— after years of reports and months of leakages, Nintendo has actually validated the greatest open trick in video gaming: The Switch 2 is launching this year.
The statement does not come as a surprise– specifically in the wake of CES 2025, where a number of peripheral makers were vibrant adequate to show reproductions of the unrevealed hardware to display their Switch 2 devices– however you may be surprised at simply how carefully the upcoming Switch 2 adhere to the type and function of its predecessor.
At a glimpse, the expose video reveals a … a little larger Switch. It's still a hybrid console, rotating in between a portable handheld video gaming gadget and a home entertainment system that outputs to your big-screen television by means of a docking station. It still has a set of removable Joy-Con controllers that appear to still work as 2 independent controllers for the ever-present, on-the-go multiplayer. It runs Mario Kart! For all intents and functions, this is Switch 2: Switch Harder.
In a market where generational leaps are generally accompanied by the out of breath espousing of brand-new functions and ever more effective hardware, the Switch 2 expose feels strangely restrained. Even the Sony PlayStation 5 Pro, a mid-generation upgrade, had more buzz surrounding its statement. Nintendo has actually seldom played that video game however– probably the last time it did was method back in the SNES period, where it took pride in the 16-bit console's “Mode 7” graphics expertise over the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive– here in 2025, it does not require to. The factor is easy: The existing Switch is currently a market leader, so why modification what works?
It's difficult to overemphasize the effect the Switch has actually had on the video gaming market because its launch in 2017. Not just has it turn into one of the very popular consoles of perpetuity– 146.2 million systems offered internationally since September 2024, putting it behind just the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo DS portable, though it might surpass even those by the end of its life process– however it's practically solitarily driven the restored rise in video gaming handhelds.
The launch of Valve's Steam Deck in 2022 was the greatest response to the success of the Switch, and its ended up being an instant hit, permitting gamers to take their bulging (and typically unblemished) Steam libraries with them. Like the Switch, the Steam Deck supported docked output to a TELEVISION, either through Valve's peripheral or one made by numerous third-party makers. From Steam Deck, we saw the arrival of competing portable video gaming PCs, from Lenovo's Legion Go to Asus' ROG Ally X or MSI's Claw, with more en route.
Picture: Nintendo
Even Microsoft is preparing some sort of portable Xbox, which would see it going into a corner of the video gaming market it has actually never ever meddled, although the business's video gaming employer, Phil Spencer, states such a device is most likely years away. Sony, on the other hand, currently twice-burned with video gaming handhelds in the type of the PSP and PS Vita, was so amazed by the appeal of its PS Portal gadget– introduced as a “remote audience” device for PS5– that it keeps upgrading it to include more devoted video gaming functions (even if those aspirations aren't rather panning out right now).
