Mr Viral
The Switch 2 is just days away from its official June 5 launch, but already footage is beginning to spread online of people going hands-on with Nintendo’s next console. One fan based in Russia recently uploaded a nearly 10-minute video that includes the Switch 2’s startup sequence and a tour through its menu settings. “Respects to this man for sacrificing his life to unbox the console a week before launch,” reads the top comment on YouTube.
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Suggested ReadingThe early player in question runs a Telegram channel where he’s been answering questions about the new hardware. His video includes a demonstration of what sounds like some bespoke Nintendo menu music for the boot-up sequence, though it unfortunately goes away once hitting the main menu. Fans of the ambient Wii theme music will have their hearts broken once again.
The leaker did answer as many fan questions as he could, and said a second video is on its way. Here’s what we’ve learned about the Switch 2 hardware in practice, according to him:
The only menu themes are black and whiteHe couldn’t find a toggle for variable refresh rateHDR calibration does exist in handheld modeThe firmware version listed for the console is 19.0.0.0The available storage is 221GBGame Share and other features don’t work without the day-one updateLike the Switch 2 unboxed in a separate brief video (since removed by Nintendo), this one appears to need a day-one patch to be fully capable. While early players have reported not being able to run Switch 1 games on the new hardware, it’s not clear yet if that means Switch 2 games won’t work right out of the box or not. Switch 1 games require a software layer for backwards compatibility, and it’s possible that Switch 2 cartridges might play just fine even ahead of the launch date, though it’s not yet clear if anyone out in the wild has both a Switch 2 and a Switch 2 game in their possession and has been able to test that yet.
Nintendo didn’t respond to a request for comment about what the reported day-one patch will entail.
A similar leak happened with the original Switch when someone with early access began sharing images of the home screen and menu settings weeks ahead of release. At Nintendo it was “like code red to find out what happened,” former marketing manager Kit Ellis said on a recent podcast episode. “It was actually really surprising for me to see that, like, ‘Oh! You actually can track this,’” he continued. “Like, again, these things get scanned and identified, and there are so many little identifiers that you might not even think of, like they will find who it is, but the fact that the leak has happened…” “It’s almost too late,” his co-host who worked alongside him at Nintendo said, finishing the thought.
The Switch 2 leaks should in many ways be less exciting to fans since the console is more of a straightforward upgrade to the existing hardware than a radical departure from the past, like the original Switch was from the Wii U. But the current console’s massive success has also propelled Switch 2 hype to new levels, with players combing through each new piece of footage and information until they can try it for themselves. Watching someone else do that is the next best thing, and comes without having to worry about any consequences from Nintendo.
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