Nintendo Switch 2 Hopes

It's hard to believe that the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct is in just a few hours. It feels like just yesterday that Nintendo gave us our first (official) look at the system... aaaand told us we weren't getting anything else for a few months. Crazy how quickly that time flew by. I came up with an idea to make a blog about some of my hopes for the Switch 2 around the time the trailer released. I knew it was something I'd have to do sooner rather than later, but I kept putting off for later, and later, and later... and now here we are 6 hours before the presentation. Oops. Seeing as how little time there is until Nintendo tells all, I figured I'd better hurry up and release the dang blog while there's still a point in doing so. So let's just get into it!

Number one on my list is a better home menu. The home menu of the first Switch is kind of... blah. Even ignoring the lackluster visuals (which I will get into later), the actual functionality of the menu leaves alot to be desired. It's literally just a straight line of the last 20 or so games you've played most recently. That style's fine for like a quick start menu or something, and to the Switch's credit, that is the style it was going for, but I would really like the Switch 2 menu to be a bit more involved. The fact that the Switch 1 menu only shows the most recent games means that I will often times play the same small handful of games over and over, forgetting about older titles that just got cycled through the list. This problem only gets exacerbated by the inclusion of physical games on the home menu taking up the same space as digital games, only adding to the clutter for no real benefit. There's a second menu that shows every game you own, which is closer to what I want, but it's ultimately just a wall of games with no real organization options beyond some simple sorting filters. It's also buried at the back of the base menu, so it's not something I use very often.

Speaking of menus: themes! People have been asking for themes for the Switch home menu for literal years, ever since the console was first released. Part of the reason for this is the fact that there's a whole entire submenu in the Switch settings for themes, yet the only two themes included are Basic Black and Basic White. I believe the official reason given for why no more themes were ever added was so that the Switch could start up faster? Though I think alot of people would be willing to trade some of the Switch's load time if it meant that they could have Rayquaza watching them from behind their singular row of games. But if Nintendo wanted the load times to be consistent no matter which theme you used, then why not add more basic colour themes? Red, blue, pink... it's nothing crazy but it would add alot of personality to the home menu. Also, it would be nice if they added some menu music.

Speaking of it would be nice if they added some menu music: the eShop! Make it run faster. Scratch that, make it run period. The Switch's eShop is so horrendously slow for alot of really stupid reasons and is a torturous experience if you're trying to browse for something. Also, Nintendo: please have higher standards for what games end up on the eShop. There are so many AI and shovelware games on there. They make browsing the eShop torturous for completely different reasons. But, I mainly just want the eShop to run faster. How am I supposed to browse for AI shovelware if the eShop's still trying to load some stupid Mario game 20 rows up!? It makes no sense, I tell you.

Speaking of makes no sense: whatever this segue is! The Nintendo Switch has games. You know what else has games? Older Nintendo consoles. While some of these console's games are currently available to play on the Switch via Nintendo Switch Online (NSO), I'd love it if the remainder were added to the service sometime sooner rather than later. It's insane to me that the service was launched over half a decade ago and yet the newest console on it is the Game Boy Advance from 2001. Insane. Maybe the lack of consoles would be a bit more bearable if they added more games to the service more frequently? Fat chance, but hey, this is a list of hopes, not predictions.

Speaking of  : achievements! They've been a staple of gaming for literal decades at this point and yet Nintendo still hasn't implemented them into any of their consoles yet. I have genuinely no idea why this is the case. Nintendo has always been a little behind the times, but if we don't get an achievements system for the Switch 2 I think I'm gonna lose it. I do think they're coming though. Nintendo's flirted with the idea of achievements before with the My Nintendo missions, and they somewhat recently incorporated them into the Switch 1 via the Nintendo Switch Online app. It's certainly something on their minds, at least. But if the Switch 2 isn't the console to get achievements, then I don't think we're ever getting them.

Those are all of my hopes for the Nintendo Switch 2! A bit of a shorter blog then I usually write. I wanted to keep it mainly focused on the console itself rather than anything to do with the games, but if you're curious here are some of my hopes for that:

This was a surprisingly difficult blog to make, since most of the things I wanted for the Switch 2 were already confirmed. Backwards compatibility? Already confirmed. Nintendo Switch Online service carries over? Already confirmed. Heck, Rhythm Heaven and Tomodachi Life were the games I most wanted to see and they literally just had sequels announced a few days ago! Those along with achievements were probably my biggest wants for the system. That said, this is something I've given alot of thought to for the past eight years, so it's not as if I was struggling for ideas for this.

That's all from me for now. Would write more but I need to get to bed if I want to some sleep before the presentation tomorrow morning. What are your hopes for the Switch 2? Let me know in the comments below. See you in the next blog!

© Me