The last week’s Nintendo Direct, which revealed a myriad of console features and games. While there are still a lot of questions to be answered, the presentation offered a lot of clarity on the console’s main features and information on several exciting games, like Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. The presentation also finally revealed a release date for the console, which will hit shelves on June 5.

The Nintendo Switch 2 boasts several new features and capabilities, like 120 FPS, the new Game Chat feature, and mouse functionality for its Joy-Con. Stronger hardware also means the console will be able to run a lot of current-era games it wasn’t capable of before, like Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring. ScreenRant recently attended a special hands-on event on the day of the Direct to try out the new machine and speak with Nintendo representatives about the Nintendo Switch 2.

ScreenRant interviewed Bill Trinen, Nintendo’s Vice President of Player and Product Experience, to ask all of our burning Nintendo Switch 2 questions, learning about the console’s origins, its powerful processing potential, and - of course - the flavor palette of the Switch 2’s games.

Will Nintendo Switch 2 Cartridges Also Taste Bad?

Future Nintendo Announcements Will Clarify Gray Areas: “Stay Tuned”

With so much discourse following the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct, I had to ask some hard-hitting questions, particularly one that has been at the forefront of many players’ minds: are Switch 2 game cartridges also going to taste bad? Unfortunately, Trinen wasn’t able to confirm or deny their flavor, saying, “I have yet to get a cartridge in my hand or on my tongue, but,” he assures me, “I will keep you posted.” This is one of many facets of the console still up in the air, with more reveals foreshadowed for future Directs.

April 17’s Mario Kart World Direct may offer some closure to a big concern I had going hands-on with World, which was that my go-to racer, Isabelle, was nowhere to be found; only characters from the Mario franchise made the roster. It seems as though more non-Mario characters may be slated for an announcement during the presentation: “All I can say is that the version we have today is the version we have today. We do have a Nintendo Direct all about Mario Kart World coming, so stay tuned,” Trinen said with a knowing smile, “hopefully you'll get some good news.”

The Backstory Behind The Nintendo Switch 2

The New Console Was “Designed From The Ground Up”

Though there are a lot of future reveals that Trinen can’t delve into, he’s able to offer a lot of insights into how the console arrived at this landmark day. The Switch 2 has been in development for a long time, with work beginning soon after the original Nintendo Switch launched, and there was a clear vision from the beginning. “I don't think that we've seen big pivots,” Trinen says, explaining that “what we see today is what's been in plans for the last several years.”

“If anything, what I've been most impressed by is the different ways that the different teams are finding to leverage different elements of the system. Looking at something like Super Mario Party Jamboree, and the way it takes Game Chat features and builds it directly into the gameplay. I really liked how, for example, at the moment when somebody's getting a star, you can see their face, and the shape of the window that their face appears in changes to the shape of a star - just little touches like that.”

It’s meant to be much more than a sequel, and has “been designed from the ground up, both from a hardware perspective and from a Joy-Con perspective.” The team’s mission was taking “everything that people love about Nintendo Switch and then building upon that with new features,” a goal that took a few different forms. They expanded upon the idea of what the console could be, with “exclusive games that take advantage of the new capabilities of the hardware” and controls like the mouse that will “evolve gameplay in ways that we haven't seen on Nintendo Switch.”

An especially impactful project was the Game Chat feature, which Trinen describes as “a critical piece of Nintendo Switch 2.” Same-room multiplayer has always been a strength for Nintendo, and “Game Chat is all about taking that ability to see the faces of the people that are most important to you and bringing that to an online space.” The associated camera inspired further innovation, too, with Trinen pointing to Super Mario Party Jamboree as “a great example of what might've been viewed as just an accessory for Game Chat, but instead finding ways to build that into the gameplay.”

The Technical Power Of The Nintendo Switch 2

The Strength Of The Switch Has Increased Significantly

Even though the company opted not to use an OLED screen for the Nintendo Switch 2, Trinen is confident players won’t miss it. “I think most people's perception of LED is based off the LED screen in the Switch 1,” he explains. “With Nintendo Switch 2, it is really an enhanced LED screen, so it has a lot more vibrancy and really robust colors. My guess is that most people, when they do the comparison between an OLED and the Nintendo Switch 2 LED screen, it's going to look really good.”

He predicts people may similarly underestimate the new Joy-Con: “As people first start to process the Joy-Con mouse functionality, their immediate reaction is to think of mouse control for a game,” says Trinen, but that only takes into consideration simple movements. “With the Joy-Con, when you add in the functionality of motion control coupled with mouse control, you add in rotation and things like that.” It goes beyond that, too - there’s also “two-player mouse control out of the box with one system,” since both Joy-Con have mouse functionality, and games with dual-mouse control in single player like Drag x Drive.

Increased processing power will also improve the overall experience, helping add more depth to games. “The perfect example would be Donkey Kong Bananza,” Trinen says. “That game is really doing something that I don't think we've seen happen in a lot of other games,” referring to the “chain reaction of destruction and discovery” that comes with environmental manipulation. “You can literally punch through just about anything in that world, and it tracks your progress. Those things will interact with other things in the environment that will unveil something hidden in the terrain and cause you to want to explore.”

Looking To The Nintendo Switch 2’s Future

Innovation That Inspires & Games That “Serve As Templates”

Though he loves them all, because of that terrain-busting power, Trinen cites Bananza as the title he’s most excited for: “Whether you're a Nintendo fan, a video game fan, or a game developer, that game in particular feels like something you must play - both to see what the system is capable of, but also just to see how Nintendo is innovating from a gameplay perspective and what they're doing next.” He also says Kirby Air Riders was “ahead of its time,” and the opportunity to introduce it to a new audience is a “good opportunity for Kirby to shine.”

He hopes that aforementioned innovation, paired with the Joy-Con functionality, can make the Nintendo Switch 2 a source of inspiration. “As people start to experiment with that functionality, that's going to give them opportunities to think, ‘Does this inspire me for some new type of interaction that I hadn't thought of before?’” He names Drag x Drive and Super Mario Party Jamboree specifically as games that “are there to serve as templates for our publishing and development partners to say, ‘What's possible with this system, and how can we take advantage of that and build games around those ideas?’”