This article was originally published on April 4, 2025 - read the full issue here

By Rob Fahey

After eight phenomenally successful years of the original Nintendo Switch, you might have expected the big Switch 2 unveiling to be quite the victory lap. After all, the base console has spent the best part of the past decade running rings around more powerful, expensive systems, and anticipation for its successor has been building for years, especially since the pandemic pushed talk of a Switch Pro refresh into the long grass.

With new hardware finally on the horizon, Nintendo has earned itself the right to some fireworks, surely; perhaps even a little pinch of triumphalism?

Instead, we got a Nintendo Direct show that felt distinctly muted, and at times almost bordered on apologetic. In part, this is just how companies do these things in the videogame business now – it may be a long time ago, but nobody has forgotten the harsh lessons learned when Sony huffed too hard on the success of PS2 and went full Mad King with the launch of PS3. Low-key, humble and grateful are the tonal watchwords for avoiding becoming this generation's next Giant Enemy Crab meme.

In Nintendo's case specifically, though, a more immediate reason for its cautious approach is the console whose shadow loomed largest over this announcement – not the debut Switch, but its ill-fated predecessor, Wii U. It has not escaped notice that the Switch 2 proposition occupies a similar niche in commercial history to the Wii follow-up that launched to muted response in 2012. It's the successor to a phenomenally successful Nintendo console, carrying on not only the branding and software library of the prior console, but also many aspects of its physical appearance.

Nintendo is desperate to avoid the mistakes that led to Wii U's commercial failure.

The consensus that has emerged over the years is that the Wii U branding and presentation was confusing, leaving many Wii owners thinking it was an expensive accessory for their existing console rather than a new system entirely, while also failing to adequately explain the merits of its hardware innovations. This isn't an isolated problem for Nintendo – similar issues contributed to the 3DS console's inability to achieve even half of the sales of DS, though the 3D-enabled configuration was far from being a failure overall.

Consequently, Switch 2 has ended up being arguably Nintendo's most conservative console launch in decades. The branding is impossible to confuse (Nintendo has never put a '2' at the end of a console's name in the past), and the merits of the new system are straightforward, mostly boiling down to a (perfectly welcome) specs bump across the board.

The closest thing to a flash of Nintendo's usual toymaker's innovation is the inclusion of mouse-like functionality in the controllers, which occupied a disproportionate amount of time in this week's Direct broadcast – perhaps a sign of just how far outside the company's comfort zone it is to be building a console that's largely just a powered-up version of what came before.

This is, we should acknowledge, precisely what consumers have been asking for – the original Switch is an extraordinarily popular device, and a lot of its owners say that they would simply like a better, faster upgrade. It's unquestionably going to be easier to market this system and communicate its merits than it was with the introduction of Wii U (and perhaps even 3DS). We should also recognise, though, that Nintendo's greatest successes have always come from innovation – from giving consumers things they didn't even know they wanted – and while it's very possible that this new console will be a commercial success, talking about pushing more pixels isn't how the company has historically whipped up excitement for its launches.

Underlying all of this is the other mood dampener around the announcement – the sordid topic of coin. Switch 2 is an expensive console, effectively giving up the pricing advantage its predecessor had over Xbox and PlayStation systems, and it has expensive software to match.

Nintendo is following industry trends in raising software prices, but it stings more on its systems given the company's policy of maintaining full pricing for games long after launch. It's fair to note that games remain much cheaper than they were in previous generations once you adjust for inflation, but that's cold comfort for the many consumers who haven't seen their income rise to match price inflation in recent years.

Some peculiar nickel-and-diming around the edges of Nintendo's approach won't help perceptions of overpricing; announcing that the tutorial-like Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour will be a paid digital title is a baffling decision on this front.

Nintendo clearly knows that pricing is going to be a big challenge for the new system. It's even taken the very unusual step of creating a special Japan-only version of the console (locked to Japanese language and account settings) to allow it to set a significantly cheaper price point in that market without risking the emergence of grey-import resellers taking advantage of the Yen's weakness. Admitting that the global pricing is far too high for Japan – where wage growth has been sluggish despite inflation – is a tacit acknowledgement that it's also asking a pretty hefty sum in other regions.

How Switch 2 performs in the face of these pricing challenges will be watched carefully by other hardware companies. The Mushroom Kingdom is not beyond the reach of global economic trends, let alone tariff wars, and nor are its rivals: as the first videogame platform release of the post-pandemic era, Nintendo is effectively testing the waters for a step change in pricing that will likely be reflected in future launches from Sony and Microsoft too. In that sense, this launch is a stress test of consumer demand and sentiment – making it little wonder that the dial for bombast and triumph has been turned all the way down.

This article was originally published on April 4, 2025 - read the full issue here