Released into a crossfire of rumors and outright leaks, the Nintendo Switch 2's announcement trailer revealed the console while simultaneously revealing almost nothing about it. Its reception by critics has been one of still more speculation: What's new? What's improved? Are Nintendo's days of off-the-wall console releases in the past?
Nintendo's latest announcement feels different because, by its own standards, it is. Clinical hardware dissections are more reminiscent of Apple than the company that habitually thanks viewers for watching its trailers, and vanishingly few mainline Nintendo console trailers fail to include human beings. That puts the Switch 2 in rare air, marketing-wise, shared mostly by iterative handheld releases like the Game Boy Advance.
