Everything we learned from Nintendo’s ‘deep dive’ into the Switch 2

Sixty minutes – that’s how long Nintendo took on Wednesday afternoon to remind us that no other video game manufacturer creates joy like this one. It was the Nintendo livestream we’ve been waiting for: a deep dive into the new console after so much speculation. Sure, the Switch 2 is the company’s first real hardware sequel – an updated and spruced-up version of its predecessor rather than a radical new piece of kit. But the updates are the intriguing part.

Naturally, we’re getting a larger (7.9-inch, to be precise) screen that displays in full HD at 1080p; but we’re also getting re-thought Joy-Con controllers that now click to the console via strong magnets rather than those fiddly sliders we all put on the wrong way. The buttons are larger, too, so adults will be able to play Mario Kart with some semblance of skill. But the main new feature for the controllers is a new rollerball that enables each one to operate as a mouse. This will allow for new point-and-click features and some interesting control options. I like that they showed this off with a wheelchair basketball game, where you slide the controllers a long a surface to mimic pushing the wheels.

The Nintendo Switch 2.

The new Mario Kart game, Mario Kart World, looks rather nice. Perhaps taking inspiration from the likes of Forza Horizon and Test Drive Unlimited, it offers an open world to drive around, and, as well as circuit races, there will be endurance competitions where you drive from one side of the map to the other. According to the trailer shown during the livestream, 24 drivers can take part in each race, the most in the history of the series. There’s even a free-roam mode that lets you explore wherever you like, and take scenic drives with friends.

“With friends” was definitely the theme of the stream. A new C button on the Joy-Con opens up the GameChat facility, which lets you start a group discussion with friends and family who also own Switch 2 consoles; it even has a video chat option if you also buy the Switch 2 camera. Like a sort of candy-coloured version of Zoom, your pals appear along the bottom of the screen as you play a game and you can all chat, even if you’re playing different things. Several of the trailers shown during the presentation suggested that video footage of your friends would even be incorporated into the game itself. This is where Nintendo always does best: finding new ways for you to embarrass yourself and/or confuse and delight elderly relatives.

Donkey Kong: Bananza on the Switch 2. Photograph: Nintendo

Was this a knockout victory for Nintendo? Well, there were a lot of game announcements, but we didn’t get a big new 3D Mario adventure – although those do sometimes come a little while after launch. Also, fans are already tutting about game prices. While the machine is launching at an acceptable £395.99 (or £429.99 bundled with Mario Kart World), it looks like Mario Kart World will retail for £75. It’s a lot, but then Mario Kart 8 lasted for the entire lifespan of the Switch and most owners got hundreds of hours of entertainment out of it.

The pre-order process, which opens on 8 April, is going to be interesting. Scalpers turned the launches of the Xbox Series X and PS5 into an ugly and expensive drama, with Sony’s machine turning up for sale at $2,000 at one point thanks to limited availability.

Nintendo is good at joy, and this looks like a truly lovely machine. But in an economic climate far from joyful, fans (and their parents) will be watching pre-order and sales figures very closely over the next few long weeks.

What to play

Tough cerebral challenges … Rosewater. Photograph: Grundislav Games

I’ve been a sucker for western adventure games ever since I played Accolade’s classic Law of the West for the Commodore 64, so it’s lovely to see a newcomer in town. Rosewater is a steam punk-infused point-and-click puzzler following would-be journalist Harley Leger, who arrives in the titular frontier town for a job at the local newspaper but instead gets embroiled in a treasure hunt.

Created by Grundislav Games, it’s a spiritual successor to the studio’s 2018 title Lamplight City, but you can come to this one fresh. It’s filled with interesting characters and tough cerebral challenges, and the crisp pixel art is a rootin’, tootin’ treat. I’m sorry.

Available on: PC, Mac
Estimated playtime: 15-20 hours

What to read

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was originally intended for the Wii U. Photograph: Nintendo

• Perhaps timed to coincide with the Nintendo Switch 2 news, Polygon has a piece about playing Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Wii U, which was the intended platform for the earlier machine before it ended up on the Switch. A lot of people have forgotten it did actually get a Wii-U release, though, and it was … OK? An interesting read, though.

• The new industry site Games Business has an interview with Alain Tascan, the head of Netflix games. He sees Wii-style family TV games as the future for the platform: “For party games, I believe we can give instant fun, using the phone as a very innovative controller. On every phone you have a gyroscope, you have a microphone, you have a speaker, you have a touchscreen … if you give that to creative people, what do they do? Whether you’re alone, or with two people, or 20 people, why not? Can we do something really engaging?” Um, yes you can – as Sony showed several years ago with its PlayLink technology for PlayStation 4. Sadly, that initiative was undersupported, despite having some brilliant games. Maybe Netflix will hang in there a little longer.

• As a fan of weird mid-1990s horror games, I was very pleased to see Christian Donlan writing for Eurogamer about Harlan Ellison’s twisted terror adventure, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. The narrative, about the last survivors of a computer-initiated nuclear war being tortured by their AI-overlords, couldn’t be more timely.

What to click

• Atomfall – everybody’s gone to the reactor | ★★★☆☆

• Roblox gives parents more power over children’s activity on gaming platform

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was the hardest game I ever played – so why am I back? | Dominik Diamond

• These games were indie smash hits – but what happened next?

Question Block

The Tearoom Photograph: Robert Yang

This week I went on Bluesky to ask for questions and this concise inquiry game back from Rainer Sigl:

“Where’s the games counterculture? Does it exist?”

My equally concise answer is: It’s complicated. It depends on how we interpret the term.

My copy of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines counterculture as: “A way of life opposed to that usually considered normal.” That could almost embrace the entire independent game development community, but we can get more specific.

Perhaps the hyper-challenging games of Bennett Foddy are countercultural because they are deliberately not intuitive to control. Or perhaps the Flatgame scene, in which developers create deliberately simple games with limited interactivity, is countercultural because it challenges the ideas that video games need cutting-edge visuals and a strong challenge component.

Maybe Robert Yang’s games such as The Tearoom and Hurt Me Plenty are counter-cultural because they challenge the heteronormative orthodoxy of the mainstream industry. As ever with this subject, I defer to the developer and writer Anna Anthropy, whose brilliant book Rise of the Videogame Zinesters makes a compelling and detailed case for the existence of a global video game counterculture, existing happily for years on the periphery.

If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on [email protected].