How does the Switch 2 fit into the landscape in 2025?

Welcome back to our new “Conversation” series! This time Blue and I talk about the reveal of the Nintendo Switch 2 that happened last week, and wonder where it fits in the current landscape of gaming. How will it compare to the revolution that the original Switch ushered in? Do you need to rush out and fight for a pre-order slot on day one?

Steve: After what feels like a lifetime of leaks and fervor around the proposed successor to Nintendo's handheld phenomenon, this week we finally were graced with an official look at the Nintendo Switch 2. It had all the makings of a great Nintendo reveal - a playful tone that emphasized the fun rather than technical jargon about reskinned upscaling technologies. In fact, the reveal itself didn't even feature any kind of language at all. Instead it focused entirely of showing you exactly what the upcoming console will be - a bigger, slightly better version of the handheld you have loved since 2017. The Joycons are back, this time a little taller, and a little sleeker, and with a magnetic snap rather than the rails version on the original Switch. The screen is just a little bigger, and now there's a mysterious button on the right Joycon that has the internet ridiculously hyped for what it "might" do. This reveal was safe, avoiding all the crucial missteps that the company trod when they rolled out the doomed Wii U (fun story, I was in the crowd at E3 when it was revealed, and even being there I was still confused about exactly WHAT they were rolling out due to the namesake). And while they even showed a new Mario Kart running for a brief moment, the bulk of the actual info will be coming in a Nintendo Direct that is hitting the airwaves in April. The moments was here, and while I will most certainly grab one because I am a Nintendo fan at heart, I honestly have to ask - is this enough to actually be excited about?

I ask this as my Steam Deck OLED is sitting across the table from me. When the Nintendo Switch arrived in 2017, it was a revolution. Sure, we had seen powerful handhelds like the PS Vita before, but here Nintendo was selling a dream - a home console that you could take with you on the go. No watered down handheld SKUs of popular franchises with wildly different gameplay loops from their console counterparts. No, you could take an open-world Zelda game and play it anywhere you damn well pleased. That was bloody exciting Blue! The Switch actually changed my purchasing habits. Any cool indie game that was multiplatform I grabbed immediately on the Switch so I could take it with me, share it with friends, play it on my daily commute. Games that I loved and cherished for dozens of hours on PC were repurchased for the convenience factor alone. But now I have the Steam Deck, a centralized portal to my gaming needs that sure, is not as ergonomic and easy to toss into a bag as the Switch 2 surely will be. But in a post-COVID world where I work from home, barely leave the house, and when I do I'm usually posted up at a cafe or somewhere nice that the bulk of the Deck doesn't cause me issues, I have to wonder if I will actually get as much use out of the Switch 2 as I imagine in my head.

Sure, I will play the hell out of some Mario Kart. 3D platformer Mario? Yes please! Splatoon 4 will surely come and I will be there on day one. But will I play Slay the Spire 2 on it? Probably not. The games are cheaper on Steam. I can take them with me now, albeit not as easily, but now that extra WOW factor of the Switch is kinda a little less of a selling point. Even if I didn't have Steam Deck, we are seeing a glut of handheld gaming PCs from major manufacturers like ROG, Asus, MSI, and a bunch of the Chinese market are breaking in too.

My point is when the first Switch came along, it was a market leader. There was no competition doing what it was doing. Now there are more powerful, more versatile handhelds on the market. I know that those options are not as prestige as Nintendo, and I am not suggesting that Valve is going to be making the folks in Kyoto lose any sleep over the competition. But surely I am not alone in wondering if I actually will make good use of what kinda looks to be little more than a Switch Pro, which honestly makes a lot of sense given the leaks that were circling around the traps a few years ago.

Tell me Blue, how do you feel about the the circus that has surrounded this reveal? Do you think the Switch 2 will still resonate as strongly as its predecessor?

Blue: That's a toughie, isn't it? Honestly as transformative as the Switch has now historically proven to be, we can't really say that they were breaking all the moulds back when it first launched. Sure, marketing the 'successor' of the 3DS as a full blown home console was a big risk, but at the end of the day it's not like the technology itself was exploratory. The Switch is a handheld portable console. That's the main strength of the console in my eyes. It challenged a lot of people to give it a chance because it was claiming to be a powerful home console at the same time. And once people gave it a shot, they found that the slightly lacking performance wasn't a big deal compared to the quality of games they were getting on the console. A cynical part of me thinks that folks just really needed to get over prejudices about the handheld consoles and the Switch was the perfect non-confrontational shape to do it

And in that field... I am worried the Switch 2 will end up in a fight it was never meant to win. Putting the Switch 2 up against contemporary home consoles today will be unfair. And yet that's what's going to happen right? How will it stack up on literal paper in a column by column comparison against the PS5 and the XBox? Does it matter that the comparison doesn't make sense? How do you weigh the portability of the Switch 2 other than a single row just saying "Portable? Check" on it? What's the emotional and value judgement being done there?

And then, what about a fight that should be straightforward? What if it's put into a comparison with the original Switch? Don't get me wrong, porting as many games forward as possible on the Switch 2 is great and adds immediate value to the system. But what if you already own the system? Do you then wait until a must have exclusive? But that killer app isn't going to be the same for everyone. How many people's trigger will be the new Mario Kart? Certainly not every current Switch owner. The current Switch consoles are old and the joycons may be drifting, but is it actually broken? Is it worth the x hundred dollars to buy the new sleeker model if you're someone who gets in an hour and a half of Balatro every night before you sleep?

And I don't even think the Switch 2 beats the Switch in every category. The most obvious difference between the two is that the new baby is going to be bigger. That's not always a plus for handhelds. Will it be big enough to be annoyingly large? Admittedly, I don't pull my Switch out for casual gaming unless I've thoroughly entrenched myself in a fortress of luggage most of the time, but you never know what kind of pain points exist when it comes to tech like this. I'm probably overthinking this. I mean, there's no way Nintendo hasn't thought of all of these things right?

Looking around, the world is full of out of touch tech companies who are tripping over themselves to show that they haven't the foggiest idea what doing good business is. But in this case.. I do think Nintendo knows what they're doing. I have faith. And I really do mean faith here. I have no proof and I'm really just hoping that Nintendo is helmed by steady hands. All of the gripes I just listed are things I think are valid. I just think Nintendo is looking at this in a longer and more drawn out context. The underpoweredness of the Switch 2 doesn't bother them because they've been the underpowered console for a generation and a half already. And yet, some Switch games look stunning despite that fact (I'm looking at you Breath of the Wild title card). Graphics and technology doesn't make up for heartfelt game design and Nintendo leads by example in this area.

While not meant to compete with the brick of electronics in your living room, the Switch 2's increased hardware capabilities are both going to give so much more breathing room to devs and continue to frustrate them as publishers make the unreasonable demands of fitting games that push cutting edge computers to their limits on the little clicky clacky console that could. Nintendo probably isn't counting on their market share of Switch users upgrading day one. It's likely more than fine for them. They are one of the more stable companies in gaming and they can afford to play the longer game. They don't (I hope) need the Switch 2 to recoup itself within a single fiscal quarter.

Basically what I'm getting at is that the Switch 2, just like its name implies, isn't meant to be a revolution. Not the way the Switch was. It's in the name. It's a sequel, not a brand new experience. At least that's my speculation and hope. A lot of people have said this and that about what they would have liked the new Nintendo console to be, but at the end of the day I sit with the people I've heard who are excited that Nintendo isn't done yet with the Switch. What are they going to do? Instead of living in the dreamland of imagining what could have been instead of the Switch 2, what are you excited about (if anything at all) about this thing? We still know so little. Is there a single function that could get you to get it day one with your heart full of excitement like an 8 year old getting their first console?

Steve: While you are not exactly wrong by comparing the Switch to the 3DS, I feel like the Wii U is the stronger comparison. The 3DS more often than not had specific software made for the platform. Games that had shorter loops, that were easier to squeeze in some game time while on the go, with strong checkpointing and sections where you could close the clamshell and go on about your day. The software was designed with this in mind. That is less so on the Nintendo Switch. The promise was that you can carry the expansive world of "real games" while on the go, and it worked a treat. I don't think many games on the Switch are designed with the commuting Mum in mind, who has to divide their attention between work, kids, paying for a coffee, all while on the way to the office.

Just watch the first few minutes. That slow clap... it was weird to be there in the room when this all went down.

The Wii U though, that has more than a few similarities. It shared the same namesake as its predecessor, a move that is still perplexing all these years later, causing consumer confusion as they potentially pondered the same question you asked - do I really need this thing? It also carried forward the predecessor's library, which muddied the waters even further. The Wii U was trying to sell you on the idea of dual screen gaming, just in your living room this time. When you are plugging in a sensor bar and trying to get your waggle on though, it becomes a completely different siloed experience. If I am just content bowling a set on Wii Sports, I probably didn't need to upgrade to this weird upgrade console. But within this catastrophic misstep of a console that failed on almost every metric, there was the seed of what Nintendo truly wanted to make.The Switch is the mighty oak that grew from that seed. It is essentially the same concept - a tablet that can also be on your TV screen. Sure, I don't get to look at the game world maps in the palm of my hand while watching the action on my big TV, but the concept is almost indentical.

Nintendo is out of the modern console fight, and I think that fans and industry pundits have come to accept that. The last time that they had a direct competitor to PlayStation and Xbox was back in the Gamecube days. And if Xbox has their way, the Nintendo Switch 2 will be an Xbox. Nintendo are content doing their own thing, and that has proven to be a successful track record. I buy a Nintendo console for Zelda, Mario, Splatoon. I don't buy it OVER one of those other consoles. I buy it as a Nintendo games machine, and the spillover was it became me default indie game home for many years. As I said though, now that the Steam Deck is here, this will relegate the Switch 2 simply to being my Nintendo machine.

And that is where we come into full agreement - what is Nintendo going to do that will sell me on taking the plunge. Eventually there will be enough games to warrant me picking one up, especially now I have a kid who will more than likely become Nintendo pilled just via osmosis of living with me, and being in Japan. But I totally agree - if you are a hardcore gamer, what is going to be the reason to pick it up on day one? That is most likely going to come down to your favorite franchises. A new Metroid? Not a necessity for me. A new Mario Kart? Maybe. A new Splatoon or Zelda? Instant need on my end. However, tightening financial constraints and wisdom may even prevent me there. Why buy this when I know in 2-3 years we'll probably get an OLED model? Why get this for your kids when there will probably be a "Lite" model that is more impervious to damage?

When I sit here and really think about it though - nothing truly excites me about the console. It looks nice. It's iterative. Like when you get a new iPhone, it will feel like a faster, sleeker, more polished version of what you had before. It will slip into my life and will not greatly change it. That in itself is kinda nice sometimes. I am not sure what that is going to feel like when it comes to a new gaming platform though. Have we come to the end of big bombastic upgrades when it comes to consoles? The PS4 to PS5 felt like nothing more than a nice new controller and a different UI. The Xbox Series X even had the same menu system as the Xbox One X I had before that. Have we entered the iPhone era of gaming platforms?

Blue: While I get what you mean when you say Nintendo is out of the modern console fight, I do assert that for a lot of families, the budget for the plastic that done play vidya games goes to either Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft. It's not technologically comparable, but it is in other ways. How much it costs, how much value it will provide, what games are available etc etc. So even saying that you bought a Switch just for the Nintendo games is already putting it in the fight with PlayStation and XBox. And that's part of the point too. I wouldn't consider buying any of these pieces of hardware around the same time as each other and I think that the larger portion of the market that Nintendo courts is even more conservative in their expenditure. So while the value of the Nintendo machine being handheld has decreased by the emergence of competitor handheld consoles, the name recognition and the fact that this has the added benefit of out of the box play for Nintendo brand games still puts it a leg up on the rest (conveniently ignoring the price range which is as of yet unknown).

Now I could very well be wrong here, but I do feel that the products from ROG, Asus, MSI, and yes even the Steam Deck are more for enthusiasts than the casual market. Which means that the Switch 2 transforms from 'just a Nintendo machine' to 'the Nintendo machine that can play games that I'd otherwise have to mess with the Steam Deck for'. I know I just said what you said but the other way around, but I do think it's a consideration for some folks. Especially if they've yet to take the plunge themselves into the world of the Steam Deck. How much effort do I want to make for on the go indie games if I also want the new Zelda. How much money am I willing to pay to make that a non-problem?

But yes, we come to the crux of the discussion I think. Since the trailer is content to not show us anything new or 'gimmicky', the meat and potatoes of the system will be what games are there on release. And there simply has to be something right? They would time the release of something this big with at least one game to attract attention. And no offense to the Karting fans, I simply don't think the new Mario Kart is that game. It feels like they have something waiting in the wings. The new Mario 3D platformer is my best guess. Odyssey is as old as the Switch is now at 8 years old. I would not be surprised at all to see something new in that line whether it be Odyssey 2 or something else with the same genetics.

Here's my for fun totally out of left field idea that I really really don't think they can pull off. Nintendo goes back to basics and shows people bringing their Switch together for group gaming again (I was sad to see in the early look trailer that they don't even talk about local multiplayer anymore). They beef up the capabilities of the Switch 2 for ad hoc networked connections. They work together with FromSoftware and Capcom to make Elden Ring: Nightreign and Monster Hunter: Wilds premier titles. BAM! The perfect on the go console that boasts world class co-op experiences that we already know are coming out soon (ish).

Ah, what a fun fantasy land that would be. But I mean outside of something big and unexpected like that, I do think you're right in the assessment that it'll be like a new iPhone. Evolutionary steps, rather than ground breaking revolutionary stomps. I don't think this heralds the end of innovative console revolutions, but also we never found the next step from vacuum tubes to silicon so maybe the electronics ceiling we hit 20 years ago is finally catching up to gaming. And more importantly, I think this is fine. Would people have been happy with a cool new gimmick console from Nintendo? Of course, but I really can't see the Switch 2 as anything other than committing to the trajectory they already have and loudly saying that they're not done with the games they've been making for the past 8 years. And that's a great thing. The past 8 years of Nintendo first party games have all been fun!