My daughter and I followed through with our plan to watch the Switch 2 presentation together this morning! I put it on my TV while I worked, and she pulled out the bean bag chair.

We both walked away mildly disappointed-- we're both still going to buy it, but we were expecting a little more than what we got. It kind of starts with the price; at $500 for the bundle plus tax, plus I know I'll want to get the Pro Controller, that's one heck of an initial expenditure to get into the new platform. And if you want the camera, tack on another $50. Additionally, it looks like retail games for the system are going to be a whopping $80!

So then you start to analyze, "Well, what do I get with the new platform?", and the value proposition is just not very high out of the gates. Nintendo basically only showed two first-party games, Switch 2-exclusive games that I can remember-- Mario Kart World, and the new Donkey Kong title. The rest of the video was mostly very rough looking third-party ports of games we've already had for years on the PlayStation 5, and which look and run about ten times better on that system. And the PS5 is actually cheaper than the Switch 2 if you get the version without the disc drive!

But the PlayStation 5 isn't a handheld-- fair enough. Tack on a PlayStation Portal to quasi-equalize the feature set, and you're looking at a $600 entry point to the PS5 ecosystem, if you want to lay on the bed and play on a smaller screen.

So how about compared to the Steam Deck then? Given the dearth of first-party games shown on the Switch 2 so far, all that's left is a "it can run Hades 2 and Elden Ring" sort of a deal-- but so can the Steam Deck, which can also run literally tens of thousands of other Steam games, which you can buy for pennies-on-the-dollar from places like Kingguin and CD Keys! If anything, I thought today's Switch 2 video was a good advert for the myriad of PC gaming handhelds out there.

I'm also worried about the Switch 2's level of power.

I was hoping it would be at least a small upgrade in performance from my OLED Steam Deck, if not even a bit more than that-- but every game Nintendo showed had lousy framerates and tons of shimmering plus aliasing. Overall it just doesn't look as powerful as I thought it'd be, based on the game footage they've shown so far at least. This is a problem, because the Steam Deck is basically incapable of running 2025-era triple-A games-- which means the Switch 2 will be a completely non-viable "primary console" just like the original Switch was.

Again, it goes back to value proposition: now we're talking a $500 console, where you still need another platform just to play the latest games!

All of that said, having a Forza Horizon with a Mario Kart skin on it is going to be super fun, especially since you just know it'll have that trademark Nintendo level design, with clever little secrets filled in all over the place. And I'm sure Nintendo has a lot of first-party games brewing, including an inevitable Splatoon 4, for which both my daughter and I are excited.

For us, it's worth getting into the system on day one if we can, since we know we'll inevitably buy one anyway. But for a lot of other people, I'd tend to recommend a PlayStation 5 or to at least do some homework into the various PC-based handhelds-- especially the superb, essentially hassle-free Steam Deck.