My Switch 2 hands-on impressions

Totally fine, and quite thrilling in some cases, but also totally clouded by questions about price

Donkey Kong: Bananza. Screenshot: Nintendo

I played the Switch 2 for several hours in New York City on Wednesday.

• I played a wild 24-player knock-out race in Mario Kart World (and drove another race as a cow)

• Dug deep in the shockingly destructible Donkey Kong Bananza …

• Scanned so many things in what feels like a return-to-form in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond…

• Did a positive 180 on my feelings about Drag x Drive, the wheelchair-basketball game that uses the Switch 2’s mouse control features, while I was playing the game…

• Played a version of Super Mario Bros. level 1-1 that was displayed all at once, from end-to-end, across a 4K TV screen in Nintendo Switch 2 World Tour…

Yes, that’s the whole first level of Super Mario Bros. on the screen and fully playable from end to end (those are my hands on the contollers). It’s part of Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, which is full of activities meant to show off the system’s features. In this case: the value of seeing graphics in 4K. Photo: Game File

I could go on (and will, below, with lots of photos and videos to share).

Make no mistake: I had a great time with the Switch 2’s games. I had near-zero complaints about the hardware.

And yet, as the day went on, and as news about money—the price of the system, the price of the games, the price of the game upgrades, and then, also announced yesterday, those global-economy-shaking new U.S. tariffs¹—it was impossible to stop thinking about how expensive Nintendo’s next age of gaming will be.

The console, at $450, didn’t bring the biggest sticker shock. Adjusted for inflation, the original Switch would launch now for about $390. Pay the price once, and you’re in.

The price of the games, though, is a long-term point of stress.

The $70 for the new Donkey Kong is what it is. It matches what premium games on high-end consoles now regularly hit.

But Mario Kart’s going for $80, and the price haunts the game with the question as to why. Nintendo invited such questions by selling 2023’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom at $70, instead of the Switch’s standard game price of $60, and suggesting it was due to that Zelda being an “incredibly full” game. It’s true. It was massive. It’s just odd that Nintendo has opened the door to the idea that extra big games will go for extra big dollars. (Cue the speculation of GTA VI selling for $100.)

Equally vexing is the pricing around Nintendo’s Switch 2 Edition expansions of Switch 1 games. Based on retail listings, these appear to cost $10-20 on top of the full retail price of the game, resulting in a potential $80 price tag for the Switch 2 version of excellent 2022 Switch 1 game Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Look, my kids and I loved that game. I even played its Switch 2-exclusive expansion, Star-Crossed World, yesterday and was having a great time bouncing a spring-loaded Kirby up a skyscraper half-covered in crystals. But this Switch 2-exclusive expansion didn’t feel like it tapped into the Switch 2’s added horsepower and left me wondering why someone would need to buy the new console to experience it.

I also eyeballed the new content for the Switch 2 edition of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. I’m not mad at Nintendo about it, just disappointed. The idea of Nintendo charging $10 extra for an in-game navigation aid, achievements, bonus audio logs, item-sharing and, of all things, a daily log-in bonus (and, yes, better graphics and framerate), feels like the antithesis of Nintendo charging more, as it could argue for Switch 1’s TotK release, because the game is extra-great.

Alas, I don’t want to be playing Armchair Video Game Business Analyst when I am trying to play Video Game Critic. I really don’t.

Nintendo, no doubt, also doesn’t want me thinking about the money and doesn’t want you thinking about it either.

They left pricing details out of their hour-long Switch 2 Nintendo Direct yesterday for a reason. This is also a company that typically prefers not to talk about hardware specs, lately won’t even tell you exactly who is making their games before they’re released, because they want you to focus on—and feel—the magic of their games.

Good luck to all of us in that regard.

Shall I get into the magic of what I played yesterday, now?

I’ll start with Mario Kart, and its nifty new rewind feature….