News Nintendo details the Switch 2 in a Direct livestream

[TDRare]

24 player mariokart sounds like a blast.
Hopefully the console isn't too expensive.

The article quotes $449 USD, which seems significantly higher than the Switch. I'm in Canada, and the original switch was under$400 Canadian, Switch 2 will be in the $650 range.

 

[gggplaya]

Why in the heck is the camera a separate accessory, instead of built in? Is it just because they want to charge way too much for what is definitely going to be a generic, exceptionally low-quality webcam?

Many parents, including myself would not want a built in camera on the switch. If it has a camera, I would want a way to lock it out for young children. I would also want the microphone and party VOIP to have the ability to lock out as well, except for APPROVED friends. Too many old creeps on the internet.

 

[thestryker]

You can still expand the storage with microSD cards OR buy the physical game instead of downloading it.

It's actually not microSD cards anymore either it's microSD Express which tends to cost 3-4x more.

 

[cyrusfox]

Many parents, including myself would not want a built in camera on the switch. If it has a camera, I would want a way to lock it out for young children. I would also want the microphone and party VOIP to have the ability to lock out as well, except for APPROVED friends. Too many old creeps on the internet.

The DS had a camera, so nothing too revolutionary. Nintendo parent controls work quite well and I expect them to give good options to lock features out in terms of chat. Problem is whether parents set them up properly or the ingenuity of kids to get themselves in trouble. For gameplay mechanics I think it is great feature add, for privacy and exploitation it is is a big concern, agreed.

 

[Notton]

The article quotes $449 USD, which seems significantly higher than the Switch. I'm in Canada, and the original switch was under$400 Canadian, Switch 2 will be in the $650 range.

I made that comment during the live stream and before the price was announced.
You can check the timestamp.

 

[ThereAndBackAgain]

RIP broke Nintendo fans. Mario Kart is $80 and DK Bananza is $70, and the console itself is $450. They're pricing a good number of people out.

I read in the QA with Nintendo they said NEW games wont come in physical form anymore.

Where did you read that? The only indication I can find is that some games will be released as "Game-Key Cards," not all. The concept is absurd, with all of the drawbacks of physical media but without the benefit of not taking up storage space, but it probably will only be used when companies want to cheap out, so most likely not any first-party games.

MicroSD transfer speeds won’t cut it for modern load times.

They're mandating use of microSD Express cards for storage expansion for that reason.

The DS had a camera, so nothing too revolutionary.

To be pedantic, the DSi and the 3DS had cameras, but not the original DS or the DS Lite.

 

[Heiro78]

Why in the heck is the camera a separate accessory, instead of built in? Is it just because they want to charge way too much for what is definitely going to be a generic, exceptionally low-quality webcam?
It could be a selfie cam that stays exposed when the Switch is docked. It could be built into the dock. For what they're charging it could definitely be included in the box. They even could just make the Switch universally compatible with any webcam. But nope, its a standalone security camera that nobody's going to buy.
2006 called. They want the Xbox Live vision camera that I bought on clearance for $7 just for the 3-month Live subscription card and never used, except for that one time in college I thought I could use it to review a movie, back.

I would never use the camera so I'm glad it's not included and keeps the cost a little more down. It's similar to the Kinect camera being included with the Xbox One when most of those gamers werent using it's true functionality.

 

[Heiro78]

You can still expand the storage with microSD cards OR buy the physical game instead of downloading it.

I've heard even worse case for the physical games. Apparently the full games will not be on the cartridges and instead they will have keys to play the game on the console, which will download the reminder of the game. Absolutely insane for that to be the case when the physical games will cost more

 

[usertests]

The $450 price is going to deter initial scalping, and help insulate the company from the effects of tariffs, inflation, conflict/disaster. While allowing them to reap the rewards from what is probably a high margin. If sales start to follow a WiiU trajectory after the first few months, maybe they will do an official price cut down to $400.

Just for the record, if there’s a way to jailbreak this thing, that newer Nvidia Tegra Orin hardware setup is EXCELLENT for emulation up to roughly WiiU level.

I wonder how it will go. PS5/Xbox have avoided being fully jailbroken AFAIK.

That pricing is getting crazy for parents. Especially if they have multiple kids.

Ok kids, you can have a Switch 2, or eggs this year. 😉

That’s probably mostly down to balancing storage and speed vs cost in those cartridges. MicroSD transfer speeds won’t cut it for modern load times.

I find it bizarre. I understand that these companies want to force players to download updates for games on physical media, that's not new. But as far as capacity goes, it shouldn't cost much more to make a "card' that has 128 GB instead of 64 GB, for example, with 99% of Switch 2 games able to fit within 128 GB. Even if it is operating at (probably low) NVMe speeds. Game needs 192-256 GB? Charge $80 instead of $70.

Some of what is going on here could reflect Nintendo getting overconfident.

It's actually not microSD cards anymore either it's microSD Express which tends to cost 3-4x more.

Bad for early adopters, but I guess this will become the most popular SD Express capable device very quickly and save SD Express from becoming an irrelevant standard, which it has been up to now.

I hope we see the Steam Deck 2 adopt SD Express and SDUC capacities.

 

[thestryker]

Bad for early adopters, but I guess this will become the most popular SD Express capable device very quickly and save SD Express from becoming an irrelevant standard, which it has been up to now.

I hope we see the Steam Deck 2 adopt SD Express and SDUC capacities.

It'll definitely be the highest volume product to use them, but I don't see prices dropping any time soon. Lexar is advertising the first available 1TB for $200 and theirs scale at the same pricing so $100 for 512GB and $50 for 256GB. That's a pretty hefty premium on top of a $450 price of entry for the device itself which only has 256GB internally.

I suppose one positive is that since it's a standard over time the prices should drop.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

Between the price of the console which is basically a revised Switch 1 performing how the original should have and graphics basically being the same , the outlandish price for games, the insulting decision to further increase cost with proprietary storage, outside Nintendo loyalists it's DOA.

This may even be Nintendo's Dreamcast, except the Dreamcast was good and just not understood. Personally with Nintendo's antistreamer (aka free promotions), underpowered overpriced hardware, no games outside recycled IP, I hope this tanks and Nintendo does what Sega did and becomes a game publisher.

 

[usertests]

Between the price of the console which is basically a revised Switch 1 performing how the original should have and graphics basically being the same , the outlandish price for games, the insulting decision to further increase cost with proprietary storage, outside Nintendo loyalists it's DOA.

Ampere wasn't available when the Switch 1 was designed/launched, so while that was underpowered, it would never have reached the level Switch 2 will. Perf/Watt being the most important aspect.

The MSRP will be less than what it's going to end up being scalped to in the initial weeks/months, and if the price is suppressing sales later they can just drop it. But with all the doom predicted from the tariff wars that just started, don't count on any electronics being cheap.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

It's actually not microSD cards anymore either it's microSD Express which tends to cost 3-4x more.

And microSD Express is supposed to enable higher performance. Now, we all know that various SD cards have differing levels of performance, depending on the NAND used, but hopefully there will be some very good performance options.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Between the price of the console which is basically a revised Switch 1 performing how the original should have and graphics basically being the same , the outlandish price for games, the insulting decision to further increase cost with proprietary storage, outside Nintendo loyalists it's DOA.

Switch 1 came out in 2017 and Amphere wasn't released until 2020. At that time the best SoC that nVidia had was the Tegra X1 (with Maxwell cores) which was released in 2015. Development for the Switch 1 started sometime in 2013, after the Wii U launch in 2012, so when they were looking for a SoC they needed something that was coming out soonish. At that point nVidia probably said they had the Tegra X1 in development because the X2 wasn't in development at that time. Sure Nintendo could have decided on the X2 but that would have been a major change in the development cycle and thus push back the release. Now it is rummored that Nintendo is using a custom T239 chip which is on their Orin design which was announced in 2018 and released in 2022. As of right now it is their top SoC that could be put into a device like this as Grace (T241) is their "superchip" for datacenters. Therefore there is NO WAY that Switch 2 is how the Switch 1 should have performed at launch as the SoC just wasn't there for that. Overall Switch 2 will probably have PS4/Pro performance which for a handheld is pretty good.

 

[ThereAndBackAgain]

I've heard even worse case for the physical games. Apparently the full games will not be on the cartridges and instead they will have keys to play the game on the console, which will download the reminder of the game. Absolutely insane for that to be the case when the physical games will cost more

Not all games; only when publishers opt to do it that way. I doubt any first party games will be Game-Key Cards, but we'll see.

I wonder how it will go. PS5/Xbox have avoided being fully jailbroken AFAIK.

I think this is due in part to a lack of interest, if I'm not mistaken. Most if not all of the games available on either system also release on PC, either immediately or eventually, and the Xbox at least can simply be run in developer mode to install emulators.

Some of what is going on here could reflect Nintendo getting overconfident.

Definitely.

Between the price of the console which is basically a revised Switch 1 performing how the original should have and graphics basically being the same , the outlandish price for games, the insulting decision to further increase cost with proprietary storage, outside Nintendo loyalists it's DOA.

This may even be Nintendo's Dreamcast, except the Dreamcast was good and just not understood. Personally with Nintendo's antistreamer (aka free promotions), underpowered overpriced hardware, no games outside recycled IP, I hope this tanks and Nintendo does what Sega did and becomes a game publisher.

I also hope the Switch 2 fails spectacularly. Nintendo needs to be brought back down to earth. And them becoming a third-party developer publishing on other systems would be awesome. But the Switch 2 is significantly more powerful than the first one, being able to run Metroid Prime 4 at 4K 60 FPS, when the original might only be able to manage it at 720P, and will be 1080P at the most.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

Ampere wasn't available when the Switch 1 was designed/launched, so while that was underpowered, it would never have reached the level Switch 2 will. Perf/Watt being the most important aspect.

Switch 1 came out in 2017 and Amphere wasn't released until 2020. At that time the best SoC that nVidia had was the Tegra X1 (with Maxwell cores) which was released in 2015. Development for the Switch 1 started sometime in 2013, after the Wii U launch in 2012, so when they were looking for a SoC they needed something that was coming out soonish. At that point nVidia probably said they had the Tegra X1 in development because the X2 wasn't in development at that time. Sure Nintendo could have decided on the X2 but that would have been a major change in the development cycle and thus push back the release. Now it is rummored that Nintendo is using a custom T239 chip which is on their Orin design which was announced in 2018 and released in 2022. As of right now it is their top SoC that could be put into a device like this as Grace (T241) is their "superchip" for datacenters. Therefore there is NO WAY that Switch 2 is how the Switch 1 should have performed at launch as the SoC just wasn't there for that. Overall Switch 2 will probably have PS4/Pro performance which for a handheld is pretty good.

You both are so literal. I'll simplify it for you. The system should have been what the Switch 2 will be. I don't know why you two are so hyper focused on the SOC and/or form factor.
You're assuming it had to be the form factor we got, also flawed.
We very easily could have gotten the handheld we did with a dock that was more or less an eGPU or some other supplementary power bump.

The Switch 1 was underpowered, 100% for thermal reasons further supporting my anti-form factor 2-dimensional thinking. The Switch 2's graphics still suck, they are atrocious by 2025 standards, especially at that price point.

I also hope the Switch 2 fails spectacularly. Nintendo needs to be brought back down to earth. And them becoming a third-party developer publishing on other systems would be awesome. But the Switch 2 is significantly more powerful than the first one, being able to run Metroid Prime 4 at 4K 60 FPS, when the original might only be able to manage it at 720P, and will be 1080P at the most.

Absolutely. They are or maybe we're in we are in untouchable land. Especially all the shovelware.

The Switch 2 is "way more powerful" only relative to the original and everyone is going by what they claim. Take TOTK, it ran super inconsistent. Their own IP on their own HW. Yet you OC the Switch 1 and it ran perfectly.
Back to more powerful. Sure, they say 4K 60 but it's also only docked and isnt an Ultra realistic game.

Now they are also competing against a handheld market where their numbers only means something if and relative to 3rd party publisher games. For $|€|£200 more Id rather get a Steam Deck, LeGo, AllyX. Will/are they (be) a plug and play experience, no but fact remains they are competitors that offer more. Nintendo is lazily relying on IP once again, that and gimmicks. Half their direct was on magnets and pushing marketing mumbojumbo rather than anything meaningful.

 

[jeremyj_83]

You both are so literal. I'll simplify it for you. The system should have been what the Switch 2 will be. I don't know why you two are so hyper focused on the SOC and/or form factor.
You're assuming it had to be the form factor we got, also flawed.
We very easily could have gotten the handheld we did with a dock that was more or less an eGPU or some other supplementary power bump.

The Switch 1 was underpowered, 100% for thermal reasons further supporting my anti-form factor 2-dimensional thinking. The Switch 2's graphics still suck, they are atrocious by 2025 standards, especially at that price point.

I've said for many years that it doesn't matter how pretty (eye candy) you make a game if the game play sucks than so does the game. Does a SNES game look amazing by 2025 standards? Heck no. But there are tons of games that I still play because the GAME PLAY is there.

The Switch was designed from day 1 to be a Hybrid (handheld and docked) console. That form factor worked and it was the best selling console of that era. A lot of people would play it on public transportation to and from work. The games on the console were rock solid which added to a lot of replay value as well. Sure the graphics weren't as good as the PS4 but again the game play was there so people didn't care. Not to mention good developers were able to get around some of the graphical limitations via art design. Both Zelda games look amazing on Switch because of the art design they used. That said the hardware wasn't there for it to push more polygons in 2017. Sure they could have had an external GPU but tell me how well have those been received on even the PC front for people with laptops? Instead the docked mode allowed for higher power draw and with Switch 2 the active cooling will help even more. One other thing to think of is what will the new Playstation Portable do graphically? I bet it won't really be any better than the Switch 2 and if it is I bet it will be thicker AND heavier. Remember there are always going to be tradeoffs when it comes to a device fitting power, size, heat, and cost. I'm sure Sony would love for the PS5 to be able to push RTX 5090 level graphics but there is NO WAY that will happen in a $500 device.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

I've said for many years that it doesn't matter how pretty (eye candy) you make a game if the game play sucks than so does the game. Does a SNES game look amazing by 2025 standards? Heck no. But there are tons of games that I still play because the GAME PLAY is there.

The Switch was designed from day 1 to be a Hybrid (handheld and docked) console. That form factor worked and it was the best selling console of that era. A lot of people would play it on public transportation to and from work. The games on the console were rock solid which added to a lot of replay value as well. Sure the graphics weren't as good as the PS4 but again the game play was there so people didn't care. Not to mention good developers were able to get around some of the graphical limitations via art design. Both Zelda games look amazing on Switch because of the art design they used. That said the hardware wasn't there for it to push more polygons in 2017. Sure they could have had an external GPU but tell me how well have those been received on even the PC front for people with laptops? Instead the docked mode allowed for higher power draw and with Switch 2 the active cooling will help even more. One other thing to think of is what will the new Playstation Portable do graphically? I bet it won't really be any better than the Switch 2 and if it is I bet it will be thicker AND heavier. Remember there are always going to be tradeoffs when it comes to a device fitting power, size, heat, and cost. I'm sure Sony would love for the PS5 to be able to push RTX 5090 level graphics but there is NO WAY that will happen in a $500 device.

The gameplay did suck. They were rehashes of rehashes. The only original thing was BOTW/TOTK. How many times can you remake Mario Party, Kart, etc.. before people realize it's the same thing. It's akin to MS not getting off thie cushions and redoing Windows codebase but rather pile overtop it.
It's safe. Not what is best.

Gameplay is important but not at the expense of originality

 

[usertests]

The Switch 2's graphics still suck, they are atrocious by 2025 standards, especially at that price point.

The graphics will be on par with or better than your beloved Steam Deck, except it will also have DLSS to make 1080p viable.

 

[thestryker]

And microSD Express is supposed to enable higher performance. Now, we all know that various SD cards have differing levels of performance, depending on the NAND used, but hopefully there will be some very good performance options.

Seems like once you hit 256GB they're all probably going to be about the same performance wise. I assume they're going to be limited to by the NAND in play. I do wonder how hot these will run as well since that's quite a bit more performance in the same physical size (though in theory this shouldn't be a big issue for just playing games).

SanDisk:
880MB/s read/440MB/s write - 128GB
880MB/s read/650MB/s write - 256GB

Lexar:
900MB/s read/600MB/s write - 256GB/512GB/1TB

Samsung doesn't have any on the market currently.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

The graphics will be on par with or better than your beloved Steam Deck, except it will also have DLSS to make 1080p viable.

Yet it costs the same and will have a smaller library albeit Nintendo IP which expands it slightly.

I'm not referring to you directly by saying this but I can tell this will be a shill thread.

For those that think the Switch 2 is amazing and fits your needs, that's great and I'm genuinely happy for you. I'm not here nor is it my place to tell anyone if it's right or wrong. I'm stating my stance on the console as I see it for me. My opinions with a sprinkle of facts. Nothing more, nothing less.

That said I've said my piece and have nothing further to contribute and will not respond to nor read any responses. 🖖

 

[atomicWAR]

While I am mostly impressed I feel like this console is a bit more expensive then most parents are going to like (449/499 w/ game) and game pricing is even worse in my opinion at 70-90 dollars. That said 120hz 1080P display, big 7.9" screen, 4K docked, dlss and ray tracing have me excited. I don't expect a lot from this chip but 1080P seems doable if the leaked specs of a T239 are indeed true with images up-scaled to 4K when docked. Ray-tracing seems like a stretch but it has been in general this gen, save high end PCs.

No mention of SoC and only 256gb of storage make me very skeptical.

If they are going to bring more AAA games to the Switch that 256gb will not be enough for more than 2-3 games.

The storage is a little light but considering the addition of mirco SD express cards I don't see a huge issue with it. I am just glad we are not getting three skus with different storage allotments. I was half worried that might be the case to keep the base model *cheap*.

Besides most storage heavy games will be targeting ≤1080P with 4K being achieved via upscaling. So Nintendo shouldn't need near as much space as current gen systems. I suspect we'll end up with sub XB1/PS4 image quality in games, though Switch 2 should get close. And we got what? 500GB back then. I guess Nintendo could have split the difference at 384GB but I think most consumers would prefer a cheaper price point, particularly parents who may need more than one console to keep the peace.

Over 80% of my switch library is physical games. Maybe even over 90%. I thought the rest of my family would be the same but they are maybe more like 1/3 physical. Plus the modern trend is that most console gamers are digital only. Still I'm glad that switch games can work on switch 2. The whole switch 2 edition of some games feels like it could fragment multiplayer games. Imagine having the switch 2 edition of mario party and your friends don't. Then those specific mini games aren't available, yet you paid for them. Guess ya gotta have them over in person then

Couldn't agree more. While my split in physical games is more 50/50 on console, more and more I want physical games as I feel like game ownership has been forcefully taken from gamers. Look at PC, physical is near impossible to get. At best you can buy DRM free copies via services like GOG but it still leaves a large portion of games out of reach for those who insist on game ownership as they don't sell ALL games made in this fashion, just a fraction.

Personally I think game ownership is the single largest issue with modern gaming. I hope someone like Valve addresses it soon. While I'd never sell my copy of anything in a digital market place, I would like to be able to leave my modern digital titles to my gamer family when ever I pass the final level in life. Something that is legally impossible with current digital platforms like Steam, Epic or the MS store. So yeah seeing physical games continued to be supported is a very positive thing in my book.

 

[Heiro78]

Personally I think game ownership is the single largest issue with modern gaming. I hope someone like Valve addresses it soon. While I'd never sell my copy of anything in a digital market place, I would like to be able to leave my modern digital titles to my gamer family when ever I pass the final level in life. Something that is legally impossible with current digital platforms like Steam, Epic or the MS store. So yeah seeing physical games continued to be supported is a very positive thing in my book.

I'm even planning on getting a physical copy of mario kart world instead of the bundle. I hope that some good website can give us an upfront list of which games are full on the cartridge and which are just the game-key

 

[Heiro78]

Not all games; only when publishers opt to do it that way. I doubt any first party games will be Game-Key Cards, but we'll see.

Thank goodness not all games will be game-key style. I want a list to be put out on which ones are that and which are not. So I know when it's not worth it.

 

[atomicWAR]

I'm even planning on getting a physical copy of mario kart world instead of the bundle. I hope that some good website can give us an upfront list of which games are full on the cartridge and which are just the game-key

Yeah I want to as well. And I agree I hope sites make it very clear what is a cartridge and what is just a key. This has been problematic for some time on places like Amazon. I have made purchases with the understanding it was a cart (ie messaged seller) only to get a key. When I complain I am told I can't get a refund because keys can't be returned. Though to be fair Amazon did refund me the first time it happened. Regardless I gotten stuck with keys when I wanted physical where sales tactics were less than ethical. At the end of the day this digital game licensing needs to end and ownership needs to be the normal. If I don't want to own something/test it out, I'll play it on game pass.