Not long ago, I wrote a bit about the history of handheld gaming and its possible future. Now, Nintendo have officially unveiled the Switch 2, meaning I can discuss what I think about it in more detail. The headline has probably already told you that I’m not too optimistic about it. I’ll start by getting my personal biases out of the way: I do not personally care for the Switch. I have one (a Switch Lite, specifically) and I do not enjoy using it very much. I also don’t particularly care for Nintendo’s first-party games lately. They’ve fallen into some design choices that I find unappealing. That being said, I know these games are massively popular. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is by far the best selling game in its series, with Tears of the Kingdom being in second, again by a wide margin. Super Mario Odyssey has sold more than any Mario platformer since the very first Super Mario Bros for NES. While I don’t like these games, I’m not about to discount their appeal. It would also be a mistake to assume that simply having these recognizable franchises is enough for a console to be successful.

If you build it, will they come?

A common refrain is that obviously the Switch 2 will be popular because it will have Mario, Zelda, and the rest of the Nintendo stable. One can easily see the problem with this logic. Remember the Wii U? It was the successor to the massively popular Wii, at the time Nintendo’s best selling home console. It was a commercial failure, selling only about 13.5 million units globally, a far cry from the Wii’s 101.6 million. This was despite having Super Mario 3D World, a game that sold an entirely respectable ~6 million copies (more than a third of Wii U owners bought it!). This was also despite The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild being announced for the system in early 2013. Breath of the Wild would be a massive success for Switch, but the Wii U version is largely forgotten (some of its unique features are actually coming back to the Switch 2 version, oddly enough). Simply having a game isn’t enough, and the promise of a game in the future certainly isn’t enough.

Breath of the Wild was a long time coming, if you couldn’t tell. Announced in 2013, it’s said to have begun development shortly after Skyward Sword was finished in 2011. Its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, wouldn’t be released until 2023, and this is despite featuring the same map and core technology. It could take a long time before Nintendo manage to release a brand-new Legend of Zelda for Switch 2. They’re hardly the only company with this problem. The PlayStation 4 had a remarkable final year in 2020 with blockbuster releases like Ghost of Tsushima and The Last of Us Part II that showed just how much the PS4 could do, while promising so much more could be done on PlayStation 5. This year, we’re finally going to see the sequel to Ghost of Tsushima. Meanwhile, Naughty Dog’s next game, while revealed to the public, has no set release window. With development cycles taking this long, the mere assumption of new games can’t be the only selling point.

Hardware: Better, Faster, Stronger

The Switch 2 is, quite plainly, more powerful than the original Switch. That much should be obvious. Exactly how powerful the Switch 2 will end up being is a matter of speculation. Some are estimating that it’s roughly as potent as the PlayStation 4, although support for Nvidia’s DLSS will help it get more out of the hardware. All of this is well and good (the Switch was clearly struggling to keep up in its last few years), but one can see why “more powerful” isn’t enough on its own.

For one thing, is it powerful enough? While it supports modern video output like 4k resolution and 120 Hz video, how much reason do we have to believe it can output modern games at a satisfactory level? There are already reports that Cyberpunk 2077’s Switch 2 port will run at only 40 FPS in its performance mode, which is only available when docked. Handheld mode will only be worse. If that’s how the Switch 2 handles a game from five years ago (admittedly a very high-tech game from five years ago), the problem will likely only get worse over time.

At the same time, Switch owners clearly aren’t bothered as much by technical failings. If they were, they wouldn’t be buying games on Switch. This isn’t so much a saving grace as it is a big problem for the Switch 2: if Switch 2 owners are presently satisfied with the Switch, how much reason will there be to upgrade? On some level, this is true of every new console generation, but it’s especially true for the Switch. Anyone who does most of their gaming on Switch clearly doesn’t rank graphics as a priority. The new games that will be exclusive to Switch 2 will need to be more of a selling point, but recall the Wii U again. Nintendo made a big deal out of finally getting multiplatform games like Assassin’s Creed III, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Batman: Arkham City, and Mass Effect 3. The Switch 2 will similarly be playing catch-up at first. They’re banking on the possibility that they have a core audience who are interested in playing games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring so much that they’re willing to buy the Switch 2 rather than play them in their existing forms. The Switch 2 does have the advantage of offering these games on a handheld, but there other ways of accomplishing that now, which wasn’t the case in 2017. Devices like the Steam Deck or Asus Rog Ally are niche at present, but there’s increasingly less of a difference between them and what Nintendo has to offer.

Money: It’s a Rich Man’s World

The elephant in the room thus far has been the price. Even Nintendo tried to avoid talking about it, waiting until after the Nintendo Direct to reveal the price in a press release. I’ll be discussing price in US Dollars, due to that being the currency of global commerce, although recent events have me wondering how long that will be the case for.

The Switch 2 is retailing for $449.99. For reference, the Switch launched at $299.99, which adjusted for inflation would likely have it retailing for $399.99 today. In a vacuum, it’s hard to see the problem here, but let’s bring out some other points of comparison. The PlayStation 5 Slim (disk drive included) can currently be purchased through PlayStation Direct for $499.99. At the same time, they have a deal on for the Astro Bot PlayStation 5 Slim for only $449.99, the same price as the Switch 2. You could also save $50 by buying the digital-only version, but that’s treading in sensitive waters for some people. In short, for the same price as the Switch 2, you can buy a console that’s significantly more powerful and comes with a full game. It also comes with the regular PS5 pack-in game Astro’s Playroom, whereas Nintendo’s Switch 2 Welcome Tour is a separate albeit slight purchase. Lastly, the PlayStation 5 comes with a proper controller. The Switch 2’s new and improve Joy-Con 2 controllers do come with the device, but anyone who has used the Joy-Con will tell you that they’re not satisfactory for any serious gaming. The Switch 2 Pro Controller, which has all the bells and whistles you would expect (minus analogue triggers, something Nintendo have not had since the GameCube days, but also featuring back buttons, a feature I greatly appreciate), will be an extra $79.99. Most shockingly, the game that should be the launch juggernaut, Mario Kart World, is retailing for an unprecedented $79.99. This is more than games cost for PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X. Nintendo games are also notorious for rarely going on sale and almost never having price drops. If this trend continues, Nintendo will have fully lost the advantage of having a more affordable product.

Perhaps this is all a bit unfair. After all, the Switch 2 does have the burden of needing a screen and a battery due to being a hybrid home console/handheld. Most surveys support the claim that people use handheld mode more than docked anyway, so having a dedicated controller is unnecessary. But there’s a very delicate balance between price and performance that the Switch 2 needs to hit, and at the price they’re selling it for, I’m doubtful it can provide what people will expect. I’m sure Nintendo’s first-party games will run just fine, but will more demanding games from third-party developers be adequate in handheld mode? If they’re not, then genuinely, what’s the point? You’ll just have a worse PlayStation 5 for about the same price as a PlayStation 5. The Switch 2 lives and dies by handheld mode, and everything we’ve seen and heard makes it doubtful that it can live up to its lofty price point. I mentioned before that Switch users have lower standards than other groups, but that was something that only worked out when the Switch was the cheaper alternative. If the Switch 2 is a premium product, it needs premium performance.

Life’s a Switch and Then You Die

I do not anticipate the Switch 2 will be a Wii U-level failure. The Wii U was a perfect storm of just about every bad decision Nintendo could have made. I do think the Switch 2 will noticeably underperform the Switch. Like the Wii, the Switch found an enormous audience in people who were outside the sights of the other major platform owners. The problem was that a great deal of them had no interest in upgrading to the Wii U. There were the very casual users who saw no need for another console, and the more committed gamers who would rather buy the inevitable next-generation PlayStation or Xbox knowing that the Wii U was barely more powerful (possibly less powerful, but this is a matter of some debate) than the consoles that had been on the market for years. The Switch 2 is in a similar predicament, although I think the market is better suited at this point than it was with the Wii U. A closer comparison may be the DS and the 3DS. Like the Switch and the Wii, the DS was huge among the casual market in the way the 3DS was not. The 3DS was still quite popular, but it was a massive retraction from what the DS had sold. I’m not well equipped to tell you how the Switch 2 will sell, but anyone who thinks it’s a certainty that Nintendo will knock it out of the park with a new money printer needs to look at things from the outside. There are far too many risks surrounding the Switch 2, and the looming threat of tariffs driving up the price even more make the Switch 2’s future even more uncertain.