Under Nintendo’s great Satoru Island leadership, Nintendo sought out the remaining technology arm races of Sony, Microsoft and the video game business, and pursued a series of wild experiments that became spectacular (WII, DS) (Wii U). Iwata’s final innovation, which he realized after his untimely death, was combining the company’s handheld and home console business into a single device with a 2017 switch.
Just saying Iwata is enough Really I chose his moment. He anticipated a closure gap between portable and home hardware features and the audience who wanted the game to be more adapted to their lives. The 152 million-selling Switch will soon become Nintendo’s bestselling system, potentially claiming the best title ever from the PlayStation 2.
Now, Nintendo is betting that the Switch is so incredibly successful, there’s no need to innovate any more. The Nintendo Switch 2 has some minor eccentricities, including the inclusion of mouse controls, but is an aggressively reasonable sequel. It is specifically made to be bigger, refined, faster and higher specifications. Comes with a wrist list. The arms are more pixels, faster frame rate, better controller. But it’s a very familiar device.
Like a new iPhone setup, Switch2 slips your gaming life into a new package that shines like nothing
In fact, it’s very familiar and almost radical. As far as gaming consoles go, anyway. I have never experienced this seamlessly from one console generation to another console generation. The user interfaces of Switch and Switch 2 are roughly the same, and the simple data transfer process sets up a new console in all games and settings exactly the same as the old console. Just like a new iPhone setup, Switch 2 slips your gaming life into a glorious new package as if nothing was.
But Nintendo’s laser focus on continuity is more than just ease of use, and more than a new console can play games from the old console. The two platforms are two-way conversations, clearly designed to exist side by side with households (like me), where they interact with each other. This is highlighted by new features common to both systems. Virtual game cards for digital games can be easily exchanged between families. Gameshare allows Switch 2 to stream local multiplayer games to nearby Switches.
It’s an attractive shift from Nintendo. Nintendo has a uneven record of backward compatibility and feels guilty to its customers, if not one of its competitors, to buy everything again. However, the video game market is changing, and Nintendo appears to be keenly aware of this. Like a ubiquitous mega game Fortnite and Minecraft Transcending the system being played, gamers correctly expect to follow one device from one game library and progress. The Switch 2 is a console built for the present moment, with hardware platforms (even Nintendo) having more porous boundaries than ever before.
But in that case, the hardware must make its own claim. A week after Switch 2, I really, really believe it will.
Photo: Nintendo
Look at its pleasant friendliness and elegant understatement. This will help you find a device that is a powerful flex for Nintendo designers and engineers. There is still the playfulness and tactile feel inherent in Nintendo’s approach to hardware design, embodied in small triggers that pull the Joy-Con 2 controller away from its side, and embodied in a highly satisfying magnetic snap that fills them again. However, it depicts a sophisticated engineering look, a silky matte finish, and a significantly improved build quality and material, even the Joy-Con 2s steel shoulder buttons and a sturdy metal kickstand.
For the first time in a long time, Nintendo is launching a portable gaming device dedicated to the competition in the form of a new wave of PC handhelds led by steam decks. Rather than trying to overtake these machines on power, Nintendo is almost humiliating, honestly outweighing them in the quality of their industrial design. The Switch 2 is roughly as strong as a steam deck or other entry-level PC handheld, lighter, thinner, infinitely quieter, more seriously portable, and ergonomically (except for the lack of hand grip) with a TV dock and a removable controller. My steam deck feels suddenly clunky and essentially in comparison.
Switch 2 has been close to the cutting edge of technology since Nintendo launched GameCube and Game Boy Advance in 2001, and how efficiently its power is applied without the RAW POWER. An early indication is that this is, surprisingly, even an impressively competent gaming device. Nintendo has two major advantages in PC handheld competitions (including the upcoming ROG Xbox Ally). Custom Nvidia hardware with magic bullets from Nvidia’s DLSS AI upscaling technology. And the fact that it’s a fixed platform and you’re playing a game specifically designed to run it.
The Switch 2 screen is also a great asset. Although it cannot compete with the OLED screen in terms of color, brightness or image quality, the HDR implementation is a bit weak, with 120 frames per second, a changing refresh rate, and instantaneous drops in performance are less noticeable, making it easier for all games to play.
Game beasts like Cyberpunk 2077 It looks great, runs very solid whether handheld or docked (and there is no whisper of noise from the console fans). Visually, the gap between Cyberpunk Switch 2 and PlayStation 5 are much smaller The Witcher 3 Switch and PlayStation 4. Gorgeous Mario Kart World It appears to run at a resolution of 1440p when docked, offering a 4-player split screen race with a perfect 60 frames per second. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The tears of the kingdom Don’t touch the sides – their Switch 2 edition is pure perfection, incredibly crisp and responsive.
A decent chunk in the switch library may be improved with Switch 2. The Legend of Zelda: Echo of Wisdom (It used to be very choppy and now it’s perfectly smooth). Performance issues and unlocked framerate switch games are far better without patches. Digital Foundry reports that infamous things are bad Batman: Arkham Knight It’s basically fixed now, but one friend was excited to text me a text message A-Train: I’m riding it all! sightseeing Runs 3 times faster on Switch 2. The faster memory on Switch 2 also significantly improves load times. (Perhaps the biggest performance upgrade is reserved for the ESHOP store, which is cluttered and delayed on the Switch, but quickly and organized on the Switch 2.)
Nintendo engineers have also discovered some new Switch 2 horsepower applications. And I tried it locally with the new GameChat service, sharing a video feed from one copy of one game either local or online to one Switch 2, and using the video streaming investment of engineers pouring video streaming into the unfortunate Wii U Survival Kidsa fun, simple cooperative craft game, with two other players using the switch. The other players’ feeds had ambiguous artifacts at any time, but their game was completely smooth and playable. This is a magical generous technology that works well in simpler multiplayer games, but who knows how well it is supported.
Image: Nintendo
Though not too novel, GameChat is at the heart of Nintendo’s vision for Switch 2. It’s not innovative, it’s been sitting between a rival console for voice chat and a full-fledged communications platform like Discord for decades. But it’s quite rich in its features, with impressive noise cancellation, smart video and the ability to stream gaming screens to friends. As expected by Nintendo, it is backed up by the robust parental control of Nintendo’s Switch smartphone app and is highly focused on consent. Existing friends can be individually pre-approved for GameChat.
GameChat has problems with all video chat platforms. The chat could be muffled at the start, and on one call I was troubled by the distracting ultrasound of my voice. It’s also very pandemic coded. Nintendo has always shown a direct preference over online experiences, and you can feel nervous to have voice chats with someone as much as possible in your room. But that’s not a bad purpose, and the seamless integration of GameChat at the system level is a major leap into the present from companies that previously hosted online games at Arms length. In fact, GameChat’s features, social controls, and general familiarity take much more priority than the Xbox and PlayStation chat services, making it a truly viable alternative to discrepancies.
Nintendo is also making significant advances in accessibility. This is another area that has long been behind the competition due to its stubborn claim to the integrity of the control scheme. System-level accessibility options include the ability to create and save multiple button mapping presets, allowing you to adjust settings for each game, adjustable text sizes, color inversion and grayscale, mono audio, and more. GameChat also features speech-to-text and text-to-speech transcription.
Image: Nintendo
It’s all so wise, so modern and very positive. However, even so, Nintendo sometimes goes to Nintendo. When the news of that first leaked, the idea of using Joy-Con2 as a mouse on its side seemed like a joke. it’s not. Mouse controls are as fast and accurate as you want, and are a real bonus for strategy games like: Civilization 7 First person game like Cyberpunk – If you can get used to the strange and delicate feeling of holding the thin controller sideways and swiping across the sofa cushion.
However, mouse controls are very strange inclusions, but secreted to the sides of the controller and the edges of possible use cases in the console. It’s like Easter eggs of hardware thrown into engineers just because they can. Even Nintendo itself can imagine exploring it in some games and forgetting that it’s there. At the same time, it’s a small welcome enhancement for many indie PC games, jumping to Switch 2.
The clash between Nintendo’s whimsicality and its new high-tech fetishism is less obvious than the hilariously nasty launch game. Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tourits fun demos and mini-games, desert arid presentations, and a bold, boring catalogue of new console specifications. But for the most part, Nintendo allows its odd escape personality to peek at its reserved and classy, like the cyan and coral rings around the thumb and the pleasant little clicks, pops and chimes of the UI. That’s good. Nintendo games give you a canvas big enough for its colorful creativity.
Instead, Switch 2 finds Nintendo in Apple mode. The company has brought considerable engineering and design skills to withstand building a smooth operator with a console that is powerful enough to be fully used without sweating. It completed the design – and justified the price when compared to the closest competition for the Switch 2.
I think Nintendo is intentionally casting Switch 2 as a seamless extension, not as an alternative to all conquest switches. The new console lightly wears the mantle of its game-changing predecessor and expands its functionality in a comprehensive way. Switch 2 has the highest confidence of continuity candidates who think the election is in the bag.