Oli's Blog Thing

A place where I dump my thoughts in little (or big) text blocks I call blog posts. Not sure if they qualify as blog posts though.

Home Page About Me Blog Thing My Links Aero Ring

My thoughts on Nintendo Switch 2

Nintendo's new console is here, (well, almost) and I am both incredibly hyped and kinda disappointed at the same time.

The console

1080p@120/4K@60 with HDR, a bigger screen, magnetic Joy-Con, the C button and better performance are the Switch 2's most important new features. And while those are obviously great, there is one that has left me a bit disappointed, and that is the C button and what it does. To be honest, it could've had much more potential, yet Nintendo just used it as a shortcut button to the new Discord GameChat feature. But that isn't too bad, to be honest. It's nice to have actual built-in voice chatting, instead of it being bound to a phone app.

One thing that I am for sure a bit mad about is the fact that we've unfortunately got, at least from the few screenshots seen in the Direct and on the Nintendo website, pretty much no changes to the console's UI aside from a different option highlight effect and more rounded corners.

The thing I am most mad about however is the console's price. Now the original Nintendo Switch costs 299€. Fair price in my opinion. The OLED model is 349€. Also a good price considering how good the screen looks.

Now, what about Switch 2? It's 469€. That's 170€ more than Switch 1, or 130€ more than Switch OLED, which makes this even worse considering the Switch OLED has a better screen, because yes, the Switch 2 has an LCD screen, not OLED.

And personally, I'm blaming NVIDIA for the sharp price increase. Because while CPU prices haven't really gone up, the price of NVIDIA's low-end GPUs has gone up from 159 USD for the GTX 950 (which uses the same architecture as the Switch GPU) to 249 USD for the RTX 3050, which uses the Ampere architecture, the same as Switch 2, at least according to the leaks.

But aside from the bad pricing and lackluster software, the Switch 2 is a great successor to the Switch.

Main launch title

As someone who considers Mario Kart to be his favorite game series, this one game would and does convince me to want to get a Switch 2. Mario Kart World upgrades everything that makes Mario Kart great and introduces a very cool twist, being Open-World Racing. Every course is in one interconnected world, and when you drive a Cup, you get to drive to the next track when the race on the current track finishes.

We've also of course got 24 players in one track (which gives us an inflated roster with characters like a freaking Cow, the Penguin from SM64 and more) and some new items! The ones I could spot are Kamek/Magic, the feather and a bunch of items from Tour, like the Hammers, coin box, Ice Flower and the Mega Mushroom.

As for mechanics, we've got a new grinding system, as well as wall-rides, and transforming vehicles, which was pretty much copied from Sonic Racing. That also means that gliders are gone, since your kart now transforms into a plane when you drive on a glider pad. There are also what looks like to be consumables you can collect, that transform you into skins like those we saw in Mario Kart Tour.

There are also two new game modes, Knockout Tour, where you drive on 6 tracks across the entire map, with a knockout system being put in place, knocking out players at the bottom of the grid after checkpoints. And Free Roam, where you get to drive freely on the map. Interestingly, there wasn't any mention of Battle Mode...

One great thing is that Nintendo leaked pretty much half the track roster for us. And the interesting thing is that the seperation between Retro and Current (I don't call those cups Retro and Nitro anymore, since Nitro isn't really accurate as that is the DS's codename, which would mean that Wii cups should be called Revolution cups, 8's should be Café cups, and 8 Deluxe's should be called NX cups) isn't there anymore. You'll see what I mean when I list out the cups Nintendo revealed:

Mushroom Cup:

Flower Cup:

Star Cup:

Shell Cup:

A few interesting things here are the fact that Crown City is represented twice here, however with different course screenshots. And for some reason, the Special Cup wasn't there! We only saw (in this order) the Mushroom, Flower, Star, Shell, Banana, Leaf and Lightning Cups.

So this game is looking to be incredibly good, not only in terms of mechanics, but also with the game modes, graphics and track selection! There is one problem, however... The game is 80 bucks USD, or 90€!!! This is honestly insane pricing. I'm fine with games being 70€, but not almost 100! Now obviously, GTA 6 will apparently cost the same, but still. I am afraid that this will be the standard for all NS2 games, which would NOT be good.

So to sum it up, the Switch 2 is absolutely great, so is Mario Kart World, but only if you ignore the pricing.