The Nintendo Switch 2 was announced today and it immediately made me nostalgic about the launch of the original Switch that came in 2017.
Nintendo revealed the prior machine, the Nintendo Switch, back on October 20, 2016 in a Nintendo Direct. It was from a position of weakness, due to the poor sales of the Nintendo Wii U, which sold only 13.56 million units compared to the prior success of the Nintendo Wii, which sold more than 101.6 million units.
This time, the reveal came in the form of a Nintendo Direct video that last two minutes and 21 seconds, and it had no voiceover. It was released at the groggy moment of 5 a.m. Pacific time today. Some years from now, I think we’ll all remember this moment as something special. It was a moment of high anticipation, no doubt watched around the world due to leaks, and at least we got the official name confirmed: the Nintendo Switch 2. But if you were looking for a lot more, it’s a bit of a letdown as you’ll have to wait until the next reveal in a fairly long and slow marketing striptease.
Back in 2017, the overall game console industry was in a good state. The Sony PlayStation 4 was selling strong and Microsoft was struggling to chase it with the Xbox One. Nintendo’s cartoon world and low-res games looked like it was finally struggling with the race to high-end 3D graphics by the other game consoles.
I’ve been covering the game industry on a daily basis since 1996, and each console launch is always like a cultural moment. I’m nostalgic for the moments of launches like the Nintendo GameCube, the original Xbox, the PlayStation 2 and just about every console introduced since. I miss those days when the reveals happened at live events like E3 and the sales were heralded by midnight launches at stores.
The big games for the Switch launch included 1-2-Switch, a bunch of mini games; The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild; Just Dance 2017; Skylanders: Imaginators; Super Bomberman 3; I am Setsuna; Snipperclips; Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove; Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment; and Fast RMX. The Zelda title was the most memorable, while the 1-2-Switch had cute games like Quick Draw that showed off the Switch’s uniqueness with the motion-detecting gunfight game.
The Switch launched officially on March 3, 2017, and it was a big hit. The Switch was aimed at a wide demographic of players through multiple modes of use on both the TV and on the run. It became Nintendo’s best-selling game console with more than 146 million units sold and 1.3 billion games to date.
Nobody needed to write anything about how weak the game industry was. Fast forward to now. Matthew Ball, CEO of Epyllion and industry seer, dropped a 220-page slide deck that explained why the game industry slowed down in the past 2.5 years and companies struggled with 34,000 layoffs among game companies.
Venture investment is down, mobile gaming growth has stalled, the pandemic boom has fizzled, and the industry has shrunk at a time when some other industries are still growing. For this year, it may be up to the Switch 2 and Grand Theft Auto VI to rescue game sales.
Last time around, Nintendo had Zelda and now it’s going to have Mario Kart game, including as many as 24 players in a race. The next bit of news is coming in a Nintendo Direct show on April 2.
Nintendo said it will have a Switch 2 public hands-on tour in North America:
- New York, April 4-6, 2025
- Los Angeles, April 11-13, 2025
- Dallas, April 25-27, 2025
- Toronto, April 25-27, 2025
Ball said in his deck so far that the Switch sales benefited Nintendo mostly. Switch users buy 25% to 33% fewer games than PlayStation/Xbox owners, and over half of sales are Nintendo’s games versus 10% on PS/Xbox. It’s dominated by sales of titles like Mario Kart 8 and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023).
The Switch’s sales are not from net new players, but from the cannibalization of living room and handheld console sales. Both the PlayStation and Xbox Series X/S sales are down after 49 months of sales. The Switch 2 will have to sell a lot to make up for those problems.
Now Nintendo will have to convince us if there’s enough new here. For the Switch 2 to win, it will have to contend with the SteamDeck, which, as a kind of PC, has helped the PC gain market share in recent years on the consoles. And Steam’s largest player base in now in Asia and in China in particular, Ball said.
One of the challenges is a flood in the market of new games. Steam now introduces as many new games in a year as the entire lifetime of a Nintendo console.
Nintendo left a lot of questions open, as it didn’t disclose any specs. It showed off how the Nintendo Joy-Con controllers can now be attached magnetically to the sides of the console, which is hybrid TV and handheld again. It also showed a slightly bigger screen and a stronger stand. It’s coming sometime in 2025, probably in the fall. Hopefully we’ll find out more about the price and timing at the next event.
As noted earlier, I’m very interested to know if the specs for the Switch 2 will make cross-platform game development harder or easier. The hardware for the Switch 2 will likely be similar in capability to the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and the SteamDeck. That means companies will not have to create totally separate versions of a game to run a title on the Switch 2.
I would not be surprised if the Switch 2 is another smash hit. But we’ll find out in the coming months as the titles get reveal and the uniqueness of the Switch 2 is explained.
Meanwhile, I’m thinking nostalgically back to the fun days of 2016 and 2017 when the last machine came out.
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