Nintendo Switch OLED
Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

Switch, eh? You think it's had its final bookend game and then another all-timer comes along to extend the library. Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom looked like the perfect finale for an extraordinary console that kicked off with Breath of the Wild, but then Nintendo goes and puts out the best 2D Mario in 30 years with Super Mario Wonder. And between those and continuing into 2024, you've got fantastic games like Pikmin 4, Super Mario RPG, and (hopefully) the upcoming Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door remake extending the bookshelf even further. It's a heck of a console with an extraordinary library that Just. Keeps. Going.

We love it, but we're also well aware that it's not perfect, and as we begin sliding into the closing months of 2023, we at Team Nintendo Life have been pondering what lessons the fabled 'Switch 2' really needs to learn from its long-lived predecessor. The six-and-a-half years we've spent with our Switches has given us ample time to discover all the wrinkles that we hope to see ironed out in future hardware, and below we look at things we believe are essential fixes, as well as a wishlist of non-essentials we'd sure like to see.

Before we begin, we're working under the assumption that Nintendo's next console will more or less follow the template established by the current one; that is it will be a hybrid handheld system that docks to a television and has removable controllers. Who knows, Nintendo could put out a cloud-only digital doughnut that you wear on your wrist! We can't see the new console launching without some sort of new gimmick, but given the huge success of Switch, we're assuming that the fundamentals will remain.

There's a poll at the end, too — be sure to let us know which of these issues (or others) you'd like to see addressed.

'Switch 2' Essential Fixes

Let's start with the non-negotiables, then...

Driftless Joy-Con

Nintendo Switch White Joy-Con
Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

Since 2017 the dreaded 'Joy-Con drift' has affected Switch owners around the globe to a greater or lesser degree. For a manufacturer known for its robust hardware, it's perhaps the biggest disappointment of this generation and one that's cost Nintendo as it has had to extend warranties and replace faulty sticks in many territories.

Even if you've been able to get a free replacement, for a system that sells itself through its sheer convenience and ease of use, having to go through the headache of sending your (pricey) controllers away for repair is still a massive pain — and one which many of us took to remedying ourselves.

It's also easy to forget that early Joy-Con also suffered from connection issues due to interference. Honestly, the range of the set that came with this writer's OLED model still isn't fantastic.

We'd take a proper D-pad and increased range, but reliably driftless Joy-Con is absolutely the #1 fix on this list.

Better eShop discoverability

Nintendo Switch eShop
Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

The explosive success of the Switch meant that before long the Switch eShop was bursting with quality games. However, finding them amongst the weekly deluge has only gotten tougher as the years have passed, and Nintendo could do a lot to help surface gems and better curate the experience.

This could involve better filters, options to blacklist certain publishers and prevent them from appearing, introducing user reviews (as present on 3DS), or other methods to help players sort the wheat from the chaff. With many indie devs getting buried in the store within days of launching, Nintendo needs to tackle this issue head-on, as well as the following problem...

Crackdown on 'scam' games

Nintendo Switch OLED eShop
Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

We looked into these types of games recently with the help of SwitchStars' Luke Wild, but the frequency with which these keyword-filled scam games are flooding the Switch's storefront has become such an issue that it's genuinely difficult to find the game you're looking for in the 'New Releases' section on the eShop.

Just this week, a release from Instamarketingandgame, one of several suspect publishers putting out these low-quality cash-ins, was pulled from the eShop due to a PEGI-related issue that saw its drink-driving-focused gameplay being labelled as appropriate for players three years of age.

Whether that one is gone for good is another question — we'd guess that it will be back on the eShop before long, unfortunately — but even with the stellar software coming to Switch every week, wading through the eShop downloads for our weekly roundup has become a depressing experience, and one Nintendo has to address on its next eShop.

Cases that don't crack, screens that don't scratch

Nintendo Switch cracked fan vent
Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

While drifting Joy-Con took some time to materialise at a large scale, from the early days of Switch reports of scratched screens and warping cases, with the worst cases of the latter even resulting in cracks. While teething problems with new, unproven hardware are to be expected, perhaps, you'd hope that Nintendo has learned enough over the past six years to launch new hardware that avoids these pitfalls.

'Switch 2' Wishlist

And now we move into the 'not-a-dealbreaker-but' section...

An OLED screen from the start

Nintendo Switch OLED Advance Wars
Image: Gemma Smith / Nintendo Life

You can never go back. If, as rumoured, the screen in Nintendo's next handheld isn't an OLED, it's going to have to be one sexy piece of kit to make us forget the vibrant colours and high contrast of the OLED model's gorgeous screen.

Honestly, we almost put this in the 'Essential' section, but it's also true that there are great non-OLED screens available, and ultimately it's not going to be a dealbreaker. It's just going to be hard to swallow if the screen on the 'new' Switch, regardless of resolution, doesn't look as vibrant and lovely as the one many of us have right now.

Decent in-built voice chat

Nintendo Switch Voice Chat
Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

We kinda got tired of asking for this, didn't we? Yes, we all just hit Discord or another app when we want to play online and interface with other human units, but wouldn't it be nice if we could just do it on the system itself without getting our phones involved, hmm?

Non-fiddly cart slot cover

If you're of a nervous disposition or you bite your nails for any other reason, you'll probably have had trouble getting the Switch's cart slot cover open. It's not a biggy, but it would be great if this was tweaked to be a little clicky door.

Nintendo Switch OLED Game Card Cover
Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

More internal storage

The Switch OLED model doubled the system's internal storage to a whopping 64GB, but games — even Switch games — are pretty hefty these days, and even if you're a physical-only gamer, the number of required downloads and updates you'll need to store means that 64GB isn't adequate anymore. If you buy your games digitally, there are several Switch titles that simply won't fit on the system unless you've got a micro SD card. Our total file size for NBA 2K24, for example, is sitting at 61.4GB at the time of writing. Well, that's under 64GB, so you're alright!' we hear you say, but Switch's operating system and firmware take up a chunk of the internal storage, so no, if doesn't fit.

Realistically, almost everyone does supplement internal storage with a hefty memory expansion, and the prices are relatively modest these days, but the more onboard memory the better in our book. We'd like to see 'Switch 2' coming with at least 1TB.

Nintendo Switch Micro SD slot
Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

Analogue triggers

Not a huge deal, but it would be nice to have a little extra analogue control in racing games that assign the brakes and throttles to shoulder buttons. Having a binary on-off and not being able to gently feather the gas results in us spinning out, and while we can often remap the accelerator to a stick to get the precision we want, it would be nice to have analogue parity with other consoles and get back the shoulder control we enjoyed back in the GameCube days.

FLUDD in Super Mario Sunshine would certainly appreciate it.

Nintendo Switch OLED Joy-Con Shoulder Buttons
Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

Themes

Would we take themes over a zippy no-nonsense menu system? Not if we were forced to choose, no, but blimey Nintendo, how about some colour options? Surely throwing in a 'Purple' or 'Orange' option alongside the regulation White and Black isn't going to strain the chipset to breaking point!

Yes, natty 3DS-style themes and folders would be the ultimate goal — and we'd do bad things to get some catchy music in the home menu or eShop — but just a splash of colour would be great.

Nintendo Switch Themes
Image: Nintendo Life

StreetPass

Ah, how we miss ye, StreetPass. Our lovely video producer Zion has been on a mission this year to keep the 3DS StreetPass candle burning in 2023, and the feature's absence on Switch has certainly made it a less 'fun' portable to have about your person. The social element it brought to 3DS — not to mention the fun little StreePass game catalogue — was a delight, and one we'd love to experience again on new Nintendo hardware.

New Nintendo 3DS StreetPass Quest
Image: Gemma Smith / Nintendo Life

Slicker online, and adios to Friend Codes

A couple of perennial favourites here. Switch made some progress with friend suggestions and social media connections via Facebook and Twitter, but it would be nice to have a slicker system for adding friends on a new system.

And, of course, there's the old online chestnut. For the Nintendo faithful among us, years of just putting up with online foibles and unconventional approaches to seemingly solved problems has left us a little drained and hopeless. Switch isn't the worst, it could just be simpler than it is. Could this be the time Nintendo comes out with an online system that just connects simply and works consistently?


Switch OLED
Image: Damien McFerran / Nintendo Life

There are plenty of other things we'd like to see come to a potential new Switch that aren't existing problems to fix rather than pitfalls to avoid. As well as hopefully migrating the Nintendo Switch Online subscription offerings to the new console, Switch has notably gained various accessibility and quality-of-life functions throughout its lifecycle via firmware updates. Starting from scratch would be a mistake, especially when it comes to bare-minimum options such as button remapping and the ability to zoom text.

There's still much room for Nintendo to advance in those areas, and there's absolutely no need to be going 'backwards' by hitting reset on the gradual UI and feature improvements we've seen roll out since 2017. The Switch we have in 2023 is the absolute baseline from which to build. We don't want to be writing about why 'Switch 2' doesn't support Bluetooth headphones or anything like that.

Those are our hopes for the next console, but what about you? Let us know the issues you think most need addressing with 'Switch 2' in the poll and the comments below.

For you, which disappointing aspects of Switch are top priorities to fix with 'Switch 2'? (4,185 votes)

  1. Joy-Con drift27%
  2. eShop discoverability8%
  3. Umpteen 'scam' games5%
  4. Case cracking, screen scratching5%
  5. Non-OLED screens11%
  6. No system-level voice chat4%
  7. Fiddly cart slot cover2%
  8. Tiny internal storage12%
  9. Lack of analogue triggers8%
  10. No themes8%
  11. No StreetPass4%
  12. Online and Friend Codes4%
  13. Something else (comment below)3%