Topic: Nintendo Switch 2 Predictions

@FishyS
Sometimes I wonder if you’re being serious lol

You’ve never seen an adult using a switch in a doctor’s office or something? I see it pretty often. And then yea, kids literally all the time. Offices, church, restaurants, literally wherever. And never have I seen a single Steam Deck in those places. Or any of those other handhelds PCs. The very real mobility of the original Switch was a huge selling point, especially for the families.

You’re in denial over how big this thing is gonna be. I can’t wait until it comes out and this forum has at least one thread dedicated to people being shocked at how much bigger it is. It’s gonna happen.

@westman98
Like I said, I’m very aware that people don’t give much thought to the other handhelds, and I know the numbers right now are low. But just wait. Especially if the Sony rumors are true.

Honestly, same. I can never tell if you're making things up/exaggerating or if we live in different universes. Since things like 'is it appropriate to have a Switch in a place like a restaurant (??)' may vary by location, I'll just assume cultural/geographical differences for this one.

For what it's worth, the closest thing to actual facts I can find beyond our own personal experiences and experiences of people we know is probably the 2024 State of Switch. From that, 61% said they rarely or never bring their Switch outside of their own home and 10% said 'often'. Unfortunately it doesn't break that down into more detailed locations — for example I assume a large chunk of that 10% are people who often take a Switch to friends or relatives homes or a train station or in the car with their parents driving but don't use it in random public locations.

I've definitely seen people in train/bus stations (and on the bus/trains) using steam decks by the way, but not nearly as often as Switches. I think that is more how common the devices are and less the bulk since in both cases they tend to be stored in backpacks.

@FishyS
Hold on hold on… you’ve never/rarely seen people using their Switch at restaurants? For real?

Now I'm back to not knowing if you're joking. I don't think I've ever seen a Switch in a restaurant except maybe in food places in airports. And I eat out pretty often. Obviously people mess with their phones in restaurants but that's in that weird middle area of sort of impolite but somehow also socially acceptable. And kids sometimes use tablets, depending what type of restaurant it is. Someone dragging out an actual large gaming console in the middle of a restaurant and just playing? That is a little hard to imagine. I guess I could actually imagine it in a place like a McDonald's but I've never actually seen it there either.

@FishyS
Well, there’s your key word: “large.” The original Switch and the Lite are far from large. They’re both smaller than tablets, and the Lite isn’t all that far off from some of these insane smart phones (only half joking lol)

But yea, I see people with them in restaurants, especially if they’re dining alone or if it’s more of a fast food place where you just sit wherever you want. Kids I see with them all the time.

Yeah, how large is too large I guess was your original point. That was a debate with Switch 1 and will be another debate with Switch 2. On the one hand, Switch is close to twice the area of a DS ( 37.7 square inches versus 19.5 square inches ) and in particular is too large for most pockets and many purses. I've seen slightly varying estimates for Switch 2 size, but one was 48 square inches, so something nearish 30% larger than normal Switch. So maybe 30% larger than what is already kind of inconvenient to carry around. On the other hand, some people drag ipads around. The 2022 ipad was 69 square inches so 83% larger than Switch.

I guess we'll see. I wonder if even Nintendo knows how often Switch is used in different ways or locations. If usage varies wildly even within the US, it most surely does between countries. I wish we had better information than the yearly surveys.

@FishyS
Yea. I would think Nintendo has much more data on usage habits, so I would hope they’re going into this size increase with confidence in terms of what they’ve been seeing.

I know a lot of people here on the forum say they mostly play on TV or just around their house anyway. I play mostly portable, and I am able to take it to my work to play during my lunch most days. I would be bummed if the new size turns out to be kind of prohibitive of frequent travel.

I’m kind of afraid what the battery life might be, too.

I'm sure this generation Nintendo will want to be hot on security and piracy. The current Switch's early security vulnerabilities has caused lots of major games to be leaked early and emulated.

The question is how strongly Nintendo try to prevent this with the Switch 2. Being a hybrid console it seems impractical for them to introduce Denuvo-style DRM requiring access to the internet for games to be verified before they can be launched. The recent PlayStation Network outage caused some people to be unable to access games offline if they hadn't enabled offline settings or weren't using their 'primary' PlayStation.

I don't think Nintendo would go this route, maybe some third party publishers may, or maybe the Switch 2 will be a rock solid unhackable machine, we shall see.

@Coversnail Possible scenario is Nintendo learns from Microsoft who made the Xbox Series X and S pretty much unhackable and puts that same amount of security on the Switch 2.

Hard to get PreOrders....or find until Holiday 2025....

I predict a June 1st release date.

Metroid Prime 4 relases on 5/16 and the Samus/Doom Guy memes will be next level.

Not a prediction but a hope - I hope the pro controllers are BC. I'm not ready to retire my TOTK one. My smash Bro Pro has seen better days and likely going in the box for display soon.

@LordDieALot Switch Pro Controllers are likely to work on Switch 2, in addition to the original Joy-Cons (although the latter can’t directly connect to the Switch 2’s sides).

I hope to one day resolder Hall Effect for my pro controller as well.

Will the Switch 2 console box end up using a different packaging style or will it end up using the same style as the Switch and Switch OLED?

@MrCarlos46 Not sure any leaks can answer that yet? I'd probably wager something similar to S1

@MrCarlos46 The LCD of today isn't the LCD of 2017. Why do people keep grabbing on to that for? No one is saying about about Sony Portal? It has LCD on it and yet no one harping about it being a LCD and not OLED?

@SwitchForce I did not talk about what the screen could be. I was talking about the packaging style for the box.

As in 2017-2021 or 2021-present?

We might not even see the box until a few days before release.

@SwitchForce Something else that could end up happening is there is no Switch 2 OLED made throughout its lifetime and all models use a recent LCD screen.