Nintendo asks gamers to embrace improvements and price increases with the new Switch 2 | hands-on with hardware

Nintendo has gone seven years without a new game console, and now it is unveiling the Switch 2 for a low low price of $80 for games and $450 for platforms.

The Switch 2 is the first Nintendo console in a while that doesn’t have an original name, and so it has the boring name of Switch 2 and it is making some gamers wonder if there is enough innovation in this system. Nintendo’s own hardware designers admitted that they struggled to come up with a good name.

But Nintendo really has to launch it due to competition from Valve’s Steam Deck and the work of various rivals. That gets it into the discussion of hardware specs for the first time. In its press event, Nintendo touted the systems ability to hit 4K HDR graphics and 60 frames per second on a TV, or 120 FPS at 1080p, in comparison to the 720p 30 FPS performance of the seven-year-old Switch.

The net result is that there are a lot of tradeoffs for different parts of the system when you play it with unaffordable hardware.

It’s wonderful to see Nintendo graduate into the HDR era. It might even have a chance to run Call of Duty games.

If Nintendo locks this system’s specs in for a long time, it has potential to sell a lot of units and get a lot of games designed for the console. But it will get into a game of hardware leapfrog with Valve and other PC makers. The pressure to refresh will come faster, and launching a new system more frequently is a path to being no different from an ordinary PC.

Nintendo has done a good job paying attention to detail and redesigning the system from the ground up. The Joy-Con controllers are more functional with the mouse feature and the magnetic attachment. But they’re still serving a hybrid purpose. That means the controllers are awkward and not as good as ordinary game console controllers. And they’re not quite as good as ordinary computer mice.

The “C” button for social sharing and game chat is a good feature, but Sony got there first with this innovation. Nintendo has upped the ante on social with video images of each player and a dedicated camera. But the faces of players are pretty blurry in the gameplay. So game chat is functional, but it’s not really at an optimal state of the art yet.

The system’s built-in mic can be used to voice chat while playing games with up to 12 people in different locations. Up to four friends can share their screen, and if they connect a compatible USB-C camera, such as the Nintendo Switch 2 camera (sold separately), they can also video chat, seeing each other’s faces as they cheer, shout, or laugh while playing. But after March, it’s going to cost money in the form of a Nintendo Online membership.

Nintendo held back on some details I hope we’ll hear about soon. The battery life for the Switch 2 isn’t firm yet, and the details for the Nvidia processor are still pretty vague. Some games like Metroid Prime 4: Beyond will have to have performance mode and a quality mode — a sign that the tradeoff is inescapable.

There are some good benefits that will put the system back in the “must buy” column for some gamers. With GameShare, a new Nintendo Switch 2 feature, players can share and play the same game with others who do not have the game.

If one person has a Nintendo Switch 2 system and a game compatible with GameShare, that person can invite others to temporarily play the same game together via local play with their Nintendo Switch 2 or Nintendo Switch system. Between Nintendo Switch 2 systems, GameShare can also be used along with GameChat for online play, so that players can chat with others while all of them play the same game.

I also thought it was brilliant of Nintendo to not only support Switch games on the Switch 2 but also promise compatibility with some GameCube games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. But we’ll see if this software emulation can truly drive the kind great imagery that players want.

Perhaps the most innovative game at the Nintendo showcase was Drag x Drive, a game where players in wheelchairs can play a kind of stylized basketball. This game is an online 3v3 game experience, where players use the mouse controls with both Joy-Con 2s at the same time to intuitively steer, speed up, perform tricks and make plays such as dunks. I played it and it was tough to remember the inverted playstyle that was the default for the game. I found myself turning right when I wanted to turn left.

I also thought it was quite intuitive to play Firaxis’ Civilization 7 game with the Joy-Con 2 mouse. It was surprisingly easy to play the game at a fast pace with the mouse controller.

But the Joy-Con controller is not shaped like a perfect mouse. That means it doesn’t beat out using an ordinary computer mouse, and combining the mouse with a regular Joy-Con 2 controller makes for confusing gameplay, as in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.

Disclosure: Nintendo paid my way to New York.