Nintendo has finally confirmed all the details about the Switch 2. And we aren’t holding the big one back: the console launches on June 5, 2025.
The Switch 2 is more or less an improved version of the Nintendo Switch. Some rumors correctly predicted some features on the console, but we’ll run down what they have officially revealed below.
The Switch 2 screen is 8” long, and has twice the pixel size of the original Switch screen. It is an LCD screen, as some gamers feared, but there’s still a lot upgraded to it. For example, it supports HDR and can run games to as high as 120 FPS.
As leaked over a year ago, the Switch 2’s Joy-Cons are magnetic. The considerably bigger SL and SR buttons are made of steel, and they connect to the magnets which are inside the Switch 2 console itself.
The Joy-Cons are also confirmed to have mouse controls, and it’s available for both Joy-Cons. And of course, since the Switch 2 itself has become bigger, the analog sticks will also be bigger.
The Switch 2’s speakers have been highly improved, and will even offer 3D sound, built in on those speakers.
The top USB-C port was confirmed to also be able to charge the console, though we don’t quite know if it can do all the things the bottom USB-C port can just quite yet.
The console’s default storage has been upgraded to 256 GB. It’s the biggest that Nintendo has offered as a minimum for any console, and hints at how big Switch 2 games will potentially be.
The dock, as it turns out, won’t have a GPU hiding inside it, but it seems to have some impressive technology in it anyway. It will upscale the screen up to 4K.
Nintendo also touts that the dock has a built in fan that will cool the console. As much as that’s great news for the console’s performance docked, it definitely implies something about how it could run undocked. Hopefully the 1080p limit is a reasonable compromise for that.
In essence, a lot of the details that was datamined from the Hosiden factory were confirmed to be correct. But unfortunately, the crazier rumors and speculation that spread in the past few months didn’t turn out to be true.
While we did wish that Nintendo had dipped their toes into VR or reexplored dual screens for this console, this was still a very impressive showing. As you may have already seen, the announced 3rd party offerings also made it clear that the Switch 2 has the power to run 10th generation console games.
Finally, Nintendo confirmed via press release that the base console is retailing for $ 449.99. Some fans were hoping that Nintendo would price it lower, and that could justify dropping the prices for the older consoles.
We will see in time if the original Switch consoles see a price drop now or if it’s coming a few years from now. But Nintendo pricing the console below $ 500 does make it a strong competitor to both PC gaming handhelds, including the Steam Deck, and Sony’s and Microsoft’s consoles. It’s so low that one does wonder if this is Nintendo’s first loss leader.
