Nintendo Direct: Nintendo Switch 2 (Wednesday 2nd April 2025 @ 14:00 BST)

[Julius]

5 days remain. 

[Julius]

4 days remain. 

[Ashley]

1 hour ago, Julius said:

4 days remain. 

I hate to break it to you but 9:30 is not dawn. 

[Julius]

8 minutes ago, Ashley said:

I hate to break it to you but 9:30 is not dawn. 

[Julius]

(yeah, yeah, it's not dawn, I had a lie-in alright? )

3 days remain. 

[Hero-of-Time]

It's great that no software has leaked (so far) for this Direct. Me and my mate are gonna go into work early so that we can finish and get back in time to watch the event live. 

[BowserBasher]

14 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

It's great that no software has leaked (so far) for this Direct. Me and my mate are gonna go into work early so that we can finish and get back in time to watch the event live. 

I think this is going to help. Everyone got to upset when Nintendo released the Switch 2 teaser trailer, moaning that we knew everything that was in it, well one thats your own faults for leaking all the info. Nintendo decided to take that and just go "here you want news, this is what we were going to do anyway, but you've ruined it for everyone."

With the fact that no games are known (Apart from Mario Kart), people can't get upset* when a "leaked game" doesn't make it. I'm looking at the past Switch Direct when there was no Zelda TP or WW and No Kirby game that everyone seemed to think was coming.

 

*Yes, I know everyone is still gonna get upset when certain games are not announced

[Hero-of-Time]

3 minutes ago, BowserBasher said:

Yes, I know everyone is still gonna get upset when certain games are not announced

I don't even know what to expect. Surely it's time for a new 3D Mario game to be shown. Outside of that? I've no idea.

[Julius]

2 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

It's great that no software has leaked (so far) for this Direct. Me and my mate are gonna go into work early so that we can finish and get back in time to watch the event live. 

Yeah, definitely! I remember even the January Presentation for the Switch back in 2017 got leaked because of there being a floor and media hands-on after, but this being a Direct...it has been super quiet. 

I'm working from home on Wednesday and sticking myself on Do Not Disturb from 13:45 onwards, going to get all my work out of the way in the morning (just a team meeting and a couple of Zooms) 

Should come in handy if these pre-orders drop randomly during/after the Direct...

2 hours ago, BowserBasher said:

*Yes, I know everyone is still gonna get upset when certain games are not announced

Which is a bit crazy because, like @Hero-of-Time said, I don't even know what to expect here other than 3D Mario (because it's long overdue) and more news on the new Mario Kart. 

Otherwise, I'm just essentially born-again Anton Ego:

What's keeping my expectations in check for now - check in with me tomorrow or Tuesday and we'll see where I'm at then  - is that we don't know how long this Switch 2 Direct is going to be just yet, and the wording of "a closer look at Switch 2" without a mention of games...

...there's a possibility here for this thing to be 25 minutes, 10 minutes on the new hardware/eShop and NSO-related updates which could be specific to Switch 2 (i.e. DS if there's some sort of second screen/Mouse-Con solution), 15 minutes specifically on launch titles and call it a day, it releases in June when they could hold a more typical Not-E3-style Direct and third parties could be left to market the games themselves, rest of the release calendar gets fleshed out over the summer. I mean it sells out regardless, right? 

On the flipside, following the announcement of Nintendo Today! and it already being host to more substantial news than I think we were expecting, I wonder if some other updates could be fleshed out there, for example "This is a bit more on how the Mouse-Con works!" with a short video on how it works, and "Here are more games which will be enhanced with Switch 2 Editions" with some Switch vs Switch 2 performance comparisons, etc. I'm really curious to see how Nintendo Today! is utilised with the promise of daily Switch 2 updates following Wednesday's Direct, as I genuinely think some smaller games tacked on to launch (think something like a Snipperclips equivalent, not included in the Switch Jan 2017 Presentation) could easily be saved for and get some lip service there, too. 

Obviously I'm on Team 45-60 Minutes of Hardware + Games Galore, but it's just so hard to guess what Nintendo's moves are going to be – that Switch Direct on Thursday caught everyone off guard. Not long until we find out now, in any case! 

Edited yesterday at 04:03 PM by Julius

[Hero-of-Time]

I wonder which 3rd party games will be shown? Gotta imagine Nintendo will want highlight some big hitters and show that the device will be getting a good amount of support. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth would be a good showpiece. Now with added door textures.

Personally, I want the Kingdom Hearts games on the thing. None of this streaming garbage. Give me them all on a cart. Resident Evil 2 Remake is another. In fact, getting Resident Evil 7, 8, along with 2 and 3 remakes, would be amazing.

If Microsoft don't have Rare Replay on the thing then they are just leaving money on the table.

[Ashley]

I wonder if they'd do a kind of "this is for launch, these are for 'launch window' and these are our plans for the first year" and it's just very short teases/confirmation. 

Do we know the length yet? Part of it will be the console of course, then cross compatibility/upgrades and then games so I could see them being fairly short and then have another direct before launch going into more details of the games. 

[nekunando]

19 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I wonder which 3rd party games will be shown? Gotta imagine Nintendo will want highlight some big hitters and show that the device will be getting a good amount of support. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth would be a good showpiece. Now with added door textures.

Personally, I want the Kingdom Hearts games on the thing. None of this streaming garbage. Give me them all on a cart. Resident Evil 2 Remake is another. In fact, getting Resident Evil 7, 8, along with 2 and 3 remakes, would be amazing.

If Microsoft don't have Rare Replay on the thing then they are just leaving money on the table.

I can't think of too many third party games I'm desperate for at the moment. If I was that interested in them, I'd probably already have a PS5 to play them 😅

That's not to say I don't want them to come to Switch 2, though. I hope we get things like Final Fantasy VII Remake and Eldin Ring just for the sake of them being here rather than being things I'd actually buy myself. The more the merrier!

I guess I would hope we get something like WRC from EA along with a significantly improved version of FC (though I wouldn't hold my breath on it being any better where it matters 😖)

I'm not a huge Resident Evil guy outside of the GC versions of 4 and the remake of the original but I'd be happy to see all of the recent remakes make their way to Switch 2 along with VII and VIII. I was never going to play them from the cloud 😂

With Capcom, I wouldn't be surprised to see a version of Street Fighter VI at launch.

As for Konami, I'm a bit surprised they haven't made eFootball available on Switch. Hopefully that changes here, even if it still isn't close to what Pro Evo was 😕 Maybe we'll get Metal Gear Solid Delta (and it'd be nice to have confirmation of Volume 2 of the collection if it hasn't already been mentioned for Nintendo)

I mainly just want the Nintendo stuff to be good. 3D Mario never lets you down but I'll die if they somehow take it in the wrong direction for me. An amazing new Mario and Mario Kart is enough to get the ball rolling and I'm sure there will be some sort of showcase of the new controller functionality.

Personally, I'd love it to be a much deeper sequel to Wario Ware DIY where design is made much easier due to the mouse controls and also the controller will lend themselves to all sorts of gameplay ideas.

I got DIY way too late so never got to experience it properly so to have something like that close to launch would be amazing. I'd take that over another Mario Maker or Zelda Maker any day 🔥

I also hope we see something that fills the ARMS slot that the original Switch presentation had. For me, it's one of the defining games on the system and was completely different. I wasn't sure I'd be into it on the first reveal but it was amazing!

My biggest fear, and one that is probably more likely than ever after seeing the popularity of things such as Tomodachi Life and Animal Crossing, is that the majority of stuff shown just won't be to my taste.

Many of the games I love, including Punch-Out, Wave Race, F-Zero, Excitebike and 1080 haven't been seen properly for 15-20 years (and more 😭)

You can say F-Zero 99 came but that's not the F-Zero I want. In fact, I'm don't even need new entries in any of those franchises necessarily. I'll happily take HD remakes of the Wii version of Punch-Out, Wave Race: Blue Storm, F-Zero GX, Excitebike 64 (or Excite Truck + Bots) and 1080 Avalanche. 

Confirmation of a GameCube on NSO would at least give me more hope of seeing some of these, at least!

Anyway, I'm excited but increasingly nervous for Wednesday! I'll probably have to have my lunch break at 2pm to watch it and just take as long as it takes until it's over!

[Julius]

1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I wonder which 3rd party games will be shown? Gotta imagine Nintendo will want highlight some big hitters and show that the device will be getting a good amount of support. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth would be a good showpiece. Now with added door textures.

Personally, I want the Kingdom Hearts games on the thing. None of this streaming garbage. Give me them all on a cart. Resident Evil 2 Remake is another. In fact, getting Resident Evil 7, 8, along with 2 and 3 remakes, would be amazing.

If Microsoft don't have Rare Replay on the thing then they are just leaving money on the table.

Agreed on all of the above. 

VII Remake being made available this year on Switch 2 with a stinger for VII Rebirth coming next year would be massive. Hell, I don't want to get carried away here, but just because I don't think they want to send the message that this thing is only getting ports, they could totally have short-ish trailers for both Remake and Rebirth back-to-back ("Fall 2025", "Spring 2026") and confirm that the yet-to-be-titled trilogy-closer is coming to Switch 2 at launch and that could be your stinger to the back-to-back trailers – coming "Winter 2026" (i.e. Jan/Feb/March 2027). Rebirth was first announced during S-E's own VII 25th anniversary stream, after all, not at a a PlayStation event, and a bit over 18 months out from its launch, so unless there's still some element of exclusivity which hasn't changed despite the low sales which forced their hand to get Rebirth on PC less than 12 months after launch...it feels like a possibility. 

I think you're right on the money with Kingdom Hearts and the recent Resident Evil games being freed of their cloud-based shackles, but of the cloud-based games available on Switch, they're the only ones I really see being big enough to cause a splash with a native version launch. I wonder if they could give an update on 4? One of KH4 or FFVIIR-III seems realistic to me if they're going to go hard after the JRPG market in Japan (which they should be). Hell, if I were Atlus, I'd be showing Persona 6 here unless there's some weird deals somewhere else (though there were those P4R rumours recently, and P3R and ReFantazio are right there waiting to be ported). 

Speaking of re-porting things, they could release real versions of the Yakuza games on Switch 2. That'd be awesome, and Like A Dragon and Infinite Wealth would be perfect fits for the system. Haven't played any 3D brawlers in handheld myself so I won't comment on the rest of the series  could also do similar for big games we've already seen like The Witcher 3 – and speaking of which, Cyberpunk 2077 has to be planned, surely? 

Speaking to the other cloud-based Switch titles, AC Odyssey would do gangbusters, too, but that game's pretty old now, so while maybe they port it at some point, I imagine getting Shadows and maybe Mirage over on Switch 2 ASAP would be their focus. We'll only 2 weeks removed from Shadows' launch and Ubisoft has a lot going on at the moment, but that Black Flag remake feels like it'd be a good fit here as a statement of Ubi's Switch 2 support. But, again, one of those they could also save for their own show later this year. 

And yeah, Rare Replay would be massive – I'd be there for it. If I were Microsoft I'd be keeping that as a Switch 2 exclusive, purely because I think it vibes better with the Nintendo catalogue, but then there's also Forza Horizon 5, Indy, that Oblivion Remake which they're apparently planning to just shadow-drop in April, Starfield, etc. Honestly, if Xbox shows up here in a meaningful way – do they finally give Phil the opportunity to show off his chops in an actually well-managed show and give him 5 minutes to pledge Xbox's catalogue to Switch 2? That feels like it could be massive. 

Thinking along similar lines, I wonder if we see some weird PlayStation remasters here which have been licensed out to Bandai Namco or whoever else is up to the task? Wasn't at all on my radar, but after the Direct other day, it really makes me wonder. LittleBigPlanet? Puppeteer? LocoRoco? Part of me wants to suggest Astro Bot or even just Playroom purely because of the Nintendo vibe and how big it would be on a Switch 2, and has been in Japan, but it seems too big a deal to let go and integrates too much of the PS hardware to be seriously under consideration, I feel. 

Then there's also Baldur's Gate III (such an obvious showcase for Mouse-Con, similar to how Prime 4 is the obvious showcase for the jump in tech with the Switch 2), Elden Ring (+ Dark Souls trilogy + Sekiro + Armored Core VI)...every time I start listing out the third-party potential for the Switch 2, it scares me a little. Curation is going to be so key. I haven't even mentioned a potential GTA V port or Red Dead Redemption II! And we haven't even dipped into potential indie big-hitters, either. 

To make this personal, though, and I might need to maybe think on this a little more, right now the potential announcements in terms of third-party I'm by far the most interested in are going to all be coming from Square Enix (way to set myself up for disappointment , I know).

Not saying I expect all or even any of these, but, to name and shame them:

• Dragon Quest XII – XI is up there with Chrono Trigger as one of my all-time favourite JRPGs, and we have known nothing other than a title, and it being a bit more serious (hopefully that doesn't mean edgy) for the longest time. Even if it's not coming until 2027, I don't care. Give me something. Please. Horii, if you can self-leak I & II HD-2D Remake, you can do it for XII too! 
• Final Fantasy Tactics / IX – included in that Nvidia leak forever ago and completely missing since. One of those where I don't know if you do it here simply because they could totally be on the OG Switch technically - then again, DQ III HD-2D didn't perform as well on Switch as it did other consoles, so maybe not? - but either way, if we're playing to the Japanese and JRPG crowd here, one of these seems the obvious pick. Selfishly I'd want Tactics of the two, purely because I've had it sitting on my Vita since getting it but put it off due to the Nvidia leak, and have already played IX myself. It is IX's 25th anniversary later this year, though, so 
• The next HD-2D project – Chrono Trigger. Final Fantasy VI. A commitment to Dragon Quest IV / V / VI. One of them, please. Yes, I'm putting the cart before the horse here, because we're still waiting on DQ I & II HD-2D to get a release date, but why not? These things do crazy well sales-wise now and are such a great way to get timeless classics on modern systems. 

I'll save my first-party ramblings for another day, because yeah...I think I'm excited now 

42 minutes ago, Ashley said:

I wonder if they'd do a kind of "this is for launch, these are for 'launch window' and these are our plans for the first year" and it's just very short teases/confirmation. 

Do we know the length yet? Part of it will be the console of course, then cross compatibility/upgrades and then games so I could see them being fairly short and then have another direct before launch going into more details of the games. 

No timeframe yet as I mentioned above, but yeah, like I mentioned before, I agree that this template is a possibility. The use of Nintendo Today! to drop news/announcements daily updates to launch could be huge, too – makes me wonder if people are already trying to crack that code, though...

Although I do think it's a small possibility, I want a blowout, and I do think waiting on sharing more info as long as they have just to go "well here's what you'll get in 2 months" and then maybe throwing us a bone for another release later in the summer is going to make people pause for a moment. Not in any way which is going to damage, because it will sell out at launch regardless – but because it will sell out at launch regardless, I think this needs to be a bit more like their E3 2017 presentation than it does the January 2017 presentation. 

Big statement console events like these rarely happen, and I think do a very bad job if they're just trying to sell you on the launch, because I believe they need to create a feeling of investment moving forwards, beyond that initial launch window: I'm not just buying the Switch 2 at launch for [3D Mario/new Mario Kart] at launch, I'm buying into the promise of what's to come.

For those unable to buy-in at launch or not planning to buy-in at launch, it becomes a question of what's on the horizon: oh, smaller scale 3D Zelda coming in 2026? I guess I know when I'm picking up my Switch 2 now, better start saving for then. (just an example, sorry to those of you waiting on something like this )

Very interested to see how this all gets handled, they're under a lot of pressure to deliver even without hoping for specific first-party releases to be shown, purely because of the success of the Switch. I'm hoping we get a runtime tomorrow! 

Edited yesterday at 05:17 PM by Julius

[Ashley]

I think that's a 50/50 chance the direct will convince me to either get a Switch 2 or a GameCube. Either going forward or going backwards, we'll see!

[Hero-of-Time]

I'm hoping the console/UI has a little personality to it. The Switch, for all the success it had, was stupidly bland. No themes, folders, music, boring homescreen design....the list goes on. The Wii U at least had that going for it.

All the consoles now are pretty boring in this regard and it would be nice if Nintendo recapture some of that past magic with the Switch 2. 

[RedShell]

36 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I'm hoping the console/UI has a little personality to it. The Switch, for all the success it had, was stupidly bland. No themes, folders, music, boring homescreen design....the list goes on. The Wii U at least had that going for it.

All the consoles now are pretty boring in this regard and it would be nice if Nintendo recapture some of that past magic with the Switch 2. 

Agreed.
I booted up my 3DS recently and was amazed when the Club Nintendo Hanafuda theme started playing (I'd completely forgotten about it) I then spent a while just going through all the other themes I have on there.  

Suppose the closest we got to any type of customisation on Switch was the groups thing, but even that was done in a weird/boring way.

Yes, I had to put Soccer Slammers in its own group of shame. Absolutely shocking game, that I got for free but still felt ripped off by.

 

[Hero-of-Time]

12 minutes ago, RedShell said:

I booted up my 3DS recently and was amazed when the Club Nintendo Hanafuda theme started playing (I'd completely forgotten about it) I then spent a while just going through all the other themes I have on there.  

I done exactly the same last week whilst playing Kirby Blowout Blast.

I changed the 3DS theme to match what I was playing and then went through all the ones I picked up over the years.

It's such a shame Nintendo went backwards with these kinds of things. 

I hope they don't scrap the platinum coins/avatar stuff that they have for the Switch. I enjoy unlocking them and earning coins. Hopefully it carries on forward and they expand on it some more.

[Ashley]

Having never used the groups thing and you saying it was done in a boring way I thought all the labels were automatic and got to "indie/other" and thought that was a bit dismissive of Nintendo and then saw "complete and utter..." and for a brief moment still thought it was Nintendo. 

[nekunando]

I actually love how clean the Switch UI is and hope it doesn't become as convoluted and messy as rival systems.

I'm genuinely not bothered about themes either as I usually end up back with the original design anyway.

I do have a Yoshi theme on my New 3DS that matches my face plates well 😅

[Helmsly]

I'd love the Switch 2 to have proper Themes. I had assumed that was going to happen over time with the Switch 1, back when the console came out eight years go, because the 3DS had them but weirdly it never happened. I looked at some fan made themes out there and I think anything like this would be a nice option:

Or even the option to use our screenshots as themes would be nice.

3 hours ago, RedShell said:

Agreed.
I booted up my 3DS recently and was amazed when the Club Nintendo Hanafuda theme started playing (I'd completely forgotten about it) I then spent a while just going through all the other themes I have on there.

My 3DS has that awesome Dreamcast theme that plays the lobby music from Phantasy Star Online and makes the sound effects for navigating the menu sound like the Dreamcast Menu

 

Edited yesterday at 10:33 PM by Helmsly

[Cube]

I had the Mega Drive theme which launched every game with the classic "SEGA" voice line.

[Dcubed]

Ironically, the SEGA Themes were the best themes on the 3DS.  I had them all

[Julius]

2. Days. Remain.