Hands on with the Nintendo Switch 2

On Saturday (April 12, 2025) I got up at the rather unsociable hour of 5am in order to catch a train down to London so I could play the Switch 2 ahead of release at one of Nintendo’s various, global ‘Experience’ events.

After arriving in London and fuelling up on a pricey breakfast I was ready to head over to the convention space for my first hands-on with Nintendo’s upcoming hybrid.

What awaited me was a room filled with Switch 2 consoles, all ready to show off the launch window line-up of software. This included the new open world Mario Kart, the oddity that is Welcome Tour, and that new Donkey Kong adventure.

After waiting in-line we were ushered into the gaming area, welcomed by a somewhat feigned group of ‘enthusiastic’ staffers cheering us all on as we walked in. For a British crowd it felt a tad odd to be walking in to folks whooping and hollering — but hey, it get’s you hyped for some Mario Kart, I’ll give em that.

Anyway, I’ve shared my off the cuff remarks in this roughly ten minute video, running through my experience with each of the main games played, along with my general impression of the hardware.

The biggest deal for me is just how significant an upgrade this new system will truly be for those coming from the original 2017 Switch model. For what appears to be a rather safe and iterative upgrade, I still found plenty to like about this new hardware.

I’m less convinced of the initial slate of software reveals, particularly from Nintendo themselves though. The launch is lacking a meaty single-player experience to dive into on launch day — Breath of the Wild being a perfect prior example. Sure, DK is coming, but that’s a little later, and like I mentioned in the above video, it didn’t particularly wow me.

At this point I’m choosing to believe Nintendo have a fair bit up their sleeve for the back half of 2025 and early 2026, rounding out the launch period with some more heavy hitters. The approach for now, from where I’m sitting at least, is to give third parties a bit of breathing space to make an impact — as the 2017 novelty of “wow I can play this portably” won’t be as strong this time around — so, Nintendo making space for others may help with that?

Anyway, hands-on over and I’ve got my pre-order in. I’m keen to see where Nintendo takes this conservative upgrade to their all time best.