Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

I don't like the aesthetic as much as the Switch 1. Looks a little too sleek, too monochrome, not Nintendo-y enough. Other than the splash of color around the thumbsticks it looks like any number of those handheld Steam Deck-alikes that have been coming out.

That said I always wait for the special Zelda editions of Nintendo's consoles, so I don't know that I have standing to complain.

I only know a few users but they all (three, one being my kid) have covered their console in stickers, so that monochrome is completely hidden.

I personally like the new color scheme. It says "I'm mature now, but still playful". Also, all black is less distracting when you're trying to concentrate on a bigger screen which needs you to move your eyeballs.

Also, the new controllers look more "freedom friendly", if you pardon the pun. IOW, they iterated them so that they're more useful when they are detached.

Nintendo is not Nintendo-y enough for a while now. The switch system UI is bland and on launch the gray switch was the one being presented.

Yeah, I am not a big fan of the Switch UI. They really took out the "surprise and delight" compared to the Wii U and 3DS. Very bland and straightforward, and yet somehow awfully slow and laggy.

I prefer just "playful" to "mature but still playful". Something about the straightforwardness of "this is a toy for people of all ages, but it is still a toy" speaks to me.

Your taste/view is as valid and correct as mine.

If these things could be standardized, we would have only one design for every category of item, possibly from different brands.

Since it can't, we have this thing called design and art, which is a good thing :)

Speaking of - does anyone know of an HTPC frontend which duplicates the look and feel of the Wii menu?

It's so odd to see Nintendo who hasn't competed on hardware specs for decades to release new console without atleast some gimmick(s) to sell their severely underpowered hardware.

Absolute zero gimmicks and zero excitement.

I personally dont care for gimmicks, but I expect them from Nintendo.

I disagree. I find it delightful. The sounds are awesome.

People are speculating that you can use the controllers like a computer mouse. You can see an allusion to that towards the end of the video.

De gustibus et coloribus… :)

I am personally not a fan of the toy-like aesthetic of the colourful switch. But having a choice between both styles is ideal.

** N64 has entered the chat

Who even runs HTPCs these days?

> Also, the new controllers look more "freedom friendly", if you pardon the pun. IOW, they iterated them so that they're more useful when they are detached.

I am a little concerned about that connector for the controls. I hope they have designed it to be sturdy. After working on broken Switch 1s a lot of USB C ports were abused by users.

The current Switch had an alternative monochrome (grey) version from the start, so I guess there's a chance the alternative version of the new one would be colorful.

That's a really old-school gimmick if so.

Have you scrolled through the Switch store? The UI freezes for seconds at a time while network requests lock up the main thread.

Yeah, and this might make first-person shooters and some strategy games play a lot nicer if (big if) it works well. Perhaps the next iteration of Mario Maker might also make use of it.

That sounds like such an obvious oversight with benefit of hindsight. They could have instantly plugged Valorant/Apex gateway into PC established by YT Live/Twitch through that if only they had it on the right joycon.

Retro things have a habit of coming back. See: polaroids

Absolutely! I was just elaborating on my tastes, didn't mean to come across as disparaging yours.

The sound design is in fact delightful. Nintendo is great at sound design.

The Lenovo Legion Go I think has this for FPS games. Joycon like thing goes into a little slider adapter and becomes a vertical mouse.

I was interested in disconnecting my smart TV from the internet and using a replacement which I am in complete control of.

As to "who", some part of the demographic who runs JellyFin/Plex/Etc.

Were the Wii and Wii U not sleek and monochrome?

This has more color than either of those.

There's a very good reason for this: The whole OS is under 400MB. Every Nintendo Switch game cartridge comes with a full copy of the necessary OS on it.

Every game card is playable, no matter how out of date the Switch is, without any internet connection.

I'll take that kind of functionality before "surprise and delight." We might get "surprise and delight" this generation though, if in part because the change to a modified Samsung NAND over Macronix might be cheaper at larger capacities if rumors are correct.

400MB is huge, and cute touches can be very small.

people who appreciate that Roku is a marketing company and not a gadget company

It's not that large considering the size of NVIDIA drivers + WebKit alone.

By comparison, the Wii U with it's "nice touches" was over 5 GB.

> Every game card is playable, no matter how out of date the Switch is, without any internet connection.

This is mostly accurate, but not entirely afaict. I had to connect my switch to wifi in order to update the OS to play Xenoblade 3 (or Tears of the Kingdom? It's been a while).

Might be TOTK; I personally updated an offline Switch to use Sonic X Shadow Generations from the cartridge alone yesterday.

That's the only part I don't like about the Switch OS, and, yes, it's very bad. And it always baffles me why they wouldn't improve the app that generates revenue of all things.

They had it right with motion controls on the Wii. I could headshot on the Wii edition of Resident Evil 4 so effectively it was cheating.

The Switch also has motion control for fine aiming in some games (Zelda, Borderlands 2). Joysticks for gross movement then motion controls for smaller adjustments. Much better scheme than Xbox or PS.

Strategy games might benefit.

I think this is aimed at a slightly older audience than the "regular" switch.

This is more like a switch "pro", and I assume a switch 2 lite and such will follow.

This is like the 3ds XL, which in terms of hardware was a HUUUUGGE upgrade to the 3ds, but they didn't really mention it anywhere.

Didn’t a third party company design the Switch UI?

Resi 4 on the Wii was so good. It was a good game anyway, but the aiming was precise and a hell of a lot of fun. I think about it a lot. I'm hesitant to play the remaster on my steam deck because I doubt it's possible to be as good

The necessary OS for running the game doesn't need webkit, and I doubt the important part of the nvidia drivers is super big.

> That said I always wait for the special Zelda editions of Nintendo's consoles, so I don't know that I have standing to complain.

Yeah, I am sure there will be plenty of playful and colourful joycons for the Switch 2 as well.

I hated the 3DS UI. It was not exciting, it was bad and inconsistent. At least with the Switch it is unobstrusive.

I would doubt they made a build of the OS without webkit, or else you’d have a OS without captive portal or eShop support. Feels annoying.

It's been a while, but from my recollection that was the main version at launch. It's what I got, anyways. I don't remember the red and blue joycons showing up until later.

What do you mean HUUUGE upgrade? The only difference between the 3DS and the 3DS XL is the battery. Same with the New 3DS XL and New 3Ds.

You might be getting confused because the New 3DS (which was a hardware upgrade) mostly sold in XL version in the US. The non-XL model was sold mostly as limited special editions.

The switch had the red and blue from launch. In the reveal trailer they only showed the grey, but then in the switch presentation they revealed the red and blue. I don't quite remember, but I think from then on they mainly used that in marketing. It could be the same situation here, but the fact that the joycons already have a hint of blue and red makes me think this will be the only version, as it's sort of a mix between the 2 versions of the original switch.

Personally I like it. I choose the grey version of the switch, and I think making the joycons the exact same colour as the system this time looks way better. Also I like the splash of colour rather than it being entirely grey/black.

I know for a fact they had the grey and colorful models on launch day, I bought the model with the red and blue joycons at mignight on launch day at my local BestBuy. The promo video in this article[1] shows some folks playing bomberman with those joycons about 2/3 in.

1: https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/13/14241960/nintendo-switch-l...

Definitely marketed towards middle age “gamers” with their mario toys on their shelves.

Do young people even play on switch any more? Pretty sure it is xbox, mobile and pc.

Not sure which version was more popular, but I bought a red/blue switch on launch day. And anecdotally I'd say I've seen more of those than the grey one over the years.

That sounds like an extremely unlikely claim

And you can only buy one game at a time, and have to enter your password in for each one? I like to do all my game research and shopping in one evening and buy 3-4 games at a time. If there's a way to do this I would love to know how!