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Switch 2
4 weeks ago
General
Don't Trace, Create.
I finally decided after a few months that it was time to let that Gorilla that kept pounding on my door out of the closet. In other words, I decided to set up the Nintendo Switch 2 and install the New Donkey Kong game, which is ok, but I really haven’t had much time to play it.
My first impression of the Switch 2 is pretty… what happened Nintendo? The first one was great, but I’m guessing that the company got greedy, or a bit on the anti consumer side. Even though I think the hardware is pretty solid, I think Nintendo is stabbing themselves in the foot with the way that they are handling the software side of things.
The elephant in the room is the price of $500, and that is with the one that comes with the Mario-Cart bundle. I have heard people complain that it’s way too much, but many are the same ones that will easily spend over that amount on a mid level graphics card. I will say that when it comes to tech, and inflation, it’s just barely hitting a fair price. It would be a good price if it came with 512 of internal storage, or a bit more ram, but I don’t think that Nintendo was thinking very far in the future. I feel that 256 isn’t enough if they are going to have games like Cyber Punk 2077 that requires 60gbs of memory. Maybe the 12gb or ram will work, after all Microsoft can get it to work on the Xbox Series S. Also Nintendo’s OS isn’t bloated like Windows.
Like I said earlier, the hardware is pretty solid, and feels more premium compared to something like the ROG Ally X. I can’t compare it to the Xbox ROG Ally X, but I’m not a big fan of how the system looks big and clunky, compared to the slim look of the Switch 2, but it is a more powerful system. When it comes to the specs, it’s about 5x to 10x more powerful with some added gimmicks that the original doesn’t have like the ability to use the joy-cons as a mouse. I also like the way that the controls snap into place vs sliding on. I’m surprised that Nintendo didn’t name it the Click. The screen is supposed to be a better resolution with a higher variable refresh rate. I also don’t know why they didn’t use RGB lighting around the controller vs color rings.
I did try a few games like the new Donkey Kong Banaza, and since it’s a game from Nintendo, it’s kind of expected for it to be good, and what little of it that I did play, it wasn’t half bad, but I have said that about other games, and the further that I got, it got bad. I did the Hogwarts $10 upgrade, and at first it was a little bit of a battle to get it to run, and it has to do with something that I will address further down. I did see an improvement compared when it was on the original switch. I decided to try to see what a an original third party switch game would look like so I picked, The Outer Worlds, and it was giving me flashbacks of the N64 days. I could be wrong but I don’t remember it looking that bad on original hardware. So after dealing with one of Nintendo’s new not so friendly features, l pulled it back up on the OLED Nintendo. I will admit that load times are faster on the Switch 2. To be fair, I think that I have been spoiled with playing on the ROG Ally, and on PC, because it’s just as on original hardware like it is on the 2. I was surprised at how well that Cyber Punk 2077 ran on it, because I figured it would have been a complete dumpster fire like the X Box One.
Then you have the software side of things. I fully agree that if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. In other words, I’m not too bothered about the way the OS looks. After all, the main purpose of the device is to play games. As for the games, I think that Nintendo is losing its edge of being family and friendly. I feel that they are double dipping and charging too much for older titles that have been around for a long time. I.E., $70 for the Super Mario Galaxy combo.
Now the new Switch has some new things that I think are very gimmicky like the joy-cons being able to be used as a so-called mouse. I feel that they might use it a few times, and that’s about it. The other new thing which I noticed was carried over to the original switch is the virtual cards. Now this is where I feel that Nintendo needs to learn a lesson from Steam, Xbox Game Pass, PSN, and even Nintendo from the days of the past. When you buy or lease something from either of them, one has the ability to play it wherever and whenever as long as there is some sort of internet. Now Nintendo has come up with this great idea which I feel is very anti consumer when it comes to these virtual cards. Personally there is no need to do it because Nintendo should be able to see who owns the games to what account, but they want buyers to play a silly game where you must have your old unit nearby so you can exchange virtual cards. So that means if one goes on a business trip, vacation, or whatever, and you left your Switch at home, that you can simply run to the story and pick up a new Switch or Switch 2, get online from how many miles away, and just start playing. I found that I had to pull mine from underneath a litter of dust bunnies, give it some charge in order to finish downloading it even though it showed on my account that I owned the game. How F up is that?
Maybe Nintendo can fix and get rid of the stupid crap that they are forcing on their customers, but if they don’t this could be the start of the Wii-U 2.0. In other words their downfall.
My first impression of the Switch 2 is pretty… what happened Nintendo? The first one was great, but I’m guessing that the company got greedy, or a bit on the anti consumer side. Even though I think the hardware is pretty solid, I think Nintendo is stabbing themselves in the foot with the way that they are handling the software side of things.
The elephant in the room is the price of $500, and that is with the one that comes with the Mario-Cart bundle. I have heard people complain that it’s way too much, but many are the same ones that will easily spend over that amount on a mid level graphics card. I will say that when it comes to tech, and inflation, it’s just barely hitting a fair price. It would be a good price if it came with 512 of internal storage, or a bit more ram, but I don’t think that Nintendo was thinking very far in the future. I feel that 256 isn’t enough if they are going to have games like Cyber Punk 2077 that requires 60gbs of memory. Maybe the 12gb or ram will work, after all Microsoft can get it to work on the Xbox Series S. Also Nintendo’s OS isn’t bloated like Windows.
Like I said earlier, the hardware is pretty solid, and feels more premium compared to something like the ROG Ally X. I can’t compare it to the Xbox ROG Ally X, but I’m not a big fan of how the system looks big and clunky, compared to the slim look of the Switch 2, but it is a more powerful system. When it comes to the specs, it’s about 5x to 10x more powerful with some added gimmicks that the original doesn’t have like the ability to use the joy-cons as a mouse. I also like the way that the controls snap into place vs sliding on. I’m surprised that Nintendo didn’t name it the Click. The screen is supposed to be a better resolution with a higher variable refresh rate. I also don’t know why they didn’t use RGB lighting around the controller vs color rings.
I did try a few games like the new Donkey Kong Banaza, and since it’s a game from Nintendo, it’s kind of expected for it to be good, and what little of it that I did play, it wasn’t half bad, but I have said that about other games, and the further that I got, it got bad. I did the Hogwarts $10 upgrade, and at first it was a little bit of a battle to get it to run, and it has to do with something that I will address further down. I did see an improvement compared when it was on the original switch. I decided to try to see what a an original third party switch game would look like so I picked, The Outer Worlds, and it was giving me flashbacks of the N64 days. I could be wrong but I don’t remember it looking that bad on original hardware. So after dealing with one of Nintendo’s new not so friendly features, l pulled it back up on the OLED Nintendo. I will admit that load times are faster on the Switch 2. To be fair, I think that I have been spoiled with playing on the ROG Ally, and on PC, because it’s just as on original hardware like it is on the 2. I was surprised at how well that Cyber Punk 2077 ran on it, because I figured it would have been a complete dumpster fire like the X Box One.
Then you have the software side of things. I fully agree that if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. In other words, I’m not too bothered about the way the OS looks. After all, the main purpose of the device is to play games. As for the games, I think that Nintendo is losing its edge of being family and friendly. I feel that they are double dipping and charging too much for older titles that have been around for a long time. I.E., $70 for the Super Mario Galaxy combo.
Now the new Switch has some new things that I think are very gimmicky like the joy-cons being able to be used as a so-called mouse. I feel that they might use it a few times, and that’s about it. The other new thing which I noticed was carried over to the original switch is the virtual cards. Now this is where I feel that Nintendo needs to learn a lesson from Steam, Xbox Game Pass, PSN, and even Nintendo from the days of the past. When you buy or lease something from either of them, one has the ability to play it wherever and whenever as long as there is some sort of internet. Now Nintendo has come up with this great idea which I feel is very anti consumer when it comes to these virtual cards. Personally there is no need to do it because Nintendo should be able to see who owns the games to what account, but they want buyers to play a silly game where you must have your old unit nearby so you can exchange virtual cards. So that means if one goes on a business trip, vacation, or whatever, and you left your Switch at home, that you can simply run to the story and pick up a new Switch or Switch 2, get online from how many miles away, and just start playing. I found that I had to pull mine from underneath a litter of dust bunnies, give it some charge in order to finish downloading it even though it showed on my account that I owned the game. How F up is that?
Maybe Nintendo can fix and get rid of the stupid crap that they are forcing on their customers, but if they don’t this could be the start of the Wii-U 2.0. In other words their downfall.
"E. A. Sports. Got to the N."
As in one of the heads that turned Electronic Arts into a second hand lead to Satan had transferred into a leading position in Nintendo. And so the corruption has taken root. At least I hear that their daring lawsuits to own basic gaming mechanics is being denied.
(See... once upon a time, I had bought a very outdated EA game at the swap meet. And the disk was dead. Figuring it was nearly hopeless, I gave the number on the back of the box a call. Despite being a second owner of an old game, they honored the good relations warranty and mailed me a fresh, new game, on their dime. THAT was the EA I grew up with and cherished. Today's EA... I 'know' would never do such a thing.)
Now if this Switch sequel is going to flop like the Wii-U... time will tell. So many consoles are just sitting there on the shelves... right now. But Christmas is coming up fast. Maybe... there will be a last minute demand? At least I can evilly smirk at all the wanna be scalpers that invested in day one units... even at those prices... only to find that Nintendo didn't skimp out on the supplies. Leaving them scrambling to make any money back.
The other day, I was giving a reboot of Dragon Quest III some time and found a minor S2 flaw. Even though on the original, I had successfully placed multiple key orbs into place, now through some super simple problem, I can't place the final two. Seems the menu and the search button are overlapping. Thus, softlocked. Wonder if I'm the only one that has happened to. Is there a way to report it for a patch? Probably just a line or two of code to update. But would they?
We also have a lot of the new Switch 2s where I work too. I don't think it's a bad piece of hardware, but the games that Nintendo is playing with it kind of sucks.
I do also think what Nintendo did when it comes to scalpers is great. Let them eat their lunch.
Now, given their spanking from that Pokemon copycat that is giving the fans what they want, Nintendo needs to do some real work and get the next Pokemon game(s) released. And a Smash Bros. that hits it out of the ballpark would surely get the consoles moving off of those dusty shelves. The next Mario Universe game would also pick things up. Everyone loves a Mario Party. And that Animal Crossing always seems to round out the library for the casual sim audience.
Some of their other pillars are kind of going the way of the Romans. Still... there is potential for a return of Metroid, F-Zero, StarFox and such. Though with the fox, they'd probably try and throw in mouse control for bombing runs and lord knows what to over complicate things. (Mouse is probably this generation's IR Camera. Almost nobody will ever know what to do with it. But... it is there.)
I don't think Switch 2 is going to be another Wii-U. It just needs some killer franchises to release. Wouldn't hurt if Nintendo dropped this dumb card key thing. I say it's never too late to drop that stupid notion, as internal memory is a precious resource. In fact, I say rework it. Make these key cars into Nintendo exclusive memory cards. Sure. DL the game from the e-shop onto those. Mass produce one cart and minimize the classic production cycle of sticking ROM's into tiny shells for each game.