Life with the Nintendo Switch 2
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Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Rainbow Road. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am bad at Mario Kart World. I just need to get that off my chest. I've been playing Mario Kart like most of my life in various iterations, and I've usually been pretty good at it. I wouldn't say I'm like a, you know, speed running champion of Mario Kart, but I'm pretty good at it. I could beat most people. And now all I can do is come in like 13th over and over and over and over again, and it is...

devastating. But now I have discovered I'm in. I care so deeply about being good at this game that I think the only thing you will find me doing for potentially several weeks or months is playing Mario Kart World. If you want to play with me and beat me, because you will, let me know. I am here for it. I am ready. I am coming for you, Mario Kart World. Anyway, today on the show, we are going to talk actually all about the

the Nintendo Switch 2. That's all we're doing today. We're going to talk to Andrew Webster, who reviewed the device for us. We're going to talk to Ash Parrish, who has been using the device and has been testing a lot of the games, has a lot of thoughts about how this is going. We're also going to talk about some other handheld console news, but we'll get to that later. Then we have a hotline question about the Switch 2. I'm telling you, we're just doing Switch 2 stuff today. We've had the thing for a while. We have some thoughts about it.

It's Switch 2 time here on the Verge cast. All of that is coming up in just a second. But first, I'm going to play more of this stupid game that I can't stop playing. I'm going to come in 13th and then we're going to do this. This is the Verge cast. We'll be right back.

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All right, we're back. Andrew Webster is here. Hi, Andrew. Hello. I feel like I have dragged you here to talk about the Switch several times against your will now, and I'm very excited to have you back. So thank you for doing this. Of course. I'm always, always here to talk Nintendo. So let's talk about the review process as much as... I want to talk about how you feel about this thing, but this has been an interesting gadget to review for...

for you over the last week or so. What have you been up to? How has this thing been going for you? Well, yeah, it's been weird because normally you get things ahead of time and then we can play around with it and then publish something that lets people know whether they want to buy it or not. But Nintendo did not do that. And my unit showed up two days late. So I've just spent every waking moment that wasn't

covering one of the four live video game events that happened over the past week um you know playing mario kart and no man's sky and figuring out what virtual game cards are so what were the first games you installed like what was the first thing i mean i assume mario kart world was first because it was the first one everybody's mario kart world um and then fortnite and no man's sky were like the two two ones because i feel like those especially i put in

a number of hours that I won't say publicly. So like I can really tell the difference and they both like struggled hardcore on the first switch. So they're pretty notable upgrades.

So I want to come back to this because I think the Fortnite of it all, I actually think might be a really telling way to distinguish the new Switch. But let's talk about this thing as just a piece of hardware first. You've spent a lot of time on the first Switch. And I think the question we talked a bunch about in the run up to this thing is, what do we want?

a better Switch to be. And there are a bunch of things that could be, including some sort of wildly different idea about what a Nintendo Switch console might be or look like or do. And instead, we got a thing that is just like a full rev of specs in most ways, I would say. Purely as a piece of hardware, what have you felt about it so far? Does it feel like they got the thing right in just trying to make it better across the board? Yeah, it's like...

I don't say this in like a bad way. It's good enough. Like it's what they needed to do. I've written about this thing like at many different points, including before it came out. And every time I was just like, it's a switch, but better. And finding new ways to say that is difficult. But that's really even after spending, you know, an entire week with it. It's a switch, but better. So what what about it jumps out to you is that?

better like what are the sort of most noticeably better things i mean just the way games run is like a huge difference like we talk about mario kart world um and like developers in the hand had said that you know when they were developing this game for the switch they were like getting scared because it's not going to work on it um and you play it on switch 2 and it runs beautifully you know i was doing like four player split screen and this game is like so chaotic

you know, everything explodes. You have like two bullet bills at the same time while you're getting hit with a blue shell and like all that stuff's happening on your TV at the same time and it runs great. Like it's just not a game that would be possible on the other Switch. And yeah, and like Fortnite, you know, our colleague Charles wrote about

Like when he played it on the Switch 2 for the first time, because he only played on the Switch, he was like, holy shit, this is like how you people did living? Like he bought all these skins and he could actually tell who they were on the new hardware because they just were like polygonal trash before. I feel like that's the same as like if you've been playing Fortnite only on your phone for the last decade. You're like, yeah, this game is fine. But like, what's the fuss about Fortnite? And then you get the full Fortnite experience. You're like, oh, this is actually...

Kind of sick. And it's like, you know, you're still grading Nintendo on a curve. It doesn't look as good as a PS5 or whatever, but like it looks very good. And especially in portable mode, you know, it's, it's Fortnite. Yeah. So this, this is a dumb question. And you're better equipped to answer it than I am. And one of the things I've been trying to figure out about the Switch 2 is games look dramatically better. And I can't figure out whether that's because I have the old,

old like OG pre OLED switch. And so I'm actually upgrading like a couple of generations of display. Or if it is because there's just so much more processing power that actually the games themselves are

are able to be made to look better. Uh, and so I, but I just keep staring at the screen being like, I can't believe how much better this looks even for like games that I played on the old switch. Yeah. Like this, the screen is obviously better. Although like I mentioned this on a review, it's like, I do miss the OLED. Like it was, it's much more vibrant. Um, but you know, the screen is better, but it, I think it is more the, the processing issue, you know? Um,

It's not the screen that makes the eShop actually usable for once, where you can input codes and it doesn't take half an hour. It's there. So yeah, it's like, you know, Nintendo is not a company that likes to make beefy consoles, but this is like, you know, I can play Cyberpunk and it looks good, even in portable mode.

That game was a disaster when it first came out on previous-gen consoles, and it runs great on the Switch. It's not the latest open-world game, but it's a big thing, and it's a big technical test, and it works great. Have you run into anything that feels like it's pressing up against the edges of what the Switch 2 can do? The only stuff that looked bad for me is doing... There's a new feature called Game Share, where with one copy of the game, you basically stream it

to someone who's nearby. So like me and you were hanging out, we can play it. Um, and well, me and my kids were playing this game called survival kids, which is exactly what it sounds like. It looked fine. Um, but then my wife and I were playing split fiction, which is kind of like a triple A ish, uh, quality game. Um, and like, she was on the old switch. I was on the switch too. And like, it looked terrible. Um, so I think that stuff, but that's, I think that's,

more of like a streaming issue than like a hardware issue but um yeah i'm the kind of person who drives around my car world and like take pictures of all the signs so i notice things that probably people don't notice but like you know some of that stuff looks a little fuzzy or low res but um nothing like huge that normal people would notice i don't think okay yeah it does feel like nintendo in general is pretty well calibrated to like having enough power to do what it needs to do without having

tons of headroom, which I think is potentially sort of problematic as you get to like the eighth year of a console cycle. Uh, but in these first runs, it's, I can't remember a Nintendo experience where I have felt like something was sort of underpowered on the first day and Nintendo just does a good job of that. Yeah. And the only other thing they have is like a bunch of quizzes. So, you know, if that didn't run well, we're, we're in trouble. Yeah, that's fair.

Um, what, what do you feel about the the joy cons the controllers I know everybody has had a lot of feelings about potential drift issues again because they're not hall effects joysticks but I am certainly no controller expert what what has been your joy con experience so far.

Again, they're just like a little bit better. Like I think being bigger helps them, especially when you're like, you know, splitting them apart and having two people using them. It makes a big difference. You know, we'll have to find out if drift becomes an issue. The mouse thing is like fine. I was playing Civ for a while and it's like,

it works, but it's not the most comfortable way to hold a controller on your thigh, moving it around. So it's kind of like they're pretty similar to the console as a whole, where it's just like, you know,

They made it slightly better. I will say the magnet thing is very satisfying to like snap them in and out. It is. And in a way that I going back to the original switch now feels that mechanism always felt sort of fragile. Like I was going to accidentally break the thing you had to sort of slide it into on the edges. And then the whole thing was going to fall apart. This feels it feels like.

Like it's going to come out in the way that like my AirPods always feel like they're going to come out of my ears, but they never do. And so far, it's it's I have not had one problem with like detaching when I didn't want it to, even though it feels like it should be flimsier than it actually seems to be. Yeah. Honestly, the same with like the kickstand, like the kickstand is like seems like it should be flimsy. It's like a cut out you, but it's like the sturdiest of all the models I've seen so far. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. So is there anything about the hardware that has been disappointing to you?

I think I don't want to buy a micro SD express card for it, but the games are bigger now. And so it takes up, even though they gave you more space, like if Cyberpunk's like 50 gigs, that's like a fifth of your console already. So I've already been deleting and moving things around a weekend.

So, I mean, that's just the nature of having bigger games. But in comparison to a PlayStation or Xbox where I don't do that as much, and the games are even bigger, it's pretty annoying. And the battery life is not as good. Yeah, what have you experienced so far? I think the coverage we've done, it seems to suggest that people are having pretty...

mixed but generally not super impressive experiences with the battery. Yeah, I think the low-end Nintendo says is like two hours and that's like... That's pretty bad. If you're playing... I think it really depends what you're playing. If you're doing like the game share stuff seems to really take the battery. Something big like Cyberpunk really seems to do it. If I'm just like messing around in Free Rome and Mario Kart, it seems okay. But I think like the really intensive games seem to really drain it and hit that lower end that they're saying.

Yeah, I mean, I think... I feel like the Switch, the Switch 1, uh...

Was normally somewhere in the like five hour range for kind of normal use for a lot of people. And that felt fine. Two is tough. Yeah. Two is not enough battery. That's like, you know, wouldn't get me to San Francisco on a flight. So. Right. Exactly. Yeah. It's it's pretty rough. The the storage thing, I tend to agree, I think, is kind of odd. And 256 gigs is fine.

But even going up to like 512 goes from I am sort of constantly managing which games I have on my console to like most people would probably just be able to have all of the games they're actively playing online.

And it's like there's just that's the one hardware upgrade that it feels like Nintendo just didn't quite push far enough. And I think part of it is like their games are like super optimized. They're tiny. But like every third party, if you know, Cyberpunk, Street Fighter 6, even like Yakuza, which is like a PS4 game is like 40 gigs, which is, you know, pretty, pretty good size for a device like this. Yeah. What's your normal setup? How do you play?

play are you a docked guy with a controller are you all handheld what's your what's your move I work around everyone else okay if the TV is free then I'm using the TV otherwise but I did spend like you know we had a nice weekend up here and I spent like you know a lot of time on the couch in the backyard just playing cyberpunk it was nice

I mean, that's the dream. In the backyard playing Cyberpunk is like a life I can get ready for. Yeah. I rarely do tabletop just because it's, I don't know, I find, I'm not a fan of like the split controller thing. I'm not bringing a thing with me. I tested a bunch for the mouse controls, but I'm not a PC gamer. So, you know, it's kind of lost on me. Yeah, that's fair. How have you felt about the overall like size and weight of the thing? And especially in handheld mode, actually holding the thing? So like,

I thought it would bother me because like when you put it up next to a switch, like it's a pretty big difference, but like I have not really had any issues. Um,

I pass it to my 12-year-old because she's put in a lot of hours in Pokemon just if she could see a difference. And two hours later, she came back. I had to grab it away from her because she wouldn't give it back. And she, tiny little hands, didn't have any issues with this big thing. So I think mileage varies, obviously. But for me, it's been fine. And whether she just wants extra screen time or actually doesn't have a problem with it, my daughter seemed all right.

Yeah. So do you find yourself slightly disappointed with the idea that it is just a better Switch? Because you seem slightly disappointed by the idea that there's not some bigger swing in this console. I don't know. I think what we need to see is like Nintendo making those swings, I think, with the experiences. I think if they just continue doing like this form factor and this style of hardware, then

that's fine if they don't get complacent in the other areas. Like world is like a very interesting expansion of Mario Kart. You can't just, they realized we can't just like add more levels like we did before. We're going to try this new thing. Donkey Kong weirdly seems like a very interesting expansion.

platformer where you can like deform the terrain and do all this kind of crazy stuff um but like i feel like we need to see more of that stuff like the equivalent of like a labo kind of thing because yeah like the hardware is like a tough thing to make those swings on and nintendo is in like a very comfortable position that they obviously don't want to mess with um but

I think the issue comes with them being too comfortable on the software side, which we don't know enough about yet because there's only a couple Switch 2 exclusives. The other big stuff coming is cross-platform stuff like Metroid and Pokemon.

Yeah, I'm part of the reason I ask is I've been torn about how to feel about this, too, because I think I've been saying all along that, like, give me the thesis of the original switch all the way back to 2017. I think that was the correct way to think about what gaming should be. Just like make the processor and the Wi-Fi faster and I will be happy. And.

like, check and check, right? That stuff has worked. But I think a lot of people have had the experience of, like, I played the Switch for a long time, and then I got a Switch 2, and just immediately settled into it. And it's like, it doesn't... I don't know if this is your experience, too. I just kind of stopped thinking about it as a new console almost immediately. Which, on the one hand...

sort of a huge victory, right? Like the upgrade process is pretty smooth. The thing works pretty well. I haven't turned on my Switch 1 since 10 minutes after I started working with the Switch 2. The whole thing just like flips and still feels like a Switch only better. And there's part of that that's like great, nicely done, perfectly executed job by Nintendo. And then there's part of me that is like, I spent $500 on this thing and it feels more or less like

The old thing. And so I don't I don't know what I wanted Nintendo to do to make this feel sort of weird and wild and different. But the company is so good at doing that most of the time when it does it, that it's almost you almost feel it when it's not sort of mind blowingly good.

in some way. Yeah. And I don't know how Nintendo is even supposed to split those two things simultaneously, but I did feel that little bit of like, this is it, even though it's exactly what I wanted. Yeah, it's, I mean, and it honestly is the same across every console platform at the moment as they become more like smartphones where they're just like steady upgrades. Like the PS5 has a great controller and smartphones

stuff looks better, but it's the same thing. The first thing I did was play Fortnite on it to compare it to the PS4. So it's like Nintendo is stuck in that space where it's like, we want to keep this audience, but how do we keep them interested? I think the real thing will be when we see the next Zelda

and or mario and see like what they do to take advantage of the hardware because obviously mario kart's like the big game in terms of sales but i think those are the two showcase um franchises that nintendo has i think zelda will probably be a while because they just put one out last year but like you know part of what made the switch work was it launched with breath of the wild right and it was like you know not only did we make an open world zelda but hey you can like

take it on a plane, which is like a pretty good sales pitch. Mario Kart's like, you know, a crowd-pleaser game, but it doesn't have that same impact, especially in terms of selling what's different about the hardware. Do you have a theory on what that might look like on the Switch 2? Like the...

what could be the equivalent of the now you can take it on a plane? I mean, I think if I knew what it was, then it would be a boring thing for Nintendo. I think the thing they need to do is like the Nintendo thing where it's like, I didn't even think of this. You know, Mario Kart's a little bit of that. Like I wouldn't have expected them to make an open world

kart racing game and i would not have expected donkey kong to be like a tentpole 3d platforming game but those are still you know it's mario kart and donkey kong like they need uh i think a zelda and a mario that does something that shows you hey this couldn't exist before i don't know if they're waiting to have like more of an install base or what the plan is there but um

I think one of those needs to do something that I wouldn't have thought of because that's like what Nintendo is. They do the things you don't think of. And you're like, wait, this is great and it makes perfect sense. So why didn't someone think of it? Yeah. Do you think it's possible that part of the answer there is to kind of keep increasing the line of accessories? Like I just look at the the Piranha game chat.

camera that Nintendo announced, which I didn't buy. I bought the boring one and I really regret it. I was sitting right next to the Piranha one and I should have bought the Piranha. But I've always wondered why Nintendo doesn't sort of go further down that road. It's like there's the Mario Kart wheel, there's the plant, and...

There's not that much else. But like, if you're going to embrace this modular thing, there's a huge potential sort of way you could do all kinds of different sorts of controller and camera stuff and make more stuff out of game chat. And I don't know, a deep, long road of accessories Nintendo could go down. Do you think is that part of where it goes from here? Like similar-ish base, but new-ish ideas about how to accessorize it?

Maybe. I mean, they've done that in the past. Like, some of the biggest Wii games were like Wii Fit, which had its own, what was it called? The balance board for exercising on. Right, yeah. I think it does sort of...

fragment things in a way so like i think a good example is like a ring fit adventure that came out for the switch which was like it just came with like a wheel um like an exercise ring um but you slotted the joy-con controller and so it's like i think finding ways to do that would make sense um so it's like a cheap pack-in with with a thing as opposed to like you know you need to need to buy an 80 controller to to play this game which severely fragments um

what what you can do um maybe there's something with like the mouse they can do with that when they finally make mario paints i don't know but yeah

Yeah. What have you what have you seen in some of the new sort of digital game ideas? Like there's the new thing where you can like kind of share games across consoles and then there's the streaming stuff you were talking about. But it seems like at least from what I can tell, the basic interface of the switch to is like essentially the same thing as the last one. But they seem to have some new ideas about how to sort of manage and share and move games around. Has that stuff worked for you?

Yeah, it seems okay. It's like, it takes a minute to wrap your head around that they're sort of trying to

treat digital games as if you have a physical card and it has to be in one switch and not in the other. But I think actually in particular in my household where we have like now, I guess five switches, it's actually a way to keep track of things. The way before it was pretty convoluted. This is not necessarily the less convoluted, but I think once you think of it in the weird way that Nintendo wants you to, that these are actual cartridges.

It basically like turns the digital game into like an actual physical object that you move from place to place. Exactly. Kind of the idea, right? So like, you know, when I installed Super Mario Wonder on the Switch 2, I was like taking it out of my OLED switch, basically, but digitally. So probably depends on the circumstances. But I think, you know, in a household with a bunch of switches and kids, it's actually a

way to share things that makes sense. It's just, you know, it's weird in a Nintendo way that like it takes a minute to wrap your head around. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. And I think to me, it seems like that goes back to the same sort of thing that it's like Nintendo is making a bunch of decisions here that kind of individually makes sense. Right. Like I get

I would rather just be able to have all my games everywhere all the time, but I can understand why that doesn't really work that way. And moving games between consoles is traditionally terrible. So I'm like, okay, this is slightly convoluted, but I get why Nintendo is doing it this way. This sort of makes sense.

But then again, it all falls into this, like, yeah, it just kind of works and you kind of stop thinking about it zone. By the way, is everybody else in your family clamoring for a Switch 2 now? Like, is it once they get the new one, does the old one seem like junk? No, in fact, we've already, like, Pokemon Violet has already, like, jumped back and forth between the two systems. Interesting. My kid plays whatever is free. So, and I think that speaks to, like,

First of all, it makes it good if you have a family and you're upgrading to Switch 2 because they're fine with the old one. So that's a positive for us. But yeah, I think it speaks to this thing of it not being that different or exciting. Where it's like, I see all this stuff. I honestly don't think my 12-year-old noticed much of a difference when she...

spent another 10 hours playing Pokemon Violet. Right. Yeah, that's very fair. So it seems like a big part of the kind of open questions about the Switch 2 are going to be the games that come the rest of this summer. And I think we're due for a pretty serious run of stuff over the next couple of months, right? I remember we saw that direct in whatever that was, like April. We all came out of that thinking that was a pretty strong...

set of launch-ish games. Is there anything you're looking at in particular being like, okay, this is going to start to be the test of where you can really push this thing? Obviously, I think Donkey Kong Bonanza is the obvious one. Is there anything else? Yeah. There's an original FromSoftware game, which is a studio that makes Elden Ring and Dark Souls and all that stuff. Like, exclusive to the Switch 2. And I think, like, that is...

a wild thing to just like say out loud that they're making a game exclusive for the switch to, um, in addition to like putting Elden Ring on it. And I think actually both of those, like, I think Elden Ring is a very good technical test, but I think a game that only exists on the switch to from that studio, which is like the most hardcore of, you know, big game studios, um, will be like a, a really good sign if it's good. Um, but yeah, um,

Because that's obviously third-party game support has always been a place that Nintendo has struggled with. And there's lots of cool stuff we're talking about at launch here, but they're all...

They exist elsewhere. You know, Split Fiction, Cyberpunk, Street Fighter VI are all games I can play on my PlayStation. And so I think showing something that is only on the Switch 2 from a studio like that is like a real statement of intent as long as it, you know, is good. Yeah. Well, and to that point, actually, I think one of the things I've been trying to figure out with the Switch 2 kind of throughout this whole launch process is...

whether it is more directly in competition with the Xbox and PlayStation than it has been before. Because I think, and we've talked about this over the years, like there's the Xbox and the PlayStation, which are kind of playing the same game, so to speak, right? And then Nintendo has just always been over here. And I think most people thinking about what console to buy are probably not debating, do I buy a PlayStation or do I buy a Switch, right? Like you either use them in complimentary ways or you kind of are one or the other, right?

But it feels like, again, especially with a lot of the games you're talking about now coming to the Switch 2, which has this huge performance increase, it can do all this other stuff, it is getting, like, Split Fiction is a good example. That's the kind of game that I don't think I would have expected on the Switch the first go-round. But now it's here, and we're going to get these other AAA games, and this stuff is going to start to be big. Like, do you think the Switch 2 is more sort of next to the Xbox and PlayStation than Nintendo has been in the past?

I mean, it is at the moment, but even the games we're talking about, again, they're like not new. You know, GTA 6 isn't coming to the Switch 2. I can say that pretty confidently. That's actually a big deal. I had not thought about that until you just said that, but that is a meaningful, immediate difference. Yeah, I think this is like a thing that actually happens a lot with Nintendo consoles at launch where they like get a bunch of third-party developers to make games for them or like ports of games that exist already.

And they look great. But what'll shorten that gap is shortening the time between when these games are actually on the Switch. When did Cyberpunk come out? Like three years ago? And that's like a technical showcase for Nintendo's new console. Right, yeah, fair. Which, it's great, but The Witcher 4 is probably not going to be launched initially on the Switch 2. It'll be some sort of weird cloud game three years later.

So I think it's like maybe closer than it's ever been, but there is still like a definite gap there. Okay. Yeah. So you're still, you're still buying this thing because you want to play Mario Kart, not because you're excited to play the best new high end games from studios around the industry. Yeah. It's like a, it's like a bonus that you get to do those other things. Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. Have you done any of the like retro GameCube stuff? I realized this morning that that's a part of this I have not dug into at all. How is how is that side of things? I mean, they're GameCube capes. They're great. That is like the most unheralded Nintendo console. Yeah, it's like they have like a great selection of zero games.

is like the fastest racing game. Shocking amount of enthusiasm in our comments for F-Zero. Well, it's also like Nintendo has forgotten it existed except for a weird offshoot that's like Battle Royale. Yeah, like Wind Waker obviously rules and people finally respect that it looks good. And Soul Calibur was like

such a weird fighting game where they put Link in it. So I think the GameCube games look great. I do think it's a little weird that it's like a Switch 2 exclusive thing. I guess it's a reason to sell, but I don't see why.

those games couldn't run on a switch i also just find it very funny as a marketing exercise to be like hey the reason to buy our new console is to buy is to play games from our decades old console that most people don't think about that much yeah and then barely sold as well yeah um but you know if they put double dash on there then it's all worth it i do nothing would be funnier than double dash being like a bigger hit than mario kart world that everybody's like actually all i want is double dash we're good forget the rest of this open world stuff if

If they could add like a double dash mode to world, that would be, that would actually, I would redo my best Mario Kart ever headline for this. Yeah, that is a very good idea. So, all right. So last question, then I'm gonna let you go. I think the big open question, I think of the Switch 2, and this seems to be kind of the overall reaction, is not like, is it a good console or is it better than the Switch? Like, I think we...

both sort of figured it would be and it seems like it pretty clearly is it's the price right it's the it's the is this thing worth 450 or 500 depending on which version of it you buy uh how how easy or hard have you found it to reckon with like what is this thing at you know the the 300 it used to be versus the 500 it is now i think it depends on how long you've had a switch for

If you bought a switch in 2017, then like it makes so much sense. Like you need a new one. It's like you, this thing has been chugging. Um, and it's a little bit more, but like, what's your other option? Like you want to stay in this ecosystem. It makes a lot of sense. If I had just bought a, like an OLED last year, then I probably would not want to upgrade. Um,

or I would wait until, you know, a few of those games actually come out. And, you know, they sold out of them mostly. It's like doing really well. So I think that's the case for a lot of people. But I think Nintendo is also happy for that person to have bought an OLED last year and then wait three years and buy the OLED Switch 2. So it's expensive. I'm glad they didn't go up further after all that nonsense happened the day that they showed off their console. Yeah.

Um, which is pretty well, but, uh, it could have gotten truly ugly there for a while. Yeah. Yeah. The timing of it isn't great, but I do think, you know, it doesn't seem to be an issue that is like really stunting its growth, at least initially. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. I think the, the, like, would it be nice if it were cheaper? Of course. But I also think it seems increasingly like this is just what these things cost. Like,

Are we right to be mad that games are starting to cost $80? Yes, of course. Absolutely. I don't think it's going to change the fact that games are $80. Yeah, it's also, you know, like $110 Canadian. So it's much worse here. That's true. Fair enough. All right, Andrew.

Congrats on finally finishing this thing. I'm assuming this means you're never going to play the Switch 2 again. You're done. No more games for Andrew. This is the end of your Switch 2 journey. I am just going to disappear into no man's sky as soon as this thing is done with. Yeah, which is now you get to go do that for fun instead of for journalism because our jobs are very weird. Exactly. All right. We got to take a break too. Andrew, thank you. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Pure Leaf Iced Tea.

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All right, we're back. Ash Parrish is here. Hi, Ash. Hi. From your childhood home. Yes, this is where baby Ash grew up from when I was about 16 to when I was about 19. So maybe not that long ago.

Love this for you. We've had this house for like 20 plus years now. So the most important question I have for you is, did you bring the switch with you? I absolutely did. A funny story about that is I went to the midnight release of the switch. I went to a physical GameStop to pick it up. And immediately after I got my switch, I got on the road and drove to Indiana. That's a five hour ride if you're, you know, driving kind of fast.

so I could leave my dog with his grandmother while I went to Summer Games Fest, but I had the Switch with me. That was a long day. That was a very long day. That is a long day. So you've actually had, I would say, like the sort of ideal relationship

potential switch experience already, which is you've gotten to play it in a bunch of places. The like the whole idea of this thing, right, is it's supposed to be equally at home, like on a on a big screen in your living room or like in a hotel room or wherever. How I have not traveled with this thing at all yet. It has sat in its dock right there next to me every single second I have owned it. So how does this thing travel?

So it travels well with one big caveat. First of all, I feel like I'd need a traveling case for this, which is not something that I felt like I needed with my regular Switch. I'll throw that in the bag and keep it going and I've never had any issues. But one thing I've noticed with the Switch 2 is like I put it in my carry-on bag and I feel like I get this nervous feeling like I should be protecting this.

And I when I pulled it out of my bag to play it on the plane, I noticed that the left Joy-Con thumbstick was not as responsive as I was used to it being. And the right one was a little bit more responsive. And I think it may have gotten jostled or squished where the Joy-Con may have gotten pressed in. I managed to work it out, so it feels fine now. But I'm like, OK, yeah, this we need some kind of protection because I just can't have this out raw dogging life anymore.

Other than that, like it's really good. I had took a picture and I'll put this in my blog that I write about how the switch travels of it sitting with the little kickstand on those tray tables on a plane and just like sitting with it, holding it like that. Like I thought that felt really good. And I've never used you're not able to really do that with the original switch because the kickstand is so thin and flimsy.

It's awful. That's the word you're looking for. It's awful. Yeah, yeah. This is the whole thing on the Switch. It goes for the kickstand. It goes all the way across the body of the Switch. And it's very tight when you like adjust it. And that feels really good. So I'm sitting on this plane. The kickstand is up like the Joy-Cons are still attached to the unit. And I'm holding it in my lap or like on this desktop thing. And it actually felt really comfortable. And I really like that. I'll have a picture for you.

The battery life kind of leaves a lot to be desired. I did see that Nintendo put out a statement that, you know, it may just be you, maybe just be a glitch. I don't know about that. But I noticed that it seems to draw a lot of power when it's in idle mode.

But I haven't really used it all that much while I was at Summer Games Fest. I pulled it out a couple times to play like when I was in my hotel room or I hadn't plugged it in. And I noticed that the battery life kind of drained, even though it hadn't been like on on a lot. And I was really like, oh, that's that's different. I'm not used to it kind of like degrading over time like that, even though I hadn't been using it.

And the big thing, the glaring issue for me is that it does not pair with my Bluetooth headphones. I have a pair of JVC, just like cheapo headphones that kind of like hang around my neck. They're like wireless earbuds.

But they don't pair. I don't know why. I've tried all different kinds of configurations. My earbuds work with everything else. I'm going to test it with my mom's ear pods later to see if it's just a me issue or if it's like a thing or it's just a my switch issue. I don't know.

But I was really looking forward to being able to listen to the music because I was playing 100 Line, Last Defense Academy on the plane. And I was really looking forward to being able to use my earphones with it. And I couldn't and I was really upset about this. So hopefully it's just like a me issue and not a Switch issue. There are some really weird connection limitations I've discovered on this thing that are the sort of thing that's like,

probably fine in you know actual use like the thing where you can only have two wireless controllers connected at a time but but a pair of joy cons counts as two so it's just like it's just it's super weird and and the reality of it is like okay what are the odds you're likely to be have to have both a pair of joy cons and a separate controller that you all want to use wirelessly all at the same time

probably relatively small, but not zero. And it's not like a hard technology problem to solve. Yeah. One thing I will, that I just remembered, I remember seeing that the Switch had two USB-C ports and I was like, well, why do we need two? And I realized

Found the use case for the two. So because the battery was having such an issue, I had a battery pack with me. And because it wasn't picking up my earbuds, I had some earphones that take a USB-C connection. I was able to plug in the charger on the bottom and then plug in my headphones on the top. And I'm like, ah, that's smart. Because if I didn't, if it only had the one, I would have to choose between either listening or charging the thing. So I thought that was actually OK. Nintendo, you got me on that one.

Yeah, that's pretty good. That is something. So one other travel question, and then I'll move on from this. Because I think one of the things that...

frustrated me a little bit with the original Switch was that one of the canonical ways you're supposed to do it was exactly what you're describing, right? You prop it up somewhere with the kickstand out, you take out the Joy-Cons, you hold the Joy-Cons in both hands, and you play with it detached that way. And I always felt like the Switch's screen was just a little too small for that to work. And I know the Switch 2 screen is bigger, but I've only been able to test that in sort of hokey ways sitting here at my desk. How does it do on the...

The thing you just described, like I want to play this sitting in an airplane seat is like the dream. And with the original Switch, it never quite hit for me.

Does it work with the Switch 2? Is it bigger enough? It is bigger enough. It feels really good. Like even in the hands, like it feels good. Like this feels more natural to me than the Switch, which kind of like you're kind of close like this because it is so small. But this you're able to like relax a little bit and like, you know, take that tension out of your shoulders as you play. And that makes a big difference. I really enjoy that part.

I haven't yet tested it where I've got the two Joy-Cons slotted into the controller and then the Switch is away from me from a distance, but I plan on testing that later when I try teaching my mom how to play with the Switch 2 to see how...

accessible family-wise the system is. But yeah, I think it'll be good. I think it'll be really good. Yeah, that's very exciting. I think that just adding that next thing goes a long way for me. So what have you been playing? I think you've been testing this thing. You were one of the first people on our team to get a hands-on with it in particular. You've covered all the games. What was the first stuff you dove into when you got your Switch 2?

Mario Kart, baby. Like, one of the things that I really was trying to get going at Summer Games Fest was to get a bunch of people, like, you know, my colleagues at other outlets. We all are trying our best to get a Switch 2. Some of them had it delivered, so they didn't have them with them. But some of them had them with them. And just get together this big Mario Kart knockout tournament going. And it just, we couldn't make it work, unfortunately. But Mario Kart is...

so much fun to play on the Switch 2. Like, I'm not a Mario Kart person. I'm really not an online gamer person, like multiplayer gamer. I just don't do that. But playing Knockout online was like the first thing I did when I turned on this system. And it was so much fun, even though I lost pretty badly. Those people are no joke. I've also been playing, but that's like the only like new certified Switch 2 game that I had. On that front, what

Before, I'm curious, like, what do you make of this, like, gentle backlash there has been to Mario Kart World being, like, the launch title? I feel like the thing that I've heard, the sort of most negative piece of reaction I've seen to all of the Switch stuff is the, like, oh, it's just a better Switch, which we can come back to, but I find completely ridiculous because that is exactly what I wanted. Hooray, it's a better Switch. But there is this thing where it's, like, people don't think Mario Kart World is enough to be the sort of launch title for a new console, right?

What do you make of that? I honestly, I feel it. I really do. Yeah? Because when you're on a plane, right, the most fun part about Mario Kart is the ability to play online with other people, right? When you're on a plane, you know, you don't really have that. I mean, you could pay for Wi-Fi if you want and try to, you know, do it that way, which I don't know why you would do that. Yeah.

So I'm on this plane in this like, you know, bubble and I'm like, damn, I wish I had like a chunky 60 hour RPG that I could play right now, which is why I turned, I didn't play Mario Kart and I turned back on 100 line Last Defense Academy, which is like this Danganronpa like RPG kind of thing because that's,

That's what I wanted in that situation. And there was just nothing there that could like scratch that itch because I've already played the Zelda. I don't want to play it again. I know that it looks really beautiful. Like it looks like it was supposed to, you know, all those years ago. Like now I don't want to do that again. I don't want to rehash that. I want something new. And I really wish that there was some kind of, I don't know, like Mario, hint, hint, that I could have been playing while I was, you know, with no internet signal. Otherwise I would have been playing Mario Kart.

So that's a really interesting point. I hadn't even really thought about that. That, like, for all that there is to do in Mario Kart World, it doesn't feel like that big a game. Like, it's very fun, and I will play a ton of it, but it doesn't feel sort of epic in scope the way a lot of these, like, launch. Like, Breath of the Wild was a perfect example. It was, like, nobody could believe how epic in scope that game was at the time. And so maybe the expectations for...

Like, it doesn't just have to be a game that's fun that I'm going to play a lot. It has to, like... You want something that sort of feels demonstrably different. Yeah. That's fair. This is a nice statement. It's an okay statement. It's a fun statement. But it's not, like, the kind of statement that you should be punching people in the face with with the launch of your new console, right? When I pre-ordered my Switch, I also put a pre-order for Donkey Kong Bonanza because for some reason I thought that would be a launch title. Because if it was, like, we would have...

be having a totally different conversation because I would be talking all about Donkey Kong because that was my game of the show damn near when I was doing the Switch 2 experience back in April. Like that was the game I wanted and I was really disappointed to find out that that wasn't a launch title. Like what that would have been the seller. Like that would have been the thing that would have been the thing that would have satisfied me on my plane ride. But I guess I have to wait for that.

I know. I was a little surprised because they even set that one up like it was going to be the one. Like, you and I talked after that Nintendo Direct, and it was like, okay, this is the game for this console. So I guess we have to wait a little bit. But yeah, I guess that's what we got to do. Nintendo does things on their own time, and...

We got to wait for them, let them cook. They usually don't disappoint us. So we'll see how it goes when Donkey Kong Bonanza launches. I mean, that is true. The they usually don't disappoint us thing is the only part of me that is like a little willing to be patient is like usually it's worth it. Usually. Yeah. It'll be OK. So what else have you been playing? So it's just been pretty much those two. Believe it or not, like when I'm at Summer Games Fest, I don't have a lot of time to play video games because I'm...

you know, dodging protests and, you know, going from appointment to appointment to appointment. So I'll have a little downtime at the end of the day and I'm trying to get through this, this RPG because I'm really interested in the story and it's kind of fun, but that's pretty much it for right now. What are you, what are you excited to play? What's out that you're like itching to get into?

Hmm. What is the thing is, what is out? I do want to play the welcome tour because I saw something in that game. I know people right now. Did you ever think you would say the sentence out loud? I want to play the welcome tour. No, I didn't. But there was something that I saw that like sparked an interest in me at the switch to experience that is like, I want to learn more about this device in my hands. And I think that was a good way to impart that information.

Like there's this thing where it teaches you about like HDR and like frame rates. Like, yes, I know what a frame rates is and I know what happens when frame rates are low, but I never really understood the technical details behind like frame rates and why things appear differently. And welcome tour got into that. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. I could learn some things that I didn't already know about this. And I don't have that game yet. And that's on my list of things to do. Maybe I'll go download it after I'm done talking with you so I can talk more about it. But yeah,

I was really interested in that. And I like those little mini games, like those little WarioWare-esque mini games. I think they could be really fun and a really nice way to introduce the Switch to my mom. So yeah, I think that is what I'm going to do when I get off the call with you. That's the game we'll play together instead of Animal Crossing.

Oh, and I did transfer my Animal Crossing island over from my Switch 1 to my Switch 2 to see how easy that was. And that was a relatively seamless experience. So people who are really precious about their Animal Crossing islands, don't worry. You can save all your stuff. It's not a big hassle. I

I will say that was one of the things I was most pleasantly surprised by was how easy it was to go from Switch 1 to Switch 2. Mine was slightly messy because I have, as it turns out, two Nintendo accounts with the same email address, which just breaks everything. I don't even know how that happened, but it was just a mess. But once I sorted that out, it's like a 10-minute process. All my stuff got moved over, and it was like I haven't had to touch my original Switch since, which has been awesome. Yeah. Very surprised by that.

What do you, what's your sense of sort of where on the spectrum this goes between like slightly better Switch, I barely even notice a difference, all the way to like complete brand new Nintendo console generation? I mean,

I'm kind of in the middle because of the situation we talked about before, which is the games. Like, if I had more games that are not just ports from the Switch 1 to the Switch 2, like more original games to play, I think we would be having a different conversation. But there aren't that many Switch 2 exclusives out right now. There's Deltarune, but I got to be honest, like I was an Undertale girly. I was not a Deltarune person. I know that people are freaking out and having a

really great time with the new chapters that were released with the Switch 2. But even then, that doesn't feel like a Switch, an exclusively Switch 2 experience. You know, it's going to be on both consoles. So I'm waiting for the games, man. Like, when the games, I think, will tell me

What or how much more powerful this system is. And until then, you know, we're just dealing with the cool camera and the voice chat and, you know, trying to see how many different kinds of camera inputs the switch can take, which I've seen people are my colleagues in Slack, like, you know, connecting their weird cameras to it and whatever. And that's fun.

Almost bought one myself and I didn't, but we'll see. It looks like, and from what I've heard from other people, the camera really enhances things, especially Mario Kart, because you can see your friend's face. It is pretty fun. The thing where it's like their little head sort of bobbing above the car is pretty great. Gives it a little, I don't know.

an extrusion as a claw that enhances that fun, but I don't have that stuff yet. We'll wait. So what, what do you think will make a switch to game a switch to game? This is because again, if it's, if it's just a slightly better switch, um,

there is a world in which the thing that we get is slightly better games, right? Everything runs a little faster. I mean, this has been my experience so far. It's like the single biggest upgrade is just that everything is faster. Yes. Which is not a $500 upgrade all on its own, but it has been like a real meaningful quality of life improvement in my experience with this console. Every menu is faster. Everything loads faster. Like it's just a vastly faster thing. Is it possible that that's

the extent of it or is your sense that like from what we've seen from games that have and have not launched yet that there is going to be something you can do in these games that feels sort of meaningfully different even from the switch one the only answer that i can think of is nintendo finding a way to hit us in the face with their new joy-con technology so like the little mouse thing like they had dragon drive which was the 3v3 wheelchair basketball thing but that

for me, left a lot to be desired. There was Metroid Prime 4, which probably will be the game that makes everybody go, damn, this is a Switch 2. I didn't really like it all that much. Maybe I need to have more time with it in order to really get in the groove of things because I did not play the first three Metroid Primes and I'm more of like a side-scrolling Metroid girly versus the first-person Metroid girly. I tried to play those Metroid Prime games when they re-released them on the Switch and they kind of just didn't hold me.

So I'm hoping that, you know, with more time with Metroid Prime 4, I can see the vision there. But I'm really waiting. Like, Nintendo's always done these really cool gimmicky things that, yeah, they look silly and whatever, but they also really work. They're really fun. Like, we had that with the Joy-Cons with, like, Nintendo Switch Sports and Ring Fit Adventure, those kinds of things. That's what makes this console feel different from your Xboxes and your PlayStations. I'm waiting on that, but I am...

I really cannot conceive of how they make those mouse controls fun because the little bit I saw of it was not fun for me and kind of painful. Yeah, it does seem like that thing could be really cool or it could be very like Microsoft Connect-y in that it is like a nifty thing that exists in three games. And that's fine as far as it goes, but it's not.

No one's going to remember the Kinect as like the thing that made the Xbox work. You know what I mean? I trust Nintendo's innovation a little bit more than I trust Microsoft's and PlayStation's, which makes me sound like one of those like Nintendo fanboy people. I am not. I am platform agnostic. Can I take it with me on the go? Yes. Okay, I'm in. Yeah. That's a good segue, David. Yeah. Yeah.

Wait, last thing. I'm curious about your controller setup. I just bought a Pro Controller for the Switch 2 and I'm feeling a lot of feelings about it because it's very good and it was also $85 and that fills me with rage every time I look at it. What's your setup? My setup is

I have not put this thing in a dock yet because I don't particularly care about it. That's not how I play these games. That's not how I use my Switch One either. This was in my hand, in my lap at all times. And I am very satisfied with that experience so far. Yeah, I buy that. I will try it for sake of, you know...

whatever, to have something to compare it against. But like, I just don't care. Yeah. And you haven't found it like heavy or bulky. I think I've seen a surprising number of people be like, this thing is enormous. And I mean, at least to me, that has not felt true. No, it's pretty much the same. It's the same profile as the the

Steam Deck to me, it's thinner, so it feels better in the hand. It doesn't give me claw hand the same way the Steam Deck does because your hands are in this weird... They can't quite close like this like they would around a controller, nor are they like this where they're more relaxed. It's just this middle part that makes my hands cramp up. I hate it. But it feels really natural in my hands. It feels like it should have because I can stretch out my shoulders and relax versus being real close when you are with the smaller original Switch.

Yeah, no, no, I that's definitely been my experience to the little bit I've played with it just like sitting on the couch or like up in bed or whatever. Like, I have not experienced it as heavy once. Yeah, part of it is like I do a lot of like lying in bed, holding an iPad above my face. And that I'm constantly worried I'm gonna like drop on my head. But this is normally like sitting in my lap and I have my arms propped up somewhere. And I don't know, this just doesn't feel like a problem to me the same way.

I just had this vision of you playing a Switch like this, and I'm like, I would drop that on my head. I would have blunt force trauma every day. I have dropped iPads on my face. That's terrible. iPads, plural, I have dropped on my face over the years. No, no. And those things are heavy. No, you don't want that going on your skull. Yeah, it's not. I don't recommend it. It's not a good time. You mentioned the Xbox. And the other handheld news of the week...

was a new Xbox-y handheld console that you also got to try that a bunch of people have sent to me as a potentially interesting way. I was on this podcast a while ago being like, dear God, just give me a device I can play FIFA on. And that device eventually became the Switch. And it's fine. It's not the best version of it, but it's fine. But then I look and it's like, oh, we've been waiting for Xbox handhelds for forever forever.

this is kind of maybe starting to happen it is it is happening i so i was at the xbox event at summer game fest they had uh hands-on so it was really a hands-on with gears of war reloaded so they're doing another remaster of gears of war congratulations

And they had the game on like every different kind of console that it can run so you can compare. So they had it on an Xbox. They had it on a PlayStation. They had it on a PC. They had it on one of the vanilla ROG Allies. And then they also had the ROG

ally X, we got to talk to Microsoft. We got to sit them down and be like, dude, you got suck at naming things. You're making this so unnecessarily complicated. I just, I hate the naming convention that they just seem to stick with. But I played Gears of War Reloaded on the original ROG ally. And then I went over to the Xbox ROG ally and the difference, like I,

I put that thing in my hand. I'm like, I need this. I need this device because the way that it's set up is that it has like the, the, the handholds like extend away from the console. So it feels more like you're actually gripping a controller versus the steam deck where it's just like this flat rectangular profile. And that little bit of difference meant so much because I could

curl my hand more naturally. And I have just, like I said, I have this like claw hand situation with the Steam Deck where after a couple of hours of play, like my hand cramps up and I hate the way that it feels. But this, even though I only got to play with it a little bit, it felt so much better. And everybody that I was with in my little play testing pod said the same thing. Like, oh my God, this feels incredible. Same weight as like a Steam Deck.

Like, it performed really well. Like, I went from the original ally to the new ally playing Gears of War, and I felt like I improved a little bit with my shooting and whatever. Like, I don't like first-person shooters, but I do like Gears because I think that's more my speed in terms of, you know, shooting, like, those cover-based shooting versus, like, the twitchiness of, like, a Call of Duty.

And I felt like I got better. And I'm like, oh, this is kind of sexy. And like you, I've been waiting for a Game Pass device, essentially. I am not smart, so I don't know how to mod my Steam Deck to do all that. Like, you guys can do that. Go with the grace and favor of the Lord. That is not for me. Give me a device that is all there so I don't have to think about that. And if that is satisfied by this Xbox ROG,

No, ROG, Ally, Xbox. Nope, I've still got it wrong. Whatever, you know what I'm talking about. If that device can satisfy that itch, it's day one for me.

If I'm thinking about this right, it's basically like a normal sort of handheld console that is like growing an Xbox controller? Yes. Okay. Kind of. It's not, it doesn't like super protrude out, but it protrudes out just enough that your hand can kind of close on it like a fist versus holding it like this. And that, that, that little difference is a lot. Yeah. I like that. So, and I would assume the, from what I understand of most of these consoles, the

biggest thing people want from an Xbox version of this as opposed to just a normal handheld console is better software, right? Like the thing everybody on our team keeps telling me is the problem with all of these handheld consoles is Windows. Yes. Like you can build all the great hardware you want and Windows will just ruin it for you. All you need is a good home screen and

and then just play the games. And it is wild how hard that is with Windows. Take an Xbox, you know, like they had that big plastic cube thing that they molded in that reveal video. Just like take a Xbox Series S or X or whatever and put a screen on it and just give that to me. Give me the Xbox interface. Don't mess around and try to make it fancy with Windows. I know they have to do that because this is also going to be a device that plays third-party stores as well. So there's going to be some...

shenanigans with the software that I'm going to have to be able to navigate. But if you just, where is the Xbox in a handheld form? We have a PlayStation in a handheld form. We have a Switch in a handheld form. We have a PC in a handheld form. Why is it so difficult for Xbox to make an Xbox in a handheld form? Like, I really don't understand the disconnect there.

Do you think that's starting to change in a meaningful way? Like, it's clearly not an accident that they put this thing out there in front of people. Is 2025 the year of the handheld Xbox, finally, do you think? We'll see. It really depends on how well...

everything runs on that Xbox ally. Like we really have to see more of that interface, that UI. There's this whole thing about whether or not a game is Xbox play anywhere, or if it's something that you have to stream through the cloud, because this is not a, you can't just boot up an Xbox ally, I believe, and just play whatever Xbox games you have. You're, you're probably streaming them. They don't play them natively. I mean, unless they have like a specific designation, that's a big problem. I think we're,

what consumers want, especially consumers like me who are kind of like on the low tech side where we don't do modding or anything like that. We just want

the same experience we have at home in our hands. And the other two can do that. Why can't Xbox? Right. I do think you just made an incredibly compelling argument for the Switch 2. All of that is like, there are, the end of this road for the handheld Xbox, I think is probably pretty great. And Game Pass makes a lot of sense. Like you can see where it might go. But right now it's like, oh, would you like to look at a long checklist to see if you can play your games or would you like to buy a Switch 2? Correct. Exactly.

That seems easy to me right now. Yeah. It feels like there's some real catching up to do there for almost everybody else trying to play this game. For some reason, Xbox likes to make things needlessly complicated. It don't got to be that hard, buddy. Just put the console in my hand. It's real. Make that happen. And you will literally print money. Put it in my hand. Print money. Xbox Series X with a screen. Give it to me. This is it. All right. Well, Ash, you are home. You have a mom to go teach about the Switch. Keep us posted on how this goes.

Do the welcome tour and let me know if it's worth the $10. I have not spent the $10 on principle, but like if it's worth it, I'll do it. So keep me posted, okay? I will definitely do that. All right. Thank you for being here. We got to take a break. We're going to come back with more Switch stuff. We'll be right back. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to.

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All right, we're back. Let's do a question from the Verge cast hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. You can email vergecast at theverge.com. We got a whole bunch of stuff coming up this summer to do. So send us all of your questions. For now, we're talking Switch today. We have a question about the Switch.

Hey there, Verge Cash. This is Scott calling from Australia. My question's about the Switch 2, mainly about considering the economics and the pricing, because this is the first time we've seen the most recent generation where it hasn't gone down in price. The Switch kept the $299 price point. Other consoles are staying the same or going up, and now the Switch 2 is also a bump up from previous consoles. I

I'm just wondering, this is the first time it's ever happened, and might this be the last generation of consoles that we see for some time until there's some kind of streamlining on the economics of making manufacturing cheaper again or cost of living changes?

We kind of peaked out on the, I think what the hardware does generally, but I don't really know how much more we can do with hardware and pricing with upgrades if this pattern of keeping the prices the same for seven years continues. So curious what you think. Thanks.

If ever there was a Sean Hollister-coded VergeCast hotline question, this is it. Sean Hollister, thanks for being here. Hi, thanks for having me. Oh my goodness. I feel like we have to talk about this in two pieces, right? There's the like, what do we do with the economics of consoles? And then there's the, is this the last console? Which is like a mind-bending thing that we should talk about. But I'm just curious how you're thinking about the price of all of this. We talked a little bit about it with Andrew and Ash, but the like...

I had not thought about until we heard this question that the thing where the price of the console stayed consistent or even went up over time is genuinely weird and unusual in the history of gaming. What do you make of where we are at this moment? Oh, gosh, I feel like there are two camps here, two very, very vocal camps. One of them is, hey, every time Apple introduces a new iPhone device,

the price of previous iPhones goes down in price, right? They're like, let's pass that savings along to you. They're like, yes, please give your old iPhones to other people who need them so that everybody can be on an iPhone. Please, folks who couldn't afford the latest and greatest, now afford the last year's model. Let's do it that way. And that way, it seems like every year you can get more for your money. And the other camp is,

console prices and game prices have been pretty stable for a very, very long time. They've gone up a little bit here and a little bit there. I mean, it was certainly a shock when they announced the PlayStation 3 at $599 US dollars. Giant enemy crab. That was this ridiculous moment for a lot of people. How could it possibly cost so much? But they've actually been relatively stable. The Switch...

is a seven, eight-year-old console that's now being replaced with a new version. And me personally, I think I'm more in the first camp, in the you should get more for your money seven years later, because I would expect that the Switch would get this much better in that amount of time at the same price.

But for those who have been seeing how weird it is these prices have stayed so stable, this is an opportunity, a kind of a once-in-a-many-generation opportunity for these companies to finally charge more money because they have the tariffs going on, the threat of inflation everywhere. They can say, well, it costs us more now. We can finally afford to charge you a bit more too. And

I kind of want to resist that, but I also see where the others are coming from. Yeah, it's tricky because it does seem like, on the one hand, it is certainly true that there are, you know, different economic headwinds facing these companies. Like, we weren't sure what the Switch 2 was going to cost for a while there. I don't think Nintendo knew what it was going to cost for a while there. And yet, I think about the price of games, which has gone sort of inexorably upwards over the last several years, and it really does feel like

for good and evil simultaneously, these companies are poking at the edges of what people are willing to pay more than ever. And I think there is just this sense that games are expensive and they have huge, huge audiences. And I think a lot of these companies have figured out they probably could make more money from them. And you

You can feel about that however you want, but in a shareholder capitalism era, of course they're going to raise prices. So I think it's both a bummer and makes perfect sense to me all at the same time. In the Nintendo 64 era, games cost $60, $70, even $80 sometimes. Nintendo 64, we're talking about like, what, $95, $96?

for Nintendo 64. And to find out that people are angry about that, it irks a lot of people inside game companies who are like, our budgets have ballooned. Our players have, you know, there's so many more players now. We have to like, we have to build all this extra content for them, the graphics level. There's so many more things you have to do for them. But,

It's really about what consumers will take at the end of the day. It's about what are we willing to pay? And many companies, you know, they've decided that in order to fund these bigger budgets, they're going to have to fund big packs of DLC. They're going to be like, we have to have all these other things for you to purchase. These DLC, these HD texture packs. It's now $10 for each of these Switch 2 games to get the advancements there. It might have been a free patch on a PC game like five years ago. Now they're like, okay, well, we're going to

charge a little bit more there too. And the nickel and diming effect of this company's charging you more for all of these little things that grates on us too. But we seem to be more willing to accept that, you know, death by a thousand cuts than we are by all at once. Now games are $80. Now games are $90. It is true. It's, it's a good point. I had not, I've probably spent more in like $5 increments than

like by a vast margin than I have just on more expensive consoles, right? Like the way that they bleed you is the microtransactions. That's where the real money is. Selling you the console the first time is not how these companies are going to make most of their money going forward. And that's probably bad. Like you could maybe argue that each of these things should be $1,000 and then there shouldn't be any microtransactions inside of games and that might be a better world to live in. But that is...

In no way the world we live in, and it's not where we're headed. It isn't. The price of the Switch 2 is really complicated, though. When you get into this idea that, like, is this, is this, like, the end of consoles as we know them, now that we're seeing, like, the prices go up so dramatically? I want to push back on that a little bit before we get to the second part about, is this the end of consoles? So...

The Switch 2 price is very intriguing because in the United States, it's coming at a time when we can see the existing Switches stay on shelves at lower prices and we can see that the PlayStation 5 is like a pretty good deal compared to a Switch 2.

And that is just not the case over in Japan. Over in Japan, where they are also having to sell a lot of these Switch 2s, over there, the PlayStations are all ridiculously more expensive. Sony has raised the prices of PlayStations three times over there. And they've raised them almost the rest of the world except for the United States. The United States is like the one outlier where Sony's like,

we'll keep the prices fine over there because we really, really care about that audience. Over in Japan, there's this, almost a sense of gratitude towards Nintendo for this price that's only like a certain amount more than the original Switch because it's not anywhere near as bad as what you'd have to play for a PlayStation over there.

And because of the way the exchange rate is working right now, if Nintendo brought out the Switch 2 in Japan at kind of like the price that we would be seeing over here for inflation, people would descend on Japan and buy all those and bring them to other places and do all kinds of weird arbitrage because you can just get so much more in Japan for your dollar right now because of the exchange rate.

That's really interesting. So what do you make of this? Is this the last console thing? Because I think there is a version of the story here that says these things are going to get more expensive, but you're going to buy them later.

much less often right like already the the console generations are are pretty far apart and if we're going to get to the point where most of the money is in games and most of the money is in live service stuff maybe we hit the point where either the console becomes something you replace the way you replace like a car uh or it becomes sort of irrelevant altogether and this just stops being like a piece of really expensive hardware that you buy but i think uh our caller here is

Basing this on the theory that maybe we're maxing out the technology available for video games, I'm just going to go out on a limb and guess that you do not think that is true. I definitely don't. But it really depends on the company. Microsoft seems to have already decided that.

that was the last full Xbox, the Xbox Series X and S, I mean. They've already decided that that is the last time they put out a box and the box is the only thing. They've decided very, very clearly that Xbox, that your streaming is a big chunk of that, that you're going to pay for a subscription service to stream your games, that you're gonna be able to play them on Windows systems that look and feel like Xbox.

That you're going to that they're going to merge these things into what's going to be one seamless. Does that mean they stop selling a box? I don't think so. But they've already decided that it's going to be just one part of their strategy over on the PlayStation side of things. What we think is happening, what the rumors seem to be pointing to is it becomes a continuum where the next.

PlayStation entry is not like a PlayStation 6 that replaces the PlayStation 5 as a one-to-one. Maybe it's going to be a PlayStation handheld. Maybe it's going to be, you know, we've got a PlayStation Portal streaming device there. But the idea being there that...

We'd already seen with the PlayStation 4, the PlayStation 4 Pro, the PlayStation 5, the PlayStation 5 Pro, that we've reached a kind of a PC graphics card level of purchasing where you pay for the amount of power you want to have.

and you play all the same games on it with different levels of power. So if you get the PS5 Pro, those games are going to look the best. And if you get the PS5, they're going to look a little bit worse. And if you get the PS4 Pro, a little bit worse. But they all basically play the same exact games, many of which you could play on PC with different levels of graphic power too. The next entry there might be the PlayStation 5 handheld or the

PlayStation 5.5 or whatever you want to call this in between step where instead of them going to a full PlayStation 6, they shrink down the amount of performance that you have to maybe, maybe it's a PS4 Pro level of performance or maybe it's a PS, like a PS5 Lite level of performance, but you can now take it with you like you take a Switch with you and you got a couple hours of play on those same PS5 games.

I think that's the direction that's going. What that does suggest then is that maybe we're headed to a point where we're used to these consoles being

kind of step function improvements performance-wise, right? Like the PS4 to the PS5, and I guess especially the PS3 to the PS4, was like a huge like supercomputer leap in performance. And what I was going to ask you coming in was like, okay, we've had this big run of graphic cards from NVIDIA and we're in this like sort of newly invigorated space of PC gaming in a lot of ways.

But it also sort of seems like that is hitting a plateau in some ways where like the games are only so good and the chips are only so good and they kind of run at different speeds. But maybe what it sounds like is actually what's going to happen is there's going to continue to be the sort of top of the line thing. But because it's not the only thing anymore, because you don't have to just buy the fancy one because there are other ones available now, that maybe what happens is the top of the line thing disappears.

doesn't improve as fast. Does that make sense? Like if you have this whole spectrum, you don't have to make the next thing the best thing because it's just going to be the, the,

one for the people who want the most fancy thing. I think that's very much right. I don't know if it's because it has to be that way or because the companies want it to be that way. If it has to be that way now in this moment, in this geo-economic climb with tariffs and supply chain issues and all kinds of things that were previously figured out all of a sudden not being figured out...

Or if it has to be this way because NVIDIA and AMD see all the profit in generative AI and they want to put all of the manufacturing resources toward that and very little towards gaming. If it has to be that way right now.

And it could change back to the step function later. I think there are a lot of people both inside the companies and us gamers who would like it to go back to step change. But there are a lot of benefits to the incremental cycle. I mean, in the world of PCs, there are new graphics cards every two to three years. People don't buy new graphics cards every two to three years. They're not unless they are the diehards.

You can wait five, seven, eight, ten years before you buy your next graphics card and all of a sudden all of your games look amazingly better and they run at smoother frame rates. The same games that you had a decade ago. We're starting to see the benefits of that in handhelds as well with the Steam Deck and some of these Windows platforms where...

Some people, it's been so long since they've been in PC gaming that those same games they played a long time ago look better on this handheld than they did on their last desktop PC. That's how long some people wait now because that is possible in PC. And I would love for that to be possible in console, too.

For a very long time, it was impossible because of backwards compatibility concerns. I mean, if you tried to develop a game for the PlayStation 3's cell processor, which was infamously difficult to develop for and required, you know, this very specialized hardware, and then you go to the

PlayStation 4, and you're like, okay, well, I'm going to play all my PS3 games on that, right? I was like, no, you would need so much brute force horsepower to do that cell stuff on this new x86 chip that's more like a Windows machine. But now that all the consoles and all the handhelds

are using the same underlying chip architecture. They're basically all playing PC games, more or less. You could kind of have a world where you just say, I'm willing to spend this much money for this much horsepower, and my stuff will play on it.

Okay. Which actually seems like, on sort of both parts of the question here, a good outcome, right? You end up in a position where I'm not forced to buy the thing that is getting relentlessly more expensive because I don't need the most powerful, highest-end thing. I'm able to sort of scale down to fit both my budgets and my needs. But also it means...

you can get lots of different variations of the thing rather than just being like, here is the new Xbox, take it or leave it. You absolutely can. And that's what we're seeing with Nintendo. Nintendo says, here's the Switch 2. By the way, we are also still selling three other models of Switch. You don't want to pay, you know, $450 for a Switch 2. We've got our Switch OLED, we've got our Switch, we've got our Switch Lite, and they're all there ready for you to play

relatively the same game. Now, we don't know if Nintendo's gonna turn around and be like, "Actually, 90% of our Switch 2 library, all of these new games we're developing, will only be playable on Switch 2." And they make a big break there, and then people who are, you know, kind of forced to upgrade from Switch. On the Xbox side of things, you don't have to worry about that. Probably on the future PlayStation side of things, you don't have to worry about that as much, because there will be streaming to fill in some of the gaps.

But none of these are anywhere near as open as PC, where I'm like, okay, games I have 10, 20, 30 years ago still play on a modern PC and often way the heck better because of everything that's happened between horsepower and monitors getting better and so on. Yeah, fair enough. All right, well, this actually made me feel better. This is very exciting. Thank you for doing this. Scott, I hope this helped. Sean, thank you as always. Of course. Thanks so much.

All right. That is it for the show today. Thank you to everybody who came on to talk to me. And thank you as always for listening. If you have thoughts, questions, feelings, switch to games you're liking and want to tell us about, uh, thoughts about the battery life. We've been hearing really mixed things about battery life, anything on your mind about the switch to, or really anything in general, hit us up. Verge cast at the verge.com is the email. Eight, six, six verge. One, one is the hotline. We absolutely love hearing from you. It's the single best part about doing the show.

And we're going to keep covering this thing like all summer. Keep it locked on The Verge for all of Andrew's coverage, his review of the device, all the stuff Ash has been writing about her experiences and the games, all this stuff. There's a huge run of games coming this summer for the Switch 2, and I think it might change how a lot of people feel about the console for better or for worse. So keep it locked and tell us everything that you're experiencing about the Switch 2 as well.

This show is produced by Eric Gomez, Brandon Kiefer, and Will Poore. The Verge cast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Eli and I will be back on Friday to talk about all of the other tech news happening because the tech news, it just keeps happening. You would think it's summer, but it just keeps happening. Also, I should say that at some point here in the near future, one or both of Eli and I are just going to sort of mysteriously disappear to go have kids. These things happen without a lot of notice sometimes. So, uh...

We'll try and, you know, make the transition as seamless as possible. But if we suddenly disappear, don't worry. We will be back. Until then, see you next time. Rock and roll.

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