Nintendo Switch 2 Reveal Anxieties

4/6/2025

The Nintendo Switch has been a cornerstone of my life since I was lucky enough to get one in April of 2017. Prior to that, I had spent a few years exclusively playing and collecting retro games. I just wasn't happy with where "big games" were going, and the Switch, for me, was something simple and enjoyable. With a little exception, if something didn't come out on Switch, I didn't much care to investigate it. How was I gonna play it? It just didn't matter to me, and I quite liked it that way.

Over the past 8 (!) years, I've watched "big games" close studio after studio and fire thousands of employees. I've watched microtransactions, battle passes, and just general casino gacha gambling get more and more mainstream. Some games are 70 dollars, some have ambiguous update schedules ("What if they patch it?"). There are endless discourses and exhausting culture wars making games not even really fun to read or talk about. But the Switch was largely keeping me away from all that. Check out game, (hopefully) enjoy game, take Switch to a friend's house sometimes, rinse and repeat. Nintendo's penchant for regular, high quality releases for all their major franchises, and the Switch itself being a hybrid console has spoiled me. Frankly, I don't want a system that isn't a hybrid anymore. Not that the PS5 or Xbox Series of systems have done basically anything to entice me.

I've had to spend the last few years anxiously reevaluating my relationship with video games. I mean really, how much do I care any more about the latest and greatest games, from anybody? Keep in mind my taste, I passed on Breath of the Wild for Puyo Puyo Tetris and my beloved Blaster Master Zero as my first Switch games.

The nonstop, endlessly noisy and useless "discourses" about culture wars, chads, virgins, slop, revisionism, and "media literacy" don't exactly entice me to be an active member of the video game scene. Who would want to be a part of that?

Anxiety. I would say, is the word surrounding the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2.

Nintendo Switch 2 is bringing Nintendo closer to "big games" than I'm entirely sure I'm comfortable with. What video game is supposed to be so fun and enjoyable, or touching, or interesting, that it's worth plunking down 70 dollars? Switch 2 pricing information is being poorly communicated and, currently, in flux, and I am based in the United States. Do I care to buy some of these Upgrade Packs? I had previously praised Kirby and the Forgotten Land for being a complete wonderful experience, and now it's got a DLC expansion only available on Switch 2, over three years later. How am I supposed to feel about that? I can't imagine myself ever feeling good about it. I have some decisions to make about how I'm going to play Pokemon Legends: Z-A, a game I'm pretty excited about which is now forked into two versions, with one pretty clearly superior.

A lot of these questions were going to come up for me regardless of the price. But I can't say the price helped. I have been budgeting for it, happily assuming that I would have a smooth continuity for the successor of one of my very favorite game systems. I thought I was prepared to pretty much blindly accept the Switch 2 into my life, but I've found myself rethinking everything.

I can't completely imagine myself being totally divorced from all video games. Nor do I need to decide right now if I'll never, ever get a Switch 2. I'm not boycotting it because it's bad, or anti-consumer, or anything like that. This is about my personal enjoyment and hobbies.

Outside of my personal situation, I don't think it's such a stretch to imagine that for many (or most?) consumers, the jump from $300 to $450 isn't small potatoes. Whether it's a fair price or not for the hardware and modern game development costs cannot really change that it's simply not going to be in many people's pocketbooks. In America, things are looking to get tougher with this fuckass administration tanking the economy, the deeper details of which I couldn't totally discuss if you asked.

I have no idea if the inner workings of Nintendo and manufacturing realities mean they could drop the price somewhere down the line. I would be happy to see that, of course, but as of this writing, Nintendo has delayed preorders due to the impact of tariffs and "evolving market conditions", which isn't a great sign as far as the price of anything is concerned.

Not much of this feels great. Even if you have more positive feelings about the Switch 2 than I do right now, I think we could agree that this all has been a massive leap in complexity for Nintendo products. People are still coming to grips with which Switch 1 games have simple patches, Upgrade Packs that cost more, and what the deal is with varying prices of games across all the regions. All of this is a little freaky compared to the Switch 1's successful simplicity in what it did, and how you bought games. What if Nintendo was Freaktendo and they sucked toes?

There's plenty of good too, mind you. I'm sure it's going to feel awesome to play Prime 4 in high fidelity. After seemingly endless Pokemon titles on the Switch 1, seeing one run smoothly feels like a fantasy. I think the option for mouse controls on a Joycon has a lot of potential. The stage is once again set for something special.

I'm just not quite sure when I'll be there.

- Joycon Jane