In the leak-filled weeks prior to the Switch 2 reveal, we saw increasing incredulity from die-hard Nintendo fans on social media. We won’t link specific examples, but you don’t have to scroll far before seeing takes along these lines:
All these leaks are ruining the reveal! Why isn’t Nintendo getting ahead of this?!
How have Nintendo f****d this up so badly?!?11
We’ll be studying this bungled reveal for years to come!
Others put the blame squarely on the leakers for spoiling things. Developer Hideki Kamiya vented post-reveal, hoping that leakers “always have poop on the soles of their shoes.” From all corners of the Nintendo fandom, there’s been a lot of frustration.
And we totally understand. As uberfans who have followed ‘Switch 2’ (hey, we can bin the quote marks now!) developments for years, it’s been irritating to see clout-seeking, source-burying leaker wannabes ‘forgetting’ to highlight that, actually, the reveal trailer in their first tweet is fan-made and not the real “Switch 2 trailer!” And then gaslighting people who complain in the replies. The legitimate leaks are one thing, but mixed in with everything else, it gets exhausting.
Being obliged to look at and evaluate every little thing and judge what’s coverage-worthy makes things noisier for us than the average fan, perhaps, but anyone scrolling through video game feeds likely felt impatient for Nintendo to just announce the bloody thing. Deploy the trailer, damn it!
Confusing frustration and impatience with the idea that Nintendo and Switch 2’s official reveal has been ‘damaged’ somehow by this carnival of leaks is a mistake, though.
Firstly, as we’ve written before, the basic parameters of Nintendo’s next console have been known for a very long time. Long before we saw renders of a slightly bigger Joy-Con or got reliable intel that magnets were being used to attach them, we knew this would be a hybrid console – a ‘Switch 2’, whatever they ended up naming it.
Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa himself said that “Switch next model” would be the most appropriate way to describe the follow-up. It was never going to be some radical, Wii-like reinvention for the company; it was never going to be a big surprise.
Anyone keeping an eye on things could have sketched the follow-up to the Switch on a napkin and produced something very close to the end product. It’s… another Switch! Sure, it’s got some fun new features – the optical sensors and the Joy-Con in general look pretty swish. But brass tacks, it’s the same thing, upgraded.
The sentiment that accessory makers have ruined the grand reveal ignores news dating back to the last decade discussing the nature of the Switch successor. A beautiful official render might have been preferable to a grainy screengrab of a CAD model, but if the idea of ‘just another Switch’ left you cold, you’d have reacted exactly the same to the real McCoy, however slick the trailer. The ‘damage’ was done long ago for fans tiring of the hybrid concept.
Secondly, and most significantly: the Switch 2 reveal trailer is not for you. The dedicated gaming fan reading these words has likely been keeping up to date with industry rumours for years. In the same way the first Switch introduction (ha ha, ha ha, yeah) was made for a larger audience, this trailer was primarily designed to inform casual gaming fans — and potential fans — exactly what this is.
The trailer does that exceptionally well. The original Switch we know and love morphs, part-by-part, into a totally new model. Slap an enormous ‘2’ on the end and there is absolutely zero confusion this time around. The huge, wider audience of people who get their gaming news from the BBC and other non-gaming outlets know precisely what this thing is.
But the original Switch didn’t leak like this! No, not quite like this, but Nintendo was in a very different spot. Coming off the back of the Wii U, the platform holder needed to change the conversation and make a splash and was quite chatty about the ‘NX’ by comparison.
To briefly recap, Nintendo first mentioned NX in early 2015 during a joint media briefing with mobile company DeNA to assure everyone that the firm was still in the dedicated hardware business. The console was brought up several times between then and the October 2016 reveal, as the messaging sought to distance the new system from the old (“we’re not building the next version of Wii or Wii U“) and confirmed its March 2017 launch nearly a year ahead of time. NOA tweeted about it and everything.
And let’s not forget that the basic Switch concept did leak. July 2016 saw articles which nailed what the Switch turned out to be, with mock-up illustrations capturing the hybrid handheld’s form fairly accurately. And we were having very similar conversations about Nintendo’s tight-lipped approach back then, too.
What’s the difference, then? Eight years ago, Nintendo absolutely needed to take control of the narrative after the bungled miscommunication that introduced the previous system. Is Wii U a new console? Is it just a controller for the Wii? Can you use two GamePads at once? Those were all legitimate questions Nintendo failed to answer in the Wii U announcement trailer in 2011. The concept was unclear from the beginning to core and casual fans alike.
Everyone already understands the concept of a Switch, though. After proving that there’s a market for a hybrid handheld and struggling to meet demand with the original system, Nintendo’s #1 priority is manufacturing enough units for launch. The messaging? That’s easy this time – it’s a new Switch, like the one you’ve been using for years! But better and with a new Mario Kart!
There’s no conversation to change this time; the goal was to clearly communicate that this is a totally new system and the slick trailer (and conventional name) achieves that. Are people behind the scenes at Nintendo irritated? Who wouldn’t be?! But ultimately it’s no skin off their nose if case firms start leaking the thing to people who already know it exists.
It’s worth noting the explosion of ‘leaker’ culture across social media over the last decade, too, blurring the lines more than ever between journalists, self-styled ‘insiders’, and intrepid internet detectives analysing shipping manifests. Mobile phone fans are used to leaks like this; if there’s interest around a product that everyone knows is in production, the chances of getting to the reveal without images leaking from the factory are practically nil. That doesn’t stop millions of people from buying the iPhone 47.
Exciting as it is, even the Mario Kart tease is incidental in the context of an announcement targeting people who haven’t been following the ins and outs of motherboard grabs from Chinese factories, people for whom this will be the first look at the new Switch.
If anything, it’s the uncharacteristic lack of ‘surprise’ with the reveal which has some fans perplexed; we thought there might be another game or two. Rest assured, there’ll be plenty of off-the-wall software coming out for the now-conventional-looking console – something on the software and peripheral side to bring the patented WTF surprise and delight. That USB-C slot on the top and the optical sensor in the Joy-Con are crying out for some weird-ass, Nintendo-like experimentation.
But anyone who thinks the platform holder’s inaction allowed leaks to ‘spoil’ Switch 2’s reveal or that the console’s chances have somehow been damaged, ironically, hasn’t been paying attention. Leaks didn’t do Switch any harm whatsoever. The real question is if Nintendo can capture lightning in a very similar bottle a second time.