The Ringer-Verse - Nintendo Direct and Switch 2 Hands-On Reactions | Button Mash

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Ben and Matt James dissect all the news from Nintendo’s long-awaited full unveiling of the Switch 2, from the announcements on the Nintendo Direct livestream to the in-person, hands-on event that Ben attended. First, they give their verdicts on whether the much-hyped Nintendo Direct fulfilled expectations. Then, they list their likes and dislikes from the day of reveals and demos, in addition to discussing some lingering unknowns. Host: Ben Lindbergh Guest: Matt James Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's similar. Ringer Deputy Art Lead, Matt James. Hello, Matt. I heard it's bigger, man. It is indeed bigger and heavier. I can testify to that and many other things, and I will. And back in January, you and I did a whole pod on a two-minute switch to reveal video. would be generous to call it a reveal video.

It did technically show the Switch 2, which had previously been leaked. That's how Starved we were for Switch 2 information. We have much more to talk about this time. So much more. We're releasing this podcast 24 hours after Wednesday's Momentus Nintendo Direct, not because it took us that long to get our thoughts together, though we do have a lot of thoughts, but because I spent the day in Midtown Manhattan at a Switch 2 event,

for media members. And all of what I saw and did there was embargoed until now. So this episode of ButtonMash will be in a many-way tie for the Internet's first hands-on reaction to the Switch 2. I spent several hours playing the system. I got to try 10 games. I heard from Nintendo hardware designers and executives. I got some swag, including a Switch to Pencil case.

All right. All right. Don't rub it in. Yeah, I know. Now you're envious. the pencil case. But my dog... I don't even like pencils,

but I'm still very jealous. My dog, Grumpkin, is obsessed with this pencil case. We couldn't get it away from her. She was, she like turned feral with the, she's now sleeping on the couch

instead of with my wife or with me eventually, where she eventually will, because she was so worried that we would take away her switch two pencil case. So she's hyped for switch two, apparently.

Yeah. So I'll tell you about all of that. AMA, but to be honest, the extra insight that I got from getting my grubby hands on the thing pales in comparison to what many millions of people learned simultaneously during the direct. So we may not know when GTA 6 is coming out, but the other major mystery of 2025, when we'll switch to arrive, has been solved, which is different from the mystery of when you and I and everyone else who wants to switch to, we'll get one, but one thing at a time. This is the second of what I think could be 12 consecutive weeks with a button mash episode,

an unprecedented streak, a run that will culminate with the release of the Switch 2. We know the launch date. We know the launch lineup. We know the price. We know what the mysterious C button does. We haven't learned everything, but we've learned a lot. And we're going to give you our likes and dislikes, or at least less likes. But big picture, Matt, after all the buildup, all the hype, all the weeks, all the speculation, did the big day live up to your expectations?

Did it exceed them? What was your overall take on the grand unveiling? It came very close to meeting my expectations. I think it was just under. And I'm a little bit mad about a few things. And I'm very happy about some other things. Yeah, I'm with you. It's a mixed reaction. I mean, I'm going to have some level of hype when any new console is finally revealed. And there was a lot to get very excited about. And we will talk about all of that. And there were also some things that we liked less. And I guess also just the fact that there has been such a big buildup to this and it's just been such a long road to the reveal. And so much of this had been leaked, which is sort of an extremely online problem. Many people were not paying as close attention to switch to rumors as we probably were, but a lot of it was out there.

And so that raised expectations and it came down to, okay, what do we not know? What are they going to reveal that we hadn't already had some inkling of? And there were some biggies and there were also some things that perhaps fell short of expectations. So we're about to talk about all of that. But I'm with you. I would say that it's more or less. met expectations, which is saying something because expectations were pretty high, even though they'd been somewhat artificially lowered by the fact that this is a sequel to the Switch.

And so ultimately, it's not beating the allegations that this is a bigger, better Nintendo Switch. It just comes down to whether you think that's a bad thing. More of the same is that disappointing, given that Nintendo Switch is one of the most successful beloved consoles of all time. Yeah, it's hard to, you know, the expectations for a system that's a sequel, they can only get so high. You know, it's a tough balancing effort for Nintendo to deliver something new and exciting, while also not changing things to the point where people get mad, that they're ruining their favorite thing. So it is a delicate balancing act.

I think they've done a pretty good job outside of a few tiny details. Yeah, I would say so. And there were still some surprises, some of which were. pleasant ones. Speaking of which, we have many pleasant surprises and also probably some expected podcast coming for you on the Ringervverse and House of our feeds, which I will quickly tease. Next week on But Mash, we will have South of Midnight and a Minecraft movie reactions.

I will be paying American dollars to see a Minecraft movie in theaters and telling you how that went. And after that, I will be teaming up with our friend Daniel Cheney. chin to do weekly episodes on The Last of Us season two. I've gotten some questions. Would we be butt-mashing about The Last of Us? Yes, we will. So to complement the coverage of the Midnight Boys and House of R, which will also be weekly,

this is just full court press on The Last of Us at both of our feeds and elsewhere on the Ringer podcast network. Here at Butmash, we'll be focusing more heavily on the season as a game adaptation. So we'll be replaying portions of... of the game, the inspired portions of each episode. We'll be talking about how the structure of the TV season seems to be mapping onto the structure of the game or not. So this will be sort of spoilery.

It will be for people who have some sense of what's coming, maybe who have played the games or who don't mind getting a sneak peek and hopefully we'll have some interviews. So it'll be fun. It'll be differentiated. I'm looking forward to it. We will still do some non-the-last-us-centric episodes of ButtonMash as well as gaming events warrant. So you can contact us with your questions and comments and requests at ringaversegaming at gmail.com. Elsewhere on the Ringaverse and House of Our Daredevil Born Again and Yellow jackets are winding down.

Black Mirror, season seven drops next week, sinners, the week after that. And after that, of course, it will be and or season. So there is a lot to anticipate, not just in the realm of the switch to, though there as well. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 US-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business. So visit Spectrum. com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. 100 free events. 6,000 kids, one mission. Clinic Kids is using sports and evidence-based

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ways to start your gut health ritual. Try Activia today. Enjoying Activia twice a day for two weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes gas, floating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. So let's talk some switch to and some of the major takeaways here. And maybe we can do this in the form of the likes and dislikes or pleasant or unpleasant surprises. Where do you want to start us off with this direct? And I will chime in to add additional details from my hands-on experience where I can. Well, let's start at the screen, Ben, because there was a detail that came out today about the screen that we hadn't heard before that was, in my opinion, pretty exciting.

And I'm going to be eager to hear how your experience in person was. So we knew that the screen was going to be 7.9 inches as opposed to 6.2 of the switch 1. What we did not know is that the screen is going to be a 120-hertz VRR screen. Now, that means variable refresh rate. which means this thing can, the screen on the switch two can output up to 120 frames for second, should a game be able to output that many frames. And the VRR, the variable refresh rate,

means that whatever the system is capable of putting out, that's how many frames you'll see. A lot of screens are locked to certain specific numbers, like 30, 40, 60, 120, and kind of adapt what the processor is putting out to fit within those specific tent poles. But the VRR screen experience is a much smoother experience when you have your eyes on it very close.

So that was pretty exciting to me. It's also an HDR screen, which I think we kind of had a sense that it was going to be. So that's high dynamic range. That means your blacks are going to be deeper while your highlights are going to be blowing the screen out. Color, brightness, contrast. Yeah, there is a big to do about this.

not having OLED. And, you know, while it is not OLED, I think that all of the news that came out today about it makes me believe, like, this is the best case scenario of what we could have for a non-OLED screen to the point where I think people might end up actually missing it less than they anticipated. Yeah, I think so. I've been using a switch OLED for a while, and going from that to the switch two was definitely not jarring. It didn't really feel. feel like a step back. Now, I've noted that I'm probably not the normal switch user in the sense that I work from home. I'm often playing the thing docked and using a pro controller.

And just, you know, I actually had to take the system out of the dock before I went to this hands-on event to remind myself, like, what does the switch itself feel like? I had a little hands-on event at home with the original switch just so I could calibrate and compare. So in that sense, it matters a little less to me because I'm playing it docked almost as if it's any other console, just one that has a lot of Nintendo first party games. But it looks really good. And it looks big. It's obviously bigger.

We knew the specs. But when you're holding it up close to your face, it looks really large. It doesn't feel like you're sacrificing that much playing portable. And the three hardware designers who were in the direct were also in person that's. this event and they were asked why LCD and not OLED. And they talked about the advances in LCD technology since the original switch and how, you know, it was a tough decision. But ultimately they felt like LCD could give them what they wanted to do.

And of course, cynically, you could say, well, this way they can just sell us a switch to OLED at some point, which is probably true. But yeah, it definitely didn't feel like we were going backward. in a significant way when I was watching this thing. Yeah, I think that, you know, they could have put an OLED in this. I think if they had put an OLED in it, that would have driven the price up so much if they were trying to, you know, getting a VRR OLED screen at a big size is not cheap. Yeah.

Right now. And with the advances in LCD technology, like they were saying, I'm honestly not, I'm not surprised. But it turned out this way. Yeah. So I think that's a good like mind. I mean, I'll start off with the basic, which is that it comes out June 5th, which I'm probably not breaking news to anyone who's listening to this podcast and says, oh, that's when the Switch 2 comes out. I get my video game news exclusively through Buttmash podcast, but June 5th is soon. So that's exciting.

Again, this was heavily rumored and leaked, and you could kind of forecast that that's when it was coming out. But I enjoy that we don't have that long to wait. Now, we've had a really long time to wait. So the Switch itself has been out for many years, and it's been a slow rollout of the news here. But I always like a video game news drop about something that either is out immediately or will come out soon. And so it's kind of artificial in the sense that they just waited a really long time

to actually tell us the official release date. But it's nice that when they actually did, we don't have that long to wait because, you know, I can remember in my youth. Now, when you're a kid, waiting months just seems like an eternity. It's just interminable. But there were some long waits for consoles where we knew when they were coming out way in advance. And at least at the time, I had a hard time just hold my horses, just holding my breath, waiting for those systems to come out.

So it's nice that we're essentially two months away from at least having the three theoretical possibility of owning Switch 2. So that's good. So we've each done a like, perhaps an obvious like. Do you want to do a dislike or a less like? Yeah, you know I'd love to be a hater on here. All right, let me hate on this camera. Okay.

So one of the early things that they kind of pitched in this direct today was the Nintendo Switch 2 camera. Yeah. Now, within the game chat feature, for which there is a new button on the controller that will bring up game chat, which is very cool. I like game chat. Not to get off on something I like, but the game chat feature, we're doing some game chat right now. That's right.

And it looks like Zoom or Discord or whatever, where you have, you know, whoever's in your party kind of talking at you on there. Now, they want you to use this camera to, it sort of like takes your face and cuts it out from the background and inserts it into the chat as like an overlay. onto your game that you're streaming or even integrating it into some actual games like Mario Party. Now, the camera is

50 bucks, I think. Man, no one's going to use this thing. We've tried this time after time in video games all the way back to the Connect. We had the eye toy. Gamers don't want to be on camera.

People don't want to be on camera. Yeah. Yeah, unless you're actually a streamer, no one wants to like, no one's dying to see their bored friends, like, face while they're focused on playing a video game for the most part. Like, I don't know, people don't like being on camera in Zooms at work. Like, people just aren't going to use this thing.

And I was kind of surprised that they were kind of pushing it so hard at the jump as seemingly like an integral part of the game chat. which I just, I don't think it's going to be, I think some people are going to buy this, and then they're going to realize, oh, none of my friends bought this. And it's kind of weird that it's just my face on the game chat. And everyone else is not on the game chat. And maybe I'll stop using this. Yeah, the videos that they showed of this thing in action did not really resemble my friend group.

And just like how we interact with video games, if we interact with video games. I think there are a lot of cool things about the game chat feature. But yeah, the video specifically, we're all on Zoom too much as it is already. One nice thing is that you don't have to have the switch to camera, which wasn't initially clear to me in the direct and in the presentation that I and the other media members saw. It was sort of buried the news that this will actually be compatible with many or most cameras. So if you have a camera, a webcam with a USBC connection, it will very likely work with Switch. It may not perhaps be quite as well integrated.

But I like that you don't have to buy a dedicated Switch to peripheral to make this work. But also, I have very little desire to make this work. So I think it was nice in the sense that it was the closest that this came to just Nintendo weirdness, which I think is something that we all wanted because it just felt like, wow, this feels very expected and predictable for Nintendo. They're always just doing wacky pivots that no one saw coming, and now it's just Switch 2. And so where's that Nintendo character going to come from?

And one thing that the designers stressed was that it could come from individual games now. It could be ring fit style stuff. It could be some sort of pack-in hardware. So it doesn't have to be at the level of the base system necessarily. but this feels like the most Nintendo thing that we saw that was newly revealed. And I like that they're trying for that, at least. And Nintendo could be very hit or miss with those things. Sometimes it's, wow, what an amazing innovation.

How did no one ever do this before? And sometimes it's, well, we could all list a long list of Nintendo innovations that just kind of died and were never really utilized. So I am curious to see whether this will follow. into that latter category. Like some aspects of it, having your little face in a circle next to your character, your avatar on the screen, that's kind of cool. That's kind of original.

But yeah, how often will we really want to do this? That's an open question. Maybe if you're playing Mario Party or something, but I kind of can't envision myself wanting to do that all that often. I'm with you. All right. What do you hate about it today? What do you give me a dislike?

We got to talk about the pricing, right? We do. The pricing of the system itself, the pricing of some games. There's a reason that information was conspicuously absent from the Nintendo Direct. It's $450, 450 American Smackers. And even... And no one's going to buy that version. Well, yeah.

Because the other one is $500 and comes with the $80-dollar Mario Kart game. Yeah, 80 or 90, if you want a physical concept. copy of it. So $450 is a lot by Nintendo standards, even inflation adjusted. That is more than the switch was significantly more. And yes, it's more powerful hardware. And yes, there has been inflation. And yes, who the hell knows what's going on with tariffs from one week to the next or day to the next? So who knows how much this thing will actually cost when it comes out two months from now. It's hard to predict two hours from now at this point. So it could be, I suppose, that Nintendo is sort of pricing in some of that extra expense there. And we'll see how much of that

gets passed on to consumers and how much Nintendo will absorb. But I think a lot of analysts, you know, this was within the realm of possibility. It wasn't like no one had conceived that it could be $450 bucks. It's not like Atari Jaguar all over again or something. But 400 was sort of a popular forecasted price point. Yeah, I think everybody felt that 400 would have been a real win. Yes, right. It's sort of a victory. Definitely that. It's not, they blew it with this pricing, but it's definitely not, I feel great about this. And with Mario Kart World, breaking the $80 or $90 barrier, and this is not for some fancy special collectors edition gimmicky, get access three days early deal.

This is just the game is 80 bucks or 90 if you want the cartridge. And we don't exactly know the pricing for all the other games or third party games, but you got to figure if that's coming in at 80 or 90, probably 70's going to be standard. So the Donkey Kong game is 70. This thing is going to cost you, assuming, you can even get one. Yeah, and that was kind of a recurring theme throughout the presentation,

this sort of sense that Nintendo is worried and they are coming for your money because they're worried. The price of the system, the price of these games, upgrade fees for Switch 2 versions of games, mandatory Nintendo Switch Online memberships for upgraded versions of some games. It just seemed like around every corner there was a, a fee that was at the upper limits of tolerable for everything that was going on,

which is kind of icky feeling. I'm not gonna lie. And no one else could get away with this, aside from Nintendo. You're talking about a Switch 2, which is fairly comparable now to a Steam Deck OLED in price, right? And the Steam Deck OLED has, that's a real competitor. I think for Switch 2.

Now, Switch 2, you're paying almost as much or as much as a PS5 for essentially hardware that can only really kick out PS4 Pro level graphics, you know? And the rest is just all that Nintendo juice

that they got, you know? Yeah. From a pricing perspective, I think the most egregious thing was the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, which is first-party software that is meant to demonstrate the capabilities of the system, and yet is not free.

Not free. Everyone was watching that being like, oh, this is their Astro bot. That's going to be packaged with it. Yeah, this is Astro's Playroom. It's paid. And we're not telling you how much it is. Right. And the way that they pitched it was just kind of like learn more about the system that

you just purchased. And also there are some mini games that are just kind of tech demos that demonstrate what you can do with this thing, which feels very much like, I mean, it behooves the system. It moves Nintendo to demonstrate the capabilities of the system. Granted, if you're playing the thing, you already own it, presumably. But still, you want people to be five dollars or purchase. Right.

We don't know. But whatever it is, even if it's some nominal fee, that just feels like nickel and dining because this is just a classic, like, pack-in game that demonstrates what the system can do. And yet it won't unless you pay for it, which does feel very, yeah, icky, as you said. And the upcharge for physical games is gross, especially because some of the physical games will be too big to actually fit on a Switch 2 cart. And in those cases, what you're buying is a cart to put in your system that says that you have the right to download it. And then you need to have that cart inside your switch every time to play the game that you downloaded.

And it's not actually even on that cart. So what's the point of having the physical version, aside from like you have a nice box to put on your shelf for $10 more? It just, it's not great. Nintendo was one of these last companies that made you feel like you could still buy a game like you used to for years and put it in your system and play it. And we're kind of losing that this generation, I think. Yeah.

And look, everyone's bemoaning the inevitable inflation of video game software. prices. Everything has got more expensive, and it makes sense that video games would get more expensive, too. I'm not happy about it. I don't know anyone who's happy about it, even if we said, well, we have to pay for the development costs that are also getting more exorbitant, and we want the games to continue to be good, and we don't want all the developers to get laid off, and so we want this to be a sustainable model, and at some point you have to raise your prices, you're not going to be thrilled about it as a consumer. And I will acknowledge that. my privilege in the sense that I get a lot of games for free if I'm playing them for review.

But not from Nintendo. But not early, at least in many cases, occasionally. But I think we had it good for a while. And that's why I wasn't initially just raising a hue and a cry over games going to 70 bucks because, look, they were 60 for a very long time. They were 50 for a very long time. I think inflation of gaming software specifically has not kept pace with inflation across the board, right? Sure.

We were paying prices that weren't that different from what they were until recently when we were kids. Like, it's almost shocking. You know, you go back and you look at like what Nintendo 64 games costs. Like they cost more than games did in subsequent decades. And so in that sense, the proposition in terms of entertainment, per hour, it's still pretty good with gaming generally. Even if you're talking 70 bucks, I mean, compare that to many other forms of entertainment and the hours that you're getting out of many video games at least. And I think it's still a fairly economical proposition.

And yet, of course, we will lament just any price hike. And to go sort of suddenly, it's almost as if, you know, it's like we can only increase game prices in increments of like 10 or 20 bucks. It's sort of strange. It's like, okay, we're used to. Yeah, like we're used to groceries just going up slowly and steadily, and that's not good, but it's a little less of a shock to the system. When they raise prices in gaming, we're talking, you know, console prices going up by 50 bucks, 100 bucks, or game prices going up by 10 bucks or more. And so it hits you all at once, right? It doesn't sneak up on you the way that other forms of inflation do. We've spent the better part of this year,

hoping that Rockstar games doesn't sucker punch us with $100 GTA6 or whatever. And then out of nowhere, Nintendo hits us with the $90 Mario card. I know. They put the permission structure out there for Rockstar to be like, oh, okay, then. All right. I mean, look, if they charge 100 bucks for GTA6, no one will like it, but people will pay up. I mean, that's just the way that it works.

But, yeah, I was looking earlier today at a Toys R Us catalog from the S&S days and seeing them charge like $70 for NBA hang time. In 90s. Yeah, 90s dollars. That's, you know, not even accounting for inflation. So these kind of up jumps aren't necessarily always permanent. But I will say that the interesting wrinkle to it in today's gaming landscape that we didn't have back in the 90s when this kind of thing first happened. is that you kind of risk disenfranchising all of the younger gamers, the kids,

who can't afford $90 Mario card. Yeah, think of the children. Children are our future. Back in our day, right? You mow some more lawns, show some more driveways, and man, you make that high price happen because you gotta have that game. But in today's world, there's a lot of free-to-play options.

There's Minecraft. There's the game you already have that you already play, that you socialize with all your friends on. And maybe there's a little bit of a risk here that a big price escalation in these Nintendo games that typically are at least friendlier towards the younger generation are just going to be completely missed by this entire generation because of these prices.

What else did you like? What else did I like, Ben? I liked the GameShare feature. Yes. Well, if we're staying on hardware for now. Yeah, sure. So the game share feature, for those who don't know, it's pretty cool. For compatible games, the idea is from any Switch 2 that supports, in which you're playing a game that supports this,

you can share your game to another Switch 2 or a Switch 1 that's on the same Wi-Fi next to you or over the Internet online. And without owning that game, the person who has that other system can play along as second player, having only one copy of the game. So it's something that I intend to do. I have a Switch 1. As soon as I get Switch 2, Switch 1 is going to be my wife's Switch 1. And all of a sudden, now we have GameShare so that we can play on our own screens the same game at the same time over the Wi-Fi.

And that is really cool. I like that a lot. Yeah. Split Fiction, which we potted about recently, is a launch title. And you could imagine how something like that could make use of that feature. Who knows how many games will ultimately support that. But I can imagine some pretty cool implementations of that. And yeah, just multiple systems are supported. It's nice that the switch will remain useful for a while, even in this context.

So that was a cool thing. That was another sort of Nintendo-ish spin, a little wrinkle that hadn't really been previously reported. Yeah, all right. You give me a one. What'd you like today? I guess staying in that vein, just generally compatibility, backwards, compatibility specifically. It's good that most Switch games will be supported. Now, you know, there will be some that aren't or they're painstakingly working through the 10,000 switch games to make sure that they're compatible with Switch 2. Most of them are and will be.

And also the controllers, too, if you want to use your Joycons or your Pro Controller. from your original switch with your switch two. That's nice because, again, we're talking about some of the, I don't know if we want to call it price gouging, but it's not cheap. And so that's one way in which it is. At least we can reuse some stuff that we were used to. And I guess it's sort of similar to what we've seen with, say,

PS5, where you do have Switch to specific upgraded versions of some games, but also if you just play Switch games, the base games on Switch 2, you will, in many cases, see some upgrades. So they've been kind of cagey about that. It's kind of a case-by-case basis, but you may see faster loading times and better frame rates and that sort of thing,

just playing your standard Switch games that you already own or can purchase on Switch 2. So it's just a nice little latent, passive upgrade. So I think it's pretty essential that they brought along the vast, install base of Switch. That's why they went with Switch 2 instead of completely reinventing things here. And so it's good that it seems like that'll be a pretty seamless process.

Also transferring your games from your Switch to your Switch to your Save Data, etc. Seems like it's all going to be pretty painless. That's great. And earlier today, they released a hardware compatibility list. And I looked over this document and I was like, okay, here we go. Tell me my Switch Pro controller isn't going to work on this thing. I have to buy a Switch 2 Pro Controller, but no, the Pro Controller from Switch 1, it works.

It doesn't have the C button. But I'm sure you'll be able to jump to the menus. Yeah. Without, you know, you don't need the C button. And, you know, I have those Nintendo Switch Online NES controllers and an S-NES controller for Switch 1. I assume that all of my third party, like 8-bit dough controllers, have a good shot at working on Switch 2,

given how much of the actual first-party Nintendo Switch-1 controllers are going to work on Switch 2. So that was a surprising non-cash grab. Yeah. Although I probably will buy a Switch-2 Pro Controller because it has back paddles and I am a sucker for back-paddles. I will talk about that in a second. Okay. All right. So putting our Hater hats back on, what was another dislike for you?

I didn't have, as far as hardware goes, I think that's the end. of my dislikes. I have sort of a middle ground, sort of hate it, love it, that I'll do in lieu of an outright hate it. And that is the change in the microSD cards that you're using in the system. So switch one, you could use pretty much any old microSD card to expand the storage in your system. And those get up to pretty high capacities for pretty cheap. Switch to you will have to use microSD express cards. and those are a newer technology.

They are much faster. I read that your standard microSD card, the read speed of it at best was about 300-ish megabytes a second, and the express cards, in theory, can get up to 985. And as far as right speed goes, it's like 200 megabytes to 650-ish. So this is like a three-ish times faster.

sort of scenario. And while it sucks that we're going to have to spend more money to get less storage, I think ultimately this is going to be pretty necessary. I think it's kind of smart that they did this because the write and read speeds of standard SD cards as we are entering sort of a new generation of fidelity on the switch, we're probably going to be inadequate, especially because micro-SD cards have a whole range of speeds. I said, you know, 300 megabytes right speed, but a lot of SD cards are way below that. We're talking like 50 megabytes.

So the gamut of what a micro-SD card can be is really wide, and it can be very poor. So I think they made a tough but good call here. And hopefully the fact that Switch 2 is adopting the microSD express means that there's going to be an uptick in production and availability and hopefully competition. So maybe prices on those will drop. But yeah, tough call. Good call.

Yeah, I think so too. I don't mind paying a bit more if there's a real upgrade associated with it. That's why we get a new console because we want it to have new capabilities. And if that's essential for that, then fine. And yeah, I think I'm kind of in a middle ground just generally with the specs. Now, we don't have all the nitty-gritty, and the developers were asked about this at the event and basically punted to Nvidia who designed the chip for this thing and said,

our partners at Nvidia will reveal that because we just like to focus on games and what you can do with the system. And maybe that's because ultimately the specs will not be super impressive compared to the state of the art elsewhere. And so maybe that would lead to people dunking on the switch. And Nintendo just thinks, well, we can get more out of those specs than anyone expects. And they certainly do have a track record of doing that.

But based on what we know, just the capabilities, I would say they're good enough. And it's kind of like we're grading on a curve here just because the Switch is so old and underpowered compared to the current generation of consoles that just adding support for things that the other consoles now have had for years feels like this big win, this big game. And it is for Nintendo. And so just the idea that, okay, it supports, as you said, 120 frames per second at 1080P, or 60 frames per second at 4K. Docked.

Not every game will support that necessarily, but the hardware does. 256 gigs of built-in internal storage up from 32 or 64. A lot of little things like that where, okay, like it's not mind-blowing. These are things that you would have wanted to have in a Switch Pro if we had ever gotten one. But at least we got them.

And that coupled with DLSS, like the upresing technology that this will use, there's enough here to think that this thing isn't going to be instantly obsolete, that it's going to come out and we're immediately going to be demanding a Switch 2 Pro. I mean, probably people will be. But it won't be just like, okay, the planned obsolescence here, it's like we've waited eight years or however long and it will instantly feel super underpowered. It's not going to keep pace with a PS5 Pro, but it still feels like a large leap relative to what we've had.

And I guess you could say that about a lot of things. I mean, game chat, right? It's like revolutionary. You can have native chat on a game console if you've only been in Nintendo ecosystem. Delete the app from my phone. Right. The fact that you had to use an app to do that on Switch, it's just sort of silly how backwards Nintendo has been in so many respects, especially when it comes to online integration.

So, you know, it's like welcome to 2012, right? I don't even know when this would have been, you know, like, impressive. But, okay, it's good that you can finally do those things that Nintendo was deficient at. It's not necessarily like an advantage over the rivals, the competitors, but it's at least making up for what was a glaring disadvantage. I sense that there is a little bit of like a disconnect and expectations of what the system is going to be able to output in some circles. Like, like cyberpunk, right? It's coming Switch 2.

That's cool. I played it. It's not going to look like it does on PS5. It's going to look like it does on a Steam deck with all of the settings at low. You know? And people keep talking. I keep hearing like, oh, maybe like this upcoming Doom the Dark Ages is going to launch on Switch 2. And I'm like, I don't see how that's possible.

I don't know. It seems like there may be people expecting this to have, they see how good, Metroid Prime 4 looks. And they just think, is this kind of near PS5? And I don't think it is going to be. I think it's going to be closer to PS4 Pro, if not way closer

to PS4 Pro. Yeah, they did some great things with Switch ports of Doom Eternal. Those things looked better than they had any right to, but 720P 30 frames per second. So you kind of have to just lower your expectations. You could get Doom the Dark Ages. Are you going to want to? I mean, they put Mortal Kombat on Switch 1.

Well, that was maybe a mistake, but they did do that. It's like, yeah, you can get Doom to run on a refrigerator or whatever, but will you want to play it there? The original Doom, that is, I think Switch 2 will be better than running it on a refrigerator. I guess another hardware dislike that I had, the thing is pretty hefty. And this is one area where I can weigh in having held it. Nice. It's heavy. It's not thicker.

It's the same thickness, which is good because it's bigger, bigger screen. But it does feel not super portable, I would say, at least in my mind. I mean, the thing is like one big. Yeah, it's big. It's like, I mean, it's pluses and minuses and it's tradeoffs. And yeah, you get a big screen. And so it doesn't feel portable in that sense, but also it doesn't feel portable in the sense that carrying this thing around, like, it's 1.2 pounds with the joycons attached. So it's like 34% heavier

than a standard switch, 27% heavier than a switch OLED. You can feel that difference, like, holding it up and playing for extended stretches. And, you know, I work out. Like, I'm not, I'm going to have the spindly gaming arms here. I'm just saying, like, you know, it will weigh you down after a while. Now, did you get a chance at the event to lie down? in a bed and accidentally drop it on your face? They did not provide beds at this event, so it didn't really simulate the real-life use, unfortunately. No toilets that you could, because the things were,

I mean, they had toilets, you know, would have been inhumane not to put that many people. But, yeah, the switches were tethered, so you couldn't take it just onto the toilet just to simulate that real-life experience. So I have to picture that. But, yeah, it doesn't matter that much for me because I'm going to be using it docks most of the time,

but if you are a portable switch player, if you're taking it on your commute or wherever, it's pretty hefty, you know? It's obviously not something you're going to slip in your pocket to begin with, but even holding it, unless you're holding it in your lap or something, if you're balancing on something,

you're resting it on something, or you're using the frame, the stand, which is improved over the switch stand. So those things will mitigate this somewhat. But if you are actually holding it at arm's length, your arms are going to get tired eventually. So be aware of that.

And I guess, yeah, that's more or less my gripes with the hardware and also my likes with the hardware. I'll talk about the controllers in a second. The battery life is a concern for some people. And the designers danced around that a bit at the event. And I think probably fairly just because it is really variable how you're going to be using this thing. And I think it's probably more variable than the switch was.

You know, if you're using game chat, if you're using video, there are ways that you're going to run down the battery more, obviously, and, you know, bigger screen and more processing power. It has a stronger battery, but it also has higher power demand. So it definitely doesn't seem like you're going to get gains from a battery life perspective, like in real world conditions. And it's possible that it could actually be a bit of a step back. We'll just have to see how it plays in real life, obviously. I couldn't really test that in the setup they gave us. But yeah, if you're expecting or hoping for longer battery life to go along with the better hardware, you're probably not going to get that or at least we can't count on that.

All right. I had a feeling. Yeah. What else did you like? And if you want to transition to software, we can do that. We can go to software. But first, there's something about hardware that I don't know if I like or not like yet. Okay.

Because I want to hear your experience about it. Yeah. Talk to me about. mouse mode. Yes. Okay. So I have a lot of thoughts on this. Some positive, some negative. So it is, as we expected, as was rumored, as we speculated on our previous pods, the joycons are also mice. You can use them as mice, mouses. How do you pluralize that? I don't know, but you can turn them on their side, hold them like a mouse, and you can use them both as a mouse simultaneously. So that's kind of cool.

It opens up some possible applications that you might not even get standards on a gaming PC. Like we could get some Nintendo wonkiness and weirdness here. And there were some demonstrations of that that I got to play. I would say that the applications will be somewhat limited just by the context of console gaming. Technically, like usually if you're playing a console, you're not in the most mouse-friendly environment. Right. Because if you wanted to use a mouse, you would be doing that at your desktop or your laptop or whatever, and you would be at a desk. And one of the nice things about playing a console is that you are freed from your desk and you can just lie on the couch or lie on your

bed or take it to the toilet, as we just discussed. And so if you're doing all those things, then even if you technically can use a joycon as a mouse, will you want to? I will say that it works. Now, in the setup that we're going to, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to be. And so, you're we had at this event. It was like a flat table with a perfect rolling surface. It's not a roller. It's digital, obviously. But the tracking felt good. And you can use it without a table. So they were pretty specific about that. And I did try that. If you want to run it on your pants, you can do that. And, you know, I didn't get to try it on a wide variety. I got to bulk up. Yeah. I got to get these thighs bigger. Yes. Or prime floor comes out. Right. I didn't get to try it on a wide

variety of surfaces, but if you can use it on pants, at least the jeans that I was wearing, it worked fine. You know, you're kind of like limited in how comfortable that feels, I guess. And so, for instance, with Metroid Prime, which was one of the games I got to play Metroid Prime 4, and you can switch control schemes in a pretty impressive way. So you can just use it sort of the standard, you know, first-person shooter controls, and you can just use the joysticks, and you don't have to worry about the fact that, yeah, it can be a mouse. But if you want to use it as a mouse, you can do that,

and you don't have to go into a menu and switch a setting or something, you just flip the joycon on its side, and you start rolling the thing, and suddenly, you know, you can control Samus with your left joycon with that joystick, and then control where Samus is looking with the mouse control, with the other joycon. And that's really cool.

It is really cool. And, you know, there's a built-in gyroscope and accelerometer and everything in there. So it works well. And also, yeah, there are, you know, motion controls too. So, like, if you lock onto a target in that game, you can then just gesture with the joycon to aim if you want to. Now, I felt myself not really wanting to is the thing. After trying it initially, I was like, you know, I don't know that this is better. like I might just default to the standard controls.

And some games might make you go into the menu and change the setting. Like they're giving the option to the developer, how they want to handle that. Whether it's just on the fly, you can switch control schemes or you actually have to change the setting. But you can do it. And that is a pretty cool capability. And, you know, they had SIV 7 set up there and like, you can do it. You know, I don't know that you will want to in that many contexts, but you can.

And it does enable. a lot of different types of gameplay that most consoles aren't going to support or aren't going to support natively at least. Yeah, well, I think really this is going to open up a whole new world of indie games on the system, which is first-person shooters and indie games that we wouldn't otherwise have on console

are the two reasons that I'm most excited about mouse mode. And I could see myself using mouse mode for Metroid Prime 4. I'm pretty excited to try it. And I also got to play Dragon Drive, which is maybe the best illustration of how you can use the mouse mode on the Switch to. No, it is. It is also not a RuPaul's Drag Race Cart racer. No, sorry to disappoint people. But it is essentially wheelchair basketball.

That is what it is. And it's three on three. And you use the mouse controls basically as each of your arms to spin the wheels. and it's pretty fun, I would say. It's kind of Rocket League-esque, a little less... Would you pay $80 or $90 for it? No. Okay.

But I would pay some amount of money for it. It's kind of like the arms of the Switch to, you know, what Arms was the Switch to. It's that to switch to. So it is a little bit like, okay, this is tech demo-y, gimmicky, like, this is how you use it. But it was pretty fun. And, you know, you can use the JoyCon. you can use the controller motion style to shoot the ball. So it's basketball, you're like on this little court and you're wheeling around.

Yeah, I know basketball. Yeah, good. Okay. I don't know if to explain that. But you can sort of, you know, stop on a dime and you can just wheel around very quickly. And it was, you know, kind of fun, kind of frenetic. The other thing I will say, though, is that like this was also pretty strenuous as like, being in an actual conveyance like this is,

maybe not that much. But like, you know, they gave us these tables and you're rolling the joycons and like you have to do it kind of fast in these like long strokes sort of to get your speed up. You're not skipping arm day, are you, Ben? I am not.

You got all this leg real estate for the house. I know. It feels like I'm... You can't hold the switch. You can't use... I know. I am physically capable of performing these motions, but it was a little bit tiring.

after a while when you're like getting up to speed and you know i guess that's good like nintendo likes uh having games that double as exercise essentially but just be prepared for you know you're going to be getting a workout in when you're lugging the switch two around and also playing drag and drive so great i'll make sure there's a nintendo switch camera on my face while i'm struggling to yeah and i guess you know while we're on hardware i'll i'll just say like the actual system itself obviously it feels high quality and everything. It doesn't feel flimsy. The magnets, how do they work?

They work pretty well, actually. Is there a risk of getting your finger caught in there? I don't think so. No. Maybe I'm just incredibly well-coordinated, but no, I don't think there's a real risk of that. And it looks maybe a little flimsier than it feels. It doesn't feel flimsy at all. Does it feel more together than a switch one when it's connected via rails?

Because you know, you can take a switch one and kind of wiggle it and it kind of gives a little maybe squeaks. There's a little bit of give, I think, by design with the little release latch thing, just because they don't want to put too much pressure on that. I guess that would be the point of failure potentially. But when the joycons are attached to the side magnetically, it feels really solid. Like there's no wobble there. And this is something they had hoped to do for the original switch. And so they've been, you know, dreaming on this for years. And it just felt too loose and wobbly when they previously tried it.

And now they nailed it. And it is like, it is firmly attached. Like you can't just yank the things off there. You've got to do the release latch. And it does not at all feel like it could just fall off. And there is sort of a satisfying click. So there's no wonder about, oh, did I actually reattach these things properly? No, you did.

So that seems to work quite well. And I'll also say that as a pro-controller person, the new pro-controller feels nice. And you mentioned the paddle buttons on the back, which are assignable, programmable, basically. The one downside of that is that, like, your fingers do kind of make contact with them inadvertently. And so that's not a problem if you're not assigning them to anything as I wasn't. And so, you know, clicking them wasn't doing anything. I mean, I think that's a common complaint with back paddles. If you're not like a typical back paddle user,

they are supposed to be under your fingers. Yes, they are. They weren't within reach. Some people are just not going to like that at all. If you're not using them, then it feels like you're using them when you aren't. And so that would be a fit disconcerting. It does have an audio jack in it as well.

It does have an audio jack, which is nice, yes. And this applies to the pro controller and also to the system itself. The joysticks are the smoothest joystick. sticks that I can remember feeling. Like, it is no friction. Like, there's no resistance. There was no strain playing these things. I don't have big hands, and these fit my hands.

Really a lot about your physical condition in this episode. My various deficiencies. But, no, this was not at all a problem for me gripping this thing. You know, there was, like, some systems like the joysticks are kind of high, and it feels awkward with your thumb position. You can grind against the sides. Yeah, like you feel like you're going to get blisters on your fingers, Ringo Star-style, if you're playing in a marathon session.

And I did not feel that at all. It was almost like, is there not enough resistance? Like, it felt so smooth. I was almost unaccustomed to just how easy it was to manipulate those joystick. So it feels and looks like a high-quality build overall. I'm going to buy it. Yeah. Did they have the GameCube version there?

I did not get to, wait, did I? Yes, I did. I did get to feel that, yeah, because I played the Wind Waker at Long Last and played the GameCube. Not exactly the version we wanted, but we got it. It took a while, but here it is. The GameCube version and not the HD version. It felt like a GameCube controller with a C button, which is what you want.

I mean, that's a... Did it feel like it had some heft to it, or did it feel kind of cheap and hollow? No, it felt good. Yeah, it felt good. It felt like there was the right amount of resistance and everything. I mean, that's one of my favorite controllers ever probably. So you can't screw that one of. You can if it feels cheaper if you're mad cats or someone.

But yeah, I don't know. Shots, I know. But no, I think it felt good. It felt like it should. It felt like home. All right. I have one more hardware question. Oh, yeah, please.

Super quickly. The new dock has active cooling in it. Yeah. Did you have, it's probably a busy room. Yeah. Could you get a sense of if that was noisy at all? No. So, no, not really, because the system itself, like they had some out for display that were not powered on,

just in case you wanted to, you know, take a picture of yourself with it, get some selfies, get some social clout. But the systems itself, when we were playing, were. largely locked away or behind some enclosure. So, you know, I could not tell. I mean, it's good that it has ventilation, that it has a fan just for performance-related reasons. One would hope, but one would also hope that one would not be able to detect that there's a fan from the noise.

So, yeah, I can't tell you one way or another. But I figured I'd ask. All right. Well, that's all I got on hardware. What do you like about the software we saw? Well, man, we saw Silk Song for a second, huh? Yeah, just for a second. You didn't get to play that.

Confirmed, 2025. Definitely coming this year. They didn't let you play a Hollow Night Silk Song. No, I did that. But a surprise. I'm sure it's still happening. I'll tell you what I got to. I got to play 10 games.

Tell me what you got to play. Yeah, I got to play Mario Kart Worlds. I got to play Metroid Prime 4 in multiple incarnations in 120 frames per second and also in 4K. I got to play Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, the Switch to Upgraded Editions. Also, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, same deal. And Hades 2. And also Wind Waker, as I just mentioned, Dragon Drive, Cyberpunk 2077, and the excellently named

Donkey Kong Bonanza. Yes. What a name. All time. A great, great, great name. Yeah. All right. Tell me about Donkey Kong Bonanza.

That looks fun. Yeah. So I would say that I'm a big fan of destructible environments, and so I like that these appear to be very destructible. However, I'm concerned about the camera. Maybe because of the destructability, a lot of the time, it felt like I was just kind of bashing me way forward without knowing where I was going exactly or, you know, like the camera couldn't keep up with the fact that I was essentially tunneling through the level architecture here. And this was good. I mean, it brought me back to like the Red Faction Days. I actually, I wrote a feature for the Ringer last year about how like the good old days of destructible environments are they coming back again because that sort of receded for a while.

And I always like that. I always think that's a great perk of a video game. And so I like that they're bringing that back here. And it was fun, you know, but I have some concerns, I guess, just about the repetitiveness about it. you know, will that core gimmick of, yeah, you can just kind of tunnel your way and burrow and smash and punch through everything with some constraints. It wasn't like you could, you know, just sink into the earth indefinitely. There were some surfaces that even D.K. couldn't punch his way through. I like the gimmick, though. I'm just, yeah, kind of concerned about the perspective because I felt at

times like I couldn't really see where I was going. Interesting. Yeah. It's been a while since we've had the, you know, like a new 3D Donkey Kong. It has. The destructible nature of the world was pretty exciting. Yeah. Hopefully, you know, obviously there's still some time before that comes out. And I don't know how long you had on it, but it seemed like there was some variety in level design from the trailer at least.

Yeah, I got to play two levels, one of which was more confined and one of which was more open world. And even in the open world, you can just kind of bash through everything, which was, with which was nice, but the camera was more of a problem in the more constrained settings. But yeah, it has been a while since I know a lot of people were thinking maybe we'd get a new 2D Donkey Kong or a Donkey Kong country and at some point we will. Well, yeah, we'll get to that in a second. But yeah, it's been a while since we got a three. And it's very much like a collectathon in classic DK fashion where you're just, you know,

hoovering up bananas left and right and sure. gold coins and you know it's just kind of a constant like you know lights are digging and sounds are ringing and uh yeah if you like that sort of thing that will that will give you the stimulation that you're craving so this is really the first you know first party switch to 3d game that that's out there did this feel like a definitive did you playing it did you feel like oh this is definitely not switch one or was it still sort of within the threshold of like this could maybe pass for like a really well executed,

fine-tuned Switch 1 game. It definitely felt like something that would bring the original switch to its knees. Yeah. Less so just because of the visuals or the resolution than just because of the disruptability

and the interactivity of the world. I'm pretty sure that would not be manageable on the original switch. But yeah, the games I played... How have you played Fortnite? You should see the things these kids build, Ben. The games I play, they didn't like pop off the screen in terms of like, wow, I've never seen graphics like this before because again, it's still Switch 2. And so it's not going to be absolute bleeding edge.

So it felt more like in terms of the world's design and how many characters and how busy is it and how much stuff is going on more so than like, you know, the revolution, the resolution, like the pixels, the polygons. it wasn't like breathtaking in that sense so much as it was. It was like, oh, this doesn't, this isn't chugging like crap. Switch would be like single digits frame rate trying to run this thing. Switch that can't even handle echoes of wisdom. Exactly. So speaking of which, tell me about the Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom upgrades, did those do anything aside from kick up the frame rate?

And even if not, how is that experience? They did not, as far as I could tell. Some of these upgraded Switch 2 games will have. new content like Kirby does and Mario Party does. But the Zelda games from what they said, and at least from what I played, appear to be the same games. Well, I guess there's the notes feature maybe in Tears of the Kingdom that will

help guide you to certain things that you're looking for. But really, it's the same game, but it plays better. And it certainly does look a lot better. I mean, it's noticeably different. There was no slowdown whatsoever. I tried to go to some forested areas, you know, some of the places that on the switch it really would start chugging and

there was no slowdown. Everything seemed to be smooth like switching weapons, menus, text, like everything was pretty instantaneous. And I tried both those games. Like, it's probably not enough for me that I will want to replay them if I wouldn't have wanted

to replay them anyway. It's not like an entirely new experience. I don't think. If you haven't played those games before, then this will certainly be the ideal and preferred way to play them. But yeah, it looked better, higher resolution, faster frame rates, probably better draw distance, you know, just kind of like getting to the edge of the plateau and Breath of the Wild and looking out or, you know, tears of the kingdom falling down from the sky. Like, it was, it was noticeably improved. And those were some of the games that really tested the switch hardware. So it's nice to see. But it's probably not enough

you know, until I'm like just kind of Jonesing to play those games again anyway, it's probably not something that I would say, ah, I'm starting over again. Right. Okay, so you also got to play the new Mario Kart. Yes, MarioCart world. And this excited me.

And I didn't expect to be so excited coming into today because it to me looked like, okay, if here's a new Mario cart, we've had Mario Kart. Seems like there's more cards on the road. Yep, cool. So based on the trailer today, the vibe I'm getting is,

Let's make Forza Horizon, the Mario Kart version. We have an open world. We have races within that world. It seems like you can go off the course and go explore, do your own thing, find things. Is that description of sort of like a Forsa horizonification of Mario Kart? Does that feel accurate to what you experienced today? Very much so. Yes, it's that.

It's open world. That's cool. It's pretty great. Yeah, this was going to be my number one or number two like. on the software level because on the one hand, we knew that there was going to be a new Mario Kart just because it's been forever and also because they showed it

when we saw that brief reveal video. So that wasn't a surprise, but the nature of it is, and it was a very pleasant surprise. This thing rules, based on my time with it, at least. It feels so much bigger in terms of the courses because they have to be,

because you have 24 characters in this thing. Like, it's a lot. Like, it feels more hectic, more chaotic, if that's what you want from Mario Kart. Like, some of these races, I mean, I was going from first to worst, like multiple times in a race, just because there's so much going on

and so many items being used and so many people who could potentially run you over. You don't have to play with the maximum number of characters, obviously. But the fact that you can was pretty sweet. And yeah, like, there's a rolling start, you know, instead of just being at the stop with the stop sign and the three, two, one and everything. It's like you're rolling into the race because you can drive

between the courses. It's just like all part of this big open world. And you can go from one place to the next. And free roam is pretty great too. I kind of wonder how this will affect like the strategy and the secrets because that's a big part of Mario Kart is like knowing where to take that turn. Right. and only having a limited amount of time and opportunity to learn those secrets. Whereas now in free room, you can really learn, I guess,

all the courses like the back of your hand and take your time. But it's kind of a nice just like hangout opportunity, just like co-op, just drive around this world. And there's also this mode called Knockout Tour, which I played a bunch of, which is just like, you know, it's almost like a battle royale kind of.

I mean, not really. You could also have a battle. probably within Mario Kart World, but it's like a race, but you're playing with the maximum number of people and you have to meet certain thresholds. And so like, you know, you start with 24 racers and you have to be one of the top 20 to survive once you get to a certain checkpoint. And then you have to be one of the top 16 or 12 or 10 or 8 or whatever. And it counts down progressively so that at the end you have a final four or a final two and you're just kind of racing against your top competitors.

And that was pretty exciting. Granted, it was in this setting where you had a bunch of paid hype people by Nintendo who were playing next to you and yelling and screaming, everything. So again, not really the real world situation that a lot of us will be in. I'm not going to stop screaming personally.

Yeah, I'm sure. When we're video chatting while we play, I'll be able to see your screaming face. Yeah. But that mode is pretty great. So it does feel like it's been a long time since the last Mario Kart, and that thing was a huge hit and continues to sell well,

but they have not just done the kind of cursory upgrade. This feels like a pretty evolutionary leap for this franchise. That's really exciting. So when you're in free roam mode, is the only thing to do kind of drive around and discover new races? Are there like secrets to discover? Are there side missions? Do you find items or power-ups?

What kind of things do you encounter? in that free room mode. In my time doing it at least, yeah, it wasn't like you could kind of level up your character or have some kind of progression or side quest or something. It did feel like just sort of exploring and tooling around and, you know, like getting to see the nooks and crannies of these worlds that you probably wouldn't have time to appreciate while you're racing through them and some of the Nintendo quirks and character and comedy and you can learn where the items are and everything. but I didn't get the sense. I mean, there may very well be unlockables

or something that I just didn't get to see in my time with it, but it did feel just kind of like a laid-back cruising-around mode more than anything. Still fun. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Maybe there's some stuff hidden in there later on.

Yeah. And my hope is that this will kind of be the template for other Nintendo franchises that we haven't seen in some time where it's like, again, it's not that we haven't seen racing games like this we have, but we haven't seen the Mario Kart version of that. And I think people were expecting maybe Open World 3D Mario. Again, we'll get to that in a second. We didn't see that.

But this gives me hope that when we do eventually get the Mario reveal, maybe it will be something in that vein. And so maybe there's something to be said for just the fact that because the switch was so underpowered, some of these franchises that we haven't seen a new installment in a while, it'll be like, okay, the Nintendo take. on the thing that we've been playing for the past several years. Kind of the way Breath of the Wild

was when it came out for Switch, where, you know, I mean, that was kind of the spirit of Zelda going back to the beginning. And this was just the first time that they could really bring that fully to life. And it wasn't just like, okay, Nintendo copies open world games.

It was like Nintendo revolutionizes open world games in a lot of ways and then became the template that a lot of other games copied. So, you know, they put their own spin on it. But that's my hope. with the Switch 2 upgrade is that we will finally get to see Nintendo's designers who are very good at what they do get to do their versions of the thing that other people on higher-powered systems have been doing for some time, and hopefully that will feel like a real leap forward.

Yeah. So I wanted to ask you about one game that you didn't get to play today. Yeah. The Dusk of Bloods. Oh, yeah. We saw this in the trailer. This is the new from software game. the developer of Eldon Ring, which is also Eldon Ring.

Also on Switch 2. But the Dusk Bloods is a brand new Fram software game that is exclusive to Switch 2. Yeah. People are saying it has Blood-Born vibes. Yes. One of the classics of From Software. Now, I was watching the trailer for this and I was getting pretty excited. I later learned that this has some multiplayer elements to it, potentially like eight players

at a time. and that maybe kind of actually made me less interested in it, finding that it had a multiplayer component, especially because we're getting Eldenring Night Rain this year. Right. I think, you know, the bread and butter of what people love about FromSoft is really a single player experience with a little bit of multiplayer element drizzled in. You didn't get to see anything at that presentation today

that we didn't see in the trailers today about... No, I know nothing about it. that you don't know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But that was, that was a coup for Switch 2 to get a from software exclusive.

If Mario Kart World wasn't my number one software reveal, it was the From Software software that we saw in the direct. Just, you know, people had figured that maybe we would be getting Eldon Ring, but to see that in the direct. And then an exclusive new franchise, you're right. If it does feel like maybe like a blood-borne re-skinned, that has the night rain treatment, then maybe that'll feel a little less cool and special than if it were just like a full-fledged, just new giant game with the in-depth single-player

experience that you couldn't get anywhere else but Switch 2. That would be a huge sort of system seller. So it remains to be seen, and this is coming out next year, right? But I did not expect to see that in this presentation. No, I don't think anybody really did. Yeah, that was probably the biggest thing that was just out of left field. Like, wow, okay. It's funny, like, going to these gaming events because I cover a number of different things.

Like, I'm not just a games writer reporter. I, you know, report on sports and stuff. And it's interesting, like, the different vibes at events, like, among the attendees. And I don't know whether that's because there's a blend of, like, serious journalists, quote, unquote, and influencers, kind of. or, you know, hobbyists or people who write for Nintendo-specific publications maybe, but it is interesting, just like in baseball, for instance, which I cover, there's this whole philosophy

of like, no cheering in the press box, right? Like, you have to be impartial, objective at all times. And, you know, on one level, it's silly. Like, we all like sports and baseball. That's probably why we got into this thing. So our inner child is getting excited about stuff we see. But, you know, you don't want to appear partisan, I guess. Whereas at a big gaming event, it's not like that.

So, you know, among the assembled reporters, like, there were a lot of ooze and ahs and cheers. And, you know, I don't want to be like a funny, dutty and stuffy about this. Like, we all like games. Hopefully that's why we cover these things and write about them and play them. But it is a striking contrast. But that is one of the biggest, like, gasps and ooze and oz and oz. because we were watching the direct live with the rest of the world at this event.

And that was, I think, probably the biggest moment of like, oh, shit. There's some people who were just cheering then. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. That's fun experience, I don't know. Yeah. So I would say, okay, so if those are the big likes, I guess here would be my biggest dislike software-wise

and tell me if I'm getting greedy here. I'm mildly disappointed, by at least the first-party aspect of the launch lineup, because as great as Mario Kart World appears to be, that's it from Nintendo, except for Switch 2 Welcome Tour, which, as we've established, is not free. And, you know, then you have DonkeyCom coming along not long after, presumably.

We still don't know the Metroid Prime release date. We don't know that. And, you know, obviously that's not a Switch-2 exclusive, as many people expected that in Pokemon. It is to me if I only play it on. Well, yes, but that in Pokemon will be cross-platform, cross-generation. Sure. And so if you're looking for reasons, Nintendo-specific reasons to upgrade.

Now, Mario Kart World alone may very well be that because the last Mario Kart is like one of the best selling Nintendo games of all time. That's a system seller. From a financial standpoint, it absolutely will meet or exceed expectations. Yes, that's the killer app. But I hear you, though. I think I was just kind of hoping for for one more first party banger. Exactly. Like towards inside the launch window.

It just felt like, you know, no shades. No shade, but it's a bright spotlight for him. Yeah, it is. And so he's no, he's no Zelda. Right. And I wasn't expecting Zelda. Like, I think that might be getting greedy just because it hasn't been long. We were expecting at least a tears.

And, you know, and we got Wind waker. and that's nice. Like, that's another case where it just feels like overdue in the sense that, okay, finally we got Wind Waker. We should have gotten it like many years ago. So yes, I'm hyped. Yes, I'm excited. My wife will finally get to play Wind Waker without like having to jump through a bunch of hoops

and everything and I will enjoy playing it myself or watching her play it. And it holds up and I played it and it felt great and everything. But that was one where like, you know, they've been holding out on us, right? And so to have like the upgraded old Zelda's at launch and then the GameCube support for Switch Online, which is another expense, but it's not an exorbitant one. That was good,

but yeah, I wanted one more thing. One more thing, and really that one thing that we all wanted was 3D Mark. Of like, let's not. Or how about a new Animal Crossing?

Yeah, right? Yeah. That would have been massive. Yeah. And I think, you know, when a new Animal Crossing does eventually come out, I feel like there's been so much advancement in that genre between Star-a-Doo and Fields of Mysteria

and all these other cozy games that I have taken off. I can't wait to see the next Nintendo incarnation of Animal Crossing. I think that's super exciting. And there's, yeah, just one more of these first-party bangers away from feeling like they're, had this thing. Yes. That would have sealed to the launch.

It was like, okay, they nailed it. Right. And, you know, they didn't drop the ball. They didn't fumble or anything. But that really would have taken this over the edge. And I'm sort of surprised, frankly, that we didn't see that because it's been so long. Yeah, we got Kirby Air Riders. Right.

Which is like, Sakurai. I'm not going to complain about that. Yeah, I'm sort of surprised that they're having like multiple racing games going up against each other. But, you know, yeah. I'm not hype for a new high rural warriors as much as I love Zelda. I know. It's not.

I don't think we're at the first of 20 incarnations across several decades of Dragon Drive. Right. So we'll see. Yeah. And so it's not a bad launch lineup. I'm not saying there's no reason to get the thing day one because Mario Kart World alone and then upgraded versions. And then, you know, it was pretty, pretty impressive third-party publisher. support, right?

Like, cyberpunk and hipman and Fortnite and Street Fighter and Split Fiction and Hogwarts Legacy, I guess, if you want that. And Yakas, uh, zero director's cut. Like, you know, I think there have been a lot of publishers out there. Like,

there was pent up demand publishers who wanted to get their software on Nintendo systems, but just couldn't run it on Switch anymore. And so, well, yeah. I thought it was interesting that Final Fantasy 7 remake was a nice, announced because I, and this is again me talking about worrying about the hardware capabilities, I can't imagine how you can get Final Fantasy 7 rebirth, the sequel.

I can't imagine that running on Switch 2. Yeah. It struggles to run on a base PS5 at times. Right. So I don't know. Like remake? Sure, that'll work on there, but rebirth? Yeah. Is that even going to happen?

Right. They didn't confirm rebirth. but presumably that would be to X. They did confirm Bravely default. Yes. Which the Flying Ferry HD remaster was great. Yeah. So a lot of really great games coming out on this thing.

My problem as a loser, I've played most of these. That's the thing. Again, like, you know, your mileage may vary, and we're multi-platform people who have been somewhat spoiled. And so all these games where it's like, oh, finally it's on Switch. Well, for us, that doesn't matter that much. But if you're a Nintendo-only person, then that's huge.

If you've been wanting to play Eldon Ring all this time and now you finally can, well, that's great. It's just, you know, yeah, if you already own other systems and you're looking for a reason to upgrades, then you need something new. You need something exclusive. And there was a little lack of that. But what you were saying, yeah, about, it's kind of like, as I was saying about, okay, we haven't seen some installments of some of these franchises.

so long, there will be big... It's by Star Fox. Give me Star Fox. Yeah, there will be big jumps. And so we're seeing that with... With World. We will probably, yeah, even if Sakra is busy with air riders, hopefully he's past the torch or something. But, you know, as you were just saying with Animal Crossing,

like, there have been a lot of great games in that genre. Let's see what they can do. Can they raise the bar? And similarly, with 3D Mario, where everyone's sort of expecting, okay, Bowser's Fury, which came with Super Mario 3D World, that will be the template for the next Mario. And they will just build on that and it'll be full open world Mario. And I'd be surprised if it isn't and maybe it's just so ambitious that they need even more time. But Odyssey was 2017.

I mean, it's been a long, long time, right? So you've got to figure that that thing's close. Like I tried to fish for more info and I tried to feel out like, okay, if something that people were anticipating wasn't. announced today. We know the whole launch lineup. So, you know, they kind of confirmed that. So it's not as if they're going to like shadow drop 3D Mario on launch day, I don't think. But I asked, you know, does that rule out that it could be coming later this year? Like, could it be holiday season or something? You have to figure there is another shoe that's going to drop for holiday. There's got to be a big game for holiday that we haven't heard about yet. And Pokemon. Yeah, there's got to be something

we don't know about. And, you know, obviously they didn't divulge anything one way or another that neither confirmed nor deny that there could be something else big coming down on pipe. I'm sure you're going to get a Skies of Arcadia sequel, obviously. Let's hope. Yeah. Or at least the original in GameCube on Nintendo's Hitch on-Sitch on-My. They want to stagger the big announcements. I get that. So people are going to be hyped for Switch 2 regardless. And so it's not as if they have to worry about selling out whatever stock that they will have here. So, you know, not showing 3D Mario, they're going to sell out as fast as these things are available. And this way they can get a second wave of coverage and, and euphoria

when they do eventually announce that. It's just if they had really wanted to blow everyone away, given how much we already knew about the system and the fact that it is somewhat iterative relative to previous Nintendo releases, that would have been the way to do it to just, you know, at least show it. It doesn't have to be launch or you don't have to confirm when it's coming. It's a little teaser. Yeah, something.

We all know it's coming. It's not like you're not making a Mario game. You're just like, okay, that was enough Mario for us. We'll draw the line there. 10 second rendered. Yeah, something. And like video and then throw a logo at the end. Yeah, we know you were hoping for this and don't worry.

We're going to release it eventually. So we'll have to settle for 3D Mario being Mario Party and Mario Kart World. The only, I guess, other slight disappointment or surprise for me, and maybe it makes sense, but we didn't really see anything from Microsoft and Sony here.

Yeah, surprising. I was also sort of surprised by that, because they've both said that they'll be supporting Switch 2, and obviously we've seen fewer and fewer exclusives on those systems, especially Xbox, and like, we know that we're going to get hit low on Switch 2,

right? Like people have been forecasting this. Maybe it's just because Nintendo didn't want the official unveiling of their system to be about other companies flagship properties. I think that's it. Yeah. I think you nailed it. They're so defensive of their image and their IP.

I think, you know, let Xbox talk about Switch 2. Like, Nintendo doesn't need to be talking about Xbox, right? Like, they're the ones with the new system. that's generating the hype. Like, you know, so, yeah. I think we will see all that Xbox stuff, you know, before long, before launch even. So I think, you know, they've been saying that there's a lot of developers

who don't have dev kits. They're very selective about which developers have dev kits. And you would have to figure that, I don't know, Microsoft would maybe be sort of higher up that tier? I don't know. As much as they want to pretend that they're bigger than Xbox and they don't need them in their direct, like, there's a lot of games that Xbox has that would be a big incentive

for people who buy a Switch 2. Yes, I guess you don't want to show Forza while you're showing off your Mario Kart version of Forza, but also eventually those things will come. And then there will be another wave of hype and publicity. So they have some idea what they're doing here when it comes to rolling these things out. They've been doing it for a long time. I guess just a couple last things I should have mentioned. I couldn't use the joycons in mouse mode without tethers because they didn't want people walking away with them.

So to prevent people from pocketing the joyscons, they did have to be attached to something in addition to the wrist strap, which of course they made us. Yes, yeah, got to be careful. but because of that, they were somewhat encumbered. I was able to arrange it in such a way that it wasn't as if I was being dragged down by the security cords, but that could have perhaps colored my interpretation

of how well those would work, just the fact that they were connected to something, so I wasn't using them fully wirelessly. And also, when we talk about game chat, I thought it was kind of, I guess, admirable that they didn't dress it up as more than it is from a performance standpoint, because, like, showing, you know, in their demos where you have the friends who are watching each other's game screens and stuff.

It's really low frame rate. It really, like, especially when it's minimized and you're showing a few different people playing maybe with their faces on there, too. It looks super janky and, like, yeah. Cool. I know. Can't wait to get that camera. I know.

It didn't get me more hyped for that feature necessarily, but at least they're not lying about it. Oh, great. Who knows? Well, we often do see companies, you know, why or, you know, kind of put a positive spin on things. So wait. So wait. That's not really, but, but no, like, and I get it because you, you don't want to devote too much of the processing power to the game chat. Like, to the point that it impairs the performance of the game.

So if the game chat has to be kind of lower res, I mean, I'll, I'll take that trade off, but then I'm probably not the target. market for that feature to begin with. So you got to use Game Chat. No, I did know. Yeah, so I know nothing more about Game Chat than anyone else. I'm wondering if like if you hit the C button, I assume that will pop you into what we saw where your actual gameplay is a little bit minimized so that you can fit all of the other people and their screens on the bottom.

And then I assume if you were to tap it again, you would hide all of that, go back to full screen. But you didn't actually see it in action. You didn't see it outside of. of the presentation that we all saw today, right? Correct. So, yeah, it does. That's a wait on that then.

It looks like they're going to have to cut some corners to make that work if you want to make it work. But again, like, it's not the most powerful system. And there were some ask the developer Q&A's on the Nintendo website where they go into more detail about this and about how they basically had to, you know, coordinate, collaborate the hardware people, the software people to figure out how do you have these system features without compromising. the performance of the games. Yeah, just you have to cut out a slice of bandwidth for the CPU and everything to always account for that. So yeah, you're lowering the peak performance just by integrating that feature for sure. Okay. Any final comments, observations, questions before we wrap up?

Yeah. How am I going to live if I don't get one of these right at lunch? What am I? Yeah. I've been hating on like so many elements of this. Granted, I'm very excited about it. Yeah, that's the base case. Like, a new system, we're excited.

Like, we get them all or try to get them all. And so obviously, we want it. I mean, that should, I hope, go without saying we're going to spend many happy hours playing the Switch to. I just need one before Metroid comes out. Yeah. If I don't get it at launch, just before Metro. Yeah.

No, I don't really have any other questions. You know it's going to be bad. And you know that the Scalper. are going to be pumping up those prices and jacking it up to ridiculous. You know, I asked, like, can you try to prevent that? And they're trying to, but they are. There's no infallible way to do that. They are trying to give people, like, who aren't going to do that

or who would be less liable to do that, kind of, you know, the inside's, I guess, like track on trying to get these things. Yes. Which, so I already signed up for it. Yeah. And you can go to their website right now. If you are a Switch 1 owner who has had, I think, one year, maybe two of consecutive Nintendo Switch Online subscription, and you have logged 50 hours or more of gameplay as of today, the day that this podcast comes out.

And I think you also have to share data. So maybe do that toggle today if you haven't to share your data. But if you meet all these qualifications and go to their website, sign up. Supposedly, in many waves, they will be sending out invites to have a 72-hour window to purchase a switch to beginning,

I believe, May 8th, a month after all of the retailers will take all of their pre-orders. Yeah. So I think the general strategy here is going to be next, was it April 8th or 9th, I think?

Is the pre-orders open? The pre-orders open? to get one then from, you know, Amazon Best Buy Target, et cetera. And if you whiff out on that, hopefully in a month, Nintendo's going to send you an email. And if not, good luck. Yeah. Yeah. And it's always a fine line there between rewarding your loyal customers and locking new customers out or people who want to get in.

Supposed people with high hour count. Yeah, which is it's good. you want to try to minimize the resale market, which you can only do so much. But they have had a long time to plan for this. And it certainly sounds as if they will have more of these things ready to go than we had in this current generation or when switch launched. I mean, you know, the chip shortages and all the supply stuff. Like that has sort of improved. I mean, considerably since then. And again, who knows what the tariff situation will be and what extra costs that will impose. on us, but they have had a long time to come up with stock here and manufacture millions of

these things. And it sounds like they're hoping to come closer to meeting the demand initially than people typically do. I mean, people are forecasting that like 15 million of these things will sell this year. So can they make that many? We'll see. But yeah, we will be doing our best to get our hands on these things too. So we will continue our coverage of Switch 2. And in addition to the pre-orders opening, there is a Treehouse Live event on YouTube today, if you're listening when this pod went up on Thursday, also Friday, with more deep dives into the games that were shown at that showcase.

So you can find that on Nintendo's YouTube channels if you want to find out more. But look, we know a lot more now than we did a day ago as we were. record this. And that's exciting. There's a lot that we are really sincerely excited about here. Yeah. Well, thanks for answering all the questions, Ben. Yeah. It's really interesting to hear the hands-on stuff from you. Hopefully I can get my hands on that pencil case. Get it away from Grumpkin. We will see. Good luck with that. Pleasure as always to pod with you. Back at you. Thanks to Devin Ronaldo for hurrying home from the Dodgers game to produce this podcast. Fortunately, got an Otani bobblehead.

That was the important thing. Thanks to Shohei Otani for hitting that walk-off homer, I guess to get Devin home sooner, although, well, sadly, Devin didn't see the homer, but heard it, at least, on the way out. So that's something. Thanks to Arjuna Ramco Pal for scheduling so many upcoming episodes of ButtonMash.

Thanks to you all for listening. ButtonMash will be back next week and every week for a good while thereafter. Contact us at RingverseGaming at gmail.com. and I hope we will come along for the ride.