The Switch 2 is getting a price increase for the US, Europe, and Canada:

$500 USD, $680 CAD, and €500, Japan from ¥49980 to ¥59980.

It goes into effect Sept1, Japan even earlier on May25.

😬 Glad I got mine earlier this year when the alarm bells really started sounding.

Seasons 5-7 Seasons 8-10

Rewrite details under cut:

blow up all american gamers from the gamerspace. this will make my favorite game 100x more playable and will reduce slurs and Racist behavior by: A Lot

step 2:

tell them its like subnautica and then stuff their brains with so much game knowledge they will be too far gone before they realize its nothing like subnautica. do you wanna play the precursor to subnautica? i know you do youre just so thirsty for it

step 3:

fill lobbies with lesbian furries who bark and meow at each other and get super competitive about it. the tension is important. it can be like, a homoerotic thing as well. but the important part is the gay furries learn proper teamwork so as to defeat their enemy better

step 4: dominate servers. love each other and the earth. drink lots of water. we have fun and my favorite game lives forever :)

I love my Switch 1 as much as anyone else does - I’ve poured several thousand of hours into hundreds of games, so I’ve seen the best and worse of the console. It’s amazing, but it’s really outdated. That doesn’t mean its bad - I still pick it up from time to time because its portable play is still very comfortable, but games are struggling to run well on it and thats just factually correct.

It’s not even a ‘Pokémon runs like shit’ situation because everyone knows that and I truly believe the fault there lies with GameFreak’s horrible optimisation. But look at how many other first party Switch titles struggle - Mario and Luigi: Brothership has horrible frame drops in the overworld. Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’s constant performance difficulties made it hard to appreciate the game as much as I should. Breath of the Wild, even back at the launch of the Switch, was having a rough time running optimally. Animal Crossing New Horizons’ load times are abysmal. Xenoblade Chronicles’ dynamic resolution makes the game look extremely blurry. There’s a good reason people were clamouring for a Switch Pro to make these games play better.

I know most people buy Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games, but when you look at third parties as well, it’s really easy to see the Switch, which is on par with 20-year-old Xbox 360 hardware, can barely run most PS4-level games and definitely fails at PS5-level ports. We have miracle ports like Nier Automata which look and play phenomenally on the Switch, but then you have Mortal Kombat 1, Batman: Arkham Knight, even the miracle ports like Doom Eternal really struggle on the Switch 1, because the hardware is objectively outdated for the games.

But what the Switch 2 does, absolutely miraculously, is fix almost all of Switch 1 games’ problems for free thanks to its backwards compatibility. Brothership and Echoes of Wisdom perform excellently now. Breath of the Wild, without the upgrade pack, still runs at a constant 30fps on Switch 2. The Xenoblade Chronicles games now run at their highest possible resolution at a fixed framerate and look sharper and clearer than before. Animal Crossing New Horizons’ load times are massively shortened! And 99% of the Switch 1’s library is playable on the Switch 2. What Nintendo accomplished with backwards compatibility is nothing short of miraculous, because these games needed better hardware to reach their full potential.

And it makes me excited for future Nintendo games too. Donkey Kong Bananza looks far more ambitious and expansive than Mario Odyssey. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment runs at a flawless 60 frames per second when Age of Calamity had notoriously abysmal performance on the Switch 1 (now fixed with the Switch 2). Metroid Prime 4: Nintendo Switch 2 Edition looks unbelievably beautiful and runs at 120 frames per second - Absolutely jaw dropping! It’s obvious too that Nintendo has outgrown the Switch with their development ambitions. They want to make bigger, bolder, more ambitious games that the Switch hardware is incapable of. The development interview for Mario Kart World revealed it was originally being developed for the Switch 1, but wouldn’t run without massive compromises, and the developers desperately needed the stronger hardware for their artistic vision.

I understand if you don’t care that much about performance, you just want to play the games. Believe me, I beat Outer Worlds and Doom Eternal on my Switch, I’ve been through hell (pun intended). Nintendo isn’t abandoning the Switch because they clearly have games planned for it in the foreseeable future - Metroid Prime 4 and Pokémon Legends Z-A are releasing on the Switch 1, and next year Tomodachi Life 2 and Rhythm Heaven Groove are as well. You can keep playing your Switch, especially if you own an OLED or think its too soon to upgrade, and don’t personally see value in the stronger hardware unless more games like a big new Animal Crossing or Zelda release. That’s okay!

But calling the entire console unnecessary because of some spite towards the company is silly. I know how badly the Switch needed the upgrade. I played dozens of hours of No Man’s Sky religiously on my Switch and believe me, as amazing as it is to play the game portably, I can’t pretend the Switch 2 edition wasn’t direly needed. Developers are moving forward at a pace that was unsustainable for the Switch. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Street Fighter 6 or Yakuza 0 shine on the new console. Nintendo’s upcoming titles show me they feel freed from the hardware shackles of the Switch 1. That is a good thing. The Switch 2 won’t be outdated in 5 years as much as the Switch 1 was.

If you’re an artist, you can’t live with a compromised creative vision for the rest of your life - Eventually, you need better tools. And for players like me, the Switch 2 answers all my dreams and then some - It makes all my Switch 1 games run flawlessly, and opens the gateway to an amazing new library to explore. It’s expensive, but it’s worth the price in my opinion, and the same is true for millions of players around the world. Because of that I think denouncing the console as unnecessary is just a bit goofy.