Nintendo To Unveil Next-Generation Switch 2 in April

Nintendo announced on Thursday it will unveil its next-generation Switch 2 gaming console at a digital event on April 2, marking the end of its nearly eight-year-old flagship model. The Japanese gaming giant revealed in a two-minute video that the new device maintains a similar hybrid design to the original Switch but is larger, with redesigned controllers that attach magnetically.

Obligatory

[burtosis]

Let’s hope they make a substantial switch, I’d hate to see tiny incremental progress.

Never before have I seen so much build-up...

[king*jojo]

...for 'bigger and with magnets'

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[jfdavis668]

Just keep it away from your floppies.

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[BetterSense]

This is a completely predictable result after the flop of the Wii U.

The original Wii was fantastically successful for Nintendo. If they had released a "Wii 2" that was the same, but just slightly more powerful, they would have sold millions. But they released a "Wii U". It had a strange new controller that had a screen in it. People didn't know if it would work with their Wii games. People didn't want a Wii U. They just wanted a better Wii. Only Splatoon kept Wii U from being a regular flop instead of a tot

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[LordofWinterfell]

The funny thing is that weird big controller with a screen, was the predecessor to the Switch itself, they just moved the rest of the Wii into the controller.

Re: Never before have I seen so much build-up...

[PLLaDeDa]

Good description of every smartphone to come out in the last 8 years.

The Switch was perfection with only 1 flaw...

[Somervillain]

The switch was a perfect console with one glaring flaw...it just wasn't that powerful...otherwise, ever aspect was absolute perfection. I am nervous about the magnetic attachment because this is meant to be used by kids. However, I am very excited they didn't get "bold" or "creative". Given this is Nintendo, I know we'll be lucky if this thing performs as well as a PS4...which is now 12 years old...but my kids and I will be very happy if this thing is of reasonable cost...and just a spec jump. I am very

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[stealth_finger]

I know it'll cost a little more, but Nintendo typically doesn't have a history of overcharging

You joking, right? How about £100 for some cardboard accessories? The actual console might not be too bad but everything else is.

..which Valve fixed.

[DrYak]

The switch was a perfect console with one glaring flaw...it just wasn't that powerful..

...which Valve fixed by releasing the SteamDeck, you might want to check that one out.

(also the SteamDeck is compatible with a surprisingly large fraction of the Steam catalogue, including tons of game for which you might already have bought a license key. Including old games that you might want to revisit, without needing to rebuy them yet again because they are more a couple of generations old. And unlike consoles by Nintendo, it's not locked down, you're free to install software from other sources (e.g.

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[skam240]

The problem with that is that the SteamDeck doesnt run Nintendo games. At least not without a bunch of work most folks wont know how to / want to do.

Nintendo is an excellent developer which is why they can get away with consistently releasing under powered consoles relative to their competition and the only legitimate place to play their games is on their consoles.

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[sad_]

the gameboy was the worst portable console in specs, and still it was the biggest. nintendo somehow knows what is important and makes it work.

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[UnknowingFool]

Nintendo’s strategy is not to use the newest and best hardware. Unfortunately that strategy requires that they lose money on hardware initially to recoup costs with games and later hardware generations. Their strategy has been to use older hardware that is profitable immediately. The new Switch will be on older hardware by today’s standards. In addition to cost considerations, sourcing is another concern. The newest hardware requires the latest chip nodes which the likes of Apple, AMD, NVidia, a

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[cob666]

For the games that I play, I don't find it to be all that underpowered, but I'm playing Zelda games and Tunic mostly. I like the slightly larger controllers on the new Switch, the current version controllers are just small enough that my hands get fatigued pretty quickly.

I'll probably buy the new version, I have plenty of friends with kids that would buy my OLED Switch in a heartbeat.

Re: The Switch was perfection with only 1 flaw...

[unami]

I read a rumor that the Switch 2 might achieve around 3,4 tflops and have 12GB of RAM. Combined with DLSS, real world game performance could be closer to a ps5 than to a ps4. I'm not too worried about the magnetic attachment. There was a rumor of them using electropermanent magnetes and Nintendo usually offers quite sturdy hardware (although the especially old joycons weren't that robust), so that should be fine. I wonder if they ever considered calling it Super Switch.

Same as ever?

[stealth_finger]

Are they going for the hybrid, underpowered gimmick with an over reliance on the same tired mario/zelda reliance?

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[omnichad]

I'd pay the same price for a console-only Switch where I can easily swap cartridges without lifting it out of the dock and with no battery that will one day fail. It's only used on the TV except to have a UI to ensure I got the cartridge in correctly while it's out of the media cabinet. Seriously, there aren't many of me, but plenty of people just want the most durable option - I'll maybe let my kids break a controller once, not a console. It would also be more compact since it wouldn't have to be in the

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[omnichad]

Although there are so few hardware makers, they could just move to a Steam model and the only hardware be the official controllers. If I can't play the games when the console dies anyway, at least I would have a way to move it to newer hardware. As it is, game patches/updates only last as long as the online services. If I buy a secondhand console or emulate years later, it will be the release-day version because there will be no way to update.

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[wed128]

Nintendo doesn't want you to buy a secondhand console or emulate, so I don't think they're optimizing around that use case

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[rykin]

I would also prefer a console only version. I don't use mine in handheld mode, so the bigger screen/magnetic controllers aren't that interesting to me.

Competition is good - But

[Saffaya]

Especially in a market with so few actors.
But, the Nintendo consoles have always been chronically underpowered or anemic since the GameCube, so it is difficult to get excited by this news.
Not to mention Nintendo introduced the gaming world to shitty quality official controllers, and the other makers have since jumped on the bandwagon, so, no thanks.

An iterative design

[xack]

That just makes tweaks to the base concept. SteamOS and the rest of the handhelds have genericized the form factor now. Nintendo only has the walled garden of Mario, Zelda and Pokemon to rely on now. While they will continue to thrive in this niche the game sector overall is now mature and not seeing any real innovation. Game innovation has reached a peak and now in decline in some areas, as the quantum tunnelling limiting Moore's law is only being stretched through questionable AI algorithms.

Buy once, available always or bust

[twocows]

My first Steam game was Counter-Strike: Source, which I believe my parents purchased back in 2006 or 2007 and I registered on Steam around that time. I can still download and play that game today through Steam. Meanwhile, I have dozens and dozens of physical Nintendo games from my childhood that I can only play on original hardware. Nintendo's policy has been to make you re-buy those games through Virtual Console or, more recently, pay a subscription to access them on Nintendo Switch Online (NSO). I do not believe they have ever produced a console that supported more than one generation of backwards-compatibility with titles you already purchased. I have no interest in buying anything Nintendo for any other reason than to hack it until they have some form of buy once, available always that they can guarantee going forward more than just one generation.

Massive shout-outs to the console hackers, homebrew developers, and emulation developers for making it trivial to route around Nintendo's anti-consumer strategies, htough. My hacked 3DS is one of my all-time favorite gaming machines, I want to go on a little side journey to explain why. I can play 3DS games with discontinued network services online via Pretendo (other projects exist to revive other dead services like Miiverse). There are a couple revival projects for Nintendo WFC that enable original DS online play and thanks to the efforts of TwilightMenu++ I can play both digital dumps of DS titles as well as DSiware. The 3DS even has built-in firmware for playing GBA games that Nintendo only minimally made use of for their Ambassador program (basically, if you purchased the 3DS before the price drop, you could pick from a small selection of GBA titles to play on your 3DS); the community has made this much more broadly usable via programs like open_agb_firm and NSUI. Universal-Updater serves as both a library of homebrew and a convenient way to update it, with tons of emulators available, some neat community-developed games and utilities, and even source ports of games (like Diablo 1 via devilution-x).

It's crazy just how much use I've gotten out of a system that I barely used at all until the community cracked it open. Meanwhile, when I watch the video on the Switch 2, the only thing that comes to mind is "what does that asterisk next to backwards compatibility mean?" If I can play games I bought nearly 20 years ago on Steam, why can't I do the same on a Nintendo platform? Why would I want to pay more for a worse experience?

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[Rinnon]

If I can play games I bought nearly 20 years ago on Steam, why can't I do the same on a Nintendo platform? Why would I want to pay more for a worse experience?

To be fair, you spent a lot more on your PC than you did on your Nintendo console. If we add up the amount you spent over the 20 years on your PCs and associated peripherals (and required [maybe] software like Windows) and compare it to the amount you've spent on your Nintendo consoles and associated peripherals, I suspect it would be no contest. At least, it is certainly no contest in my case.

I think the more apt comparison would be to Playstation or XBox; which are both still more expensive and offer sim

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[SuiteSisterMary]

I have tons of PC games that cannot be played on modern hardware/software without jumping through enough hoops to qualify as 'emulation.'

I have boxes downstairs with 5 1/4 and 3.5 inch floppies that I can't use. Hell, now that I think about it, how many PCs these days come with CD or DVD drives?

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[twocows]

I specifically mentioned mid to late 2000s as a start point; that's when Steam first started taking off and allowing you to register keys to your account. This is a good timeframe for comparison because in the mid to late 2000s, you could (and would need to for Nintendo WFC) create an account with Nintendo. Game key registration with Nintendo was also a thing back then; it's how I got my GCN Zelda Collector's edition, I registered a bunch of GCN games online and they sent me it as a promotional thing. So th

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[SuiteSisterMary]

I have games in my Steam library that simply have the emulator bundled in, or that don't run on modern Windows, so again, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

Do you also expect car parts that you bought in the mid 2000s to work on modern cars?

What about Hall effect controllers?

[kriston]

What about Hall effect controllers? My kids are constantly complaining about drift in the Nintendo Switch controllers.

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[bussdriver]

I am hoping they use AI scaling to get 4k for free. It's not like that tech is new for the class of hardware they use. Then they should call it "Super Switch."