The Long Awaited Nintendo Switch 2 is Here (…And it's not as good as we thought it would be.)

Very few consoles have garnered the hype that the long awaited Switch 2 has, but everyone is asking: is it worth the hefty price tag?

As far as one month into release, Mario Kart: World is the only Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive game.

Video game consoles have always been expensive pieces of technology, but the Switch 2 has outpriced its fans this price beyond all predictions. Not to mention the console is over £100 more expensive than the original Switch for not much of an upgrade, with accompanying games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong: Bananza at prices of up to £70. Though the increased storage and battery life are a plus, the fact that only now video games such as Pokémon Scarlet and Violet can run at a playable frame rate is kind of appalling – it only took a hefty £400 upgrade to make the barren, poorly-textured world run at 60fps, which is half of the max fps rate of the Switch 2. 

The only game that can fully utilise this 120fps cap is Mario Kart World, which is incidentally the only exclusively Switch 2 game released so far. This game is a world away from the typical Mario Kart game, with it including wall jumping, pipe riding and a multitude of tricks in the player’s toolkit in order to smash through the finish line. However, along with an expanded roster of racers, Mario Kart World, as the title suggests, also expands the Mario universe by having an entire island to explore in free roam and to ride across in Knockout Tour, a 24 player battle-royale-style race that is the fresh favourite of Nintendo’s promotional material. To the extent that in the 1.1.2 update traditional tri-lap races were removed from online play entirely to be replaced with ‘intermissions’, almost entirely straight tracks that link the main courses together in both Grand Prix and Knockout Tour modes. The player base is in shambles over how Nintendo could be this tone deaf to their opinions, and how they have been ignoring their pleas for options.

One KTS Sixthformer, Jamie French, had the opportunity to get hands on with the new console. Here's what he had to say:

"I had the opportunity to get hands on with the new Nintendo Switch 2, and I was not overly impressed. I had an hour to sit down with the Switch 2, and Mario Kart World, and I found the overall playing experience positive. The buttons felt responsive and tactile, and the joycons felt fairly durable, unlike its predecessor. The game felt responsive and fast in both handheld and docked mode, and I think the potential for this piece of hardware is very high. There was clear thought and improvement in the design of the console which I can appreciate as someone who has been frustrated with joycon drift many a time. However, my big fault with the Switch 2 was the amount of money that was required to spend on the console to get it fully functional. Outside of the £475 price tag, I also found myself looking at another £75 charge for Mario Kart World on Amazon. On top of this, I needed to purchase Nintendo Switch Online, which isn’t expensive, but I felt that after spending over £500 on the gear, I would expect to be able to play the game with all of its features. This isn’t a problem that is exclusive to Nintendo, since online subscriptions for gaming seems to be getting more and more expensive, however my big gripe with Nintendo came when I was attempting to play my old Switch 1 games on the new console. I was prompted to pay another £10 charge for an (optional) ‘upgrade pack’ when attempting to play my S1 copy of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which I felt was appalling since I had already paid for both the game and the device. Typically these upgrades are free for all other consoles. To summarise, I think the Switch 2 is a good console for handheld and Nintendo fans, however this console is definitely aimed at a younger audience, with titles like Mario and Zelda being the frontmen for new Nintendo releases, and mature titles being much rarer than other consoles. If Nintendo are going to target this younger audience, I find issue in having charges and microtransactions at every turn, especially when the console is a whopping £200 higher than its predecessor." ~ Jamie French

Though Nintendo’s properties are not the only games that were promoted in the Switch 2’s first direct, with other titles such as Hades II, Deltarune Chapters 3 + 4, and the long awaited Silksong, many of these games do not require a console and can be played on many laptops and computers as long as you have a Steam Account. Moreover, Steam has their own handheld for those that want to play their games on the go: the Steam Deck. This close competitor to the Switch 2 offers many more games that require a higher computational power than the Switch 2, some of which can be seen below.

Encounter many characters from Greek mythos as you play as the powerful witch Melinoë in Hades II, the sequel to the award-winning rogue-like dungeon crawler.

Chapters 3 and 4 of Deltarune, Toby Fox’s latest installation of the journey of Kris, Susie and Ralsei, were released on the same day as the Switch 2.

After being in development for approximately six years, Hollow Knight: Sliksong’s release seems to be imminently on the horizon.

Returning back to Nintendo, they seem to be shrugging off the quirkiness they maintained through their best loved consoles with their newest console. Corporate greed is rearing its head as the much beloved joycons are getting replaced with dull versions of themselves. No more stylised or colourful controllers, Nintendo has put a small strip of colour on them and called it a day. On top of this dystopian downgrade, there is the Switch 2 Welcome Tour. This tutorial game costs £7.99 / €9.99 / $10 depending on where you live in order to read copious amounts of text about the Switch 2, a product you have already bought. Compared to Aperture Desk Job for the Steam Deck that builds on the lore of the Portal series, or the PlayStation 5’s endearing Astrobot, tutorial game Welcome Tour has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It could not be so far removed from Wii Play, the equivalent for the 2006 Wii console, who’s ‘Find Mii!’ and Tank minigame, though short and simple, had much more charm than the corporate lobby you navigate in Welcome Tour. Moreover, comparisons with the Wii are justified, as the Switch consoles now relegate the beloved Miis to the system menu, while the Wii and the 3DS had a plaza where you could watch the little guys walk around and interact with each other. To say that Nintendo is moving away from its past as a family entertainment system is an understatement; the Nintendo of today is a much more corporate company that has lost its charm and outpriced its original demographic – children.

To make things even worse, there have been reports of swollen lithium batteries, something that should not be occurring a month into the console’s lifetime. Many batteries degrade after at least five years, and even when they reach the end of their lifespan, on Nintendo’s prior handheld the 3DS, the battery could be changed very easily with only four screws in your way. Nintendo advises that changing a battery should ‘not be undertaken by customers’ and that you should ‘contact your local customer service centre’. This advice should be heeded, as changing a swollen battery yourself can be very dangerous due to risk of fire or explosions, however the difficulty in replacing Switch batteries at risk of swelling now requires corporate involvement. This is a major issue and may lead to thousands of consoles having to be returned. Nowadays, Nintendo is becoming more and more strict on how players can use their consoles, despite the obvious problems emerging with the Switch 2. By modern console standards the Switch 2 is not worth it by many means.