The Nintendo Switch 2 is still wrapped in mystery. Its recent reveal teased a few details—a larger overall design, redesigned Joy-Con controllers, backward compatibility, and what's likely to be Mario Kart 9 as a launch title among them—but Nintendo remains tight-lipped about hardware specifications, services, and how the overall experience will improve on the existing, ultra-successful Switch console.
Nintendo is playing it safe, and while more details are set to be revealed in a dedicated Nintendo Direct broadcast on April 2, there are undoubtedly areas where the upcoming console could improve on its predecessor. Here are just five things I think the Switch 2 needs to succeed.
Photograph: NintendoBetter Online Services
While Nintendo has already done some housekeeping on this front—gone are the nightmare days of coexisting Nintendo Network IDs and Nintendo Accounts—there's still much the company could do to improve its digital services.
Firstly, its eShop store for buying games is in need of a major overhaul. On the current Switch, it's messy, slow, and a chore to navigate. What should be simple browsing tools—exploring by genre, for instance—are buried under the search tab, and there's no way to sort titles alphabetically, only by relevance, popularity, release date, or price orders.
The web browser experience is even worse—access the eShop through Nintendo.com and you get what looks more like an info page than a storefront. Scroll down and click through to any of the categories to find some games and you'll discover an interface so dated it lets you filter for games available on the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, platforms that haven't been purchasable since March 2023. Although the Nintendo Switch still enjoys a relatively strong showing for physical game sales, industry analyst Mat Piscatella says 53 percent of Switch game sales between January and August 2024 were digital. Discovery and exploration of Nintendo's digital storefront simply has to improve.
