A Direct is announced for April 2nd to cover the games.
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“Revealed”….
Can’t help but be a little disappointed. The last few consoles have all been pretty drastically different, but this is just the Switch released again. Only with different connections so you need all new accessories.
At the same time, the Switch is such a solid console that a hardware upgrade with full backwards compatibility* is really the best case scenario. People have wanted a bigger screen, better chip, and better joysticks since launch, and now we’ll have them!
*the video says it’s not 100% compatible, but I’m assuming that’s for stuff like Labo and Ring Fit that need those exact joycon sizes/shapes.
I’m hoping that with the Ring Fit, to get around that restriction we can just pair the Switch 1 joycons to the Switch 2 console and use them detached.
In theory that might still work.
They’ll probably at least try to somehow make the mig switch non-functional on the switch 2, which could cause some other games to not work.
Yeah, I guess I was just hoping for more of a new generation type reveal, rather than a sequel to the Switch. Better hardware is definitely a plus though, would be nice to replay TotK or Pokemon SV with better graphics & performance. I still wonder if those two games were meant to release alongside a Switch 2 prior to the chip shortage.
I get why - the Switch was the successor of both their console and handhelds, and it did very well. Why change it?
I am hoping that the Joycon mouse mode turns out real and used in some interesting ways.
I totally missed that the first time I watched it. That’d be awesome.
Nintendo collapsed its console and handheld product lines for the Switch. We’re also seeing large parts of the gaming industry adopt the Switch form factor for their products. I don’t think there is anything that Nintendo could innovate on that would sell.
Yeah with Nintendo watching two Xboxes languish and consumer discontent with the recent playstations as well, there’s not a real impetus for something radical in design. Some innovation would be exciting but the Switch and PC Handhelds prove people want big grippy mobile devices, even if they’re only moving between rooms.
I mean that’s not what I want, but money talks and I fit into exactly what you said. I did not buy an Xbox, I did but a PS5, but hardly bought (I don’t think I’ve even beaten) any games. The next switch is probably the next console I’m excited about. But it’s not because of the portability, it’s because they still make couch co-op games.
In short I want to say I don’t care for handhelds but I’ll probably try harder to get a switch close to release than I will a PS6 even though I don’t know how much of a point in either right now. I just have console fatigue, but keep paying into the problem.
Being able to bring your console to someone else to play couch co-op with them makes developing that style much more appealing.
Nintendo consoles tended to be radical, Nintendo handhelds were more iterative.
The Game Boy and DS lines all built gradually on each other, seems the Switch line is following suit. I assume Nintendo see the Switch as a handheld that can be docked, rather than a console that’s also portable, so I guess it makes sense that it’s following a similar trajectory of previous handheld lines.
I mean the DS was pretty radical at the time.
I feel like Nintendo does a huge innovation, then an iteration or two(or a bunch of little changes), then back to a big change. Wii/WiiU, GB/GBA, DS/3DS, switch/2
Every single console reveal, there’s a take exactly like this, and it always ages like milk. Every time.
I don’t follow - is it going to somehow transform into something that isn’t a switch?
You’d need all new accessories anyway with a complete redesign.
I’ve bought every Nintendo console up until the Wii U. Since they abandoned that early, I decided to skip the Switch. I’ll likely pick this up. If this doesn’t do well and gets abandoned early again, I’ll at least get to play all the games I’ve missed over the years due to backwards compatibility.
The Switch has so many good games! Sure, most are available on other platforms as well, but overall it’s such a great system.
The joycon sliding on the table, is that a mouse-mode? @1:11 in the reveal trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itpcsQQvgAQ
I thought the same, but the way the shot was framed made the Joy Cons look more like cars racing around. I wonder how that would work, actually.
Mouse mode has been rumored, and some leaks have shown what could be an optical sensor on the joy con.
Also, if you take your current joy cons and place them on their side like that, they surprisingly feel pretty great as a mouse. Shoulder button for min click, and your thumb hits the four face buttons. I could see it working pretty well.
MARIO PAINT 2 BAYBEEEE
Okay so they just made it slightly bigger. I don’t know how to feel on the joycons, though. Like with them just being held by that connector alone on either side, doesn’t make me think they’ll be as secure.
I wouldn’t really call this an ushering of a new generation, this just feels more like an suped up Switch model.
At least you’ll be able to play nearly all Switch games on it so nothing is that drastic.
this just feels more like an suped up Switch model.
To be fair, the last 2-3 generations of PlayStation and Xbox consoles have also been a little more than a bump in CPU/GPU specs. Anything else they added was just gimmicky fluff like Kinect that never really caught on.
Were we really expecting Nintendo to come out with something that wasn’t also just a souped up version of the last console?
I would call the difference between PS3 and PS4 just a bump in CPU/GPU there is a huge difference. The PS3 cpu architecture is completely different from the PS4. The PS3 uses a custom PowerPC architecture. The PS3 can be used to make super computers.
At the same time, gaming consoles were simplifying, making them less useful to science. The PlayStation 4 outsold both the original PlayStation and the Wii nearing the best-selling status currently held by the PS2. But for researchers, it was nearly useless. Like the slimmer version of the PlayStation 3 released before it, the PS4 can’t easily be turned into a cog for a supercomputing machine. “There’s nothing novel about the PlayStation 4, it’s just a regular old PC,” Khanna says. “We weren’t really motivated to do anything with the PlayStation 4.”
I think the expectation is that the rails are magnetized. There were a lot of reports saying that they were expected to use that technology.
Slightly bigger? Look again, the old switch screen has massive boarders and this one lokks to go to the edges as well as being larger by a few inches. It looks steam deck sized. I would say its a significant increase.
And i got the impression that the joycons would be magnetic. That would make connecting and disconnecting them MUCH easier and intuitive. The amount of times ive seen people struggle the first time with the joycons having the button to release.
Seems like a good upgrade to me. And thats not to mention the extra shoulder buttons on the joycons, the larger joycons, and the fact that this likely doesnt reveal everythin nintendo has in store for us.
I am pretty sure those extra shoulder buttons on the back are the release levers for the joycons. I think the joycons attatch magnetically, but which also activate locking hooks. Otherwise people would be accidentally detaching joycons and the tablet portion would fall and break. Nintendo designs hardware to be kid friendly, so there is almost certainly a secondary attachment mechanism in addition to the magnets.
I was talking about these buttons. And in terms of locking in, thats a possibility but a strong set of magnets with a recessed area and a connector seems like it would be quite secure.
Ohh that makes sense!
Now that I am looking at it again, I wonder if those buttons you circled are actually little plungers that push the joycon away from the body to help release it.
Edit: Whatever way they attach, I hope the new joycons don’t loosen and flex like some of the current joycons do. Some of my joycons have “wobble” when attached and it makes me sad.
There’s a little square recessed area on the bottom of the pink part, which I just now noticed. Might be some kind of locking mechanism?
Or it could be for the strap portion.
It also fixes one of the number one switch components to break - the little plastic toggles that lock the joycons in.
Was kinda hoping for specs. I like the design upgrade, though.
Much like the rest of the announcement, the specs actually got leaked a few days earlier: https://thegamepost.com/nintendo-switch-2-full-specs-appears-to-have-leaked/
TL;DR: 12GB of RAM, GPU that’s roughly on par with the Steam Deck. It’s not the most powerful handheld out there but surprisingly not bad for Nintendo standards.
I wonder if they’ve fallen into the same trap with not making the console powerful enough. The first switch was also not that powerful when it came out, and it’s really struggled in the end of its lifecycle. A lot of first party releases in the last couple years run like complete shit. They probably missed an opportunity here to stash an eGPU in the dock to provide a more modern experience while playing on the big screen.
That hardly seems necessary when the rumored specs have the the GPU nearly doubling in speed and memory bandwidth when it’s docked
Wow, Nintendo really stepped up the game here.
No wonder they successfully stopped ongoing development of switch emulation on steam deck.
GPU that’s roughly on par with the Steam Deck.
…when comparing TFLOPs, and that’s not comparable across architectures (by different companies as well!).
If we take similar-performing (in rasterization) Ampere and RDNA 2 cards (say a 3080 and 6800 XT), we can see the 3080 has 29.77 TFLOPs and the 6800 XT has 20.74 TFLOPs, an RDNA 2 FLOP is worth about 1.4x as much as an Ampere FLOP.
So extrapolating the 1.6 “RDNA 2 TFLOPs” of the Deck we get 2.24 “Ampere TFLOPs” and that’d make the Deck quite a bit faster than the Switch 2 in portable mode, but slower than the Switch 2 in docked mode.
This is obviously all just wild and silly speculation, but I doubt the Switch 2 will match the Deck in portable mode. Samsung 8nm would just eat too much power for this to realistically happen in a handheld form factor.
Especially considering it has access to DLSS, I‘m looking forward to see what Nintendo‘s first party studios can cook up with these specs. But I‘m waiting for the OLED model sometime in the future.
Let’s go! I’m excited for hardware that will run Pokemon Violet/Scarlet at a non-dog shit framerate (other than pirating).
Are you prepared to have to buy the game again to do that? I don’t know it for sure, but it’s how I expect Nintendo to operate.
They are claiming backwards compatibility, and I assume that means for physical copies as well. If not, eh we’ll see!
There’s a disclaimer that says not every Switch 1 game will work, but I think it will play on the new Switch with the same lousy performance it has now unless you buy the Switch 2 version.
That is how every previous Nintendo back-compat implementation has worked.
- GC on Wii
- Wii on Wii U
- Game Boy on Game Boy Color
- Game Boy/Color on Game Boy Advance
- Game Boy Advance on (New) Nintendo (3)DS
- Nintendo DS on Nintendo DSi
- Nintendo DS/i on Nintendo 3DS
- Nintendo 3DS on New Nintendo 3DS
In every case, the system drops back to the earlier console’s hardware specifications. There are hybrid cross-gen games on some of the handhelds which offer improvements on the newer hardware, but up to this point, older games have never been updated to get the improvements of newer hardware. That doesn’t necessarily mean the same will hold, but I’d suggest you assume it will and be pleasantly surprised if they buck the trend.
I’m those cases isn’t it because they had separate hardware built in for backwards compat? This is more of a PC style hardware upgrade rather than totally different hardware (compute wise) so it might be different for that reason?
Sort of, though Wii and Wii U are a bit more complicated than that so this somewhat of an oversimplification. The ELI5 answer is that some hardware components are directly upgraded and can run in a compatibility mode, other components are just the original hardware thrown in separately.
New3DS is the most recent and most notable exception. It’s directly upgraded 3DS hardware, but the CPU downclocks to run at 3DS specs on all legacy titles (and there are almost no native New3DS games so this upgrade was pretty pointless). Softmodding can unlock the full clockspeed, and most games do work fine this way but there are a few rare bugs.
I expect Switch 2 will just be the same architecture upgraded, because that’s a lot easier to do now, while the old style of true redundancy would inflate costs too much today. It’s also worth noting that Switch titles already expect variable performance in order to support handheld and docked modes, so I doubt much would break if allowed to overclock. But I could also see Nintendo not even trying to support it if even one bug might exist somewhere.
Just adding on to this, I do think the “up-specced OG hardware” approach something Nintendo has done before. Upgrades like GC to Wii and Game Boy to Game Boy Color are really just boosts to the clock speeds and RAM, they don’t have anything specifically included for BC reasons (unless you’re counting GameCube memory card slots). They really are just iterations on the same hardware. Similar to the New 3DS, on modded consoles you can run GameCube games at Wii clock speeds and they almost all work without issue.
On that subject, the fact that Nintendo says the compatibility won’t be 100% is potentially encouraging. If the Switch 2 was just going to downclock compatible parts to their Switch 1 performance and was otherwise identical, you’d expect all games to work. The reduction in compatibility could be because games are going to be running with Switch 2 clocks across the board, which most games should handle just fine and a small handful may not.
Ah so upgrade cost identical to what Sony did? I can see them doing that … The problem with that is that the games already have the ability on the cartridge. Remember the datamine of Paper Mario TTYD remake and the higher resolution data on the cart?
I would not put it past Nintendo to charge you $70 for Tears of the Kingdom again so that you can run it at reasonable resolutions and frame rates this time.
Another commenter elsewhere mentioned that things like Labo or Ring Fit won’t (likely) work because of the different sized controllers. I would be surprised if other games that don’t use special extra hardware work just fine.
Normally I’d disagree (because games written for a single console don’t do well with hardware upgrades), but since the old console already runs at different speeds when handheld and docked, I’d expect most games to be able to handle faster processors safely. We’ll have to see how that shakes out. If it really does run them better, and it has drift-proof sticks, I’m quite interested. Otherwise, I’ll wait a year or 2 until there’s a good, cheap library of games for it.
Looks starkly… Non-Nintendo-y?
I dunno, changing from the full colored joycons to black with accents and more rounded corners caught me off guard. This looks like a handheld from GPD or ONEXPLAYERTrue theseloook rather serious. That said their customer base is also far wider than children these days.
I’m sure that they’ll have a billion models with more color
Everything has to look so serious these days.
The colourful Joy Cons were part of the Switch’s identity, sad to see it reduced to an accent they seem almost ashamed of.
My hope is that they have an inverted version
People said similar things about the all-white Wii after the GameCube - it’s just the natural ebb and flow of product design
I’m guessing the all grey model probably sold better than the one with colorful joycons so they lead with that this time.
My switch came with black joycons. Iirc it cost extra to get the colored ones.
The original switch also had an option with grey joy cons
Lol. I did put my money on “barely distinguishable from the Switch 1, maybe bigger”. I guess I win the betting pool.
I’m mainly happy because I didn’t want to be tempted to support Nintendo’s lawsuit happy asses, anyway.
If they ever release a Virtual Boy Mini, my conscience will never recover from my own hypocrisy, though.
Congratulations on your personal betting pool. Wishing you the best.
I will be buying one.
I plan on buying just the console (which they usually lose money on anyways), and then leaving it in the box not connected to the Internet until a mod chip comes out.
Ooh. I like that. Ethical, and fun!
I don’t think Nintendo loses money on their consoles. With the original switch, and this switch 2, they specifically went with old and slow hardware to ensure the margins work out.
Has Nintendo even released a game since that second Zelda game, or are they too busy suing people?
Assuming you mean Tears of the Kingdom (May 12 2023) and not Echoes of Wisdom just a few months ago? Sorting by release date on the eShop for first-party titles published by Nintendo since then:
- Pikmin 1/2 ports
- Everybody 1-2-Switch!
- Pikmin 4
- F-Zero 99
- Detective Pikachu Returns
- Super Mario Bros. Wonder
- WarioWare: Move It!
- Super Mario RPG remake
- Another Code: Recollection
- Mario vs. Donkey Kong remake
- Princess Peach: Showtime!
- Endless Ocean Luminous
- Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door HD
- Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD
- Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition
- Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club
- The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
- Super Mario Party Jamboree
- Mario & Luigi: Brothership
- Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer
- Donkey Kong Country Returns HD
A “not really” would have sufficed.
That is 22 first party releases. The answer to your question was “yes”, not “not really”.
Yikes… so that list had 21 titles on it, not 22; and there’s a good chunk of them that are remakes. The ones that aren’t sound bad - not fun. “Not really” is accurate. 22 is not accurate at all.
I’m counting both Pikmin ports, that’s 22.
You asked “has Nintendo even released a game?” and the answer to that question is “yes”. They released 22 of them. I don’t care where you wanna move the goalposts to, you can’t say 22 games is “not really”.
I guess I should have put the /s at the end of my post so that everyone wouldn’t be so offended. Fuck Nintendo and their lawsuits though, no sarcasm intended there.
I don’t think people are upset at you calling out Nintendo for their rampant lawsuits, but instead at your dismissive reply when someone provided a list of games to answer your question.
They have released a ton of games since then. Even another Zelda.
Can’t wait… for a Switch 2 emulator
Yuzutu?
Well, it’s a bigger, better Switch alright…
A little bit underwhelming hardware-wise.
Extra joycon L/R don’t seem like they’ll factor in much in most singleplayer docked or handheld settings.(I guess those aren’t new buttons… .) The mouse thing (if that’s what they’re showing) is somewhat interesting and helps to keep touch controls relevant when docked. Top USB port, sure. Backwards compatibility is great news. Screen is…?As always with Nintendo I think it comes down to the games. Mario Kart 9 hasn’t blown me away just yet, but we’ve barely seen anything at all so…
To be continued in April, i guess.
Which mouse thing? they seem to be exactly all the same inputs the Switch 1 already had.
They seem to be implying that you can turn the joycons on their side to use them kind of like a mouse… I guess?
At least that’s what the rumors and chatter have been saying. How practical that is… I dunno.
A mouse mode could be extremely useful for things like Civilization or Fire Emblem. Of course, the touch screen is also great for that and Three Houses and Triangle Strategy didn’t support it.
It looked like they were mimicking cars to me, not mice. Not saying that it wouldn’t be a cool concept if it has an optical sensor. But they didn’t show any visual feedback to imply they were controlling any kind of cursor. If that was the implication, it’s obvious it was a rushed marketing piece.
Please excuse the screenshot of a video but this looks a lot like an optical sensor. I’ve seen a lot of internet “experts” covering this and the general consensus for now is optical sensor too.
Edit: screenshot from 1:02 in the launch video
They were attached to an accessory that allowed them to slide like that. It must have a point other than just look cool on the trailer.
Weren’t those accessories just wrist straps?
Mario Kart 9 hasn’t blown you away? What the fucking 8 seconds of it didn’t make you reevaluate your life?
What moronic take.
Did I offend you or something? Does your dad work for Nintendo? 🙄
It’s a figure of speech. But let me really spell it out for you and any other fucking slowpokes in the back of the class…
I’m not impressed with the hardware or the software that they showed today. They should show more than 8 seconds of a game that looks marginally better than Mario Kart 8 (a game I bought and enjoyed 11 years ago on the Wii U) if they want to impress me and sell me on a piece of hardware that is incrementally better than the Switch they sold me 8 year ago. Hopefully they have something that will impress me when they do another presentation in April, but if not that’s cool who gives a fuck man.
The rumor is that the price is going to be $450 for just the console and $500 for the console with Mario Kart bundled. May or may not be true, but it’s certainly plausible given how expensive electronics have gotten since 2017. I was thinking of pre-ordering after the Apr. 2 Direct, but if that price is accurate I’ll look into getting a Steam Deck instead. A lower price was the biggest advantage the original Switch had.
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Imma wait for a Zelda edition. The only release title I’m likely interested in will be Metroid Prime 4 but I can be patient.
Metroid Prime 4 is already confirmed to be a Switch 1 title. Maybe it can be programmed to run better when on the Switch 2?
I hope this hardware will stand a chance playing no man’s sky. After the freighters were introduced the switch just couldn’t handle it
This blog post is worthless. A direct link to the official video announcement would be better.
It had worth to me, as someone who was stuck in a place where it was unacceptable to watch a video but was acceptable instead to read a summary quietly.
Just curious, why was it unacceptable to watch the video?
It was early morning at jury selection, and I did not bring headphones with me.
I can see how it would be a little awkward at jury selection lol
However the video just has some generic sounding apple-esque marketing music and no talking so no headphones required!
Mute the video?
There’s also this
Why would the keep this right joystick sooooooo low! I can’t play the switch.
? It’s never seemed notably low to me. Also I think they want it to be usable sideways
