Double-Click: What's Up With the Switch 2?

Across the PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, input and output are so standardised that they often fade into the background. Nintendo, on the other hand, is the last bastion of the conspicuous feature. It is the single console manufacturer that uses unique controls and modalities to deliver an experience that can't be ported. Another studio might be reticent to develop a game that they knew couldn't sell on multiple platforms, but Nintendo's vivacious troupe of first-party celebrities won't be venturing further afield anyway. That's another singular tendency of Nintendo. As Sony releases their last-generation exclusives on the Epic Store and Microsoft adopts a "play anywhere" motto, Doug Bowser's company is left as the last of the big three to have resident series.

Many recent Nintendo games believe players should be able to spontaneously and implicitly select their objectives. In Zelda: Breath of the Wild, not only can I teleport around a Hyrule flowering with assignments, I can make my own tasks, like collecting Rhino Beetles or solving the Wahgo Katta Shrine. In Bowser's Fury, there is a singular overworld I explore, and if I see a Cat Shine I want in it, I just run over and get it. Whereas, in 3D Marios of the past, I would have had to select a single Star/Shine Sprite to chase when I entered the level.

I'm not sure Mario Kart World quite adopts that same boundaryless structure, but it's hard to believe that the freedom afforded by titles like BotW or Bowser's Fury didn't inspire this game's contiguous map. It also borrows the well-received costuming of Super Mario Odyssey and leases the mechanics of other classic forward-movement games without ingesting so much of them that it loses its identity. Driving to the next race instead of fast-travelling there is very Forza Horizon, and the grinds and wall rides will have Tony Hawk eating its heart out. They're gonna put Bam Margera in Mario Kart.

Magnetic walls and rails let World avoid the common AAA trap of changing the structure in which we perform fundamentals without changing the fundamentals themselves. As in Tony Hawk, transferring between the movement modes makes you look like a parkour expert. The player seems to have plenty of options to activate or not activate these modes throughout the tracks. By contrast, paragliding, the last big change-up to the Mario Kart movement, was something only possible at set checkpoints.

Bananza made me more excited for a new Donkey Kong game that I thought possible. It's a lot of tangy colours with rough terrain, and I love how hard the game leans into telling you that Donkey Kong could rip your skull apart with his bare hands. The ground trembles with the punches of this rambunctious ape, and everything he breaks splits into a thousand scattering pieces. In line with Nintendo's new philosophy of freedom, you can choose to tunnel through any rock you see to discover the prizes within, and that destructible terrain and those numerous particles make a strong case for upgrading your hardware.

But outside of these big first-party games, what do we have to look forward to when we buy a Switch 2? Its product pipe will soon extrude Metroid Prime 4, but that surreal space shooter will also be available on the Switch 1. Whenever a new console is about to hit shelves, there's always some amnesia about how light on software these boxes have been at launch. This issue was semi-solved by manufacturers creating significant overlap between console cycles. However, it's harder for Nintendo to bridge their gap with the same consistency when the Switch 2 doesn't look like it's the frontrunner for third-party offerings.

That's not to say there are no notable third-party jams on this thing. As best I can tell, Drag x Drive is doing disabled representation right, not just defining disabled characters by what they can't do but also showing the skills they demonstrate despite those limitations. And don't get me wrong, I am a simp for Yakuza Zero. The simultaneously madcap and tear-jerking Zero was my first foray into the laidback nightlife and rough-and-tumble gangster politics of Kamorocho. I've played Yakuza 3 Remastered and Kiwami since then, but they're still not as full and frantic as Zero. It has more Tokyo leisure time and transfixingly demonic mob bosses. It is quite simply some of the best slice-of-life media ever to exist, good enough to make me look the other way on its repetitive brawling. But even with the extras patched into the Director's Cut, I'm gawping at the price of the Switch 2 and the new Switch carts, and hoping this edition of Zero comes out on any other console.

Looking at the April Direct and Nintendo's previous generation, I'm expecting a lot of the third-party Switch 2 games to be titles that already launched on other consoles and that debuted there at lower prices. The incentive to repurchase games for the original Switch was that you'd get a portable version of them, and for the Switch 2, that remains true, but when the Switch 1 launched, there weren't all these competing computers with the same form factor. Today, the product selection is complicated.

Nintendo's next console will cost £395.99, whereas adjusted for inflation, the Wii would run you £305.42 in today's money, and the base Steam Deck comes in at £349.00. Both the Switch 2 and Steam Deck include an LCD screen and 256GB of storage, but Steam has a much larger library of games for you to browse. If those were the only factors, it would be a no-brainer to purchase a Steam Deck over a Switch 2. Impressively, Nintendo's handheld kicks back with a higher resolution and refresh rate than even the top-end Steam Deck, bucking their reputation for limp technological prowess. However, as previously mentioned, Valve and Nintendo aren't the only saloons in town.

Companies like Lenovo and Asus boast more ferocious alternatives. They might run you a little more than a Mario machine, but once you crunch the cost of Steam games vs. Switch games, you are probably saving money in the long run. Based on the Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong: Bonanza, Switch 2 games come in at £67-£75 a pop. I wonder if Nintendo didn't talk prices during the Direct because they didn't want them to taint the positive discussion of games and hardware shown with the embarrassing matter of the bill.

Remember, unlike a lot of other companies, Nintendo doesn't believe in sales or letting the droopiness of age drag down prices over time. But then, it doesn't matter how much you pay for your non-Nintendo deck, it's either more cumbersome or impossible to switch it to being a full home console, and Bowser is never going to show up on its screen. First-party exclusivity is why so much rides on Nintendo's in-house productions and means the publisher can charge more for their wares. Polygon's video on the reasons Nintendo games never go on sale is well worth watching again. I'll also reiterate a point made by @thepanzini in another thread: it's possible that when Nintendo is highly reliant on selling a few first-party games as opposed to very many third-party games, they have to pump the price up on everything to make the same profits as Sony or Microsoft.

But it's not just the Switch 2 and its games that are prohibitively expensive. Nintendo insists on nickel-and-diming for features that would be free on any other platform. Viewers of the Direct were understandably insulted by the feature tour for the Switch 2 being paid software. You're forking over money to be told that the magnets stick the Joycon 2s to the console. The Switch 2 has built-in game chat, which could be convenient, but when it requires a Switch Online subscription, video chat demands you buy a £50 camera, and even a general audience knows how to FaceTime their grandkids for free, who is going to buy this?

FaceTime wouldn't let you stick your Mario Party gameplay in the background of your feed, but even the Switch 2 can't do that without copious choppiness. Side note: It is pretty brave to make your interface look that close to Discord's. The compulsory Switch Online subscription for this chat service might fly if Switch Online offered more benefits overall. However, people generally play fewer Switch games over the internet than they do games on other platforms, and it's not like Switch Online slides you free access to modern titles as PlayStation Plus or Xbox Game Pass do. Nintendo has a robust back catalogue available by subscription. Sadly, they have been lax in updating their retro game collections, while a PC emulator lets you play any game from the NES up to the GameCube gratis, not that you heard that from me.

Keep in mind that Nintendo is serving a customer base that wants to buy a new appliance and plumb its benefits right away. People expect to purchase a new TV, take it home, and see a sharper picture. They want to switch their ISP and get faster speeds on install. I don't think that's too much to ask. Nintendo is usually well-attuned to the needs of that audience, but they believe users will buy upgrade packs for each game to see the hardware benefits of the console they just took a £400 haircut on, and I dunno about that. It's another pain point that wouldn't ache as bad if there was more new software dropping during the launch window.

If you're not buying for portability, raw hardware power, the services, or the software, you're buying for the unique features I mentioned up top. It is a little funny that Nintendo calls them Joy Con 2s and not just Joy Cons, but the company is making a statement that these controllers don't function identically to the last duo. For one thing, they attach to the side of the console snappier and slappier than ever before. Although, if those suckers have strong magnets in them, I'm not going to be putting them down near any other electronics. I do have other electronics near my Switch and sometimes in my pockets, and also, I am electronic. The mouse functionality could be neat, but it'll live or die on game feel. It's impossible to gauge its quality without a hands-on.

The console also demonstrates how accessibility features can help typical and atypical minds and bodies alike. There are the larger control stick on the Joy Cons, the extra paddles on the back of the Pro Controller, and the ability to reassign all buttons in emulated GameCube software. That last feature should be standard for all games and is particularly helpful in retro releases made for controllers with fewer buttons. With more controller elements to play with today, we may be able to find better layouts than the designers of the past could. That extra USB port on the console's roof is also a surprisingly powerful upgrade. If you're lying in bed playing the Switch, you don't want a charging cable digging into your stomach.

Some of the communication of these features restated the obvious. Our polite shop assistant explained the concept of video chatting and that even though the Switch 2 is backwards compatible, you will still be able to play new games on it. You might ask who's informed enough to tune into a Nintendo Direct but not know that. However, I think those clarifications are for journalists reporting to a mainstream audience. It's so someone on a morning news programme can say, "Don't worry, you will be able to play Switch 2 games on your Switch 2 as well".

Nintendo has earned itself the questionable honour of "The Disney of Video Games", and it's an okay descriptor for their software departments. However, their hardware positions them closer to a company like Apple. Their presentations and devices are so clean every Nintendo Direct feels like a shower, but their prices are extortionate. Their products are usually highly functional and have wide appeal, but they exist in a walled garden. With the Switch 2 Direct, all those aspects of their personality, the good and bad, have been exaggerated.

Nintendo isn't going to be the only company jacking up prices on hardware and squishware in the second half of the 2020s. This is the nature of the current economy; Nintendo just happens to stand out because they're the one company setting prices for a new line of consoles right now. That being said, I can't imagine another console manufacturer trying to charge you for multiplayer chat or a glorified manual. Nintendo is a merchant of charming games and versatile consoles but consistently fumbles the peripheral services around them. The problem is, over time, consoles have become increasingly about those peripheral services. I'm sure there's plenty of fun to be had on the Switch 2, but this Direct mostly made me want to play my original Switch for a while longer. Thanks for reading.