Something I’ve seen far less reaction to than I expected? While the Switch 2 looks like it takes standard MicroSD cards, it DOESN’T. It takes the fairly obscure MicroSD Express standard! I can’t even BUY an SD Express card locally right now! It seems likely, at launch, that Nintendo’s branded cards will be the only ones people can get that will work with it!
The Switch 2 has 256GB of onboard storage, much more than the Switch, it is true. But it’s also backwards compatible with the Switch, and lets users bring their old digital library over with them. I have a 256GB card in my Switch, it’s nearly full, and it doesn’t have my whole library on it! If I got a Switch 2, I’d have it filled up on day 1!
And the MicroSD card issue won’t be obvious to most buyers. Parents will get their kids Switch 2s, and wonder why their old card won’t work with it. It’ll look to them like the Switch 2 or the card is broken, unless they implement a physical lock against incompatible cards, and I don’t know if SD cards even support those. Also, SD Express cards are more expensive than standard ones.
This could end up being a debacle almost on the scale of the price (which, as others have noted, isn’t even Nintendo’s fault entirely).
the size of the framebuffer has nothing to do with how much power the device has to fill it up.
Even the crappiest integrated gpu is “4k” capable
4k? My 3070 can’t even get close to 60fps 4k on most games
the games will still run at 1080p, or 720p but be upscaled to 4k using dlss, xess, or fsr
It’s 4k compatible, probably not 4K native. Maybe zome games like Zelda will use Nvidia upscalling.
Gotta just be for video playback not games right??
Or maybe 30fps max?
Or it’s rendered at 1080 and upscaled…
Probably this. TV does this all the time. There is not much actually filmed in UHD/12G, except maybe Premier League, F1 and other major sporting events.
And yet switch 2 can on 10 year old phone hardware.
Man I’ve just forgotten about Nintendo at this point. Microsoft and Sony get that exclusives aren’t working when people don’t have enough money to buy every system anymore. I see Nintendo as a niche console with a handful of games. There’s just not enough to justify buying one, and I grew up on Zelda and Metroid. I love them, but it’s not worth buying another console for a few high priced games with questionable performance.
The Switch has sold more than the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S combined. Very “niche”
Cool. And Sony can sell to PS and PC, same with Xbox. They have two markets, one that they don’t have to support with hardware. They can also make games that look nice and run nice because they have much better hardware. Plus they actually do cross play with each other, making bigger player pools for match making and such.
We’re not talking about consoles sold. I’m talking about game choice and experience. If you want to look at how you can play the games, there are a few more PCs than Switches sold.
But sure, Mario Party is fun every so often.
Best selling PS5 game: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 @ 11 million
9th best selling Switch game: Super Mario Party @ 21.1 million
Super Mario Party Jamboree released in October and already sold over 6 million.
But sure, I guess Nintendo is the niche one
Cool and how many games are there on the system? With no backwards compatibility for these expensive games? How many shooters are popular on switch? Or is it that they lock down their IP and it’s marketed strongly towards children and cashing in on nostalgia.
But sure, nuance doesn’t matter. Nintendo is clearly the best system with the best games. I wonder how gaming PCs are even selling anymore, no one even should be playing on anything else it’s so obviously good. Jesus…
What exactly do you consider high priced? $60 for a game that you end up playing for 10 hours is only $6 an hour. Compared to the price of a movie ticket, that’s pretty cheap entertainment.
You can try to rationalize it all you want, bottom line is people don’t have money to buy $80 games these days. Those people aren’t going to the movies either.
I bought a rug that I’ve gotten years of value out of, should it have been thousands of dollars then? The idea that time used is how you measure value is flawed.
As far as games go, it’s still a lot. I’ve played some $20 games for hundreds of hours. Not a dealbreaker, and I’ll gladly buy the game if it looks fun. On the other hand, the games generally being expensive is not a selling point for the console.
The GPU has less than 10% the CUDA cores of a 4090, a GPU that can’t hit 120 FPS in most modern games @4K without DLSS. No way in hell will the Switch 2 hit 120 FPS @1080p, not without some extreme DLSS upscaling and some serious graphical compromises… Proper RT is completely out of the question.
This thing won’t even be able to keep up with the PS5, a 5 year old console. It will compete with the Steam Deck, however.
That said, I miss the days when Nintendo cared about graphics. But at this point it’s been over 25 years since those days. That’s almost as long as it’s been since I last enjoyed a Mario or Zelda game. Between all this and the fact that they sue their fans, I am so done with Nintendo. I feel like I’ve outgrown them anyway.
the PS5, a 5 year old console
Can we out spoiler tags on things that make me, someone who isn’t 30 yet, feel downright ancient please? It’s too early to be facing my mortality like that
Hello, is this your first time finding out consoles blatantly lie about 4k since console gamers have no understanding how 4k is impossible to run with the best hardware.
Yeah seriously it’s so annoying.
Are they legit charging money for the tech demo game?
Also did they mention how much the “upgrades” will be?
Seems like I’m staying on Steam Deck until that thing wears down into a pile of dust huh.
Hold on they are suing a grandma right now. They’ll get back to you soon.
Also did they mention how much the “upgrades” will be?
My understanding is it’s $10 for upgrades that just run better with no new content, and $20 for ones that also have new content of come sort. Nintendo’s gonna be the most expensive console to buy games for now. Remember the Switch tax? Get ready for the Switch tariff!
From what i am reading only mario party jamboree and kirby upgrades will cost money, the zelda ones are free if you pay for switch online and metroid and pokemon dont appear to have any proce attached to their upgrades.
The running theory is thst most games wont cost to upgrade unless they offer expanded content. But expansions costing money is nothing new.
if you pay for switch online
The more expensive Switch Online Expansion Pass, specifically. That’s a big if.
That’s $4.17 a month. It’s even cheaper if you get a family account and share with your family and / or friends like i do. (I am actually UK, but it seems the US price is the most quoted.) And comes with all the n64 (and the new gamecube) games. Its the cheapest online service of the three main consoles.
Also, to be clear. Im not a big switch guy, and i think nintendo are a greedy company. I mostly play playstation these days but my switch is handy and there are some amazing first party games.
That’s $4.17 a month.
…on top of all the other “It’s only $X!” subscription services out there. If it’s the ONLY subscription you have, sure, that’s not bad, but how common is that?
person just unironically said they pay nintendo 5 bucks a month for the privilege to play a curated list of 40 year old games you can quite literally find anywhere online. That’s 60$ a year to access an emulator they probably have less than 10 hours of playtime on. There’s just really no justification for Nintendo anymore, BOTW broke me and I had to be talked into it.
There are other perks, but most of them feel like problems they’re creating and then selling you the solution to rather than genuine value.
Ok. Let’s not misrepresent what i said.
Firstly, you dont round up 4.17 to 5.
Second. I said i am in the UK, so i dont bay any dollars a month.
Third, I pay for 1 quarter of £5 a month, which is the monthly cost of a family account. Which i said i have. So it’s actually £1.25 ($1.64) a month.
Forth, The games that come with the expansio are not 40 years old.the expansion gives you the n64, gameboy advance and genesis games, which are 28, 23 and 35 years old respectively.
Fifth, as well that i get 48 mario kart maps, as well ss some other games. On top of the online play which you get in the standard pack, and some other bits.
Sixth, i have played and completed mario 64 and bajo kazooie on the n64 emulator. I have introduced my son to mario kart 64 as well. I also am slowly working my way through jet force gemini. I have complete goldeneye played multiplayer with my brothers here and there and am working through perfect dark. On the GBA emulator i am playing golden sun. 10 hours is a severe underestimate for all that and more.
Finally. If you are salty about BOTW, then thats your problem. But dont go around lying about what i said to make yourself feel better.
Thats quite reasonable tbh thanks for answering!
I wonder how quickly the modding scene will crack it.
Imagine booting steam os on this thing.
Probably not gonna happen since steam os isn’t built for arm systems
Yes but just imagine
For me, its not the console price thats the problem. £395.99 in the UK but if we consider inflation, the switch 1 would be around £360-365 today. An extra £30ish for a bigger screen and more power is not too unreasonable. Plus ending in 95.99 rather than 99.99 suggests Nintendo have tried to trim the headline price down.
The real problem is the accessories and games. £75 for new pro controller, £50 for new microSD Express (only ones compatible) £50 for webcam and £67-75 for physical games, £59-£67 for digital.
Ouch.
It seems like there’s nothing special about the camera, hopefully you could use others.
The SD Express makes sense, they’re not just upcharging (you can use any manufacturer’s cards), it’s how they guarantee the storage is reliably fast enough for all games to prevent lag in loading speeds
But for the other accessories, sure. And charging for switch 2 edition upgrades is annoying.
In the nintendo direct, when they were talking about the extra usb-c port, they’ve mentioned it could be used to connect a usb-c camera. Their camera announcement came way later.
Maybe there is hope?
Fuck nintendo and those prices.
7 seas for me.
$80 lmao and $90 they are insane
Guess GTA 6 is truly gonna be $100
It’s 70 and 80 tho?
And as an old, even with this price increase games are cheap, especially with how much time you get out of them.
I remember when Mario 3 was 50$ in 1990.
That’s a 120$ today I think.
Mario 3 was way easier to make.
What a shit excuse of an argument.
Nintendo has BILLIONS all these corpos have billions they can keep the $60 price tag.
But they don’t cause they want MORE while still paying workers shit.
Maybe YOUR paycheck has keep up with inflation but mine and millions of others sure as fuck hasn’t.
Either way shits getting modded so I’ll play for free. The switch 1 is the final console for me.
My point is the prices are down even with the increase.
Nintendo, unlike Xbox and Playstation, is also one of the few where if things go poorly the management takes pay cuts rather than cutting jobs, and takes risks that justify those reserves if things go really poorly (like the Wii U or GameCube).
And just as an example of how much lower the price of video games has come:
If you want to pirate because you can’t afford it go ahead - with how shitty things are in the world, especially the USA, I’m not against it. Heck, if you need a pristine 1st generation Switch (the one that’s super easy to hack without hardware modification) I’d be glad to sell you mine. I use my PC for modded gameplay anyway.
All I’m saying is the cheap game gravy train could only go on for so long, especially with ever increasing development costs. Nintendo has in part managed to keep those costs down because they’ve kept things at 1080p / 30 (or 24)fps for so long.
End of the day, your paycheck not keeping up with inflation is your country’s fault, not Nintendo’s. If you live in the USA, you’re definitely angry at the wrong people, since Japan isn’t the one doing tariffs and eroding your worker laws.
Nintendo is one of the last game companies that actually release a finished product that’s not filled with micro transactions and your mad that they add an extra $20 to the price of something you will likely put hundreds of hours in as prices of everything have increased. Would you rather they release it for $60 but you have to pay an extra $5 for each character/vehicle/map like all the American companies are doing it
At least this game may be worth it if it’s $/h.
Nintendos game might be <40hours long of pure campaign (excluding open world games like pokemon)I don’t want that kind of pricing to be encouraging because if we’re paying per hour of campaign then Civ would be $6K and even something like Kingdom Come Deliverance would be $400
I don’t have that kind of money.
You can’t compare open end games like Minecraft and Civ with a mainly story based game like GTA.
What you do after the campaign is your issue.
I just say that it’s understandable if you compare it to traditional media.I will maybe buy it once it’s on sale.
No way in hell will I buy it for full price lol.And the price creep will come because you and me are a very quiet minority in comparison to the casual games that buy a nee console solely to play the newest GTA or CoD.
That’s why I didn’t pick Minecraft, Civ has a story mode and KCD is all about its story, just like GTA.
Didnt even know Civ had a story. Only played Civ6 and didnt really bother looking to hard as I just expected a turn based strategy game.
That’s encouraging prices to sky rocket.
Holy shit yall truly boot lick so hard.
10000% GTA6 will be $100 if Rockstar reads any of these posts.
Setting a bad precedent.
Well, I will just stick to PC and Steam Deck even if I consider price/hour money.
And that’s totally okay, if you are fine with it.
Brought to you by the losers of the lawsuits… Losers like you and me.
120 and 4K are often claimed on console specs but are rarely achieved within games. At best it will be capable of that when playing Netflix or streaming.
They announced Metroid Prime 4 will be able to run at 1080p 120fps or 4K 60fps when docked. It doesn’t have the most impressive graphics or anything, but it sounds like they’re actually going to try doing it for a few games.
I’d bet that’s using a lot of upscaling in both modes
Switch 1 games can support dynamic resolution, it’s probably going to be used for higher end games on Switch 2 as well.
Nintendo will try but based off of some of the third party gameplay they seem to be the only ones who will
The real advantage of a 120 Hz screen is that you get a much more graceful degradation if you dip below your fps target for a bit. If you’re targeting 30 fps but drop to 25, it still feels pretty smooth on a high-refresh screen, whereas that’s appallingly clunky on a low-refresh one. A “poor man’s gsync”, if you will.
To the gsync comment, the Switch 2’s screen also has VRR
This is what a lot of people don’t understand. Higher refresh rate even with lower fps makes games feel more responsive. I can play 30 fps games much easier on a refresh rate higher than 60hz.
Or it’s actually running at 720p30 and being FSR/framegenned into a blurry shimmery mess. There’s no way Nintendo managed to cram a chip powerful enough to render its own Switch 1 games at true 4k120 into a tablet.
Nah the direct didn’t claim 4k at 120.
You get 1080p at 120, or 4k at 60.
Or it’s actually running at 720p30 and being FSR/framegenned into a blurry shimmery mess. There’s no way Nintendo managed to cram a chip powerful enough to render its own Switch 1 games at true 1080p120 into a tablet.
Fixed.
The problem isn’t getting enough computing power into the tablet, the problem is cooling and battery power.
There was fine print at one point during the stream that specified that 4K will be limited to 60 FPS.
Well spotted!
I missed that while i was reading the supported resolutions on the screen.
Yes, for all but the simplest games it will be one or the other, not both at once. That’s how it tends to work even on the flagship XB/PS systems.
But how does Stardew Valley run?
If you don’t have autorun on you just hold the stick all the way in one direction.
After a week with Nintendo controllers you don’t even have to hold it anymore.
Zing!
Best switch console is still the steam deck I’m sure :3
Given the switch2 is going to cost more, definitely.
Also games are going to be $80 apparently :(
Legion Go (Debian) for me :)
How good is it? Does everything work like on the deck?
Yea, except:
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KDE’s built in screen keyboard is broken (Using Steam’s keyboard). GNOME keyboard does work fine.
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Autologin is on and screen locking is off due to a broken keyboard.
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Manual installation if hhd, steam, flatpak, lutris may required a physical keyboard for first setup.
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KDE wallet is on to protect (non-file) data. (Wifi passwords, chrome/Firefox login, etc…)
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JamesDSP is used as pulse/easyEffects may need a reset as the audio may “break” when resuming from suspend.
I didn’t want a non-vanilla Debian system (Bazzite), so I chose to manually install Debian and have a nice Debian setup. Besides those issues, everything works pretty good (no crashes, hiccups.)
Are you interested in Debian on a legion Go?
-
Either that, or the powerful gaming PC you put the Switch 2 money towards that will eventually emulate the Switch 2. Seems like a better investment than buying a locked down console with a GPU less powerful than a RTX 3050 that can only play $80 games.
Can’t wait to never buy one. My switch has tears and BOTW on it, and those are the last games I’ll buy from Nintendo so…
Bananaza looks pretty good.
Why are you guys mad at Nintendo now?
Nintendo has been pushing the limits of how far it can make things worse for their customers, and people are still locked in because of some of the first party franchises. (Zelda, Mario, Pokémon, etc.)
Frankly, I’m surprised that Nintendo fans aren’t more mad.
Because they are one of the most consumer hostile gaming companies. The only redeeming quality is their games are usually top notch. I personally refuse to give them any more money.
Their games are usually top notch and their hardware is usually more cheaply priced. Not this time.
Same reason the ps3 fumbled the announcement and failed at launch. They got too greedy
Plus it was awful to develop for, so there was a lack of titles at the beginning
FIVE HUNDRED NINETY-NINE US DOLLARS
Because their only saving grace up until this point has been relatively cheap consoles.
Their penchant for lawsuits
90€ for Mario Kart 🤡 I hope this console flops because of this alone.
I hope at the very least it forces them to drop it’s price
You know it will not… The best I hope is that MK doesn’t sell too well separately thus forcing a discount.
Depends on the customer really, we do not live in times where everyone can buy food or even think about raising another family member. Mind the release sales of the switch 1 were pre covid.
This might flop due to 2-class conflict, although Id love to see the switch 2 to succeed
The reporting I’m seeing puts it at 40 if you buy the console bundle. Which… I mean, why wouldn’t you?
I’m not sure what the deal is with the physical version, I have to assume it’s some collector’s edition deal with an Amiibo or something. Can’t imagine they straight up double the price if you want to buy the card in a box instead of bundled with the console. Waiting on official prices for all of it, in any case.
But you know that’s not gonna be the only $80 game. The next Zelda and 3D Mario are guaranteed to be $80, too, because they know people will pay it. Just like TotK’s $70 price point.
This is the price for the game on the official Nintendo store. DK is priced at 70€ digital and 80€ physical, it’s not just a Mario Kart thing.
Got a link? My official Nintendo site hadn’t updated with Switch 2 info when I checked. Do they detail the contents of the physical versions?
Here’s the link to the French store: https://store.nintendo.fr/fr/nintendo-switch-2 all regional stores have similar prices in their own currencies. No details on what’s inside the box.
Got it, thanks. Yeah, it seems it’s a 10 euro extra for physical. I get why, those Switch carts were expensive, and it seems like they’ve moved to even more expensive, faster storage, but it REALLY sucks. Puts the “virtual card” stuff they announced in perspective.
It just seems crazier for MK specifically because… well, it’s forty bucks with the bundle, and the bundle is digital-only. Makes physical 2x the cost, which is nuts.
They’re really milking this launch on a number of avenues I’m not cool with, and I’m not sure the offering justifies it. Some of those current-gen ports looked rough.
The 10 FPS screenshare feature didn’t entice you? And like cmon, gamechat. Nothing else has gamechat. And you will never even have to use a mouse ever again cuz u can just take your joycon to work and scratch it over the desk.
Don’t quote me, but I think they will ship a plastic guard to use for the mouse, just like the Lenovo Legion Go does. Don’t knock it til you try it, it does work.
For the record, it’s weird to see Nintendo stumble upon the incredible concepts of Kinect and Discord in the year of our lord 2025. But hey, every Nintendo console needs a gimmick you can proceed to ignore, and this one will at least be useful to… somebody? At least it’s a gesture that online games aren’t an afterthought anymore.
What I’m not sure about at all is the pricing model for games and backwards compatibility as it is. And while the hardware is perfectly acceptable for a modern handheld and very comparable to the current batch of PC handhelds it’s the target for the next decade, presumably, so it’s at best as outdated as the original Switch was while not being the only game in town to play some of those HD ports.
I don’t think it’s an underwhelming propostion at this point, and you can’t deny the first party software on display. I don’t think it’s nearly as exciting as the first Switch, though. We’ll see how it does with mainstream audiences, I suppose.