westman98

Specs look great for both models but that price is going to be a true sticker-shock, possibly 2× that of the cheapest SteamDeck or Switch 2.

The crazier thing is that apparently LRG has only had Switch 2 development kits for the last ~2 weeks.

I got around 2.5 hours going from 90% to <10% battery, with ~80% brightness and no downloads in the background.

IIRC Zelda BOTW lasted around 3 hours on the 2017 launch Switch (not sure at what brightness but I assume not low), so this is nominally worse but still broadly comparable.

I think Welcome Tour should have been a free pack-in game, but if it requires the purchase of accessories to 100% complete, then the game being a Switch 2 pack-in or not wouldn't have changed anything (unless you expected Nintendo to pack in a free Pro Controller, camera, and 4K TV with the Switch 2 just to make Welcome Tour 100% complete-able by everyone).

Yabuki not outright denying 200cc probably means it will be added in an update several months down the line. Hopefully this game's 200cc feels like an actual 200cc rather than 300-400cc like it is in Mario Kart 8.

The game is still ugly but this is a gigantic improvement - the frame rate is a smooth 60FPS, the aliasing shimmers are gone, and there are way more Pokemon in the overworld (almost too many).

@Suketoudara
Digital download codes sold at retail are still physical products. Sales of Mario Kart World sold from the Mario Kart World Switch 2 bundles will be tracked.

Probably an AI-written web page with the expected AI mistake.

Makes sense, I think only the absolute biggest Nintendo games will be $80: Mario Kart, Smash Bros, 3D Zelda, and maybe 3D Mario if it goes open-world like Mario Kart/Zelda.

A24 is a pseudo-indie production company largely known for making relatively small budget ($10-70M) films, like Civil War and Warfare.

I don't see any way in which an Elden Ring movie adaptation will be anything but extremely expensive and ambitious, and I just don't know if A24 is the right studio for that.

@N00BiSH
Both of the 2D Zelda's already target 60FPS but have frequent frame drops, playing them on Switch 2 will presumably automatically smooth out any frame rate issues via brute force.

Frame rate not being mentioned in the patch noted mostly implies that the 2D Zeldas aren't getting a 120FPS mode, which isn't too shocking.

As I've said before, the Wii genuinely broke people's brains regarding Nintendo hardware.

I like the game a lot, but Red Dead Redemption 2 aiming to be realistic is what makes it a slog to play.

Wow, this leaker has some dirty fingerprints.

Back in 2013, Microsoft was on the verge of shipping an Xbox One that required a mandatory internet connection to operate, with an internet check-in every 24 hours to ensure compliance. A physical Xbox One game was tied to a user account once activated, which meant a "used" retail game couldn't be traded-in or given to somebody else, thereby eliminating the very concept of "used" games in general.

Switch 2 game-key cards are nothing like that LMAO. In fact, the idea of "game-key cards" isn't new to Switch 2, as there are a decent number of PlayStation/Xbox games that have adopted this approach for their retail disc copies (with the most notable example being the last few Call of Duty titles).

@DollyrotsFan1
Switch 2 is cheaper than the Xbox Series X, and that's before the Xbox price increase that took place last week.

@HeadPirate
There are no Switches manufactured in Japan, rather they are manufactured in China, Vietnam and Cambodia (mostly China). The Vietnam/Cambodia units are shipped to the USA to avoid the 145% Trump tariffs on Chinese imports, while the Chinese units are shipped to the rest of the world.

Nintendo is choosing to subsidize the Japanese market because the Yen is super weak and they don't want to price out the Japanese market, which is a very important market for Nintendo. On the other hand, Sony/Microsoft have increased the price of the PS5/XBS in Japan multiple times as the Yen has weakened over the years, but since PlayStation and especially Xbox have a relatively small presence in Japan, they can get away with pricing out the Japanese market and not hurt their global gaming business too much.

@HeadPirate
The Japanese Switch 2 only looks cheap to us westerners because of the significant devaluation of the Japanese Yen over the last 3 years. Japanese consumers still have to pay ¥50000-53000 for the Switch 2, a 50%+ increase over the ¥32000 Switch 1.

Xbox hardware sales are already in the gutter, so price increases will accelerate the decline.

The impact will really be felt when PS5 and Switch 2 prices increase.

I'm more sympathetic of the use of game key cards than most (especially for games retailing at well below $60/70 ala the Bravely Default remaster, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2), but come on now, a $250 Collector's Edition should ship with an actual real physical copy of the game, full stop.

I'm sure Switch 2 cartridges are expensive, but not "$250" expensive lmao

Kinda astounded that Split Fiction and Madden are the largest Switch 2 game by file size, I figured it would be Cyberpunk given that it's a big open-world game with a ton of dialogue and cutscenes.

It's weird that Madden is now on Switch 2 but not College Football.

Though this also applies to PC, where it gets Madden but no College Football.

@PikminMarioKirby
Censorship is bad, no thanks.

@PharoneTheGnome
That's because the Switch 2 is not actually an upgraded Switch but rather a brand new game system with brand new system-on-chip.

Specifically, the GPU on the Switch 2 is not natively backwards compatible with the GPU on the Switch 1, so it uses a translation layer to convert Switch 1 GPU code to Switch 2 GPU code. This works 99% of the time but does present some issues for some titles.

I guarantee that if the Switch successor introduced some crazy new feature as the new central selling point (like the 3D for 3DS or the GamePad for Wii U), people would be criticizing Nintendo for needlessly attempting to fix something that ain't broke.

The Wii genuinely broke people's brains regarding Nintendo hardware 🤣.

Remember in the good old days (i.e. last generation) when consoles would go down in price over time?

I don't play racing titles that make use of the analog triggers, so this doesn't impact me one bit. In fact, it's better for shooters (a genre that I do care about) like Splatoon or COD to have digital triggers.

A lot of people are going to experience 120FPS gaming on Switch 2 for the first time with this.

Come on now, Doug Bowser's statements and Don Mattrick's statements have completely different contexts. This is outrage for outrage's sake.

IIRC, the old rumor was that a bunch of younger developers from Nintendo EPD Tokyo really liked Donkey Kong and wanted to work on a new title, so they spun-off to form a "new" team to work on a new Donkey Kong game while the rest of EPD Tokyo worked on a new 3D Mario (as they have done since 2005).

@Overzeal
No it wasn't, just because the Trump administration listed 90% on that chart doesn't make that figure (or any of the listed percentages) accurate.

@Overzeal
First of all, the US won't reciprocate, Trump has already said he won't budge, stock market and economic collapse be damned.

Second, Vietnam does not have a 90% tariff on US imports, that's absurd. Vietnam's US tariffs are more like 5%, the 90% figure refers to the trade deficit between the US and Vietnam as a percentage of US imports of Vietnamese goods.

@Overzeal
What matters to US consumers is how much the US is tariffing Vietnam, not the other way around.

The Mario Movie debuted on a Wednesday, that's why its Fri-Sat opening weekend was lower than that of Minecraft.

Big question will be the legs. The Mario Movie made $92 million in its 2nd weekend which is very impressive. The Minecraft Movie doesn't have much competition so has the runway for a good 2nd weekend drop, but the audience reception isn't exactly the best (B+ Cinemascore) which could sting.

The Switch 2's $450/500 price probably accounts for the impact of some tariffs (since Trump has talked about leveraging across-the-board tariffs throughout much of his 2024 presidential campaign), but absolutely nobody expected the tariffs to be as high as they ended up being.

If those Vietnam/Cambodia tariffs dont change soon, then I expect Nintendo to increase the price of the Switch 2 from $450/500 up to $600 at bare minimum.

@Pat_trick
Guess I should have clarified that I was referring to 1st party PS4 to PS5 upgrades ala The Last of Us, Uncharted, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon, etc. 3rd party publishers can do whatever they want on both PlayStation and Nintendo.

@rushiosan
Have you seen the file size of non-Nintendo games?

Glad they were able to create a huge roster without doing a "Super Smash Kart"-style crossover-galore as many people have suggested in the past.

Makes sense, a ~10× jump is what one would expect when you see the two 3D Zeldas go from running at 810-900p 20-30FPS on Switch 1 to 4K 60FPS with their Switch 2 Editions

Apparently CD Projekt Red as able to get a playable version of Cyberpunk running on Switch 2 in just 7 weeks, this definitely bodes well for 3rd party support on Switch 2.

@Pat_trick
PS4 to PS5 upgrades are absolutely not free, they are almost always $10 upgrades, which is similar to what Nintendo is doing here with Switch to Switch 2 upgrade packs.

Amazing Direct, the only issue is the $80 pricing of certain Switch 2 games which is not really an issue with the Direct itself.

Good, the simpler the UI is, the less system resources will be allocated for the OS, which leaves more resources to be allocated for the actual game software.

You already see this kind of thing with some retail games on PS5 and Xbox Series, where the disc only contains a few hundred megabytes of data and you have to download the rest of the game (i.e. the actual game) feom the online store. For example, the last 3 Call of Duty games do this - not exactly a small IP to adopt this retail delivery method.

It's at least better than the digital-code-in-a-box method that many Switch retail games have adopted, since game key cards have actual resell value.

I figured $70 games would become the standard on Switch 2 but $80 is crazy.

There is the Mario Kart Switch 2 bundle that is only $50 than the standalone Switch (a $30 saving), which easily alleviates the issue for me, but any $80 games that don't come with a hardware bundle is going to struggle.

This is going to be a ROG Ally with an Xbox sticker, the actual Xbox handheld is allegedly a 2027 release.

@timp29
Because upscaling to 4K is completely useless if the hardware can't actually output at 4K to a TV.

Honestly I think Insider Gaming and their sources don't know anything about the Switch 2. The "3-phase launch plan" sounded like complete nonsense, and now the Switch 2 supposedly can't even output at a 4K resolution even though every credible rumor/leak/datamine from the last ~3 years says it can?

That movie description sounds like a description of any of the Zelda games, probably a placeholder summary IMO.

Nintendo isn't adding a dedicated button that requires a completely separate console for the button to function.

People really need to accept that the Switch 2 is a straightforward successor to the Switch, where the biggest new "feature" is improved specs/power (and mouse controls), not the return of a gimmick from a decade ago.

Can't wait for April 2 not just for the new game announcements, but also for Nintendo to once-and-for-all show everyone that they are not resurrecting dual screens.

@Henmii
This is easily the best-looking 60FPS game on Switch, you quite literally won't find anything better looking than this on the platform.