It doesn’t feel like Nintendo just released a new console. Last year around this time we were inundated with weekly leaks about the Switch 2. They all pointed to the same thing: it would be a bigger, more powerful version of the console we already knew and loved. Nintendo kicked 2025 off by showing us a Switch 2 that was exactly that. It launched in June to significant fanfare and hype, and there has been surprisingly little to say about the Switch 2 ever since.
It looks lean, feels sleek, and runs older blockbusters and even some newer ones surprisingly well. But its boldest innovation is a video sharing feature that feels plucked out of 2006 and which I never hear anyone talk about. The quintessential smartphone upgrade of video game consoles, the Switch 2 set launch sales records but dominated the conversation less than anyone expected.
Nintendo’s latest flagship console doesn’t break the mold. It remains, first and foremost, a machine for playing Nintendo games, most of which are sequels to franchises that have been around since the last millennium. And it does that splendidly, even if the games themselves haven’t always cleared the lofty bar set by the Switch 1’s first year. Do I sound a little disappointed? I’m trying not to be.
2025 was a transition year for Nintendo’s hardware; one that feels less like a clear passing of the baton than an extended farewell where everyone spends an extra 15 minutes gossipping at the door while putting on their coats before actually saying goodbye. The Switch 1 was a must-buy in 2017. In 2025 the Switch 2 is more of a nice-to-have.
The Hardware
You can tell when a certain line of hardware has matured by what people focus on. The raw specs? A refined form factor? New software features? With the Switch 2, it’s a satisfying but mostly inconsequential gimmick. One of the first things anyone will do with the new device is feel the tug of magnets as the new Joy-Con click into place on the sides of the console. A hundred times later, it still delights me and yields an unwarranted flash of joy. If only the thumb-stick nubs weren’t still garbage.
The other thing that stands out most about the Switch 2 is how much faster it charges. While the battery life overall isn’t very impressive, and is still sapped surprisingly quickly even in sleep mode, it’s now possible to get a mostly full charge in just one hour. This isn’t a reason to upgrade a console, but it’s one of the things I spend the most time doing with my Switch 2 besides playing it.
The screen, slightly larger than that of its predecessor, also feels surprisingly revelatory. It’s like you’ve been driving with the sun visor down and then you lift it up to reveal the rest of the horizon. The addition of those few inches of space feels like having a blast shield lifted from your face. It’s not OLED, but the resolution is sharp, the colors are vibrant, and the overall build quality feels nice. Setting HDR correctly, though, is a pain.
Kotaku
Most importantly, the guts of the machine delivered the type of next-gen upgrade you’d want from a device that costs $150 more than its predecessor did at launch. It kept up well with modern third-party blockbusters like Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Wars Outlaws, and ran first-party Nintendo games with sprawling worlds, like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, with no major issues, at least in docked mode.
The old Switch, meanwhile, is harder than ever to go back to. The screen is small, the bezels feel that much larger, and the OS lags more than my two-year-old on a one-mile walk around the neighborhood. The hardware has held up well mechanically, but is hanging off the edge of a cliff when it comes to actual game performance.
Fans have been seeing the original Switch show its age with new releases for years now, but Pokemon Legends: Z-A and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond are likely to serve as the final nails in the coffin for anyone trying to stick it out on the less capable last-gen machines. Are the games busted on Switch 1? Not at all. Can you enjoy them? Definitely. Would I recommend just holding off until you eventually buy a Switch 2? Absolutely.
It’s worth noting that, like the Switch 2, the original Switch also saw a price hike in 2025. It now costs $40 more than it did at launch. The used prices for the old hardware, thankfully, have remained surprisingly low. A secondhand Switch Lite for $100 was probably the best deal in games this year.
The Software
The Switch 2 interface remains stubbornly barebones in an era when the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 continue to add new bells and whistles to their home screen experiences. Customization options are minimal. The row of icons constantly jiggles around based solely on what you played last. Tons of blank real estate above and below is still a wasteland, with no backgrounds to swap to besides night mode.
GameChat, the Switch 2’s actual big back-of-the-box feature, performs fine, but feels unmoored from the broader console experience. Meanwhile, the console itself can play Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Minecraft better than its predecessor, but compared to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, the Switch 2 remains just as fundamentally uninterested in being a social hub as the Switch was.
It’s the only major gaming platform not to be integrated with the biggest communication platform for gaming: Discord. Sharing game capture and images now requires a dedicated smartphone app from Nintendo’s ever-growing repository of console features outsourced to second screens. It’s not a terrible idea in principle, but it doesn’t feel sane or streamlined in practice.
Kotaku
2025 was the year that Nintendo tried to divorce itself from the increasingly unstable broader internet. It set up a dedicated Nintendo Today! news app that is sometimes the only place to find out about things like the upcoming Zelda movie, but is more often than not just a glorified calendar for sharing existing character art.
There’s also a dedicated app for parental controls, music, and more. None of it is organically integrated into the actual device fans just spent a ton of money on. The whole setup is, frankly, insane.
There were some bright spots for Nintendo’s on-system user-experience in 2025, however. It established virtual card sharing to allow users to lend out digital games across different devices as long as they’re linked by a family group or share a user profile. It’s a process that looks more complicated on paper than it feels in practice.
It makes the experience of jumping back and forth between the original Switch and the Switch 2 a lot more seamless than it was with any previous generational leaps in Nintendo’s history. The only downside is that cloud save syncing can’t always keep up. It’s a step in the right direction, but still a far cry from Microsoft’s brave new “play anywhere” future.
Another bone Nintendo threw to older Switch owners was GameShare, a way to use multiplayer across multiple devices in the same room. While GameShare works online via GameChat for Switch 2 owners, it also works locally for those with the old handheld hybrid. It works surprisingly well for things like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment multiplayer, streaming the game to an old Switch for player two. It runs at lower resolution and framerates, but is a nice option that adds utility to the older hardware, even if it’s probably going to stay a niche feature over the long run.
The Services
Switch Online expanded in a big way this year with the addition of GameCube games. Exclusive to Switch 2, the new classic console experience kicked off with F-Zero GX, Soulcalibur II, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker in June, followed by Super Mario Strikers in July, Chibi-Robo! in August, Luigi’s Mansion in October, and Wario World in December.
Games like Super Mario Sunshine and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance remain MIA for now, and it’ll be interesting to see how much the library expands into third-party releases. It added a lot of value to the existing $50-a-month Expansion Pack subscription, which also gained access to paid Switch 2 upgrades for Switch games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Nintendo
But one thing Nintendo didn’t do was bring back Virtual Console, or some other mechanism for buying old games a la carte. Entire months still go by without any new classics added to any of the console back catalogs. And glaring omissions like Super Smash Bros. 64 raise questions about whether some games will ever be added to the service.
Switch Online, which is still just $20 a year, will become mandatory for GameChat access starting after March 31, 2026. At the same time, users are getting other benefits like new music in Nintendo’s Spotify-like app for game soundtracks. Practically every week gets new tracks for games ranging from Metroid 2 to Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, though obvious albums like Mario Kart World are still missing.
Meanwhile, other benefits have been dropped from the service. Just in time for the new console’s release, Nintendo ditched its gold coins system that gave players cash back on eShop purchases, and is similarly sunsetting its Switch Game Vouchers program, a series of coupons that let fans get new games at a discount. Done right, it was one way to keep gaming on Switch more affordable. Instead, being a Nintendo fan is only getting more expensive amid tariffs, $80 games, and Switch 2 upgrade fees.
The Games
It was an eclectic year for Switch and Switch 2 releases, if not one that will be remembered like 2017, when Nintendo launched a new console into one of the best lineups in its history. Mario Kart World initially dazzled but doesn’t feel as full-bodied as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe does after years of post-release updates and DLC. Despite issuing a number of balance updates, the company has been weird about actually letting fans play the game the way they want to online.
New add-ons for Mario Party Jamboree and Kirby and the Forgotten Land were nice upgrade incentives but hardly groundbreaking. Kirby Air Riders, for all of director Masahiro Sakurai’s pre-release hype, was nice, fun, fine. Donkey Kong Bananza, an unexpected highlight, provided a novel gimmick and a crowd-pleasing ending to bookend an otherwise B+ experience. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, despite the nearly decade-long wait, was also less than transformative.
Nintendo
Pokémon Legends: Z-A delivered for Pokémon fans, bolstering what would have been an otherwise disappointing inaugural holiday season for the Switch 2, but it did not quite transform the franchise the way Switch 1 iterations of some long-standing series did. There was certainly no shortage of new Nintendo releases in 2025, from Mario Galaxy remasters to Tears of the Kingdom upgrades, but nothing that quite lived up to the sky-high expectations attached to the new hardware around this time last year.
But Nintendo has done a good job of building up the Switch 2’s initial base of third-party support. Ubisoft showed up with ports that underpromised and over-delivered, even as others like Borderlands 4 were indefinitely delayed. Cyberpunk 2077, Hitman: World of Assassination, and Street Fighter 6 all showed the breadth of what fans might expect heading into this new Nintendo console generation, which is access to many of the biggest modern games around, available with fewer compromises than expected, at least early on.
If you look at the 10 highest-rated releases of the year according to Metacritic, seven of them are available on Switch and four of them, including Hades 2, are console exclusives. It’s not hard to see the rest, including Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Blue Prince, eventually coming to the platform in 2026. At least for now, Switch 2 is shaping up to have a broader powerhouse library of games than its predecessor. The only real question is whether Nintendo can raise the bar again, or has hit its current ceiling.
The Future
There were four things that made the first year of the original Switch so special: portability, indie games, a great Mario game, and a groundbreaking Zelda. The Switch 2 benefited from none of those things in quite the same way. It still feels like we’re in the warm-up phase. Nintendo isn’t one to rest on its laurels, but it’s also looking beyond just games these days.
Nintendo’s biggest release of 2026 probably won’t be on Switch 2. If it performs as well as the first one, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie will, in terms of cultural reach and box office prowess, outshine anything that the company can stick on a cartridge. It opened a new Super Nintendo World theme park location in Orlando this year, and continues branching out into real-world experiences, new stores, more toys, and other transmedia products.
The Switch 2 feels like the Switch 1 all grown up, and it is both more useful and more boring as a result. It wears a half-zip, pays its bills on time, and always shows up on time at the bar. It has its shit together. Give it your money. It’s the gaming equivalent of investing your 401k in an index fund.
But can Nintendo still flood it with imaginative possibilities that surprise and delight the way it did with releases like Labo and Ring Fit on the Switch in its early years? Will it give us fresh gameplay ideas and new franchises, or reinvent the old ones to the point where they feel almost unrecognizable? That will be the test for the Switch 2 in 2026 and beyond. Especially if Nintendo is going to start charging more for it, as some analysts are currently speculating aloud.
The Switch 2 is good enough, but it still has a lot to prove.
