Unless you've been living under a video game rock, you know that everyone's been dying for news on the Nintendo Switch's successor for the last several years. Rumors hit a fever pitch last week. I mean, this is the longest Nintendo has gone between releasing consoles.
It was leaked on Monday that we'd have an announcement this week, and sure enough, Nintendo announced the Nintendo Switch 2 in the vague reveal trailer below (not the Super Nintendo Switch name we were hoping for).
There's a link to Nintendo's website in the YouTube description, though it doesn't give much more information than the trailer above, only that there will be some hands-on experiences in New York, LA, and Dallas in April.
Honestly, there's not much shown in this video that leaks and rumors didn't already tell us. It's bigger. The joycons don't slide in, they snap in with magnets. It will be out sometime in 2025. And we'll get more information in a Nintendo Direct on April 2.
We don't know anything about the hardware inside. We don't have an official price. We don't have games that will launch with it, although it does give us footage of a new Mario Kart, which we've kind of figured would be the launch title.
Nintendo always goes big with its launch titles for new consoles, but we knew it wouldn't be a new Zelda since Tears of the Kingdom only launched in 2024 and we just had Echoes of Wisdom. We thought maybe a Super Mario Odyssey 2, but Mario Kart makes just as much sense as anything else.
But it looks like this is a console that's built to last a decent amount of time. It gives a Steam Deck-ish vibe, looking much less breakable and more sturdy. The kickstand looks like it will actually work compared to the half-inch kickstand the original Switch had.
And it's confirmed that physical and digital copies of Nintendo Switch games will be playable on the Switch 2, though there will be caveats to that.
We're glad for this official news after so many weeks and months (and all of last year) of rumors and cease and desists in response to rumors. And we still have so many questions. What games will it launch with? Will there be a bunch of third-party ports from Xbox, Ubisoft, PlayStation that we can play on the Switch 2? Will we actually get 60 FPS?
It feels like Nintendo is really trying to not make the Nintendo Switch 2 into the Wii U. It's fine to be cautious. We've waited almost eight years for this next console since the Switch's release; we can wait six more weeks to get more information in that Nintendo Direct... even if we wish we had more information at our disposal.