Nintendo Switch 2 Announced

The Nintendo Switch 2 was just announced, finally showing the world what they already had expected. This blog didn't really follow any of the Nintendo Switch 2 leaks from the last weeks and months, but if you did, then there was no surprise for you here – from the console's name, its design, and even the exact date of this reveal... It's a bit sad how a company that used to be absolutely airtight has become an open book these days.

Anyway, you can watch the reveal trailer on Youtube. The Switch 2 looks sexy, but this is in many ways highly unconventional for Nintendo... Which might be a good thing, given their history of ups and downs with their consoles. It looks like they want to avoid the pitfall of another Wii U at any cost.

It already starts with the name. Never before has a Nintendo system had a "2" in its name. That's really Sony's thing, where the PlayStation got stringently numbered from 1 to 6. Microsoft on the other hand tries to confuse its customers as much as possible with its different Xbox brands, while Nintendo has been somewhat in the middle of this. We got the Nintendo Entertainment System and then the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Then we got the Nintendo 64, the Nintendo GameCube, the Wii and finally the Wii U. And the handheld systems went from Game Boy to Game Boy Advance to Nintendo DS to Nintendo 3DS, with multiple iterations in-between.

And some of this was certainly a bit confusing for the customers, the Wii U being the prime example, where people thought of it as an accessory for the Wii a first. But a "Nintendo Switch 2" leaves no doubt. It's simple and clear that this is the successor to the Nintendo Switch. It's also really just that...

That's the next unconventional thing for Nintendo: they are being very conventional. We're looking at a bigger Nintendo Switch here with better performance. The only "gimmick", which they are using to make the Switch 2 stand out, is that the Joy-Cons are attached magnetically, instead of being slid into holsters. This makes the whole system look a lot cleaner and also should make it easier to detach them... in theory.

Leaks have indicated that you will also be able to use the Joy-Cons like a mouse, but the reveal trailer only hints at this. Hopefully this will see more depth than the HD Rumble or the infrared sensor of the previous Joy-Cons, where the latter seemingly got dropped. And hopefully the sticks will be improved, making them less prone to drift, but they look very similar to the old ones. They should be bigger, though, and overall the system should be much more comfortable for players with large hands (like myself).

But otherwise there doesn't seem to be something experimental, like the Wii U GamePad or a controller with three handles. Nintendo has always been innovating to some degree, but after the massive success of their last innovation – the Nintendo Switch – they certainly will want to hold onto it for as long as possible. And thus they give people exactly what they have been asking for, and not much else.

Despite the lack of innovation, the focus of this reveal was on the system itself, which is another unconventional move of Nintendo, who likes to put their games at the front. You don't buy a Nintendo system for its looks, you buy it for its games. They have given us some short footage of the next Mario Kart, which seemingly can be played with up to 24 players at one, twice as many as in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. But that's it. We will have wait until a Nintendo Direct on April 2nd to learn more and hopefully see other games.

I personally also didn't expect them to show this today, despite the fact that every leaker and industry-insider on the internet told us so. Why not? Well, today is the launch of Donkey Kong Country Returns HD for the Nintendo Switch, which will now be completely overshadowed. Nintendo usually waits until the week after their next release, before they make new announcements, just to have the focus on the new product and let people digest it over the weekend. But I was clearly wrong.

It's still saddening to see how many fans have treated Nintendo's marketing in the last days. This may be an overpriced port, where a lot of people don't care for it, but it was announced months ago and naturally Nintendo will give this their attention. But everyone was just like, "Nintendo Switch 2 where?" Well, here it is...