Up until the Steam Deck took over my handheld gaming time, I was enamored with my Switch. Having upgraded from the original up to the OLED and even snapping up a used Lite for a far more portable play experience during my commute, I was willing to eat up ports of games that looked far superior on other consoles. Long before Nintendo released the Switch, I thought such a concept would be a dream come true and that Apple had some of best hardware savvy to pull it off (I still do but it’d also likely be more expensive). As rumors stared trickling in about Switch 2, I became very excited to play my large back catalog of Switch titles in 4K HDR with VRR….what a joke that has become.
If I’m being completely honest, the main reason I snapped up a Switch 2 for launch is nearly 100% due to the tariff situation here in the States thanks to the asshole in charge. I felt like I should strike now while the iron is hot when it came to selling my OLED and grabbing the Switch 2 at MSRP before the much discussed price increase. I was jazzed after the official reveal to learn about the successor’s 4k HDR capabilities with VRR support….that was walked back. It’s a shame Nintendo doesn’t have 4K upscaling offered at a system level, even if it’s simply selectable by the user on a per game basis. Then again, I guess that would eat into the sales of ‘Upgrade Packs’ that are on offer. For how large the Xenoblade series has become thanks to the Switch I’m also extremely disappointed there has been zero updates to address the laughable resolution these games run it. Sure, they all max out at 30fps and seemingly stay there now, great, but they look just as blurry and jagged on a shiny new Switch 2 as they did on an original Switch. At the very least, if updates are indeed planned, it would have been nice to hear about them by now.
This is also one of the worst launch lineups since Nintendo shipped the 3DS in my humble opinion. Personally, I could care less about Mario Kart, paying over three times more than I do now for Switch Online to access GameCube games, or paying the Switch tax to play ports of older games that have either been out for years or are releasing on PC that are both cheaper and usually still end up running and looking better on my Deck and gaming PC. I preordered Donkey Kong Bananza and am excited for Metroid, but as it stands, my Switch 2 was more of future proofing to be ready for whatever wonderous adventure Monolithsoft comes up with next.
Listen, the Switch 2 is killer hardware and I love the updated Joycons and Pro Controller. I know developers will blow my mind with even more impossible ports (as if Cyberpunk isn’t mind blowing enough already), but I can’t help but feel that Nintendo fumbled the launch of this console in terms of price, features (Game Chat, really?), and lackluster baseline visual improvements to the giant existing back catalogue. Oh, and don’t even get me started on Virtual Game Cards and Game Key Cards. FFS.
