I also tried out Mario Kart World, Metroid Prime 4, and Hades II.

As the Nintendo Switch 2 draws closer I can sense K.K. Slider and the rest of my friends waiting for me.

Last week, Nintendo made the unprecedented move of delaying US Switch 2 preorders to "assess" the impact of Donald Trump's massive tariffs on the countries where the console is produced. Before most of those tariffs were recently delayed for 90 days, many were wondering if the company may be mulling a last-minute increase in the Switch 2's $450 asking price to account for those import taxes.

While industry analysts think that kind of immediate price increase is unlikely, they warn that Trump's tariffs could have longer-term impacts on Switch 2 pricing and supplies in the US for years to come.

Already baked in

DFC Intelligence CEO David Cole, for instance, said in a recent analyst note that the company is currently modeling "a 20 percent price increase over the next two years" across all video game hardware thanks to "broader macroeconomic challenges." In the case of the Switch 2, though, Cole clarified that "we believe much of the 20 percent increase was already baked into the $450 price," which Nintendo is "not likely" to raise at this point.

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Supergiant’s Hades II will be available on PC and as a console exclusive on Switch 2. PS5 and Xbox gamers are out of luck... for now.

We may see Hall effect joystick replacements for Switch 2 Joy-Cons soon after launch.

Nintendo's barrage of Switch announcements over the last two weeks have also come with changes to the way Nintendo treats physical and digital copies of games.

Digital games can now become "virtual game cards," facilitating slightly more flexible sharing of digitally purchased games between multiple Switch systems owned by the same person or family of people. And physical copies of games can now be either traditional game cards—little bits of plastic with the game stored on a flash memory chip inside—or "Game-Key cards," which look the same from the outside but don't actually have any game data stored on them.

A Game-Key card has a "key" stored on it that prompts a download of the game data from Nintendo's servers the first time you insert it. From then on, the game behaves like a cross between a digital download and a physical game—all of the game's content has to be on the console's internal storage or a microSD Express card, but you need to have the Game-Key card inserted before the game will launch.

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Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser said that the company did not factor in possible tariffs from the U.S. when deciding on the pricing for its Nintendo Switch 2 console, according to Wired. Nintendo unveiled its highly anticipated Switch 2 last week and announced that the console would be released on June 5, priced at […]

Piranha Plant. Piranha Plant. Piranha Plant.

Nintendo did not reveal exact time for when you can preorder the Switch 2, but the June 5 release date is still ‘unchanged.’

In the wake of the Switch 2 reveal, neither Nintendo nor Nvidia has gone into any detail at all about the exact chip inside the upcoming handheld—technically, we are still not sure what Arm CPU architecture or what GPU architecture it uses, how much RAM we can expect it to have, how fast that memory will be, or exactly how many graphics cores we're looking at.

But interviews with Nintendo executives and a blog post from Nvidia did at least confirm several of the new chip's capabilities. The "custom Nvidia processor" has a GPU "with dedicated [Ray-Tracing] Cores and Tensor Cores for stunning visuals and AI-driven enhancements," writes Nvidia Software Engineering VP Muni Anda.

This means that, as rumored, the Switch 2 will support Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) upscaling technology, which helps to upscale a lower-resolution image into a higher-resolution image with less of a performance impact than native rendering and less loss of quality than traditional upscaling methods. For the Switch games that can render at 4K or at 120 FPS 1080p, DLSS will likely be responsible for making it possible.

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First-party Switch 2 games are now set at $80 for major releases, and other publishers will likely follow suit.

Among the changes mentioned in yesterday's Nintendo Switch 2 presentation was a note that the new console doesn't just support MicroSD Express cards for augmenting the device's 256GB of internal storage, but it requires MicroSD Express. Whatever plentiful, cheap microSD card you're using in your current Switch, including Sandisk's Nintendo-branded ones, can't migrate over to your Switch 2 alongside all your Switch 1 games.

MicroSD Express, explained

Why is regular-old MicroSD no longer good enough? It all comes down to speed.

Most run-of-the-mill SD and microSD cards you can buy today are using some version of the Ultra High Speed (UHS) standard. Designed to augment the default speed (12.5MB/s) and high speed (25MB/s) from the earliest versions of the SD card standard, the three UHS versions enable data transfers of up to 624MB/s.

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Mouse gaming is back on consoles, baby.

At a presentation unveiling the Nintendo Switch 2, longtime Nintendo producer Kouichi Kawamoto revealed that at one point, he considered calling the Switch’s successor the “Super Nintendo Switch.” It would have been a nice nod to Nintendo’s second console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which followed the original NES about 35 years ago. But Kawamoto, […]

Sorry for those who hoped for a $400 handheld, but at least the Nintendo Switch 2 includes mouse control JoyCons.

Nintendo's Switch 2 presentation gave us pricing for the console ($449 to start) and Nintendo's product pages have given us pricing information for accessories ($80 for a Pro Controller, $90 for another pair of Joy-Cons, and $110 for a replacement dock, sheesh). But what Nintendo didn't mention during the presentation was game pricing, either for standalone Switch 2 titles or the Switch 2 Edition upgrades for existing Switch games.

Nintendo announced via its website after the presentation that Mario Kart World, the console's flagship launch title, will cost $50 when you buy a digital copy as part of a Switch 2 bundle. But the game will cost $80 when you buy it on its own, $30 more than the pack-in version and $20 more than the usual $60 price for first-party Switch games.

Pre-order listings at US retailers that have gone live since this morning also list several $80 games—we'll use Wal-Mart's as an example. The upgraded Switch 2 Editions for a trio of Switch games—2024's Super Mario Party Jamboree, 2023's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and 2022's Kirby and the Forgotten Land—are all going for $80, the same as Mario Kart World.

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I don't think anybody outside Nintendo or FromSoftware was expecting a spiritual successor to Bloodborne to be one of the titles announced at the Nintendo Switch 2's launch today. Not just "playable" on the Switch 2, but exclusive to it. But there it was, The Duskbloods, debuting its dread horror action just a few minutes before the luminously pink and puffy Kirby Air Ride 2. 

The Switch 2's launch titles, and other announced games, are quite the rich stew. Here are some of the AAA ports, exclusives, and unexpectedly gruesome games arriving on the just-announced system.

Switch exclusives, including Nintendo’s own

Riding it like he stole it (in 2003). Credit: Nintendo

We'll get to FromSoftware's surprising Switch 2 exclusive in a bit. Far less surprising is a new Mario Kart game, as Mario Kart 8 sold more than 67 million copies, covering more than 40 percent of all Switches sold. Mario Kart World goes big, with 24 simultaneous players, and the ability to explore off the course in a kind of open-world setting.

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We've known for a few months now that the Nintendo Switch 2 will support backward compatibility for older Nintendo Switch games, and as of today's presentation, we also know that some Switch games will get special Switch 2 Editions that add new features and support higher resolutions and other features.

Nintendo's product pages for the Switch add more details, including the status of backward-compatibility testing for original Switch games and a small handful of first-party Switch games that will get "free updates" to enhance them for Switch 2.

First, some good news. There will be a second tier of updates for original Switch games that Nintendo says "may improve performance or add support for features such as GameShare in select games." These won't include the extra features or higher resolutions of Switch 2 Edition games, but they'll be available for free, and they ought to improve playability. Nintendo lists a dozen first-party Switch games that will benefit from free Switch 2 updates:

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GameCube Nintendo Classics are exclusive to Switch 2, and you'll need a subscription to buy the wireless GameCube controller.

Hop on the Nintendo Switch 2 preorder train before a scalper tries to take your place.