It’s hard not to feel a little disappointed by Nintendo’s announcement on Thursday of the Switch 2. The fact that the company seems to be playing it safe with its most conservative new console in years isn’t much of a surprise. What was surprising is just how lackluster the reveal itself was. But perhaps that’s because, for any tech-obsessive, the video Nintendo released looked eerily familiar. The brief three-minute trailer didn’t look like other game console reveals; instead it looked almost exactly like the sizzle reels Apple trots out for each year’s new iPhone.
Nintendo adopting Apple’s strategy makes natural sense. While most tech industry giants have pivoted to software and subscriptions as their primary business model, with a de-emphasis on hardware that borders on complacency, Apple is the last massive company to remain steadfastly committed to a hardware-first approach. The things it wants to sell you aren’t services, they’re laptops, tablets, and, most importantly, phones.
A quick glance at the gaming industry will tell you that Nintendo is in a pretty similar position. While Sony is throwing as many first-party games as it can on PC, and Microsoft is telling everyone that anything they own can be an Xbox with Game Pass, Nintendo is still all in on exclusive games and selling consoles. So, it seems, the Apple of console manufacturers gets an Apple-style commercial.
The Switch 2’s trailer hits all the hallmarks: It’s gorgeously photographed, with slick transitions that show off all the little changes between the original Switch and the new machine, complete with elegantly enlarging the device itself and toning back the bezel around the screen. The console’s new magnetic Joy-Cons even appear to have a bit of Apple’s MagSafe DNA at first glance. But while all of this works perfectly for a phone that receives a new version every year, it ignores the fact that the Switch 2 can’t simply be an iPhone upgrade. What the video implies is something that’s strictly iterative, in the way a phone model is. Nintendo’s video literally takes the old device and morphs it into the new one. It’s no surprise, then, that some viewers felt they weren’t exactly seeing the reveal of Nintendo’s next generation.
For all the ways that Apple is invested in people buying new iPhones, it has the luxury of taking those purchases as a given. It knows that not every person will upgrade their phone every year, but that eventually nearly every iPhone user in the world will pick up a newer phone; it’s the model the whole business is built on.
In a world where upgrades are inevitable, iteration is enough. But I still want Nintendo to sell me something. It’s been eight years since the Switch came out, and while some of its open-world offerings have started to chug, the absolute need for an upgrade isn’t exactly apparent.
A video that’s sleek, vague, pretty, enticing, and a little hollow is perfect for the hour-plus of technical discussion from Apple execs that normally comes after an iPhone reveal. But Nintendo’s version of that isn’t coming until a Nintendo Direct on April 2, where we’ll have to hope the company reveals why it actually thinks we’ll want to buy this new console — aside from the reveal of an anodyne-looking Mario Kart that could simply be another iteration of Mario Kart 8 for all we know.
Image: Nintendo
Like Apple, Nintendo is historically not a stupid company. In fact, it usually tends to be a very successful and clever company. Nintendo higher-ups presumably know the company needs innovation and ingenuity more than iteration, and more than another Mario Kart, to successfully follow up the third-best-selling console of all time. And evidence of that innovation is buried within this Switch 2 trailer. There’s compelling evidence that the Joy-Cons can transform into a mouse, and there’s slim potential for 24-player multiplayer and voice chat, which would suggest a vastly upgraded online experience. On top of all that, there’s still plenty of time for Nintendo’s publishing arm, as well as other game developers, to reveal games that players can pick up on launch day for the new console.
The problem is that Nintendo’s teaser left us to work all that out for ourselves rather than giving us something concrete to get excited about. And while Nintendo was right in thinking that fans, and websites like Polygon, would scrape the trailer clean of every detail we could, it’s hard not to feel like the company took our anticipation for granted just a little bit. It’s possible, and even likely, that all of this frustration will magically abate when we see Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, or some magical new Mario game, or even Pokémon Legends: Z-A running at playable frame rate during Nintendo’s April 2 Direct. But until then, Nintendo has left us to make up our own reasons why the Switch 2 is a more than a marginal upgrade.
Maybe my old phone is just fine for now.
