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itpcsQQvgAQ
MARIO PAINT 2 BAYBEEEE
Mouse mode has been rumored, and some leaks have shown what could be an optical sensor on the joy con.
Also, if you take your current joy cons and place them on their side like that, they surprisingly feel pretty great as a mouse. Shoulder button for min click, and your thumb hits the four face buttons. I could see it working pretty well.
I thought the same, but the way the shot was framed made the Joy Cons look more like cars racing around. I wonder how that would work, actually.
Let's go! I'm excited for hardware that will run Pokemon Violet/Scarlet at a non-dog shit framerate (other than pirating).
I hope this hardware will stand a chance playing no man's sky. After the freighters were introduced the switch just couldn't handle it
Well, it's a bigger, better Switch alright...
A little bit underwhelming hardware-wise. Extra joycon L/R don't seem like they'll factor in much in most singleplayer docked or handheld settings. (I guess those aren't new buttons..
.) The mouse thing (if that's what they're showing) is somewhat interesting and helps to keep touch controls relevant when docked. Top USB port, sure. Backwards compatibility is great news. Screen is...?
As always with Nintendo I think it comes down to the games. Mario Kart 9 hasn't blown me away just yet, but we've barely seen anything at all so...
To be continued in April, i guess.
Why would the keep this right joystick sooooooo low! I can't play the switch.
? It's never seemed notably low to me. Also I think they want it to be usable sideways
“Revealed”….
Yes!!! I hops Ring Fit is backwards compatible!
I wonder if that and/or Labo might be what they meant by the disclaimer that backwards compatibility might not support all titles. Since it's built around old Joy-Cons, might not work with new ones, unless the Switch 2 can just use original Joy-Cons.
Could also be an excuse for Ring Fit 2 built around new Joy-Cons.
In theory the old joy cons could still connect to the system via bluetooth, just not attach to the console itself. So maybe that keeps Ring Fit in play for the system.
I look forward to pirating all those games too.
Nintendo Switch 2 such a bad name
It works for Sony.
Well not only is that their 5th iteration but also named after the amount of games they've produced this gen.
It's works, but it's boring
Has Nintendo even released a game since that second Zelda game, or are they too busy suing people?
Assuming you mean Tears of the Kingdom (May 12 2023) and not Echoes of Wisdom just a few months ago? Sorting by release date on the eShop for first-party titles published by Nintendo since then:
They have released a ton of games since then. Even another Zelda.