Thoughts on Switch 2

I think it’s safe to say the Switch 2 Direct on April 2 2025 was one of the most exciting directs that they’ve had in a while. Open world Mario Kart. New 3D Mario Donkey Kong. Kirby Air Ride by Sakurai himself. Everything seemed on point, yet with the reveal of pricing and other details after the Direct, the discourse turned… less than positive.

I think that it’s pretty valid to feel that that $450 is a lot to spend on a Nintendo console, or that the game pricing is out of whack. At the same time, I’ve found there’s a lot of misinformation around a bunch of the announcements, and wanted to set the record straight.

Pricing

For clarity’s sake, the following prices are in USD, and are from Nintendo of America’s official press release.

The Nintendo Switch 2 console retails for $449.99. There’s a bundle available that includes a download code for Mario Kart World for $499. Simple enough, and to be fair I haven’t really seen people making mistakes about this but felt it was worth mentioning.

From what it seems, most Nintendo Switch 2 games will retail for $69.99 - the same price as new AAA releases on PS5 and Xbox. Some games (notably Mario Kart World) will be $79.99. In the US at least. These prices are the same for both digital and physical games, and you can check retailers to verify it yourself. There’s been a claim going around that digital games are $80 and physical ones $90, but this is false and seems to be based on the pricing in Europe (which is going to have different physical/digital pricing, but that’s another can of worms).

The console price itself makes sense. The go-to comparison people make is the Steam Deck (which is $399), but putting aside the quirks that can sometimes come up with what’s effectively a gaming PC, it’s still not really gonna be capable of playing games at 4K or 120Hz[[0]]. Pricing most games at $70 is certainly frustrating, but it’s also at this point the industry standard price of a AAA game, so I’m not too bothered by it. However, pricing Mario Kart World at $80 does come off as a too much. Yeah, it’s Mario Kart, people will buy a bajillion copies of it no matter what, but even though it’s a cool huge open world I feel like it needs to have something that makes it clear why this game needs to be $10 more expensive, and they’re not doing that. When Tears of the Kingdom released at $10 more than the average Switch game, it at least made some sense why it was priced like that - it’s trying a some really ambitious game mechanics, and development had gone on for longer than its prequel - even if you didn’t really enjoy the final product. Mario Kart World doesn’t have that, and it would do Nintendo some good to make it clear what makes it so special outside of having an open world[[1]].

[[0]]: Never mind the fact that the Switch OLED is still for sale at $350

[[1]]: Hopefully the Mario Kart World Direct actually does that

Game-Key Cards

Shortly after the direct, this image started making the rounds, and as you can imagine, a lot of people got worked up over the apparent death of physical games with all the data for the game on the cartridge.

This is from an actual Nintendo support article, but it’s taken pretty out of context.

Back on the Nintendo Switch (1), many third party publishers wanted a physical retail presence but didn’t want to print cartridges - often speculated to be due to the price of certain capacity Game Cards that the publisher didn’t want to shell out for - and they had two options: They could simply release a download code (a.k.a. “code-in-a-box”), or they could include part of the game on the cartridge and require the player to download the rest. Some examples of the other approach include DOOM (where the singleplayer content is on the cart but the multiplayer component needs to be download), and Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 1 (which has the icons for all the games and bonus content included in the set appear when the cart is inserted, but all except the bonus material require a download before they can be played). From the player’s perspective, Download codes are more limited, since they can only be used once, and can’t be resold or lent as easily as other physical games. The second approach (with an actual cartridge) is more flexible, since you can resell or lend it as easily as any other cartridge, even if it’s not the ideal of having the full game on the cart. The key point though is that Game-Key Cards are just an official label for this kind of release that already exists, and that not all Switch 2 games are going to be Game-Key Cards.

As an example, below are the boxarts for Bravely Default and Donkey Kong Banaza on Switch 2.

Bravely Default is a Game-Key Card and requires a download, as specified on the banner at the bottom. DK doesn’t have that banner, since it’s a standard physical release, and I can’t find anything that says otherwise.

It’s unfortunate that fewer games have the content on the cartridge physically (since it’s a much worse experience to have to download stuff first, not to mention having space on the system), but I’m glad that at least they’re putting a clear differentiation between code-in-a-box and Game-Key releases, since Game-Keys still offer more flexibility than digital codes (Virtual Game Cards notwithstanding).

Switch 2 Editions/Enhancements

Here’s where it gets a bit dicey, mostly because Nintendo didn’t do a good job of differentiating how these work.

There’s a few different types of games you can play on Switch 2

• Switch 1 Games - i.e. backwards compatibility. Some games might behave slightly differently on Switch 2 (since the hardware isn’t an exact match), but it’s basically the same idea as how PS4 games play on PS5.
• Updated Switch 1 Games - Games made for Switch 1 that will get a free update that may “improve performance or add support for features such as GameShare in select games.” This wasn’t mentioned at all in the Direct, and the exact details of how they’re improved is still up in the air. This includes Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, Link’s Awakening, and Echoes of Wisdom.
• Switch 2 Exclusive Games - Games made specifically for Switch 2 that can use the extra power, etc. of the Switch 2. This includes Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza
• Switch 2 Edition Games - Games made for Switch 1 with a paid upgrade for Switch 2 functionality, and/or extra content. This includes Breath of the Wild, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and Super Mario Party Jamboree.

Switch 2 Edition upgrades cost $10 or $20, which seems to depend on whether there’s some new gameplay versus mainly technical/quality of life improvements. It’s a bit hard to say the exact differences between them and updated Switch 1 games, but I think those will be mostly just performance improvements and support for GameShare in some games, while Switch 2 Edition games, even the ones without much new content like BOTW/TOTK still seem to have a decent amount of work put into them (adding HDR isn’t trivial, and there’s some new stuff on the Nintendo Switch Online app for what that's worth). Switch 2 Edition games also will be available physically for the total price of the original with the upgrade, and also seem to have all the content on the cartridge.

I think paid upgrades for some games is annoying, (though it is what Sony’s been doing on PS5) and even though you are in many cases effectively getting DLC with it as a bonus, it’s not great having existing games that cost this much more than their originals (which haven’t gone down in price, and probably won't anytime soon).

What’s the point of all of this

I feel like there’s been a surprising amount of ill will towards the Switch 2 from both Nintendo fans and the overall gaming community. While some of that is well-founded, and there’s a lot based on misinformation, I think there’s a deeper reason why people are dissatisfied.

When the Switch first came out in 2017, it felt like a rejection of a lot of modern gaming trends - big noisy consoles with long updates, a huge focus on social features - and instead embracing simplicity. It’s why the switch OS is so barebones in the first place[[2]], and the fact that it’s really just a budget android tablet under the hood didn’t really matter. Yet as time went on people started to demand something that could play games at higher resolutions and frame rates, and had more integrated social features. Now we have the Switch 2, which, more than any other Nintendo console since the GameCube, has had a focus on technical enhancements. Yet 4K and 120Hz come at a price. I still wouldn’t say it’s good by any means to push further beyond the industry norm for Mario Kart, but there’s a lot of stuff here that people are blowing up over the isn’t really the craziest thing in the world.

[[2]]: I want some kind of music or themes as much as anyone else, but as a Wii U owner from day one, I’d rather have a menu that does what it needs to do quickly than have one that takes a minute to load but has all the character in the world

I'm ultimately waiting to see how Nintendo decides to respond to this pushback in the coming days, though I don't think there's much chance of them lowering the price anytime soon.

If you want to hear more I'd recommend checking out Kit & Krysta's video on this