Nintendo Direct Was A Damning Display Of The State Of Switch 2

Astonishingly, we are already eight months into the life of Nintendo’s Switch 2 console. And three-quarters of a year in, it’s perhaps fair to say there’s not exactly been a rollercoaster of must-have games released. Given the disappointment of Metroid Prime 4, and the sheer paucity of other first-part originals, it’s becoming tricky not to think of it as a $400 Donkey Kong Bananza machine that has a side-hustle in ports. With a desperate need for the console to be given any sense of vitality in 2026, today’s Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase not only did very little to take away from the impression of stagnation, but if anything seemed to go out of its way to endorse it.

It was a very peculiarly put-together showcase. Any who try to fathom the decisions made by Nintendo are doomed to spiraling madness, but after the very pretty but previously announced Orbitals, we saw a visual novel sequel, a soccer anime oddity, and then what looked like a 2002 PC shovelware knock-off of a generic Capcom game, Tokyo Scramble. It was a deeply inauspicious start, suggesting that these desultory offerings were the games Nintendo thought we should be most excited about in 2026.

This was then further cemented by longer looks at two years-old ports. First up was Valheim, the 2021 PC survival game, arriving on Switch 2 without a new addition or significant update, presented looking choppy and blocky (which I suppose are at least thematic) for the brand-new console. This five-year-old game still has a loyal following on Steam, with 30,000 people playing every day, so it’s not exactly forgotten, but it’s a weird pick to make such a fuss of. Then came the two-month-old news that the original 2017 Hollow Knight is receiving a free upgrade for the Switch 2. Very welcome, of course, and a great move by Team Cherry, but you know, something that was announced back in December of last year.

Somehow this was followed by another soccer game, a previously announced cross-platform Square RPG, another previously announced and previously released cross-platform Square RPG (OK, I’m being slightly facetious, people are excited to play Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on Switch 2), and then two more long-ago-revealed but still potentially interesting cross-platform titles, Pragmata and Turok: Origins. At this point the Direct seemed completely lost, just stringing together games we already knew were coming to Switch 2, but also coming to Xbox, PlayStation and PC, and all with little new information nor even release dates. The whole thing felt more and more like a proof-of-life for the console, rather than a showcase of reasons to be excited.

Perhaps you’re delighted by the reveal of a sequel to 2015’s PS Vita game Tokyo Xanadu, a long-awaited revival of Nihon Falcon’s classic ’80s/’90s Xanadu series, and all power to you if so, but this alongside Digimon Story: Time Stranger also felt like pretty weak offerings. But wait, hold on to your socks and hats, because up next was Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok! You know Granblue Fantasy, right? The 2014 mobile game? Or perhaps you’re more of a fan of the Granblue Fantasy Versus games that came to, er, PS4 and Xbox One? Even Granblue Fantasy: Relink didn’t come to Switch in 2024, instead arriving only on PlayStation and PC.

Finally, way too late into the stream, some previously unreleased games with broader name recognition appeared. We got the already very well-known Monster Hunter Stories 3 as well as Resident Evil Requiem, which would have been a massive deal if they hadn’t already been announced for the system last year, and in Monster Hunter Stories‘ case, via a previous Nintendo Direct. Between these, we also had the welcome news of a collection of literally 40-year-old classics, and a rapid-fire montage of yet more previously announced games. But why Star Trek Voyager – Across the Unknown and Reanimal were confined to this purgatory, and the rest of this dismal half hour was not, is anyone’s guess.

And then the big finish! An 11-year-old, two-year-old, and 20-year-old game, each from Bethesda. Fallout 4 and Oblivion are last year’s versions, but still games that have been re-released a comical number of times across the decades. And honestly, the fact that it felt borderline exciting that 2024’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was revealed as a Switch 2 game really underlined just what a dreadful Direct this had been. “Oh my goodness, a big-name game that was released in this decade!”

This was a Partner Showcase, which is to say a Direct which features no first-party Nintendo announcements at all. But given just how little of those first-party efforts we know about at this point, it needed to do some damned heavy lifting to offer hope to Switch 2 owners who might be wondering exactly why they upgraded over the holidays. Next week’s Mario Tennis Fever from Camelot will likely be a lovely 8/10 sports game, and there’s reason to hope that next month’s Pokémon Pokopia will offer us a fresh face for an Animal Crossing-like, but neither feels like a console-selling blockbuster. A repolished Super Mario Bros. Wonder at the end of March is…sure, great. Then we have Yoshi and the Mysterious Book set for spring, and that’s it for games with even that vague of a release date. At some point in 2026 we should get Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Wave and it’ll be gratefully received, but seriously, fucking hell, that’s it. Apparently there’s another Splatoon at some point in the distant future, too.

It is surely impossible that Nintendo doesn’t have something up its sleeves for Zelda‘s 40th anniversary, right? But then it also feels impossible that Nintendo launched a brand new console without a 3D Mario title even announced, let alone released, and that’s somehow still true.

Given all of this, today’s showcase needed to have some massive third-party announcement, some huge reveal that everyone would be buzzing about. And we didn’t even get close. It was abysmal.