It feels as though, for the better half of an entire console generation, players have been longing for a Nintendo Switch with a bit more grunt and mongrel to it. Of course, we had iteration put under our noses, and there’d be buffs to things like battery life without really giving things a boost under the hood. As performance continued to decline due to the hardware’s limitations, we all wondered at what point Nintendo would pull the trigger, so to speak, and deliver the successor to its best-selling home console.
After eight years and change, the Nintendo Switch 2 is, at long last, in people’s homes. With a bigger engine room, there’s an unprecedented boom of from third parties, far greater than we got on the original. The hardware itself has advanced leaps and bounds, while adding novel gimmicks; using the Joy-Con as a mouse, for example, is a neat way gamers can experience hybrid controls for first-person shooters on Switch.
It’s hard not to consider Nintendo Switch 2 a form-perfected iteration of the original hardware. Is it still “behind” when you compare specs with other manufacturers’ machines? It is, but it still has a few advantages over its competitors. You’re not getting games like Mario, kart racer, or otherwise, on other platforms, nor are you able to take your game on the go, at least not quite like the way Nintendo lets you, anywhere else. Microsoft’s advances in the realm of “play anywhere” get close, but Nintendo delivers it natively with no real buffers in between docked and undocked play.
THE CHEAPEST PRICE: $699 STANDALONE OR $766 WITH MARIO KART WORLD
As I’ve said already and will likely continue to preach throughout this piece, Nintendo Switch 2 handles like the original hardware, having achieved perfect form. Despite its improvements across the board, particularly with its larger display, it’s incredible how familiar and comfortable the form factor feels.
Although I was fortunate not to have staples in my screen upon unboxing, the console’s setup is exceptionally simple. As before, the HDMI and USB-C power cable are hidden behind a removable back , and the console almost immediately prompts you to do a hard drive transfer. Loving a fresh start, I opted against this, but from all reports is a quick, simple process. It does look and feel like a more handheld; however, I believe that the dock, which doesn’t need to be anything special, felt a little flimsy, bending inward under no pressure at all.
It mightn’t be OLED like the later Switch models, however, this 8-inch display is gorgeously vibrant and doesn’t feel like a step backwards, given the clear advantage this system has over the original with 1080p in handheld, variable refresh rates, and high dynamic range when docked, which provides a strong burst of colour.
The console’s shipped storage is pretty hefty at 256GB, eight times the storage of the original. And with the knowledge that the games haven’t ballooned in size too drastically, Mario Kart World is 24GB, for example, it’s comforting to know that the hard drive won’t fill up after a few games. However, if we expect Call of Duty to hit parity across all platforms, that might soon change.
It does kind of stink that the console requires MicroSD Express, meaning the pre-existing cards you would have used all generation long on the Switch are effectively useless. Fortunately, the format isn’t prohibitively expensive, and even the Nintendo-partnered cards are reasonably priced, especially when one recalls the still ludicrous price of Xbox’s proprietary cards.
All in all, outside of the price itself, which does qualify the Switch 2 as a product, I do think there’s a beautiful elegance to this console’s look. And when one weighs up cost and power, it’s a great value proposition for a gamer who is yet to plunge into the handheld market.
The console’s operating system and home screen, oddly enough, have proven to be the one thing Nintendo has kept closest to its vest. Having now ducked into the menus, I can only presume it’s because there’s practically nothing new to see. It’s effectively what you knew from the Switch—complete with its dynamic light and dark themes. The only key point of difference is GameChat, a feature exclusive to this new system, being featured along the shortcut bar at the bottom of the screen. Oh, and it can be browsed using the funky new mouse feature.
Other than that, it’s pretty much business as usual for Nintendo.
A concern with pretty much any piece of handheld hardware is its battery life. As with most of its contemporaries, you’re only likely to eek about two hours of playtime out of a single charge, especially with games that sap the system like Cyberpunk. Given the console’s form factor and how small Nintendo has been able to make this battery to fit into its comfortable hand shape, I think that for it to last a couple of hours was probably a best-case scenario, in the end. This is presuming you’re letting the battery charge to its full capacity. There is an option to set its maximum charge to just 90%, which is meant to protect against premature deterioration of the battery.
In short, the battery is likely to still be a bit of a problem to the general consumer, but like everything else, it would have been considered a necessary sacrifice in favour of maintaining the original’s lean form factor.
When it comes to feel in the hand, the Joy-Con 2 doesn’t mess with the good thing Nintendo had with the original Switch. If anything, they’ve improved upon the original, with a bigger overall size, which has contributed to a less cramped feel as well as greatly improved buttons and triggers. The original, iconic Switch click burnt its way into the minds of gamers over the last eight years, and, while it’s a slight shame to sunset that soundbyte, being able to connect the Joy-Con magnetically feels like such a advancement.
I feel like the more subtle colour choices here, only having blue and red highlights against a beautiful matte black finish, help cement the fact that Nintendo has its eye on a more mature market. It’s not for kids, it’s for everyone, and they’re driving that message hard through a sleeker, professional look.
One of the Nintendo Switch 2’s marketed gimmicks is the mouse functionality. Being able to place a Joy-Con down as though it were a mouse and have it work as seamlessly as docking and undocking did last generation is such a novel and cool moment. I am skeptical of just how many use cases there’ll be for it outside of shooters, strategy games, and perusing the home menu. Of course, this isn’t Nintendo’s first mouse, and I, for one, hope it might usher in the return of Mario Paint.
I think the possibility of hybrid first-person shooting controls, where you can control character movement with a stick while free-aiming with a mouse, is genuinely the best of both worlds. I’ve long been a WASD-denier, so I’m eager to see how games like Metroid perform with the rather unique set-up.
Every official controller that Nintendo has released for the original Nintendo Switch will work with the Nintendo Switch 2. This includes the original Joy-Cons, the Pro controller, and all of the retro Nintendo Switch Online controllers. The only caveat to this is that the original Joy-Con can’t be charged on the new hardware, so you’ll need a charging grip or dock.
And, clearly, for games that use mouse controls, you’ll be forced to use the included, upgraded Joy-Con 2 controllers. Another weird quirk is that you’re not able to wake the Switch 2 from sleep mode using either the original Joy-Cons or Pro controller, but fortunately, they’re perfectly suitable as extra controllers for standard play.
Unlike the Xbox Series Elite controllers, which I did feel were relatively iterative model-to-model, there’s a quantitative improvement when it comes to the Nintendo Switch 2 Pro Controller.
Not only does it feel nicer in the hand and is designed with comfort in mind, but it’s certainly more feature-complete than its predecessor, which only really offered amiibo functionality and rumble.
It features the new C button, which can be used to bring up GameChat, but more excitingly, it features programmable back buttons, which feels like a big leap forward for player choice in remapping button layouts. One of the biggest sins committed by the original Pro Controller was the lack of a headphones jack, which, thankfully, has been corrected here with the inclusion of a standard 3.5mm jack.
Of course, it’s a bit more expensive than the original, but that’s inflation, isn’t it?
While I can’t help but applaud Nintendo, through their new camera, for fully embracing what it means to game online after being behind the ball for literal generations now, I think back to the dark days of Uno on Xbox Live Arcade and can’t help but harbour concerns for how this particular peripheral may be used.
It’s undoubtedly a source of great laughter and, when things don’t go your way, humiliation to have a friend’s smug little grin go cruising past you in Mario Kart World. I struggle to think of how many games, outside of Mario and his various fun-filled spin-offs, will find a worthwhile application for this toy.
It is a nice little camera. I think it’s rather professional-looking with its sleek stem and unassuming appearance. For how it’s used, as a chic webcam, the 1080p resolution is perfectly fine and quite in keeping with the fairly accessible price point for it at $70. For its cost, it does an excellent job of not only recognising your face from across the room, but it also does a good enough job of scrubbing out backgrounds when needed. Having spent an evening with Mario Kart World and all the shenanigans that come from being able to emote my brand of competitive disrespect, I think it’s a great little feature that I hope they’re able to find enough applications for it in other games to convince players to keep it plugged in.
There’s great flexibility in how you showcase GameChat on-screen. There are options to use up your screen’s lower third showing the s in the chat (which is also useful to keep an eye on their play if they’re opting to screen share), or you can keep it out of sight entirely. Of course, all of these cool features, like the AI noise-cancelling and facial recognition, are thanks, in large part, to Nintendo’s partnership with NVIDIA and usage of their tensor cores.
Although it feels odd to pat Nintendo on the back for finally adding social functionality that other hardware manufacturers have had ingrained in their systems for decades, I think they’ve put a novel enough spin on things to make their “tardy to the party” approach endearing. While I think the interface and the inability to add others once a chat is started is prohibitively awkward, its feature set is quite remarkable. After spending a good evening with it, I couldn’t imagine how Nintendo could have engineered it better. The noise-cancelling built into the console’s microphone is so good, it dampens all external noise from across the room and delivers your voice surprisingly clearly.
Most might have hoped that a Mario platformer, like a successor to Super Mario Odyssey, would launch with Nintendo’s new system. I think those same people, however, will happily accept the company’s first brand-new Mario Kart game in over a decade as a substitute. While delivering an open world that reaches for the same levels of density as Forza Horizon, Mario Kart World manages to still deliver the trademark joy and fun the franchise has always been known for. I’ll be spending a lot of time partaking in Knockout Tour, a brand new point-to-point elimination race that culls chunks of its enormous starting grid checkpoint-by-checkpoint until only one remains.
Read our full Mario Kart World review here.
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour rounds out the new first-party offerings, and I don’t expect this one will move an enormous amount of units. While being a functional tutorial for all of the console’s features, it lacks the charm and character that Astro’s Playroom had in doing the same for the PlayStation 5.
Read our full Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour review here.
The console’s launch window will fast become the post-launch, which means we’ll get the next run of exclusives, including Donkey Kong Bananza, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Kirby Air Riders, and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, the latter of which is undated but expected out by the end of the year.
More exciting than that is The Duskbloods, a brand-new FromSoftware game releasing exclusively for Nintendo’s new hardware. It’s a sentence that, six months ago, would have been impossible to fathom. However, it’s real, and it’s evidence that Nintendo isn’t kidding around when it comes to snatching up exclusives to further bolster the value of their new hybrid gaming machine.
Where Nintendo Switch 2 crushes its predecessor is third-party . Keep in mind, we’re talking about a console with one of the biggest install bases known to man, and yet it never quite delivered third-party ports at a parity even remotely close to acceptable. Despite being a shortfall for the system, it’s hard to say it hurt Nintendo in the long run.
But if you make Nintendo Switch 2 the destination console to play third-party games, while still delivering on the exclusives only they’re capable of and we might be heading towards a domination by the Japanese powerhouse. As it stands, the launch , from a third-party perspective, is tremendous; it honestly comes together as one of the more solid day one line-ups I can recall. What’d be mildly concerning is the lack of third-party in the console’s slate beyond launch, but we expect Nintendo is sitting on a Direct that’ll change that quick smart.
Click through the links below to read our impressions of that game’s performance on Nintendo Switch 2.
- Split Fiction
- Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition
- Sonic X Shadow Generations
- Street Fighter 6
- Sid Meier’s Civilization VII
- Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster
- Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut
- Hitman: World of Assassination – Signature Edition
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
- Fortnite
- Deltarune
It’s a wide net that captures a lot of genres, so presuming you’re picking up Mario Kart World, there’s a wealth of options to choose from to complement that purchase. There’s so much to be excited about for the future of the Nintendo Switch 2 from both a first-party and third-party front. While the original Switch positioned itself as a place to play Nintendo games and the occasional indie, there’s a genuine belief that the Switch 2 could become the place to play everything.
Casual gamers never took the Switch seriously because third-party titles seemed to always come with concessions, whether that’s in the form of incomplete “legacy” versions of FIFA or its abhorrent Mortal Kombat 1 port. It’s looking more and more like the destination console and its first twelve months will be telling.
Online and auxiliary services are the areas where Nintendo will need to show big improvement throughout this generation. Granted, they’ve never been known for their online infrastructure or the services that connect to that.
ittedly, they came along in leaps and bounds throughout the Nintendo Switch’s lifespan, and it’s certainly a growth area for them. Similarly, the value proposition for Nintendo Switch Online has grown, too. Of course, the service exists as a gateway to online play; however, that hasn’t stopped Nintendo from packing in value in other ways.
Like its contemporaries, Nintendo Switch Online offers a couple of tiered options to its customers. There is a basic plan that has the bare bones features you’d expect, and there’s an Expansion Pack that includes classic titles on available consoles later than Super Nintendo, as well as all of the able content that’s launched through the service, like Mario Kart 8’s course .
Either of those plans is available to individuals or families; the key difference is that family plans can be used on up to eight devices, which is a great option for people looking to bundle together.
In of how the hip is benefiting Switch 2 buyers, I imagine much of that remains to be seen. We do know that Zelda upgrades, referenced below, are available at no additional cost for Nintendo Switch Online s, and you’ll need the service if you’re hoping to play the GameCube classics.
For a clearer overview of what’s available to you in each plan, click here.
One of the areas that Nintendo has, I believe, looked after the game like they never have before is through their multi-tiered upgrade pathing schemes to help bring old software up to standard. It’s why I couldn’t be too hard on them for putting a small price tag on Welcome Tour, because they went relatively easy on us, given that their whole strategy last generation was to repackage the ittedly great games that didn’t gain any traction on the Wii U.
It’s worth noting that there are tiers to how Nintendo is handling its upgrades here. There are a couple of paid tiers, which often add content to the game in question, while there are free upgrades for select games that include frame rate and resolution bumps.
The games receiving free upgrades are:
- Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury
- Super Mario Odyssey
- The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
- The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
- Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
- New Super Mario Bros U Deluxe
- Game Builder Garage
- 51 Worldwide Games
- Arms
- Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain
- Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet
There are paid upgrades for both The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that cost 20 AUD. It’s worth noting that these will be made available for free to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.
The other games receiving paid upgrade paths are:
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land
- Adds the Star-Crossed World story expansion
- Super Mario Party Jamboree
- Adds the TV Jamboree expansion, which includes more minigames taking advantage of the Switch 2 functionality.
It’s hard not to see others being added as time goes on. All in all, it feels like a great selection of games to focus on during the launch window to give players something to go back to, if required.
The Nintendo Switch was a groundbreaking watershed moment for the home console market. Even today, it feels like a pioneer for handheld gaming in a way that even exceeds the Game Boy; it felt like as honest a translation from big screen to little screen as we’d seen before. It kickstarted the race into people’s into gamers’ bedrooms, commutes, and lunch breaks, and we kind of owe it to the Switch for the influx of handheld PCs the last few years have brought.
Of course, there’s novelty in being able to play console games with a mouse; however, I feel it’s due to publisher readiness to port their games, and port them well, to this new system that has Nintendo, quite literally, flicking the Switch.
Enter the Nintendo Switch 2.
