Nintendo Switch 2
Verdict: Joy redefined
The latest Nintendo console, the Switch 2, is finally here – and a question mark block hovers over it like the ones above Mario’s head. Is it worth its £395.99 asking price (or £429.99 when bundled with the new Mario Kart World)? In this economy, and with more powerful PlayStations and Xboxes available for less, that’s quite an outlay.
In response, I could make a financial argument for the Switch 2 – starting with the fact that its predecessor, the original Switch, has now been around for eight years. If this new console has the same shelf life, its sticker price will average out as £50 a year, or a pound a week. Most people’s chocolate habits cost more.
But: yawn! Financial arguments are boring, when the Switch 2 is anything but. Yes, it is mostly just a bigger, better Switch – and therefore lacks the surprise factor of Nintendo’s original hybrid console – but the ways in which it’s bigger and better are genuinely exciting.
Take the screen. I had worried that this most fundamental part of Switch 2 would be a disappointment after 2021’s upgraded Switch OLED model; not least because Nintendo has skimped on the OLED display technology that made that device’s blacks so inky and its colours so vivid. But a side-by-side comparison soon allayed my concerns.
The Switch 2’s built-in screen is considerably larger (7.9 inches, measured diagonally, compared to the OLED’s 7 inches and the original’s 6.2). It is also capable of truly high definition and – thanks to another tedious acronym, HDR – a quite impressive range of lights and darks. Could the blacks stand to be even inkier? Yes. But, overall, this is a brilliant screen in the hands. I don’t miss the OLED at all.
It’s when you place the Switch 2 in its dock, however, and play it on your television, that the advances become really apparent. Thanks to its more powerful innards, it can now manage full 4K resolution on compatible tellies, as well as frame rates of up to 120fps. Which is another way of saying that games look prettier and smoother.
To prove the point, there are some especially graphically demanding games among the Switch 2’s launch titles, including Cyberpunk 2077 (£59.99) and Split Fiction (£44.99). The old Switch would literally have melted had it tried to run these blockbusters. The new one pulls them off impressively, especially when docked. There’s something wowing – if a little weird – about walking through Cyberpunk’s neon and concrete cityscape on Nintendo hardware.
Can the PS5 or Xbox Series X run these sorts of games even better? Yes, of course. But, if you want to be competitive about it, a gaming PC can run them even better again. And none have the easy, well, switchability of the Switch 2, which can move from your TV to your handbag in an instant. Technological supremacy isn’t everything.
Peter Hoskin playing MarioKart while testing the Nintendo Switch 2 in Paris last April
The device offers eight times more memory space than its forerunner, with 256GB provided
Then there are the Switch 2’s innovations, like its new mouse mode. The detachable Joy-Con controllers can now be laid on their sides and moved and clicked just like the mouse for your desktop computer. Given the Joy-Cons’ diminutive size, it’s a surprisingly comfortable control scheme – though gamers with larger hands than, say, Donald Trump may struggle after a while.
The bigger problem with the mice, though – at least for the time being – is that there are limited opportunities to really enjoy them. Another launch title, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour (£7.99), which is designed to show off the new console’s features, contains some tremendously fun minigames of hand-eye coordination. But there’s little beyond that.
Much the same could be said of the Switch 2’s separately available camera accessory (£49.99), which also feels underutilised at this moment of launch. But let’s have faith. I’ve already played one forthcoming game, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, that does a lot more with the Joy-Cons’ mouse mode. Surely other games will do likewise for the camera.
Then where will we be? With, I hope, a console that’s the gaming equivalent of a Swiss Army knife – everything for all occasions. Play it where you want, how you want, with whom you want.
That was always the promise of the original Switch. But now, even in these early days, the Switch 2 feels positioned to really deliver. There’s so much about it that’s just better than its forerunner.
Your library of digital games is no longer hidden behind a thousand clunky menus. The shop doesn’t take an age to reveal its wares. Even the way in which the two Joy-Cons now attach themselves to the console’s main body – with a satisfying magnetic snap, rather than by a sliding mechanism – feels as though this was the way it should always have been.
I loved my Switch – I called it my favourite console of all time – but the Switch 2 makes it look like a prototype.
It will come in two varieties: just the console and the console bundled with Mario Kart World. The former will cost £395.99 and the latter £429.99
The buzzing and vibrating the Joy-Cons emulate what’s happening on screen
The console’s Joy-Cons are attached magnetically and contain some of the Switch 2’s best innovations
And all that’s before we even get to what is the biggest draw for any console, particularly for any Nintendo console – the games. Neither the PlayStation nor the Xbox will ever get the Switch 2’s main launch title, Mario Kart World (£66.99), which is a loss for them.
This first open-world entry in the madcap racing series is – much like the Switch 2 itself – an improvement on its already great predecessor. Its most entertaining addition is certainly the Knockout Tour, in which 24 drivers compete to make the cut to continue racing. First it goes down to 20 racers. Then 16. And so on and so on… until only one winner remains.
But I’ve also enjoyed Mario Kart World’s Free Roam mode, by which you drop into the game’s expansive landscape and just drive. You can go from track to track or just stay in the in-between places. There are little challenges for you to try along the way, should you wish. It’s no Skyrim or Elden Ring, in terms of the density of its open world, but it is nevertheless a remarkably freeing experience. The chill version of Mario Kart.
And just think of everything to come! A new Donkey Kong game in July, which looks as though it delivers on its hero’s full destructive potential. Followed by the Metroid Prime sequel and, even further ahead, you can safely assume, new Mario and Zelda releases. To which, I can only say one thing: get saving.
