Nintendo Switch 2 Launches on June 5th Worldwide; 1080p Screen With 120 FPS and HDR Support, Docked Mode 4K Resolution Support Confirmed
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Cool, but the specs reveal I’m most excited to hear is what hardware is required to run Mario Kart World at 4K / 60 fps on a Linux machine. Probably won’t see that announcement until well after June, but it’s also remotely possible Mario Kart World will be available before June as well like TotK was.
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I’d bet that’s using a lot of upscaling in both modes
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But you know that's not gonna be the only $80 game. The next Zelda and 3D Mario are guaranteed to be $80, too, because they know people will pay it. Just like TotK's $70 price point.
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I don’t plan to buy one because proprietary, locked down hardware isn’t a great investment compared to PC hardware that can serve a lot of different purposes, but am eagerly awaiting the news of Nintendo’s well-earned pwnage.
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Definitely getting a Steam Deck instead. I was waiting for confirmation of the ridiculously high price.
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Hopefully they'll be releasing games for both Switch and Switch 2 for a while like what happened with PS4/PS5. I know the flagship games will be 2 only, but other 3rd party stuff.
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I wouldn't expect a decent emulator for this thing any time soon.
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Well, "owning," if they're bought through Steam.
Does the Steam Deck have GOG support?
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So it's $650 CAD $700 AUD for the Switch 2 and it's $120 CAD $150 AUD for Mario Kart.
LMAO
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It’s not similar to PC hardware; It uses a Tegra processor like the Switch 1. Which means it’s more like a phone with a less than laptop grade Nvidia graphics chipset thrown in. Unlike the Steam Deck, for instance, which uses an AMD Z processor, a scaled down version of what is in the Xbox and PS5.
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I would have bet real money if you had asked me yesterday that it would have been limited to 1080p to reduce cost. I am very curious to know more about how it actually performs in each setting, how much of it is upscaling, etc. I imagine that most 4k games won’t have much in the way of better graphics than the Switch 1, the higher memory bandwidth could help with higher res textures though.
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That is entirely meaningless. That's not how performance works, it has no bearing on anything.
In practice, they showed a whole bunch of footage of comparable games, including Elden Ring, Cyberpunk. Hitman, Star Wars Outcasts and Split Fiction. At a glance, it seems fairly comparable to the current batch of PC handheld APUs and seems to be mostly running cross-gen PC games at lower resolutions and framerates but pretty solidly otherwise.
That puts it in a weaker spot than next-gen PC handhelds, but on par with most of the current batch. Or at least as on par as the Steam Deck is.
So in terms of pricing for the hardware it seems pretty consistent with what we're seeing elsewhere. The two Deck models seem to have the most comparable specs, and those are slightly cheaper for the LCD and slightly more expensive for the OLED. Other handhelds are marginally more powerful but also way more expensive. With the upcoing batch of high-end AMD APUs being also way more expensive than last gen, it seems the Switch 2 is price-competitive, at least until Valve decides it's time and tries to make another custom deal with AMD for a more powerful APU at scale.
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The Steam Deck is... not significantly cheaper?
I mean, go nuts. It will have cheaper games, a lot of the same cross-platform stuff and it trades blows on performance and display, from what I can see... but price isn't really the biggest difference here.
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Don't quote me, but I think they will ship a plastic guard to use for the mouse, just like the Lenovo Legion Go does. Don't knock it til you try it, it does work.
For the record, it's weird to see Nintendo stumble upon the incredible concepts of Kinect and Discord in the year of our lord 2025. But hey, every Nintendo console needs a gimmick you can proceed to ignore, and this one will at least be useful to... somebody? At least it's a gesture that online games aren't an afterthought anymore.
What I'm not sure about at all is the pricing model for games and backwards compatibility as it is. And while the hardware is perfectly acceptable for a modern handheld and very comparable to the current batch of PC handhelds it's the target for the next decade, presumably, so it's at best as outdated as the original Switch was while not being the only game in town to play some of those HD ports.
I don't think it's an underwhelming propostion at this point, and you can't deny the first party software on display. I don't think it's nearly as exciting as the first Switch. We'll see how it does with mainstream audiences, I suppose.
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For $50 less, you get a similarly capable machine in terms of specs but more comfortable to hold, with an immensely larger library, and an operating system far more respectful of your authority to do what you want with the machine you bought.
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You can sideload a program called Heroic Games Launcher that lets you easily manage your GOG games, as well as Amazon and Epic.
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It's at least through this year with Prime 4 and Legends Z-A. I bet the price will make adoption slow and we'll get major Switch 1 games through 2026.