Home Tech Greater power, magnetic controllers and backward compatibility: what to expect when Nintendo announces the Switch 2

Greater power, magnetic controllers and backward compatibility: what to expect when Nintendo announces the Switch 2

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A screenshot of He's Literally Just Mowing the Lawn

northIntendo is likely to announce its next console this week, the follow-up to the $150 million-selling Nintendo Switch that came out in March 2017. There’s just one problem: We already know almost everything about it. At this point, there is very little that Nintendo can announce that would be a surprise to anyone who has followed the rumors closely.

The trickle of Nintendo Switch 2 leaks began last summer and flooded this month. Last week in the CES technology fair In Las Vegas, accessory maker Genki arrived with a full model of Nintendo’s next console, which it happily showed off behind closed doors to illustrate its upcoming products. You can even see a detailed rendering of the object on the Genki website. It’s a slightly larger, more powerful version of the Switch console we all know and love, with controllers that attach magnetically rather than sliding on and off the sides of the screen. You can still play it on your TV or on the go.

This is a very un-Nintendo way of doing things. Aside from NES/SNES, every Nintendo console has been a revolution in form factor. There was the N64, with its pioneering analogue joystick and three-pronged controller; the squat, toy-like GameCube; the Wii, with its motion remote controls; Its successor, the Wii U, added a screen in the middle of its controller. This is the first time Nintendo has made two successive consoles that look the same and perform the same, with the possible exception of the dual-screen DS and its successor the 3DS, which added stereoscopic 3D to the console’s features. They even share a name and logo: the most credible current information indicates that it will be called Nintendo Switch 2.

I won’t repeat any more leaked details about Switch 2; They are easy to discover and we will know for sure what is true and what is not in the next day or so. Nintendo has confirmed that Switch 2 will share a catalog with Switch, so that every player can enjoy all the games they have purchased over the last eight years on the new console. We also know that it won’t be released before April, as it will be out in Nintendo’s next financial year (my money is June). But this is an extraordinary situation: we know practically everything about a console from gaming’s most secretive company before it’s officially announced. How has it happened?

Getting a PS5 on launch day was a challenge. Photograph: Charly Triballeau/AFP/Getty Images

When the PlayStation 5 launched in 2020, the biggest story at the time was that people couldn’t get one. Some customers who had reserved a PS5 received packages containing bags of rice, exchanged for someone who never made it well in the delivery chain. On eBay and other resale platforms, consoles were selling for two or three times their retail price. The gap between supply and demand, caused in part by manufacturing challenges during the pandemic, affected the console for at least the first two years of its life. Nintendo will have wanted to avoid a similar situation.

We know that Nintendo’s manufacturing partners have been making parts for this console for a long time: more than a year. The company aims to have large quantities of stock in reserve for when the product is launched. This is one of the reasons why so much information has been leaked in advance: many different companies have already been involved in manufacturing the Switch 2, and units/parts of units have been available for some time.

Nintendo has also not gone after the leakers in the expected way, nor has it closed anything legally. Their only response to this avalanche of unauthorized information, provided to Japanese outlet Sankei last week, is “these images and videos are not official.” This suggests that Nintendo itself considered this might be inevitable; that it has delayed the announcement of its next console as long as it could, to beat the phenomenally successful Switch, and that it believes that these leaks will not hurt sales prospects much.

The Switch 2 announcement will contain few surprises. What’s surprising is the un-Nintendo nature of this iterative console and the piecemeal way we’re discovering it. Look out for more information on the official announcement very soon.

what to play

It’s literally just mowing the grass: just mowing the grass, literally. Photography: Protostar

A low-effort dad game for a lazy January, for anyone who wastes their time in the garden: It’s literally just mowing the grass It is exactly what it says it is. You swipe and your little lawnmower smoothly passes through the unruly grass strips in your neighbors’ ever-growing yards until the entire street is in order. You mow the grass, collect hats, touch different species of butterflies to admire them. My friend Patrick Klepek from the Parents and Players Newsletter brought this to my attention. crossplay (We do a podcast together about how to navigate games with your kids) and I was surprised to find myself playing for half an hour straight. Am I getting old?

Available in: iOS/Android

Estimated playing time: 5 minutes, an hour, whatever you want

what to read

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Question Block

Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters selected Immortality in his On My Radar column. Photography: Half Mermaid Productions

This week’s question is from the reader. Thomas:

“The Guardian has a newspaper In my Radar column for interviewees to suggest what they’ve been enjoying recently, and I’ve always been surprised by the lack of games there. Why do you think this is? Don’t people think games are intellectual enough to mention? Profile/age of the people profiled? Or are we trained to think that games are not “culture” in that way?

As someone who writes about games for the cultural section of a newspaper, I encounter some version of this question all the time: Why aren’t games talked about in the same places and in the same way as other arts and entertainment? speak? Games are culture, undoubtedly, but they are also technology, and that is how many people still think of them, as technological toys. I’m very used to a certain level of condescension when it comes to games, and I suspect that most people my age who grew up when games were mocked or considered potentially dangerous fear that reaction when they talk about them.

So perhaps, when asked to choose their cultural highlights, people keep their gaming tastes to themselves and bring other things to the forefront. But I do think this is changing over time. Gone are the days when gaming was considered nebulously embarrassing, and I find that nowadays, even when I talk to someone who doesn’t understand games very well, for example when I’m a guest on a radio show, I they ask with respect and curiosity rather than condescension and disdain. As more of us come to power, this will continue to change.

If you have a question for the ask block, or anything else to say about the newsletter, hit reply or email us at pushbuttons@theguardian.com.

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