Nintendo Switch: all of the news announced in Tokyo

Nintendo’s focus at its Switch event last week was on the hybrid portable/home console’s lineup of games, with next to no information on the operating system or other functionality. Now, via some answers provided in response to questions asked by Kotaku, the company has revealed a little more information — but stayed quiet on a lot.

Here are a few things we’ve learned:

I spent about 10 minutes strolling through the lush green fields of Hyrule before I decided to change things up. I was playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild through a Nintendo Switch docked with a nice big television, which created an impressive sense of scale, showcasing just how huge of a world was out in front of me. But I didn’t feel like being tethered anymore. I deconstructed my controller, snapped its pieces on the side of the Switch tablet, and within a few seconds I was playing a huge Zelda game on a 6.2-inch tablet.

One of the biggest selling points of the Nintendo Switch is its hybrid nature. It’s a tablet that’s fully portable, and also a home console that connects to your television. But what really makes it all work is the incredibly flexible and functional new controllers called Joy-Con. They are the glue that holds the entire Switch concept together, letting you play different kinds of games in different configurations without the need for a bunch of expensive add-ons. The best part is that they work well, and switching between one mode and the next is practically seamless.

Nintendo finally unveiled launch details for its its new Switch console today (to recap: March 3rd worldwide for $299). While the pricing and availability are big news, the bigger news for me was the ability to actually play with the new console at an event in London. The console consists of a 6.2-inch 720p display, with the ability to attach two Joy-Cons to either side of the tablet portion. It’s tablet hardware that’s designed to be used at home in a special Switch Dock, or on the road with the Joy-Cons either attached or detached for wire-free play. There’s even a Joy-Con Grip to house both the sections into a single controller.

I played the upcoming Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with the tablet housed in the dock, and Mario Kart 8 with the Joy-Cons attached to the side of the tablet. I absolutely prefer playing with the tablet, rather than the Joy-Con Grip controller. There’s a simple reason for that: size. The Switch feels like a great handheld, but the gamepad feels too small to me. I’m used to the bigger controller of the Xbox One or PS4, which both have bigger buttons, better triggers, and much better D-pads. I have really small hands, so I can only imagine how fiddly the controller is if you have normal-sized hands.

As one of a handful of new games announced for its Switch console, Nintendo’s fighting game Arms had pride of place in Tokyo today. I spent a few bouts getting acquainted with its motion controls, while getting punched in the face by an ultra-buff mummy with fizzing purple balls for fists.

Arms’ control scheme is simple. Joy-Cons are detached from the base unit and held, one in each hand, in a thumbs-up pose. Tilting them forward sends your character walking forward, while backwards motion has them backpedalling. Lean them left and you’ll sidestep to the left, tilt right to go right. Punch a Joy-Con forward and your character will throw a corresponding fist; tilt the controller as it goes and your punch will snake around in midair, making it possible for you to punch around corners, or nail a moving target.

Last night, Nintendo announced a slew of games for its new Switch console. Today, the company is demonstrating many of those games live on YouTube and Twitch. At the time of publish, the team is playing match after match of the wacky boxing game ARMS. The stream will show other games throughout the day.

A list of demonstration times isn’t currently available, but we expect to see demos of 1-2 Switch, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of Fire, and Super Mario Odyssey. Nintendo execs and creators tend to appear on important Nintendo Treehouse streams, so don’t be surprised if Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto or president of Nintendo of America Reggie Fils-Aimé arrive to talk shop.

At last night’s Nintendo Switch press conference, the game publishers showed a mixture of sequels, new games, and third-party staples. The roster provides the first real look at Nintendo’s software strategy for the first year of the Switch.

The sequels appear to bolster the catalog. The long-delayed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild finally has a serious release date, launching alongside the console on March 3rd. After years of 2D and 2.5D iterations, Mario will appear in a fully 3D open-world adventure called Super Mario Odyssey. And Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe appear to build off the great, but under-appreciated games designed for the Nintendo Wii U.

In less than two months, Nintendo will release the Switch, its follow-up to the troubled Nintendo Wii U console. The new hardware certainly looks more promising than its predecessor’s did. The Switch’s hybrid console/portable concept promises a future in which players race in Mario Kart 8 and battle in Splatoon 2 whenever and wherever they like. But on March 3rd, it remains unclear which games will be available.

The only two games promised for launch during the January 12 press event were The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and 1-2-Switch. The former was meant to be a Wii U game, but after many delays, the title was tweaked so it could also release on the Switch. The latter is a motion game without graphics. So at Nintendo’s press event, the company only showed one launch video game with actual video.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is less than two months away, we found out today, and will be a launch title for the Nintendo Switch. I got the chance to finally play Nintendo’s next huge RPG in Tokyo today, taking control of main character Link for what appeared to be the first 20 minutes of the game — essentially a playable version of the demo we saw at E3 last year. What I found was a game that felt like a classic Zelda, but was also more clearly influenced by trends elsewhere in the games industry than other 3D titles in the series.

It takes place in an obviously open world, for one, and isn’t shy about throwing players into the mix. Link wakes up in the safety of a glowing cocoon inside a dark room. Two minutes later, and armed with nothing more than a raggedy shirt and pants combo, and the bare minimum of advice, he’s sent out into the vast expanse of the world. From Breath of the Wild’s title screen to reaching its version of Hyrule Field took me about five minutes. Compare this with the most famous 3D Zelda — Ocarina of Time — which spends an hour or two introducing the player to Link and his abilities in the relatively safe confines of the Kokiri Forest.

There are still a lot of questions about Nintendo’s Switch, and the Kyoto gaming giant has everything to prove. But after spending a few hours in the hybrid console’s company this afternoon in Tokyo, I think Nintendo might be onto something. At the very least, there’s evidence that the Switch is a more credible effort than its predecessor, the Wii U, which was Nintendo’s biggest home console failure to date.

I say that because of product decisions that cut to the core of how each system is used. With the Wii U and its tablet-style GamePad controller, developers essentially had two options — beam the same image from the TV to the portable screen, or display different content on each. Few found much use for the latter scenario, so the vast majority of games ended up employing the former, relegating the GamePad to a clunky, low-res portable that couldn’t even be taken outside of the house. Most of the Wii U’s best games ended up being perfectly playable without the GamePad at all.

Nintendo finally revealed all the important details about its new Switch console today, and preorders for the device are already live. If you’d like to get your hands on the $299.99 console when it launches on March 3rd, you can head over to Target or Best Buy to place an order. The Switch comes in two variations right now. One is a standard gray model, and the other is a “Neon” version with blue and red Joy-Con controllers. The company is also conducting a limited preorder run at its Nintendo World location in New York City, but online orders are probably a safer bet at this point.

As for launch games, Amazon has listings up for high-profile titles like Splatoon 2 and Super Mario Odyssey — both of which launch later this year. Only the Wii U version of the launch title The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is available for preorder now from the online retailer. Amazon’s product page for the title, which is supposed to have a simultaneous Switch and Wii U release on March 3rd, says it won’t be released until March 31st. So there’s some inconsistencies here, as to be expected the chaotic aftermath of such a colossal news dump.

In addition to the wealth of news surrounding the Switch that Nintendo announced at its Tokyo event tonight, we finally got some concrete details on the hardware specifications of Nintendo’s latest console.

The Nintendo Switch device offers a 6.2-inch, 720p multitouch display that runs at a 1280 x 720 resolution when used in a handheld mode. When docked, the Switch is capable of outputting full 1080p visuals through an HDMI connection to an attached TV. Nintendo says that the Switch runs off a custom Nvidia Tegra processor, but hasn’t released more specific details.

Video game box art isn’t what it used to be, but every once in a while a game comes out in a package that makes you proud to have it on your shelf. The upcoming Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — which is coming to both the Switch and Wii U on March 3rd — is one such game. The latest Hyrule adventure takes place in a gorgeous open world that has a hint of Studio Ghibli to it, and that sense of style shows in the box art.

Just look at it:

When Nintendo unveiled the Switch, Mario Kart made a brief appearance to show off the portable console’s split-screen capabilities. And today the company made it official: an updated version of the Wii U’s Mario Kart 8 — titled Mario Kart 8 Deluxe — is coming to the Switch on April 28th.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is the follow-up to the Wii U’s Mario Kart 8. It brings a new maps, new characters from Splatoon, King Boo, Dry Bones and Bowser Jr., new Balloon Battle and Bob-omb Blast games modes, and new items, along with everything from Mario Kart 8, including all the DLC content. Additionally, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe will offer up to eight players in local wireless multiplayer.

Nintendo is joining the likes of Sony and Microsoft and launching its own paid online subscription service for the new Switch console. Details are thin beyond staples like voice chat, but the company confirmed at its Switch launch event in Tokyo today that a premium online service would replace its previous model of letting players access multiplayer for free. Nintendo stresses that it will be an improvement over its past game-specific services.

“Users will be able to try out Nintendo Switch online services for free during a trial period after launch,” Nintendo President Tatsumi Kimishima said onstage. “Then it will become a paid service beginning in the fall of 2017. We will provide additional details on this paid service and its features on our home page at a later date.”

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be a Nintendo Switch launch title after all. The fate of the game — the 19th main installment in the long-running series — was up in the air after reports of localization issues arose late last year. Those issues don’t appear to have delayed the game past the March 3rd arrival of Nintendo’s newest console.

The company announced both the release date for the Switch and the availability of Breath of the Wild in a global live stream from Tokyo today. And in a tweet posted to the Nintendo of America Twitter account, the company announced that the game would also release on Wii U on March 3rd as well.

It looks like the Nintendo Switch will be home to much more than just Mario and Zelda.

At its presentation in Tokyo this evening, the company revealed a number of potentially exciting new role-playing games that are coming to its next console. Chief among them is Xenoblade Chronicles 2, a sequel to the massive sci-fi open-world game that launched on the Wii U. It’s expected to launch some time in 2017. It’s joined by a huge number of titles in the long-running Dragon Quest series from Square Enix, including DQ X, XI, and and the spinoffs Dragon Quest Heroes 1 and 2.

FIFA 13 was the last game in EA’s massively popular soccer series to appear on a Nintendo console. That will change this year as Electronic Arts brings FIFA to the Nintendo Switch.

The appearance of FIFA on Nintendo Switch is bigger than just one game. Nintendo struggled to get third-party developers like Electronic Arts, Activision, and Ubisoft to reliably port their biggest franchises to the Nintendo Wii and Wii U. FIFA on Switch shows that Electronic Arts is at least open to giving the new Nintendo hardware a chance.

Of course Mario will appear on Nintendo’s new console. Super Mario Odyssey was first teased this past October in the reveal trailer for the Nintendo Switch. During tonight’s press event, Nintendo provided a closer look at the platformer.

“A new Mario game” is a vague label. The core Mario franchise is more like Marvel’s cinematic universe than a continuous and singular series. Just as Marvel releases multiple Iron Man and Thor movies, Nintendo releases new entries in New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Galaxy. Each branch is unique in how it expands or restrains platforming within 2D and 3D spaces.

The first exclusive game for Nintendo’s new Switch console is a party game called 1-2-Switch. The title was announced onstage at the company’s Switch launch event in Japan today, and it will act as a kind of spiritual successor to Wii Sports. 1-2-Switch relies on both bundled Joy-Con controllers, which will act as a wide variety of different handheld objects, from revolvers for a Western shoot out to ping pong paddles for a game of virtual table tennis.

The game uses the Joy-Con’s various components — including its IR camera, motion sensors, and new HD rumble technology for object and depth recognition — to let you and a friend play the game without having to look at the screen. In a short demo video, players were shown doing a huge variety of activities, many relying on motion control and wireless interaction between the two Joy-Con controllers.

Nintendo’s colorful multiplayer shooter Splatoon is getting a sequel, and it’s coming to the new Nintendo Switch. Like the original, Splatoon 2 will feature teams of teenage squid kids going up against each other, attempting to paint arenas as much as possible. The sequel will add new stages and weapons into the fray, with even more to be added after the game launches. It’s launching this summer.

Nintendo opened its press conference for the Switch console by showcasing two new games, neither of which feature the company’s iconic characters. The first is the graphics-free motion game 1-2 Switch. The second is Arms, a colorful motion-controlled boxing game.

Dubbed “the extendable arm fight game,” Arms is being promoted as the newest addition to Nintendo’s expanding roster of characters. The game is built around competitive local multiplayer, allowing for split-screen gaming on-the-go. Arms is scheduled for release sometime this spring.

Nintendo is finally sharing details on the upcoming Switch console, starting with the modular Joy-Con controller. Here’s everything new we learned at the event:

In an unexpected announcement, Nintendo revealed the Nintendo Switch will not be region locked.

“Region-lock” refers to when a console only plays the video games released in a specified region. For example, an American Nintendo 3DS only plays games for the American region, and a Japanese Nintendo 3DS only plays games for its region. Region-locking isn’t limited to video games. Most DVD and Blu-ray players also limited by region-locking.

Nintendo announced today that the Switch will charge over USB-C, making it the first Nintendo device to charge over a standard connector. The adoption of a universal charging standard is a big deal for Nintendo, which has stubbornly insisted on using its own proprietary charging ports since the company added rechargeable batteries to its portable consoles with the Game Boy Advance SP.

The addition of USB-C to the Switch is especially welcome, since it means that the console — which can be used as a portable device — can be charged with a far more widespread cable, as well as adding the option to recharge a Switch on the go using a standard external battery pack.