Why I Sold My Nintendo Switch

And don't intend on buying the Switch 2

Last month Nintendo announced the Switch 2 in a very short video. And it's...bigger? It doesn't seem very different from the original, although we haven't had the Direct quite yet where we will get more information. This got me thinking about how and why I ended up getting rid of my Switch in general. And it's not just me getting rid of mine, my partner did too. So why? Why would we, people who have had lots of Nintendo Consoles and still have a GameCube, Wii, and Wii U tucked away, get rid of the Switch? There's so many reasons and I figured I'd like to go over it. I enjoyed Nintendo consoles and games for a long long time, said GameCube was my first ever console. But it's time to say goodbye (and it's not that hard to do so).

Emulation

The modern games industry as a whole is just over 40 years old now so we have a whole lot of prior games that exist on a whole lot of consoles. As technology has advanced those consoles were left behind but their games don't have to be. Emulation is one of the best parts of the modern industry. People are able to take the amazing games from the last 4 decades and play them on their PC without having to have the old, broken, frustrating, and expensive old tech on hand. This has been a trend in, arguably, the last 2 decades. Especially with the more recent proliferation of emulation handhelds and the Steam Deck having a large emulation fanbase.

Most modern game companies accept that Emulation is nothing but a positive in the Industry. Sure, often these games are pirated in order to be played, but that allows people who have never had the chance to play these games have the capability of experiencing them without having to find some of the old tech. Some companies have put out small versions of their consoles to allow them to get a benefit on this desire to experience older games. That's something Nintendo did. The problem with Nintendo here was that they didn't want to make enough small consoles to meet demand. Which lead to massive scalping prices. This did nothing to actually help make Emulation a more legit, and legal, format. People continued to pirate and Emulate because how else were you gonna play these games?

Which brings me to my core issue with Nintendo right now, they've gone lawsuit happy to shut down emulator after emulator, arguing in court for years now that Emulation isn't legal. It's insane. All of these people who have poured 100's of hours into perfecting or at least making progress on emulating older Nintendo games have been told they're violating the law. Nintendo has decided that they desperately want their old games to disappear. That they want many of their games locked to some of their least popular consoles because "legality". Emulation isn't a real problem for Nintendo, they still make billions of dollars, so why go after Emulators? What's the point?

Even worse, Nintendo actually uses Emulators themselves. Sometimes stealing Emulator code in order to get some of their games to work on modern consoles. In their Mini Consoles they've released, its just an small emulator in a NES and SNES box which you could do yourself on the cheap, without having to deal with massively inflated sale prices and scalpers on top of that. Nintendo likes to argue against Emulation while simultaneously benefiting from all the work people have poured into making their games work so well. Its insane.

20+1 Games?! That’s at least a hundred less than you can get with a raspberry pi and an emulator loaded on it.

When I saw that Nintendo acknowledged, finally, that Emulation is in fact legal, it pissed me off. They had demanded millions of dollars from Emulator devs. Its fucking annoying. So I resolved that I did not want to support a modern console with a company so determined to let their old games become vaporware. When I sold the console it actually felt good, I felt like I was saying a big ol' fuck you to Nintendo because, while I've enjoyed their their older games, they have been nothing but annoying in modern day.

Note: importantly, PlayStation and Nintendo have started to put out their older games on their online services. So Nintendo Online has access to a lot of older games and PS+ does as well. This is good, but not perfect, and still costs way too much money.

Games

Games Games Games. That's what makes a console. Nintendo has definitely had an impressive catalog over the course of the switch generation. Especially since they've finally introduced a decent online store that allows for indie devs to sell their games very effectively. Yet there's a core part to games that are incredibly important to making sales, price.

Nintendo never, ever puts their first party games on sale or lowers their prices. They've put out game after game after game but an 8 year old game is still 60 bucks. This is pointless. This does nothing to allow the games to continue selling despite being 8 years old. I should not have to pay 60 bucks for a game that is that old. Plenty of games decrease in price over the course of years and years, this is a natural reality for progression of the industry. For instance, Nier: Automata came out two weeks after Breath of the Wild, and Automata is now 40 bucks on steam and goes on sale all the time. But Breath of the Wild is still 60. It's crazy. Eventually, either a game drops in price, or it goes on sale. Yet, that's the biggest problem with Nintendo games. I can forgive not lowering prices, but to never put the game on sale at all? That's just annoying. Nintendo isn't the only game company that does this, but they are the only one that is consistent about it.

Add in that I've lost interest in some of their games recently and I have less and less of a reason to have a Nintendo Console. Tears of the Kingdom just annoyed me. It felt like Nintendo loved that people played so much of Breath of the Wild, so they decided to introduce something awful into the game. Constant grinding. I am not a person who likes grinding in games. Its just not my thing, not really, even in Destiny 2 it was annoying and not very enjoyable. Tears of the Kingdom simply felt like the devs said "we aren't confident enough in our game being fun so we are going to drip feed you progress instead of allowing you to meaningfully engage with our mechanics from the get go." Plus they turned up the difficulty so, if you wanted to survive more than one hit, you HAD to prioritize hearts, not the creation timer. The timer for the creations is one of the biggest terrible decisions in the game, its one of the best parts of the game but requires grinding a shit ton to be at all useful. It sucks. Imagine if, in Mario Odyssey, you had to upgrade your hat to be able to become the different creatures for longer than a minute, it would suck ass. There were great parts of TotK, but the game as a whole just bothered me. It perfectly encapsulated my frustrations with Nintendo because they seem to have decided to refuse to allow their users to have quick fun and quick engagement with core mechanics in a game. Their games used to be about having fun that is instant, that is consistent and that doesn't require massive grinding. Why force me to upgrade the length of the duration of my creations? Why not just have all of the creations exist for the max amount of time? It was just annoying and why I never even ended up finishing the game. And why I just used duplication glitches to make it faster even without finishing it.

I know that the Battery upgrades were meant to give you more stuff to upgrade, but it just makes engaging with the building boring and makes it require tons of hours of grinding to be useful.

Nintendo refusing to sell their games at a reasonable price or put them on sale, and making their own games more grindy and less immediately fun, just put me in a state of constant frustration whenever I even tried to engage with their ecosystem. Even after spending a ton of money on their e-shop, it didn't matter to me, I will not fall into the sunk cost fallacy. So I sold it.

Replaced

The switch did something that no other console had really done before, allowed home console games to be played into a portable format. It was perfect, who wouldn't want to play their console games on the go, or without having the TV on/having something else on in the background. It was a fantastic innovation in gaming, something Nintendo has done consistently throughout their time in the games industry. When I first got the Switch I was still dealing with some real physical health difficulties, going to the hospital a lot to figure out what was going on with me. The Switch allowed me to escape when I needed it most. The biggest frustration I had with it was not enough games I cared about, having to rebuy games I already owned on steam, and holding it was incredibly uncomfortable. It was just too small and thin.

Then, another innovation in the games industry happened, something that again changed the industry. The Steam Deck was announced. This was an evolution of what the Switch had done so successfully, but it had more power, was bigger, and usually more comfortable, you could play your entire Steam library, and it was still affordable. What else could you want. I of course preordered one as soon as I could and ended up getting it in August of 2022. It changed how I played games. I ended up playing a lot of games that I hadn't initially expected to play. Games that I emulated. Games that I was able to play only because I could now play them without being in front of the PC, in my very uncomfortable chair (that I have since replaced). The experience was amazing, the customization was wonderful, the functionality was fantastic. I adore every second that I play a game on it.

The Steam Deck even has all the emulators you could ever want, and it’s mobile and still plays PC games!

The Steam Deck, quite simply, did what the Switch did, but it did it 100 times better. It replaced my Switch, it improved on my Switch. What was the point of keeping it? Sure it had Nintendo games, but as I've already covered, I started having issues with their current games and their decisions on games sales and such. Steam has sales, it has games go down in price, I'm able to play all my games portable, then quit and resume them on my PC when I wanted to. I never needed to play my Switch again. It began gathering dust, and taking up space. Now, Im getting ready to relocate to a different State and, as its across the country, I needed to cut down some of my stuff. Some of my books and my games were immediately on the chopping block. And with my Steam Deck being used so much and being such an amazing piece of tech, my Switch was simply replaced. So I sold it.

The End of an Era

Nintendo used to be one of my favorite developers/publishers. They knew what they were doing, but now it feels like they've lost their way. The Switch 2 kinda shows that reality as well, since it's not as big of an innovation as they usually create. Instead of innovation, it's iteration. It was unfortunate and, since I was already having issues, not only have I sold my Switch, but I don't expect to buy another Nintendo console ever again.

The worst part is that it didn't have to be this way. If Nintendo hadn't fucked with Emulation, hadn't been so reluctant to put their games on sale, hadn't introduced grinding to their recent games then maybe things could have been different. Sure, I'm still relocating so I still have to get rid of some of my shit, and the Steam Deck still replaced my Switch, that didn't mean I had to sell it.

I loved Nintendo consoles and games back in the day, but now, things are different. I will not be buying the Switch 2 and I don't intend to review Nintendo games. I don't expect this sentiment to be shared by many people, but that's okay, I can be an Island.

Meow,

Cat