Polvasti

It's funny how people in the comments are complaining about DF's nitpicking, but if you'd watch the actual video being discussed, you'd know that the reviewer praises the Switch 2 port and mentions that the small visual cutbacks don't really affect it much at all.

@Joe11 Icons are images from different games you can use to create your own Switch profile pic, i.e. the small circled pic seen in the upper left corner of the Switch home screen.

@SillyG

Why the hell isn't this included on the Switch 1 cartridge?

The Switch 2 version of the game is only 8GB and would have needed a 16GB cartridge regardless, and they could have theoretically fit both builds of the game onto that same cartridge, if necessary, instead of imposing a 3GB download of data that should have been included in the physical release in the first place.

Switch 2 cartridges have a faster read speed than Switch 1 cartridges. Presumably the Switch 2 version of this game would need one of those faster cartridges to be able to run the game at 60fps/4k, even if the files would technically fit on a Switch 1 cartridge.

This is the one first-party Switch 2 game I'm most excited about, just two more weeks!

@Zeebor15

I hope that one day, publishers that aren't Xseed or CD Projekt will actually make their games possible to own, instead of just have a 5-10 year rental period.

What are you talking about? You can still redownload digitally bought Wii games if you had deleted them, and the Wii is almost 20 years old now. Almost certainly the same will apply to Switch 2 games either bought from the eShop or via a game key card; if you bought such a game, Nintendo won't take away to option to redownload it as soon as Switch 3 is released.

That's nice, but I wish they didn't choose such a goofy pic of Samus for the Super Metroid icon. Just look at the size of her waist compared to her chest and biceps, it's ridiculous even for this character. Reminds me of bad superhero comic art from the same era.

Something like this iconic image would've been a better representation of Samus:

"I can't say anything but I'm saying enough that everyone knows what I'm trying to say anyway."

@johnedwin

2. Difficulty in tracking digital distribution:

Unlike physical sales, where data can be aggregated from retailers and wholesalers, digital sales occur across multiple platforms (Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox Marketplace, etc.).
This makes it challenging to collect and compile comprehensive digital sales data.

I don't understand this point. There are way more retailers/wholesalers of physical games than there are storefronts for digital games, and surely those digital storefronts automatically provide sales numbers for companies who publish their games there? So, if anything, aggregating data from digital sales should be easier than from physical sales?

@Johnny44 I'm sure digital sales have been greater than physical sales for quite a while now, even on the Switch. Sites like Nintendo Life give us a distorted view, because there are so many collectors of physical games among the writers and community, but when it comes to the larger game-buying populace, digital is king.

As great as they are on the Switch 2, it would feel weird to name older games like Cyberpunk 2077, No Man's Sky, or Breath of the Wild as the game of the year of 2025, so my vote will go to Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma. Such a beautiful, fun and wholesome game.

@Lord

These scores are bloody ridiculous. All the games on key cards should get points deducted.

Why? The scores came from us, the Nintendo Life readers. If a lot of people gave a high score to a game that was released as a game key card, clearly that detail didn't bother them too much. Are they not entitled to their opinion?

@PJOReilly

For Switch 2 players, the performance issues present on Switch 1 do carry over to the newer console, and swapping between the two (bad puns flying out of me today), there's very little difference other than perhaps a slight improvement in loading times.

Youtuber SwitchCorner did a performance review of this game, where he measured the framerates on Switch 1 and Switch 2, and according to him the FPS and general performance are clearly better on Switch 2 (though still not perfect). Here's a link to his video:
https://youtu.be/kTnqqk2MUD8

Of course in the end it's all subjective, but it seems there's a significant objective FPS difference at least.

@Zeebor15 If you already have the Switch 1 version of Forgotten Land, you can buy the new DLC + the Switch 2 upgrade pack for 20 bucks, so it's not a "$80 DLC".

@RaeDawnChonglingBay Ok, thanks for the info. To me it seems needlessly convoluted to have a secondary docking station because the case doesn't fit in the primary one instead of just making a case that fits there.

In the second video in the article, I don't understand what's the point of the extra dock shown in it? You have a secondary dock that you attach to your primary Switch 2 dock... just so you can place the console outside of the official dock and not inside it? What benefits does that have?

Agree with the comments above, clearly the biggest problem here is not Nintendo rather than:
1) people who are using pirated software, even though they know it might get the console bricked, and then when that happens, reselling the Switch 2 as if it's still functional, and
2) stores selling used consoles without checking if they're functional.

@dskatter I played Nier Automata on the Switch 2 yesterday, and it ran without any issues. The FPS seems to have improved as well, it felt like it was solid 30 all the time with no drops.

@mlt A lot of people name their kids after themselves.

My theory is that the Pauline in this game is the daughter of the original Pauline. That would line up everyone's age nicely (since apes age faster than humans) without any de-aging or time travel shenanigans.

I preordered it in April after I saw the first trailer and the Treehouse demo. I don't care about racing games like Mario Kart, so Bananza is the first-party Switch 2 game I've been most looking forward to right from the start.

I'm really excited about this, since the first Hades is easily one of the best games of the last 10 years. I held off buying the PC early access version of Hades 2 when it came out, cos I wanted to only play the game when it was completed, and now I'm glad I waited, since I can just buy the Switch 2 version instead.

@sethfranum

Wrong..that does nothing to lower cost. They charge the same as physical prices. So tell me where the lower cost. Take Bravely default...full price "Key-Card" where's the lower price? This is about pure Greed!!!!

The Bravely Default key card version costs 40 euros, which is 30—40 euros less than "proper" physical Switch 2 games. So there's your lower price.

@nhSnork The game has both Japanese and English audio.

@BoFiS Mobapad's controllers have HD rumble.

@Rikgrn Ah yes, the ol' "if you're against sexism, you must be a puritan" strawman argument. Never heard that one before. 🙂

@sixrings Yes, I'm sure every time dudes make random jokes about how fine some movie star's boobs look, they're really just supporting women's empowerment.

@AverageGamer That's good to know, won't be watching any more of his videos then. I'd rather support Youtubers who can make tutorials without a dose of the good ol' sexism.

@sixrings The console is already set up for handheld play. But people have different televisions/monitors, some with HDR and some without, and different manufacturers even have different names for the same setting. So it's not like Nintendo could have made the Switch 2's default settings fit all possible external displays.

I wanna see proper gameplay footage of other levels besides the subterranean one shown in the Treehouse video.

@PJOReilly People have different definitions of "really funny", but it's certainly true that I didn't expect a tech tutorial video on HDR fine-tuning to include a sexist joke about Margot Robbie's boobs.

Gotta love the dude's solution to fixing those "suboptimal default paper white settings": just connect your Xbox to the same TV as your Switch 2 and use its HDR app to measure the white levels of the screen. You know, the Xbox I have lying around in my cupboard just in case I need to fix that pesky suboptimal paper white.

I'm guessing this is a sponsored article, but the third-party controllers mentioned here are not the best you can get at that price point, when manufacturers like Mobapad are making better ones.

@PLATINUM7 Ah, okay, that makes sense.

I still don't understand why Nintendo doesn't allow us to have the Music app on the Switch itself. The Switch dock in our apartment is connected to an A/V amplifier that's connected to speakers, so it'd be nice if we could listen to all this music straight from the console via HDMI instead of streaming it from a phone with lossy bluetooth connection.

@PLATINUM7

Not the saves but the Pokémon. You can transfer from Gen III to IV (GBA to DS), IV to V, V to Bank (DS to 3DS) and then Bank to Home (3DS to Switch/Mobile).

If the person mentioned in the article didn't use the Home app, how were they able to transfer their Pokémons to Switch 1, though? And if they did use the app, wouldn't that mean they didn't actually didn't lose all of their old Pokémons?

@Liam_Doolan Are all those cases where someone has the more expensive NSO subscription and downloads the BotW and TotK expansion packs for free counted among their sales? They still need to be "bought" from the eShop even if you don't actually pay anything.

@Pillowpants I think the idea is that with the Poncle account you can play the same save file on other consoles or PC as well (if you have the game on those), not just on Switch 1 and 2. Just like you can do with No Man's Sky, Hades, Divinity: Original Sin 2, etc.

@loyalroyal1989

I do wish that third parties could make controllers that wake the console up like official Nintendo controllers.

That would really be a good quality of life improvement

Many third-party Switch 1 controllers (like the aforementioned Mobapads) are able to wake the Switch 1 from sleep, so I'm pretty sure we'll see the same ability in third-party Switch 2 controllers as well.

Personally I'm gonna wait to see what kind of Joycon alternatives Mobapad will produce for the Switch 2, since their M6 HDs are the best ones for the original Switch.

Let's see how many comments this article will get before the first complaint about the game being sold on a key card. 🙂 My guess is less than 10.

I wish there was some way to adjust the camera sensitivity as well. Compared to modern games, the camera reacts very strongly to right stick input, making it harder to use it accurately.

@Anti-Matter I've been playing No Man's Sky since it launched on Switch 1 and it's never been unplayable. Since it's a game where developer constantly releases new content and improvements in free updates, sometimes those updates might cause issues, but they are typically solved in the next patch.

And TBH, I'd much rather choose a game where you're constantly getting free new content and visual/UI improvements, even if there's occasional issues (which will be fixed anyway), than a game where you have to pay for such updates. For example, Nintendo is charging 10 euros for the BotW and TotW Switch 2 upgrades if you own the Switch 1 version, whereas Hello Games are giving us a much more substantial Switch 2 upgrade for 0 euros.

Given his position at Nintendo, I'm sure he could've gotten a mention in the credits if he'd asked for it, something like "characters created by". But he doesn't seem to be the sort of person who demands to be credited even if he didn't provide any creative input for the game, which seems to be the case here.

There's no real point to it - unless you can't find the Joy-Con 2 you're looking for or someone else is using it.

Actually, there is a point to it, as the Switch 2 joycons are pretty unergonomic, but at the moment there aren't any ergonomic third-party alternatives available yet... So if you still want to use mouse mode with one hand, you can at least have an ergonomic Switch 1 joycon alternative (like a Mobapad) in the other.

@Old-Red By that logic, should every game that doesn't have a physical release at all have "digital only" listed as a con?

@Smithicus

its just a digital game with an unnecessary piece of plastic. Either have the game on the cartridge or dont. I actually kinda dont get it.

It's not the same as a pure digital game, because a game-key card is not tied to a user account, so it can be resold or lent to someone else. In a household like mine, where me and my spouse both have our own Switches, this is actually an important distinction. Both of us can play the same game with just one game-key card with no restrictions. So in that regard is the same as having a pure physical game.

I already preordered this for Switch 2 a while ago, but it's nice to hear it really is as good as all the previews suggested.

The original Japanese art raises quite a few questions in my head, such as:

– Who is the girl in the middle of the pic and what the heck is happening to her left arm?

– Why is there a random sombrero and a Napoleon hat(?) behind Cable?

I didn't know that in the year 2000 Cable was still considered such a cool character that he was made the centerpiece of the original cover art. For me he is forever associated with the crappy grimdark era Liefeld, Lee, McFarlane & co. pushed Marvel into in the late 1980s, with all of those cyborg scowls and thigh pouches.

Also, you can tell that this is a French game, the influence of Moebius, Mézières, and other such comic book artists on the visual style is pretty obvious.