It’s the day of launch. The postman arrives, cheery as can be, cooking alive in this year’s British heatwave, and hands you an inviting red treasure trove. You carefully pull back the cardboard latches, eager to getswept up in this magical next-gen experience, only to find abiggerSwitch. The UI is the same, the games are the same, everything about it is the same—yes,even the Joy-Con drift. The Nintendo Switch 2 is a boring console.
I’ve seen a lot of people act like it’s the end of the world that Nintendo would be so dull, that it somehow goes against the company’s entire ethos to stick with what works rather than throwing it out the window and coming up with a new gimmick. It’s not the patented creativity we’re used to seeing from the company that brought us such hits as the DS Lite, DSi, 3DS, 3DS XL,New3DS, and… oh, right, this is exactly what Nintendo does.
We saw it with the decade of DS and Game Boy iterations, and even the introduction of the more powerful SNES. The idea that every single new console should be as innovative as the N64, GameCube, or Wii, is a narrow-minded and revisionist view of history. Typically, when Nintendo strikes gold, it fine-tunes and perfects the hardware foryears, only moving on when the time is right. Why did anybody think the Switch 2 would be different?
All I Want Is An eShop That Doesn’t Turn My Switch Into A Jet Engine
The Switch 2 is our generation’s 3DS, only instead of a gimmicky 3D slider—which doesn’t need glasses!—we have mouse controls. An actual, honest to god, useful gimmick. I’d much rather aim my gun in Metroid Prime 4 like I’m playing on PC (even if it feels a bit weird) than have myPokemonkind of come out the screen, but only at the right angle. Sure, it doesn’t have a punny name like the 3DS, slapping a ‘2’ on the end like PlayStation and calling it a day, but lest we forget that Nintendotriedto be quirky with the Wii U, and nobody bought the thing. Boring is good: boring works.
The Switch was mind-blowing, transporting the entirety ofSkyrimandDark Soulsinto the palm of our hands without cutting corners, allowing us to play them on the go or as traditional console games. It’s no surprise it ushered in an entire generation of PC handhelds, including the upcoming Rog Xbox Ally. But the Switch never tapped into its full potential. Having launched in 2017, the tech simply wasn’t ready yet.
Itcouldrun games on your TV, but only at 1080p. On a 4k or even 1440p monitor, the image quality was always a bit fuzzy, meaning the console was best enjoyed in its still-limited 720p handheld mode. Even then, developers quickly hit the ceiling on what kinds of games could be ported, with major duds likeMortal Kombat 1andThe Outer Worldsshowing the cracks in its capabilities. Never mind the fact that opening the eShop when a game was running was enough to send the console into an existential spiral.
Developers eventually gave up on ports, bringing games likeHitmanandKingdom Heartsto the console via cloud streaming. At that point, you may as well use your phone.
The Switch 2 takes an ingenious and deceptively simple idea and perfects it. Games run smoother, the resolution is crisper, and the tech is there for more ports, likeYakuza 0, as well as ambitious, exclusive third-party titles, like FromSoftware’s upcomingDuskbloods. It’s boring from the outside: the same console but bigger, down to the smallest of details. But that’s all the Switch 2 ever needed to be, because the idea behind both consoles is one of the boldest we’ve seen in generations.
I’m glad Nintendo took the safe route. The Switch has once again proven itself as the best console on the market, tapping into one of the most impressive libraries in history that it now has ample room to expand upon. Throwing all of that potential away for a gimmick, to live up to some bizarre Nintendo mythos that only exists in our minds, would have been far more disappointing.
