After a brief tease in January, the hype train for Nintendo’s next console, the Switch 2, was chugging along at full speed in New York City Wednesday morning — and CBC News was on board.
In a Nintendo Direct livestream, the Japanese gaming company announced a slew of new games for the upcoming system, which is set to release on June 5, 2025.
CBC News was among a small group of media invited to get hands-on experience with the Switch 2 and short previews of many of the new games in New York City, immediately following the Nintendo Direct event.
Here’s what we’re able to tell you:
Nintendo doubled down on its mega-popular Switch by unveiling a sequel — the Switch 2 — in New York this week. We got our hands on the new console.
How does the Switch 2 feel?
Unsurprisingly, the Switch 2 feels very similar to its predecessor. In handheld mode, it feels slightly wider and heavier, but if you close your eyes you might be fooled into thinking it’s an original Switch. Using a dock (now with a fan to prevent overheating), you can easily connect it to a television.
The handful of additions are notable, though. Most importantly, the JoyCon controllers no longer slide onto the main tablet controller along a physical rail.
Now, they snap on with a strong magnetic grip. We weren’t able to pull the JoyCons off since a small physical latch keeps them in place; a small button has to be pressed to release them.
The other additions are appreciated, though subtle. A sturdier kickstand is an improvement, especially over the original Switch model’s fragile plastic flap. A second USB-C port on top of the console allows for more charging options and lets you connect peripherals like the newly announced Switch 2 camera.
The movement of the joysticks feels a little smoother, fuelling speculation and hope that they’re more resistant to drifting inputs, a frustrating phenomenon that can cause unwanted movement and inaccuracy in aiming.
Innovating, or catching up?
Older Switch games made up a large portion of the Nintendo Direct presentation, sporting new and enhanced features offered by the Switch 2’s beefed-up innards and new features.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel Tears of the Kingdom were shown off on giant televisions running at higher resolutions and a buttery frame rate; the original versions on the Switch 1 were known for occasional slowdown.
Ash Parrish, a games writer for website The Verge, sees these improvements more as Nintendo catching up to the competition.
“You see the graphical improvements for Breath of the Wild and you’re like, ‘Oh, OK, this is what this game should have looked like, you know, seven years ago,’ ” she said.
A welcome addition, in other words, but nowhere near the wonder and grandeur of when that game was first unveilled nearly a decade ago.
How are the games?
I tried a handful of games, though more were playable at the one-day event. Mario Kart World was a standout. Most of the series’ kart racing chaos is unchanged — unsurprising as it builds on the foundation of Mario Kart 8, which has sold over 80 million copies.
That just makes the additions stand out more — an open-world type mode allows you to traverse areas much wider than a single racetrack. Players can roam the maps together with the help of the new GameChat function, making it as much a road trip simulator as a racing game.
A new knockout mode eliminates a handful of stragglers at regular checkpoints, adding a new sense of tension the typically breezy kart racer series hasn’t seen.
A short romp with the much-anticipated sci-fi shooter Metroid Prime 4: Beyond gave mixed results, but not in the way I expected.
The game mostly picks up after the last entry in the Metroid sub-series that was released all the way back in 2007. Bounty huntress Samus wreaks havoc on space pirates in a first-person view that has the player blasting the weak points of enemies and giant monsters with aplomb.
Nintendo representatives, however, encouraged us to play the game with the new JoyCon mouse functionality, tipping the right controller to its side while holding the left one normally.
This mode gave me a lot of precision aiming Samus’s energy blaster, mimicking a good first-person shooter you’d play with a traditional mouse and keyboard on PC. After about 15 minutes, though, I felt some strain on my wrist.
“Turning the JoyCon to the way that you have to have it when you’re using it as a mouse is not a natural way that your hand lays, and it doesn’t make for a comfortable gaming experience,” said Parrish.
The mouse option is unusual in a way that only Nintendo seems to get away with. It’s bizarre at first, but carries a traditionalist sensibility somewhere along the way. It might unlock some truly innovative game design, but that discovery isn’t well-suited to short sessions like the one at this media preview.
Anticipation is high — and so is the price
Media were packed into a small presentation room to watch the Nintendo Direct as it broadcast live on gamers’ laptop screens around the world.
The usually subdued group occasionally yelped in surprise and delight — such as when Mario drove along walls in Mario Kart World, or when the logo for From Software — makers of the megahit Elden Ring — splashed onto the screen, leading into a trailer for its new game The Duskbloods.
As the presentation came to an end, however, cheers of joy turned to murmurs: it didn’t include a price.
That figure was quietly sent out in news releases minutes after the Direct event — $449 US and a beefy $629 Cdn, noticeably higher than the Switch launch prices back in 2017.
While media and gaming influencers are expected to get limited previews of the Switch 2 in the coming months, it won’t be much longer before others will get their mitts on the console to help decide if it’s worth the price tag.
Members of the public who won a lottery-based ticket system will attend similar Switch 2 Experience events starting in New York this weekend. Its sole Canadian stop is in Toronto from April 25-27.
