We own a Nintendo Switch and have enjoyed it the past few years, but for whatever reason we haven’t even powered it on for the past year. I’m not sure why, but despite some great games and a sense of family fun it never reached the enjoyment levels of the Wii for us.

The Wii was a remarkable product and the perfect antidote to the more graphically impressive and more powerful Xbox and Playstation offerings. It felt unique and so different that the raw computing power did not matter. The Switch doesn’t quite have that.

I don’t know quite what it is, but to me it feels as if Nintendo took something special away on the Switch that meant it has been fun for shorter periods of time than the Wii was. I realise that looking back on an older device makes no sense, but Nintendo lives or dies on their next consoles and this has been proven time and time again. The Wii U and GameCube are examples of where things went badly wrong, but the NES, SNES, Wii and Switch are where thing went very well indeed. On the handheld side, Nintendo have owned the market for some time and yet there is always a sense that the next release could be a doofer.

The Switch 2 is not a doofer in any way and it will be successful, BUT it is a Switch 2 and I wonder if this will be enough against ever improving Playstation’s and Xbox’s. At £395.99 in the UK it feels quite highly priced even if the improvements are welcome, but the expected cost of the games could be a bigger problem.

The Switch is great for kids and the higher price could be a problem, especially the games, and I remain wondering if Nintendo should be 99% focussing on game play and the ‘experience’ rather than better specs. Nintendo cannot compete in the specs area so it makes little sense to increase the price to include better specs that are still lesser than the competition.

I hope the Switch 2 does well, but I’m far from confident that it will succeed.

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