Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

Happy to see that Nintendo is treating the switch more like how they traditionally handled their mobile platforms instead of their consoles.

Iterating instead of throwing out everything with each new version. There is a part of me that is going to miss the, do weird shit and see what works, Nintendo that brought us some really fun ideas. But a stable Nintendo just being able to continue putting out great games has its advantages.

I am curious about the specs, but honestly don't care much. The only real issue the Switch had was being able to keep up with some of the games put on it with FPS but it still had beautiful games (like Tears of the Kingdom). So as long as it is actually a decent spec bump I am happy and have zero care to compare it to the other consoles (but I am sure people are going too and scream that it is "underpowered").

The biggest thing I am curious about, will it be OLED since that will be disappointing to go back to non OLED from the OLED Switch. And Price.

They’ve got the weird shit covered still, apparently the joy cons in this gen can be used as mice.

Was heavily rumoured/leaked and this teaser video literally shows them gliding along a surface.

How Nintendo will leverage that functionality, who could honestly say, but that’s the genius of keeping a toy company mindset in an industry full of sports car company mindsets.

That last sentence is worth an essay of its own. Everyone else keeps pumping resources into being photo-realistic blah-blah-blah without nearly enough attention to "is this fun"?

Strongly agreed. When I think of the best Nintendo products the words “fun” and “play” spring to mind.

AAA gaming on the other hand, either resembles sports, shallow short-form media, or Oscar-bait melodrama. Very little fun to be had.

What ever happened to fun and play?

Singleplayer AAA gaming on top of all that feels like work, the older I got the less those games kept me playing because I don't want to spend 3 hours running errands to be rewarded with an item/spell/skill.

The melodramatic storylines are also pretty grating, there are a few games with good storytelling but most are some rehash of "this world has been destroyed/is in the process of being destroyed, in the aftermath a hero is about to rise and save it" so if the mechanics don't feel fun right from the get-go I lose interest completely.

The most fun I have with games are the ones with a very iterative game loop (roguelikes for example), or social/multiplayer games, anything with a lot of replayability, and the constant feeling of improvement is like crack to me.

A surprising example I re-discovered last year after only playing it for a while some 15 years ago is Trackmania, got even some friends hooked on it to play hot seating trying to beat each others time. The game loop is short and intense (about 1-2 minutes max), has a high skill ceiling, and you feel yourself getting better at a track each time you play it, nailing some very tricky part that felt impossible 30 min before is absurdly satisfying.

My biggest problem is I'll finally get a chance to sink enough hours in to start something AAA, do maybe 4-10 hours over two or three days, and then have life get in the way and not touch it for a month or more... and completely forget how to play and WTF I was doing.

Some of my favorite UX features in newer games are automatically and contextually reminding you how the controls work when you pick it back up after a while, and quick story recaps or quest reminders on loading screens. I like to label those games "parent-friendly".