The Nintendo Switch 2 reveal was about as unremarkable as you could imagine for a new console generation reveal. It’s like the Nintendo Switch, a little bit bigger, a little bit… snappier, there’s a Mario Kart on screen, and that’s about it. For a company that’s so often been about spiritual successors that experiment and play with confounding new ideas, this is a direct sequel that slaps a 2 on the end.
Nintendo played it safe, in other words, and that’s exactly what they needed to do.
As popular and enduring as Nintendo has been, the company has always had a tendency to be a bit boom and bust. From the highs of the SNES, the Wii, you had the lows of the N64, GameCube and the Wii U, all of which were unable to keep pace with the dominant consoles of their era for one reason or another. The saving grace for Nintendo’s bank balance was that they always had great success with their handhelds. Sure, the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo 3DS were a step down from the industry-altering hits of the Game Boy and Nintendo DS, but the GBA sold over 80 million and the 3DS eventually passed 75 million and I can think of a console manufacturer that would bite your hand off to have those sales figures.
Nintendo don’t have that lifeline anymore, with the Nintendo Switch having become their all-in-one handheld and TV console. This was a genius move back in 2017, consolidating both their audiences, and letting them unite all their development teams around a single platform, but now they’re faced with having to make a new console generation with much less room for mistakes.
So the Nintendo Switch 2 keeps it simple. The reveal trailer shows a console that is built around the same fundamental principles, a hybrid console with detachable controllers that you can play handheld, docked, or as a tabletop screen. But it also showed key areas of improvement.
The Nintendo Switch 2 looks familiar, but a new Mario Kart is long overdue – image credit: Nintendo
A slightly bigger screen follows the trend set out by PC handhelds like the Steam Deck (and the Switch OLED as well), and the focus on the revised Joy-Con also hints at Nintendo addressing weaknesses of their hardware design from the original. The fixed rails are now a snap-in system – probably relying on magnets – that will hopefully be stronger and less creaky, there’s bigger buttons embedded there to make them more usable, and we’ll have to hope that it’s also got some improvements to remove the risk of analogue stick drift.
Most important of all, though, Nintendo kept it simple with the name as well. After the Wii U and 3DS (and the “New Nintendo 3DS”) seemed to confuse the average consumer with their naming, branding this the Nintendo Switch 2 makes it abundantly clear that this is a new console. Sure, there’s the possibility of cross-gen games, but gamers as a whole are familiar and comfortable with those ideas. They definitely know what backward compatibility is, and putting up a screen to say that (almost) all Switch games are compatible was as clear as could be.
The Joy-Con redesign for Nintendo Switch 2 – image credit: Nintendo
There’s also room for a few surprises still… were it not for the fact that so much about this console has already been rumoured and leaked. People very quickly spotted what look to be optical sensors in the Joy-Con connectors, and the animation of Joy-Con skating around with wrist-straps looking like mouse tails certainly suggest that the rumours of a computer mouse input style could be supported.
That’s an intriguing idea, but it’s a small quirk alongside a console that looks thoroughly familiar. And for some that’s disappointing. Where’s the wild experiments of three-pronged controllers, waggle controls or multiple screens? Where’s the new ideas?
Unfortunately, I think we’re maybe past that point in terms of gaming hardware. The Nintendo Switch was in many ways the Ur-console for Nintendo. It built in the motion sensors for the Joy-Con, it allows for both handheld and TV play, and even used the IR sensor for heart rate measurements and rudimentary shape viewing. The only things it truly missed from Nintendo’s console idea archives were a 3D screen and dual screen features.
And by having everything built in with a decently powerful console, Nintendo were still able to explore all of those ideas in their typically quirky style. We had the Nintendo Labo cardboard accessories, we had Ring Fit, we had Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training come back, and plenty more besides, and in this age of metrics and analytics, Nintendo will  have been able to see exactly what works, what sold, what was actually used. Needless to say, I don’t think Labo is making a comeback, but Ring Fit definitely could, even if it loses the heart rate tracking element.
Ring Fit could have compatibility issues with Switch 2, but the core idea is one that’s worthy of a sequel – image credit: Nintendo
Ultimately, the thing that worked best on Nintendo Switch was Mario Kart 8. The Switch has sold a whopping 146 million units, and not that far off half of those consoles have been accompanied by a copy of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (64 million copies sold, not including Wii U sales). It is the single best-selling platform exclusive game, which is just incredible.
No wonder Nintendo teased the next Mario Kart during the Switch 2’s reveal. It’s familiar, it’s safe, it’s easy to understand. It’s going to sell like hot cakes.
