Topic: Is The Switch 2 Worth It???

I think what they're trying to say is that the Switch 2 feels more like what we all expected out of the Switch Pro that never was rather than a legitimate new generation.

@Bolt_Strike Yeah something like that when they released ps5 pro they didn't call it ps6. So the switch2 is a no no. Upgraded switch for a huge price. And some switch games is impossible to play on switch2 atleast they do fix that from time to time so that's good. And i know people see me as an enemy to switch2 but it's not what i expected from Nintendo.

Yeah, I know this is your take but it's certainly not their take when they're also gushing praise at how much more of a "true gamer" device the PS5 is. From your definitions, and we both know this, Sony probably hasn't released a "next generation console" since probably the PS3. If even that.

But the argument here is not your argument. This is the response:

When in terms of raw feature and spec improvements the Switch 2 is more of a jump over the Switch than the PS5 is over the PS4

This isn't an argument from an actual gamer perspective. What they're arguing is console warrior middle-school identity BS. That's why I asked them to actually articulate what they mean. It's because they can't

@iaLgan But at the same time, the PS5 is really little more than a specs upgrade from PS4 and it's still called a PS5. And really Playstation and Xbox have done that for their entire history.

Honestly I think console generations don't really have much of a point anymore. Specs increases have long ceased to provide any meaningful upgrade it's mainly just making the same kinds of games with graphical improvements that are barely even noticeable anymore. It's blatantly obvious that hardware developers are just using the generation models as little more than a $500 subscription fee to keep enjoying their games another 10 years.

Exactly what I was saying! And whatever the merits of your argument, of which I agree there are some, I think we can both agree it's a fairly niche position to take

If anything if we were to argue that power does not matter it would be an argument for the Switch 2 over the PS5 given the PS5 only offers power over the Switch 2 while the Switch 2 offers portability. If additional power is meaningless the Switch 2 is clearly the superior of the two devices

Just to completely and utterly obliterate one point:

Lets compare and contrast:

Switch -> Switch 2:
Resolution wise the screen is now 1080p/120Hz with VRR up from 720p/60Hz and they added support for both 4K and 120Hz docked when previously the ceiling was 1080p/60. There is 3X the amount of RAM and it is significantly faster. The storage sub-system is based on UFS3.1 rather than eMMC so is significantly faster and they added support for MicroSD Express, in both cases this is a similar leap to what Sony/MS did last gen. The GPU jumped from a Maxwell architecture (2014) to Ampere (2020) and so gains features like DLSS and Ray Tracing. It's also larger, more advanced and clocked in such a way that it's something like 7x more powerful in a raw compute sense. This is a significantly more advanced piece of hardware and on spec a generational leap, comfortably

PS5 -> PS5 Pro:
The GPU is "45% faster" but is the same architecture and they added hardware based AI upscaling, basically DLSS. That's it

So cut the hyperbolic BS, this is not a "Switch Pro". In terms of relative scale between generations Switch -> Switch 2 is very much in line with the kind of jump we saw for something like PS4 -> PS5 and, if anything, probably a tad more than we saw for XBOne -> XB Series S. And if you want to suggest otherwise then either you live in @Bolt_Strike land and believe hardware spec has meant nothing for 20+ years and all consoles are now the same thing.... or you're just straight up wrong

@iaLgan

Awh, buddy - don't beat yourself up. I don't see you as an enemy to the Switch 2.

I don't see you as a gamer. Because you said so.

@skywake When people talk about a new generation effectively being a Pro model, it’s usually about the lack of next gen only games. Like PS5 was considered a PS4 Pro Pro for awhile because the PS4/PS5 crossgen window was so long. The purpose of the console was pretty much to play your old games at higher performance.

Unless the RAM crisis delays next gen into like 2030, the crossgen situation will be even more extreme than the PS4/PS5 one.

With Nintendo, it’s probably more to do with Switch 2 having no gimmicks though the crossgen logic still applies to some extent. Fall/Holiday 2025 was an unusually strong Switch 1 lineup, whether that continues into 2026 we’ll have to wait for the next Direct but currently it’s looking very empty after March.

This annoyed me when Switch 2 came out but there are now extremely few games which still don't work (basically a handfull out of 20,000). Nintendo has done a great job fixing this issue.

Everyone wants different things, but Switch 2 is pretty much exactly what most people were expecting for a year or two prior to release. The exact timing was a little later than people anticipated and the price was $50 more than people hoped, but most everything else was very close to general expectations. The fact that you expected something very different doesn't make you an enemy, it just puts you in the minority, at least within the niche group of humans who actually care about these issues.

@Grumblevolcano
I just don't consider cross-gen releases a bad thing. If a game can run on the OG Switch it should. Does this reduce the value proposition of the Switch 2? I guess so. But the alternative is clearly worse for consumers so I struggle to see how it can be described as a negative

In any case, in previous generations what we got was not a flood of exclusive releases near launch. For example on the Switch what we got near launch was a stack of Wii U ports. And on the Wii U and 3DS we got crickets near launch. Again, the cross-gen blur is clearly better than both

In any case, the person I was replying to was arguing that the PS5 is a true new generation up from the PS4 while the Switch 2 is just a "Switch Pro". So your generous angle here does not save them

@skywake
Yeah, we’ve said it a million times, but the Switch 2 can’t benefit from re-releasing Switch games like the Switch did with Wii U games.

Everybody owned a Switch. Nobody owned a Wii U lol

Anyway, the “lack of exclusives” argument is still so dumb. Even excluding Switch 2 Edition games, there are at least six first-party Switch 2 exclusives; basically one per month. And they’re all solid-to-great games. What other console has done that?

@Bolt_Strike
I'd argue Bananza, Mario Kart World and Kirby Air Riders existing already suggests otherwise. And invoking longer periods like the whole of 2017 to argue the case for the Switch having a stronger start is disingenuous given that we're not that far into the start of the Switch 2 yet. Even moreso given that the launches happened at different points in the year

Come back at the anniversary of the Switch 2 launch and then judge against the Switch 2017 (given Jan/Feb is usually dead air). That'd be a closer and more equal assessment

With that said, as @rallydefault pointed out, it is fair to say that the Switch had a relatively easier run because Wii U ports had a larger impact than Switch 2 Editions. And also Wii U was dead so there weren't games being released on both even if that might have made sense. So the Switch 2 ledger looks worse in that sense. But again, what are we actually saying here? How is this anything but a good thing? Why should I ask a user care?

If I can both see improvements in games that targeted Switch and also see games that target Switch 2? And if that transition between the two is relatively painless? That's a positive for the platform as a whole. And I would argue it makes the entire platform better. The fact that I can choose to play Prime 4 on my Switch OLED or docked at 120Hz, that's surely a better outcome than if I was forced to buy it on one platform

I mentioned Bananza and MKW, but Air Riders is not in the same league as those two. It'll probably only sell a few million (and since you constantly question sales I'll lay out the significance of that, it means few people will be interested in playing it) and it's not exactly a super ambitious title. Hard to say exactly how many of those will be "enough" and it might vary from person to person, but I'd estimate most people would want to see at least 3-5 games of that scale before they jump in. Come back in a year and then we'll see if that's enough.

We don't need to wait until then, there's nothing they can do in that time to change the narrative for the first year (maybe we get a new game announcement for later in 2026 but that's the best case scenario here). We already know a lot of games for 2026 including multiple with Spring release windows, and anything we don't currently know about is going to be smaller releases that doesn't need a huge marketing push. If there was anything MKW/Bananza scale happening in those next 3 months, we would know about them by now. As is, the next release in that scale is probably not until at least Q3, probably more likely Q4.

While true that doesn't really help the Switch 2. What we're saying here is that there's less entertainment value with ports, remakes/remasters, and DLC packs as opposed to entirely new games. A game is less entertaining if it's something you've experienced before, so of course a port from a console you missed out on is going to provide more than a port from a console you have.

Again, the issue is that we CAN'T see a noticeable improvement (and I am far from the only person to make this claim even though I may be the most extreme about it, there's been comments all over the internet of people saying they can barely tell the difference in some enhanced ports and hardware upgrades in general). That's what makes the whole exercise in upgrading consoles feel forced. Like yeah 4K is better than 1080p and 120 fps is better than 60 fps. But if those increases only make the games look 1% better is that really worth $500?

What you're describing would be great if the jump in specs were noticeable. But when you need to hold up a microscope to see the difference between a game running on older hardware and the same game running on newer hardware, when you need all of these graphical comparison videos to go pixel by pixel and frame by frame, then you really have to wonder why even bother? It's an illusion of progress and content. You're paying that $500 more for specs buzzwords than any actual improvement in the experience.

Unless you're Digital Foundry, most people can't see much of a visual difference between Mario Kart World and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Nor between Bananza and Odyssey. Nor between Prime 4 on Switch 1 and 2 because there's barely any except pixel counts.

There also wasn't that much of a visual difference between Wii U and Switch 1, but the difference was Switch 1 had something else entirely new: Full portability. It had a base hardware feature that differentiated it. Switch 2 only has performance and visual upgrades and so far they are almost insignificant.

@Bolt_Strike I will say, Mario Kart World and DK Bananza are games that couldn't really exist on the original Switch. They might not look the most impressive visually- but I feel like in Mario Kart World's case- to get that sort of visual fidelity with the Open World being rendered at all times.. they kinda needed the upgraded console? With DK Bananza, the graphical output and mechanics of the game itself would've run extremely poorly on the original Switch hardware. I feel like Bananza is probably the better showcase game for the console in comparison to the original Switch- especially given the sheer amount of detail they were able to fit into the game's environments.

This being said, we are still seeing games that were developed for the Switch 1 in mind and moved over to the Switch 2 with only slight visual changes being made. I will agree that Switch 2 Edition games aren't the most impressive or interesting ways to sell the console either. This is why we need larger scale games that were actually made for the console itself. We need more technical showcase games like the next Xenoblade Chronicles (even if it won't sell as many systems as a 3D Mario or 3D Zelda). More experiences that take advantage of either the visual end of the console, or the processing power of the console.

Hopefully by the next direct we'll see something in that regard.

@VoidofLight MKW doesn't really feel all that different mechanically, it's kinda just typical Switch era open world game (which makes sense because that's what it was intended to be). Bananza... the terrain destruction mechanics are a bit closer to the kind of ambitious mechanic that you'd struggle to see the Switch 1 running well but still, like @OmnitronVariant says it still looks very similar to Mario Odyssey graphically so that does kind of knock it down a peg. But something like Bananza might be closer to the norm for what we can expect an "ambitious" Switch 2 game to look and play like, so maybe we need to lower our expectations on that front.

I don't think the Switch 2 really needs a technical showcase, Prime 4 does a good job of that already despite being a S2E. What the Switch 2 needs most is more new, original entries from high selling IPs. We need the big and popular IPs to show what the Switch 2 can do for them (and probably more on the side of utilizing features like the higher processing power, Mouse Mode, and Gamechat rather than graphics). I don't see anyone saying the Switch 2's graphics don't look impressive (relative to the Switch 1 at least), what I see them saying is they're waiting for the megaton games. They want to see the new 3D Mario, Luigi's Mansion 4, Smash 6, the new Animal Crossing, etc. Heck, that's become such an issue right now that someone asked about it at the recent investor's meeting. The absence of those caliber of games is one of the biggest reasons people are disappointed with the Switch 2 right now, get more of those games announced and then I think the Switch 2 will start to see less criticism.

@Bolt_Strike Ahh yeah, the lack of big tent-pole games is a big part of the issue. I feel like Nintendo partially shot themselves in the foot by making TotK a Switch 1 release over a Switch 2 exclusive one- mainly because the game had areas that were clearly compromised due to the Switch 1 (skies and depths being virtually empty and lacking in unique content), along with just the fact that it's going to be another 4-5 years before the next big 3D Zelda game, and probably a long while until we see the first trailer for it (assuming Nintendo is keeping to their strategy of avoiding revealing their games until the moment that they're ready to release).

3D Mario is going to be a while off as well more than likely. Unless they're shifting teams and most of the members working on the new one aren't from the Odyssey team- we know that the game probably isn't in development, or probably just started development. DK Bananza had a lot of overlap in terms of team members from Odyssey, and those who were missing were apparently apart of the crew that produced Mario Wonder. It's more than possible that DK Bananza wrapped up development ages ago, and they started production on the next 3D Mario right after- but I'm not going to hold my breath unless they reveal it.

I do think that Luigi's Mansion 4 is highly possible, given that we haven't seen a game from Next Level games for a while- and I doubt the entirety of the studio was working on Prime 4.

Smash is going to be a while and Animal Crossing is probably a long ways off if the 3.0 update and Switch 2 edition are anything to go off of.

I think the issue is just that Nintendo doesn't have many of their heavy hitters in the pipeline at the moment- and the series that should have big new games at the start of the console's life aren't going to get them for another 3-4 years due to how long development times take and how large in scope they keep going with their games. Part of me wonders if they really were banking on just Mario Kart and Donkey Kong interesting enough people to sell consoles and holding people over until they can get larger series out. I do think Pokemon will sell consoles, and I know if Xenoblade 4 is announced this year- it'll probably sell a good amount of people on the system (I know a lot of people holding off for Xenoblade, but it isn't as much as Mario).

lol so now you're willing to admit most people can't tell these graphical differences, but when we're talking about the screen you're suddenly the CEO of Digital Foundry.

Oh man. Thank you for that. Some of you guys make it easier to wake up with a good chuckle.

Have we genuinely gone from “the Switch is underpowered” to “I can’t see the difference between games on Switch 1 and Switch 2”?

I get that these might be opinions coming from two different groups of people…but really, it goes to show that you can’t please everybody. And I honestly think the latter argument is disingenuous and not worth entertaining.