Switch 2 The Future! (Thoughts on the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct)

     Friends, we've finally gotten a full look at the Switch 2. The first direct was an hour long, and full of exciting reveals and details... but with one major caveat. Along with the direct on Wednesday, there were Nintendo Treehouse Live presentations on Thursday and Friday, which were four hours, and three hours respectively. I'll do my best to cover it all, but I'm very excited for the new console coming in just a few months!

Switch and All Its Friends

    The Switch 2 presentation began with Mario Kart World's full reveal trailer, after being teased back in February. I'm not going to lie to you and say that I'm the world's biggest Mario Kart fan. I think they're a lot of fun, but if you're going to offer me the choice between a new Mario Kart game or a new Mario 3D Platformer, I would pick the platformer every time. I have to say though, this new game looks great! The biggest feature about this game is the ability to do free roaming in the large open world that all of the tracks exist in, and I'm really excited about that. While it's a mode of it's own to just drive wherever you want, the Grand Prix now partially consists of driving to the next course. From the Nintendo Treehouse Live presentation, it seems like only the third lap of whatever race is actually the racetrack that's up next, and the first two laps are getting there, but we'll see how that differs from race to race. We also saw the DK Spaceport track, which has 8 laps separated over a larger track (think Mount Wario or 3DS Rainbow Road). I'm really looking forward to how much this change matters moving forward. It's taking a cue from the games like Burnout Paradise and Forza Horizon, allowing you to drive wherever you want, which were some of my favorite features of those games. With the driving mechanics, they've now added a rail grinding and wall driving mechanic, which doesn't rely on the zero gravity of Mario Kart 8 (which is seemingly gone). The gliders and underwater mechanics are missing, but the karts transform this time around, they grow wings (which seem to function in the same way as the gliders), and they transform into boats, allowing the characters to zoom across the water instead of going under like they have since Mario Kart 7. I have been a well documented fan of this transforming mechanic ever since Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed, so I'm glad to see this change implemented here! The character roster is pretty exciting this time around as well, allowing us to play as a cow from Moo Moo Meadows, a Dolphin, a Pianta, a Coin Coffer, etc. Along with these characters come the normal characters like Mario and Peach, of course, but this time they're adding the costume mechanic from Mario Kart Tour. During races, every now and then, you'll get a food item (which seems to be random), and that allows you to change the costume of your character. I'm sure there are a lot of things that haven't been shown yet, but I'm very excited for what has been shown! It's going to be a great launch title for the new console, and I'm excited for the upcoming Mario Kart World direct on April 17.

    Speaking of the new console, let's talk a bit about the Switch 2 itself. Switch 2 is going to have a slightly bigger screen than the original Switch while keeping the same thickness and I would imagine a similar weight as well. The new hardware allows for 120 FPS in handheld mode, supporting 1080p instead of 720p displays on the original. Docked is a lot more exciting, though, allowing for up to 4K resolutions, though I'm sure performance won't be the most solid in that mode. The big feature that has been speculated to death is the mysterious C button on the right Joy-Con 2, which we now know stands for Chat. GameChat was shown, and it seems to work like Discord, which is nothing new, but it's nice to see that Nintendo is interested in some sort of Online Chat for the first time in a while. Along with the chat feature, they're selling a camera which will work not only with video chat, but there are a few games that will work with it in some way. Here's hoping for performance similar to how the Eye-Toy worked on PS2, because that was pretty cool! The Joy-Con 2's heavily rumored feature of acting like a computer mouse was confirmed, and I'm excited for the potential here! There's a microphone on the console itself, which I'm slightly concerned about, but hopefully it'll work alright. The joysticks on the Joy-Con 2s are slightly bigger than the originals, and I'm really hoping they'll have fixed the drifting issue, since that was such a big deal. There are 256 GB of storage this time around, which is much bigger than the original Switch, with only 32. The one downside that I could find was that the battery life could actually be shorter than the original according to predictions, but I don't typically use my switch in handheld mode for that long anyway, so I don't think it's going to be a big problem.

New Content in Older Titles!

    They talked a bit about how some Switch games are going to get Switch 2 editions, which I think is pretty exciting. There was talk about Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom getting pretty significant performance buffs, looking to run in very smooth 60 FPS, as well as working alongside a mobile app which can work as what is essentially GPS. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is getting a whole extra campaign, Star-Crossed World, which looks to remix a lot of the original game, so I'm very excited for that. Metroid Prime 4 will be able to be played with Mouse controls in 4K, which is definitely something that I never thought would be possible on a Nintendo console. Super Mario Party Jamboree is getting an update as well, called Jamboree TV, and that includes several games that you can play with the Switch 2's attachable camera and mouse controls, along with several modes that are being added on that utilize the new features of the new system. There are a lot of other games that are getting Switch 2 editions, and I hope they'll all have a wealth of content like some of these. The pricing model isn't too bad I don't think, you can buy the upgrade packs for $10-15, though the Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom ones come with Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, which is nice. I wish the upgrades were free, of course, but at least it's not just that they look better, which has become the industry standard for this type of thing.

    While I bring up the Expansion Pack for a minute, one of the most exciting announcements of the day was that Gamecube games are finally coming to NSO (which is now being rebranded as Nintendo Classics). The first three games that they're putting up are Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Soul Calibur II, and F-Zero GX. Of those three, I've really only played Wind Waker, but I played the demo for Soul Calibur II a ton as a kid, and I'm excited to try out the full game for myself. The other games that they announced to be coming down the line were Super Mario Sunshine, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, Chibi Robo, Super Mario Strikers, Luigi's Mansion, and Pokemon Colosseum. I'm actually really excited for almost all of these games that they announced here, and I'm definitely looking forward to playing some of my old favorites as well as some of the games that I always heard good things about, but was never able to play for myself.

Third Party Support? On my Nintendo Console?

    Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition is coming some time this year, and will hopefully run pretty well, though I'm not expecting PS5 levels of polish or anything. Deltarune Episodes 3 and 4 are finally being released on launch day of the Switch 2, which I know people are very excited for. I really liked the first chapter, but I still need to play the second one before these two come out. Borderlands 4 was announced for the console, which is pretty exciting, along with Civilization VII (which uses mouse controls, which is perfect), as well as NBA 2K and WWE 2K. They just announced all of them in a big bundle, so I thought I should report them as such, even though I'm really only excited for Borderlands. Enter The Gungeon 2 is coming to Switch and we got some of the first footage, it's using a 3D artstyle, but it seems like this game is still a little ways off, so I'm thinking it's not going to come out this year. I really loved the first game and Exit the Gungeon, so I'm really excited for this one as well! Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition is going to be on this system, which is really crazy considering just how rough this game looked at launch on PS4, but I'm excited to see how it looks here! Square Enix showed up with Final Fantasy VII Remake, which I'm hoping will look pretty solid, since that game is so pretty, especially with the visual boost given to it by the PS5 version. Hollow Knight: Silksong showed up in a sizzle reel with the release date of "2025," which I still don't believe, but hope to be proven wrong. Split Fiction is a fantastic game which I just wrote about a few weeks ago, and I'm happy that it's coming to Switch 2 as well! We saw my favorite guy, Professor Layton, also as part of this sizzle reel. Professor Layton and the New World of Steam is coming to Switch 2 at some point this year. I feel like the mouse controls will be perfect for this game, considering the first 6 were for DS or 3DS, and I'm so excited that the Professor is back! Just when we thought all of the 3rd party games were shown off... one more got a full trailer. From Software is making a Switch 2 exclusive called The Duskbloods! There's supposedly more of a multiplayer focus, calling it PVPVE (Player Vs. Player Vs. Enemy), which could just be more of what From Soft typically does, but it looks really cool, carrying a Bloodborne-like vibe to it.

    The final game that they showed in this conference was fully expected to be a new 3D Mario title. Everyone had it marked on their bingo card already. Imagine the surprise when instead, it was a new 3D Donkey Kong game! The only fully 3D game for Donkey Kong up until this point has been Donkey Kong 64, which was made by Rare in 1999, so Donkey Kong fans have been waiting for a long time for something like this. This game looks completely different from that older title, though, since it mostly played like Banjo Kazooie. Donkey Kong Bananza has everyone's favorite tie-wearing ape destroying tons of environments as he looks for chunks of Bananium, a rare mineral that everyone is after... and some that Donkey Kong wants to eat. Based on what they showed at the Nintendo Treehouse Live, this version of Donkey Kong is much more expressive and cartoon-y than he has ever been. It looks really great and it's coming out about a month after the console is set to release.

Now For The Negative...

    One thing that unfortunately undermined a lot of the enthusiasm for this presentation was the price. It actually wasn't included in the presentation itself, but revealed about 30 minutes to an hour later. The Switch 2 will be $450 for the console by itself, and $500 for a bundle of the console with Mario Kart World. That is very expensive, but it should be stated that the bundle is going to be much cheaper if you're planning on picking up Mario Kart anyways, since the stated price for it is $80 at launch. That is an incredibly expensive game, and though it does look really good, I feel like 80 is a bit much, especially if they're planning on making every first party game $80 after that. The good news is that it doesn't seem to be the case, since Donkey Kong Bananza is set at $70, but that is also a hefty price tag. On top of this, the Switch 2 was expected to have pre-orders open up on April 9, and the release date would be on June 5, but following President Trump's tariff plan that he put into action, the pre-orders have been put on hold indefinitely for the US and Canada. The launch date for the console is still planned to be June 5, but there's no telling what the price ends up being here in the US because of these tariffs. Let's hope that it sticks to the price that was already announced, but if not, a lot of folks may have to wait even longer to get their hands on one. It's a real shame, and one that takes a lot of the hype out of the exciting time of a new console release.

    Thanks for reading this post, friends. I hope you're all doing well and I'm sorry to end this post on such a negative note, but I'm hoping that maybe this situation won't end up as bleak and worrisome as it could be. Are there any games or features you're excited for with the Switch 2 and are you interested in getting one, even at a potentially increased price because of tariffs? Let's just hope we won't have to deal with the scalpers market at the same time, because that was miserable when the PS5 came out a few years ago. Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Nintendo fan, and I'll talk to you again soon!