I’ve played some ofNintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, although as you might have guessed from the headline and seeing it in action yourself, ‘played’ is a strong word. You don’t play Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, youexperienceit. Sometimes you just look at it doing things. But it is a funky little demonstration of the capabilities of theSwitch 2, which admittedly took me by surprise.
While watching the Switch 2 Direct, each little detail impressed me more than the last. 4K resolution, 256 GB storage, 120fps, HDR enabled… this was way beyond what I thought the Switch 2 would be capable of. And the thing is, the Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is not for people who understand what any of that means. It’s for the bulk of the Switch audience, who like to playNintendogames on their sofa and heard there’s a new console out. Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour is, essentially, a playable Direct that breaks down this jargon into something tactile.
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour Is For People Who Don’t Understand Gaming
On that front, it succeeds. Though it doesn’t look graphically impressive in the way games likeCyberpunk 2077orStreet Fighter 6do, as I noted inmy full hands-on for the console itself. But it is incredibly vibrant and smooth, especially as you make your little avatar glide across the Switch 2’s screen like they’re ice skating. It’s a lot more soulless and corporate than the fun-filled discoverability ofAstro’s Playroom, but it does a decent job of breaking down how and why the Switch 2 is better than the Switch.
A lot of this is done via minigames. As you’re able to probably guess by now, the ‘mini’ does a lot of the heavy lifting there. You shake the Joy-Con like maracas and the dynamic audio accounts for the beads shifting around. You drag a spaceship to avoid falling debris with the Joy-Con mouse, andsee how responsive it is. Games make other improvements more digestible too, like showing you a ball moving across the screen and asking you to guess the framerate - although the answers never change, so if you get one wrong, you can just go through the motions to a perfect score.
There should be a few hours’ worth of activities here, too. I earned about 12 medals in my ten minutes with the game, but I saw some areas that needed over 100 medals to unlock. It’s a quick, easy way to show people who don’t quite understand the words Nintendo is using how their games will actually improve. Or it would be, if you didn’t have to buy it, which nobody will.
Should Nintendo Switch Welcome Tour Be A Paid Game?
In very simple terms, I have no idea who would buy this, or who should. I know video game manufacturing is more expensive than ever, but life is also extremely expensive. This is from a company thatonce gave away Wii Sports, one of the greatest video games of all time, for free because it felt the system needed a tech showcase. Post Astro’s Playroom, it seems odd that this game will have a fee, regardless of how nominal it might be.
Don’t get me wrong, if this was free, I would lazily complete all of the objectives to earn my medals. I’d be gliding across the screen, shaking my maracas at a framerate speed I could pick out to the third decimal place. It’s the sort of… experience, let’s say, you drift through and do kind of enjoy in the moment, then wonder why you spent any time on it. But I binge-watched The Purge movies despite not really liking any of them. I’ve played these games before.
As impressive as it is as a tech demo, I don’t see the point in buying it. You’re never going to feel like playing this thing, you won’t get the itch to walk around what looks like a commercial for Microsoft Teams and guess how fast a ball is moving in a minigame you’ve already played where the answers never change. When you unbox your Switch 2 for the first time, this is when you might have dove in and been wowed by what it can do while you wait forMario Kart Worldto download. But now, you’re just going to wait for Mario Kart World to download.
