As the onslaught of Switch 2 leaks continues, and most especially the very convincing appearance of what are likely to be the new console’s Joy-Cons, a weird sense hit me: I’m a bit disappointed. I love the Switch, I think it’s a wonderful piece of tech, and I would really love to have an upgraded version of it that’s capable of running more powerful games, and perhaps even running its own store software. But at the same time I realize, if that’s what we’re getting, it also feels like a big anticlimax.
One of the things Nintendo has been so reliable for is bizarre innovation. For generations, it’s been utterly impossible to guess what the company might create next, given the complete surprises of, say, a two-screen clamshell touch-screen portable gaming device, or a gesture-led under-TV console that shines best when the whole family is prancing around together. Even the failed Wii U that the Switch replaced was a ludicrous combination of console and a giant handheld screen as a controller. The Switch was just as imaginative, a handheld and dockable console, with detachable controllers, in wild defiance of the tech-first, ever-larger boxes sold by rivals.
Even when Nintendo was creating iterative updates for its most successful products, like the GBA SP follow-up to the Game Boy Advance, or the DSi XL evolution of the original Nintendo DS, it seemed to be doing something else at the same time. Between the DS and the DSi we also got the Wii! The GameCube came out the same year as the Game Boy Advance! But, given the extraordinary scrutiny being put on every patent and parts manufacturer Nintendo is attached to, it seems vanishingly unlikely that there’s some secret second project being hidden behind the noise of the as-yet unnamed second Switch.
And the Switch 2? It’s another Switch. The controllers look likely to slot in magnetically, rather than slide in on those tracks that only match up the third time you try, and the screen is very likely to be bigger, all running on far more powerful chips. But…given it’s backward compatible, given it’s an iteration of the same format with improved tech, I find it hard to think of it as anything more than the equivalent of a souped-up Switch XL.
As I say, I want a Switch XL. If that were announced, independent of anything else, I’d be first to pre-order. I bought the Switch OLED as soon as I could, and I was delighted to have it. A Switch 2, as it so distressingly seems likely to be called, is a thing I want. But, at the same time, it’s not what I want to want. I want to be on the timeline where Nintendo says, “Sure, here’s the Switch 2,” but then pulls back the curtain on what else it’s cooking up. The thing that’s so wild, so peculiar, that even my silliest suggestions feel feasible. It’s a wearable piece of tech that uses holograms, or a bizarre twist on AR where the flagship Mario game uses our house furniture for platforms.
Just making a better Switch is so safe, so ordinary, so utterly un-Nintendo. Can you imagine any other company in the universe having the phenomenal success of the Nintendo Wii, and responding to that not by making a more powerful version of the same, but a two-screen console so complicated to explain that no one understood what it was for? Sure, that was a terrible idea in hindsight, but it was also the sort of thing I expect from Nintendo, and it’s impossible to understate just how equally crazy the pitch for the Switch seemed at the time, following the Wii U.
I still hold out hope that the Switch 2 will have some surprises. That little lens spotted in the Joy-Cons is something Nintendo will likely use in some really innovative ways, even if other developers never notice it’s there. I often think about one of the most wonderful aspects of the Switch—the all-too underrated Labo. Those cardboard packs, in conjunction with the peculiar controllers, that had you build working pianos, fishing rods for fishing games, and even a remote-controlled bug creature. It used the Joy-Con’s haptics to move around, and the infrared sensor as a tiny camera! That was bloody incredible! That was astoundingly imaginative, and I have high hopes that Nintendo has similarly inventive plans for using the new Joy-Cons’ tech. I like to imagine they’ll have pushed it all a little harder to third-party developers this time, so we can see some of the wonderful madness that appeared in the first few months of the Nintendo DS.
But, you know, I’m still a bit sad. It could have been something bonkers! It could have been something capable of running Switch games like the 3DS could run DS games. But if all the rumors and leaks are true, there’s no entire new plane of gaming existence being added here, just a Switch that can run prettier games. I’m buying one, for sure. But I will still lament a little the brand new Nintendo console innovation it doesn’t look likely to be.
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