i'm really not sure on the switch 2, not much is known about it sure, the only game we have confirmed may not even be a new game yet and all we have to go on are leaks and a trailer, but even still i'm just, unsure about it. the trailer didn't give us much to work with, a showcase of the console, one new feature, a bland colour that makes it look like a less ugly, but still ugly, steam deck, a single game, confirmation about physical media and backwards compatibility which is the best thing about it so far and we get a look at its size. the issue is almost every thing showed off is either very uninteresting or worse, flat out worse than what we had before, the size being the big one.

it's too big, there isn't much else to it, it's huge. i'm a lite user first and foremost, i owned an original switch and i hated it, while i liked how small the joycons were when detached i hated using the console in every other way, it was big and bulky and it hurt my hands after even 20 mins of usage which was a big contributor to how i never beat a single game on the thing, not until i had the lite, it was just too much for me and it was up to that point the worst handheld to use. of course now that title was stolen by its OLED model, which is somehow even heavier and i think bigger to boot which would put it somewhere south of unusable for someone with hands as small and weak as mine, though even that didn't last since its title got stolen by the accessibility nightmare for small hands known as the steam deck, the single worst game console this side of the R-zone and hyperscan, though at least the hyperscan had those cool cards and a great classic game room review, not sure the steam deck had much of anything going for it with how it's both unusably big, unusably heavy and ugly as hell to boot, waste of space doesn't even have physical games, that's cringe and it should feel bad. back on track, this thing is looking to be less like the already bad normal switch and more like the literally unusable for me steam deck, it's a good chunk bigger than whatever model is shown off, i'm assuming the OLED and its thicker to boot, and almost surely heavier. this puts it into the realm of "not happening" for me, i don't want a console i outright can't use, sure there's the home console part but that just doesn't appeal to me, again i use the switch lite and i do that because i prefer portable gaming, i love being able to put it in my itabag and play some otome games on the bus, doing that with something as big as this looks, the lite as is barely fits in my itabag, just won't be an option, i tested with a friends steam deck and that thing literally couldn't fit in it, so this won't have much better odds especially with a case, i just don't have any interest in having a console like that hooked up at home when i know the handheld version is an option. this leaves me with really only two options, spend hundreds on a console that will be difficult for me to use or just wait for the lite that we know is coming, i'll just wait for the lite at least for its size. there's also the whole portable mouse thing that people seem to think is going to happen, this i'm also pretty iffy on, it's cool and might be neat for games like hypnospace outlaw, but i do kind of feel iffy on it, especially since it makes it feel more like a portable PC like the steam deck and that's just not an interesting direction.

but what about the rest, well, we got one new game shown off, a new mario kart at that. it looks, fine, it's mario kart, it looks nice with the environment though the character models are a large downgrade from 8, seeming to take more after the blander movie designs which i'm not really a fan of. that's all there is to say, could be a new game, could be another port of 8, we don't know and personally this isn't really enough to get me excited at all, sure i might play and enjoy it, i played 8 on the wiiu and had a super good time, but mario kart just doesn't excite me, not many Nintendo franchises really do to the degree that i'd be instantly sold on a console for them. the ones i like aren't the ones that get big launch showings, i like style savvy and fire emblem and xenoblade and their adventure games like another code or fami detective club and even their musou crossovers. though even these won't really sell me on a console, except maybe style savvy. Nintendo games rarely enter my favourites of all time list, there's a few there for sure like the style savvy games, fire emblem fates and super princess peach, but these are rarities and were very often not the reasons i invested in a console, so for this it's still a waiting game for me, i just need to see more from third parties, those are what really sell me on a Nintendo system. it always has been the case, i bought a wii for resident evil umbrella chronicles, i bought a 3DS for devil survivor overclocked and twewy being in kingdom hearts, i bought a switch for otome games and again, twewy, even their older consoles i was mostly drawn to for those third party games like with the gamecube having skies of arcadia legends and baten kaitos. so far the only exception to this has been the WIIU which i got for shin megami tensei x fire emblem and boy was i wrong on that one, though i did love the end result it wasn't really what i'd bought the system hoping for, though i do love my WIIU and it, and devils third, are what got me to make this website in the first place. so here i think it will really be waiting for those third parties to really get me excited, i still have many games to catch up to on the old system anyway, i haven't played games like a few of the musous, FE engage and xenoblade 3, so i'm not in a rush, plus it usually takes the kinds of games i want to play years to jump ship, otomate were supporting the vita long after the switch came out, until around 2020 or so, so i imagine it'll be a long time before they move their otome games to the switch 2 and until then i don't feel a huge need to move either, those are what's probably going to sell me on it the most.

in general i feel pretty positive towards the original switch, mostly, it lost a lot of the charm in Nintendo themselves and that original model was much too big for me, but once i got the lite and really started to give its library a run through i had a really good time with it. i love the lite and how it looks, it's still big compared to my ideal portable (the PSVITA) but it's more than manageable and fits in my bag, the only real issue i have with it is how little charm it has and how barebones it is, compared to the 3DS and especially the vita it just feels a little soulless. the UI is boring with very little to do on it, there's no themes or music and there's no cute little side apps like the 3DS had, the 3DS had so much charm with a pretty respectably good OST in almost every app, some great themes and the badges that i loved, plus individual tiles for things like VC games, it gave it so much charm and thats all just lacking here, replaced with minimalist nothing and that sucks, it feels so low effort. i was sold on the games though, it felt like such a home for smaller more niche Japanese games and especially great action games like all the platinum stuff on the console, we had a character action kamen rider game like what, and the visual novels, sure it wasn't on the same level as the vita was for them but damn did it pull its weight, it even had some localised nasu games and *all the otome and BL games* it had, it felt like a real renaissance for localised otome especially, continuing on from the golden age that was the vita and I hope that will continue into the switch 2, though with the way Nintendo's policies are going it's really difficult to say (see my page on that linked here). there's a lot of unknowns here that'll probably be cleared up come the final direct, what kinds of games will it launch with (hopefully better than the original switch's pretty bad lineup), will it still be plagued with AI garbage, how much will it be (the gamestop page says 799 but that can't be real), will the games be 70 and up, none of this we know and its hard to fully judge until we see all of this in full, we don't even know how much bigger the thing is exactly, its all estimation, so its hard to be super cynical about it. I just want this to be good though, this will very likely be the last generation I play new games, I plan to quit once AI tools take over as the norm and physical games get dropped, at that point i'll have no reason to continue new games, so i want to go out of this industry with a good one.