It's amazing how much information can be revealed in a trailer only three minutes long. Nintendo managed to introduce its all-new console, the Switch, in a concise, compelling video package that actually included six different pieces of hardware – the screen-equipped Switch itself, the TV-connecting Dock, the Pro Controller, the left and right detachable Joy-Cons and the Grip that can house them both – and yet everything felt neatly explained.
. . . well, maybe not everything. Because though we did learn a lot about the Switch through its first commercial, we've been left with plenty of unanswered questions in its wake. Let's turn our attention now to several of the biggest mysteries still surrounding the machine, and hope that solid answers arrive long before the system goes on sale next March.
Nintendo first targeted the month of March 2017 for the debut of "NX" with this tweet, sent out way back in April. Since then, the company hasn't wavered on marking March as the month when its next generation will begin.
Getting any more precise detail out of them, though, hasn't been successful yet. A supposed release date for Nintendo's upcoming Breath of the Wild amiibo figures was recently leaked from the source code of a Nintendo of Europe website, and that date was March 4, 2017. A Saturday. It's reasonable to assume that the Breath of the Wild amiibo would launch on the same day as the game, and that the game would launch on the same day as the system capable of playing it, so there's an argument to be made that March 4 is the date to circle on your calendars.
A Saturday launch would be a little odd, though, as Nintendo's traditionally sent new systems to store shelves on Sundays. March 5, then? With the amiibo on sale one day early, so fans can fully focus on nabbing the Switch itself at midnight? It's impossible to say at the moment, so we'll say the final release date is . . .
The million-dollar question is how many hundreds of dollars we'll have to spend to buy the Switch. Nintendo hasn't come right out and said what the price will be yet, and it's likely that they haven't yet decided themselves. Reportedly, Nintendo is paying attention to customers' conversations on the price point online in the wake of the trailer's release, so if you want to influence things, get out there and be vocal about what kind of price you'd be willing to pay. The company is unwilling to sell the system at a loss, though, so it's important to be realistic when dreaming of what the final price will be.
For reference, the Wii U launched at two price points in 2012: Spending $299.99 got you the Basic set with a white console and 8GB of storage, while $349.99 was the price of entry for the Deluxe set's black console and quadrupled 32GB of internal storage. Both SKUs came with Nintendo Land packed in.
In 2006, the Wii launched for $249.99 with Wii Sports as its pack-in title, and it became such a massive seller out of the gates that finding a Wii on a store shelf was a rarity for most of the next year. Nintendo would love to recapture that lightning in a bottle, so we'd wager that $249.99 is a number in serious consideration this time around.
Nintendo's not going to confirm the price until January at the earliest, though, so right now we have to say that . . .
Nintendo hasn't confirmed this yet either, but this question has an answer that's fairly easy to surmise. Check out the official promo shot of the system, the Dock, the Joy-Con controllers and the Joy-Con Grip seen above. We're betting that's what you get in the box.
The central Switch tablet has to be in there, of course. The two Joy-Con controllers have to be in there, otherwise you wouldn't be able to control the thing. Nintendo apparently toyed around with the idea of offering an option that didn't include the TV-out-enabling Dock, but decided against that because it would have muddled the marketing message about what the Switch is – consumers would have been confused, thinking there's some other way to hook it up to a TV. There's not. The Dock is it.
That leaves the Grip as the only arguably optional inclusion, but again, given that was the very first thing showcased in the trailer and its prominence in the promo photo there, odds seem incredibly slim that it wouldn't it be included. So when you do your unboxing in March, you'll get . . .
Only one piece of hardware seen in the debut trailer is likely to be left out of the box at launch, and sold separately instead: the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller. For both the Wii and Wii U generations, Nintendo's Pro Controllers have been optional purchases – few games have absolutely required them to function. (Some Virtual Console titles on Wii necessitated purchase of a Classic Controller or Classic Controller Pro, as the lone Wii Remote and/or Wii Remote + Nunchuk combo didn't have enough buttons to facilitate playing games like Super Mario 64.)
The Switch Pro Controller's button layout mirrors the twin Joy-Cons when they're set into the Joy-Con grip, with two exceptions. First, the analog stick on the right side is placed more toward the center of the pad, rather than directly underneath the A, B, X, and Y Buttons. Should be more comfortable that way. Second, there's a true, traditional Nintendo D-Pad on the left side, swapped in to replace the separated directional buttons on the Joy-Con L.
Will the Switch Pro Controller run on batteries? Probably not, so no need to stock up on AAAs at Radio Shack. (You all still have Radio Shacks, right?) The Wii U Pro Controller charges via USB cable, and its battery life is seriously impressive – a single charge can grant you up to 80 hours of playtime. If the Switch version is even 25% as efficient as that, it'll be more than good enough.
The Wii U Pro Controller's MSRP is $49.99, and we'd expect the Switch Pro Controller to land at or very near that same price tag. So if you're interested in having a more traditional controller to use when playing your Switch games, slip an extra 50 into your pocket before you head to the store in March. It's going to be . . .
Nintendo introduced touchscreens into mainstream gaming with the DS in 2004, then brought that same tech into the spotlight for the Wii U's GamePad in 2012. But is the screen on the central Switch tablet carrying on the touch tradition?
No official word has come from the Big N thus far, and no one in the three-minute trailer tapped on the screen at any point – but rumors claim that, yes, touch input will again be a part of this Nintendo package. In fact, Emily Rogers – who nailed the system's details and correctly predicted the timing of its reveal last week – says that it will actually be a multi-touch screen this time around, stepping up from the single-touch capability of the DS, Wii U and 3DS hardware.
We'll await official word, of course, but for this one . . .
The Wii U stylus, pictured above, ended up not being as essential to its gaming library as the DS and 3DS styli that preceded it, and yet some titles like Super Mario Maker would have been much more user-unfriendly without the simple plastic pen. So will we see a Switch stylus?
We haven't seen one yet, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. The Switch trailer only have us a good look at the top edge of the console, and not the bottom – it's possible there's a spot lurking on the underside that a stylus would slide up into. That'd be the reverse of the stylus slot placement the Wii U GamePad used, but Nintendo's hardware designers rarely keep common components like stylus slots, volume sliders and the like in the same position from device to device. They're always moving around.
Really, the determinant for whether a Switch stylus is a thing that exists is whether or not the Switch has a touchscreen. Rumors are pointing toward yes on that question, so that means that the Switch having a stylus . . .
When the Wii launched in 2006, it could play your old GameCube discs. When the Wii U launched in 2012, it could play your old Wii discs. So should we expect to be able to play the Wii U's games on Switch?
Well, the Switch has no disc drive, so that cuts out the possibility of physical backwards compatibility with any past disc-based Nintendo titles right there. But what about 3DS cartridges? The Switch uses carts, right, so maybe they can plug into that slot? Again, sadly, it can't. When asked whether or not Switch can play physical Wii U or 3DS games, a representative from Nintendo responded to us with a simple "no."
There may be some hope for digitally downloaded software from past generations, as that same rep said they had "nothing to announce on this topic" – which certainly isn't a yes, but isn't totally ruling it out. Still it's difficult to picture how Switch would run any of Nintendo's many two-screen titles, since "Nintendo Switch is dedicated to deliver a single-screen experience." We'll call this one a pretty solid . . .
Things are a little hazy here. A Nintendo rep spoke to us on the day of the Switch reveal and said that, "The main function of the Nintendo Switch Dock is to provide an output to the TV, as well as charging and providing power to the system." Which we knew, of course. But if that's the Dock's main function, could it potentially still have the secondary function of giving games a bit of an extra boost when the system's docked, versus when it's serving as a portable?
Rumors suggest that there is some additional processing power that comes into play courtesy of the Dock. So it seems like it's a possibility. And it would be understandable, if it's true, that Nintendo wouldn't come right out and confirm that to be the case immediately. After all, such a thing could be negatively interpreted as "Switch games play worse when portable" rather than the more positive "Switch games play better when they're docked."
If we could, let's take just a moment here to remember how influential the late, great Satoru Iwata was in the development of the Switch. He's been gone for over a year now, but so much of hardware design happens over such a long period of time that he was the guiding force still at the helm of the ship when its development began, and his influence is still easy to see within it.
Some of his last public statements as Nintendo's President may become a reality as well, on the topic of region-locking. In May 2015 – just two months before he passed away – Mr. Iwata said it wouldn't make sense to remove the existing region-locking from the Wii and 3DS, but things could be different for the NX.
"Removing region-locking from current game machines presents various issues, so we don't consider that to be very realistic. However, regarding NX, given the customer feedback and proposals from the market, while nothing has been decided yet, we're currently investigating internally what problems there would be in realizing it. "You can think of that as the current situation. I understand your desire, so I'd like to look at it optimistically going forward."
If the Switch is region-free, that would mean that there would no longer be any restrictions to which countries' software you play on the system. You could import Japanese-language versions of Switch games and play them on your North American Switch, for example. The PlayStation 4 is region-free. Nintendo's systems have traditionally not been.
Combine Mr. Iwata's hopeful point of view with the fact that the same sources who got the system's details right before its reveal are now saying that Switch will be region-free, and . . .
Wii U went a little wacky with its home menu, as turning the console on also triggered a swarm of Mii characters to stampede onto your TV screen and encourage you to check out Miiverse, the console's new social media network for Nintendo players (access for which was later also added to 3DS systems). Meanwhile, the GamePad touchscreen presented your options for selectable game software and other apps, and a tap of your finger or the stylus launched your chosen activity.
So what about the Switch? We haven't seen any aspect of its U.I. yet, and likely won't for another few months. As Switch is "a single-screen experience," though, we can probably bid farewell to the Mii stampede.
Nintendo's wildly successful NFC figures, amiibo, have been a huge saving grace for the Wii U – and while the "stand in line for hours to preorder a plastic Wario" part of the collecting craze has faded away, it would be silly for the company to leave compatibility with the figures behind as the next generation begins.
So far, we know for sure that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will support amiibo. And since the Wii U versions of Mario Kart 8 and Splatoon did, it's probably a safe bet that the Switch installments in those two series will as well. But overall, amiibo + Switch is a definitive . . .
Since the Switch is meant to serve as both a home console and a portable, the length of time that you'll actually be able to play it while undocked is of course a critical concern. Nintendo hasn't yet given an indication of their target for the final retail version's battery life, but Laura Kate Dale has reported that a source from Nintendo told her it's "mediocre."
A second source, from Ubisoft, claimed that the maximum battery life is three hours. That would indeed be . . .
The debut trailer showed off several different methods of Switch play, including detaching the Joy-Cons from the central unit to play while on an airplane or trendy rooftop party. The Switch Pro Controller was even shown to be fully functional with the system while it was undocked, and multiple Switch consoles can connect together to make multi-screen multiplayer games happen, as demonstrated when NBA 2K17 was shown running the same two-on-two game on two screens set up opposite one another like Mattel Battleship boards.
Ia Bluetooth the way this is all auto-magically happening? It would seem likely, but it's not confirmed yet. Laura Kate Dale also said she hasn't heard anything about Bluetooth headsets being a possibility for the Switch Pro Controller, as some people are suggesting might be the way Nintendo would go, since the Pro Controller apparently doesn't have a headphone jack.
So, Bluetooth? Well . . .
This is another subject Nintendo's been silent on, but also one we shouldn't worry about too much. The Nintendo eShop is well established on both Wii U and 3DS, and Nintendo shifted their position on making all titles available digitally to a strong "Yes" a few years ago. There's no reason to suspect they'd go backward and reverse the progress they've made in digital delivery, so we'll confidently say . . .
When you've got the Switch docked at home, you'll undoubtedly be able to connect up to your home Wi-Fi to launch the eShop, play online multiplayer, etc. But what about when you're out of the house?
Will you have to find public Wi-Fi access to be able to get online when away from home? That's how it works with the 3DS, as Nintendo's current portable doesn't connect to cellular networks. Might Switch be different in that regard, though? Will Nintendo offer some kind of portable Internet access package?
No word of any kind, rumor or otherwise, seems to have addressed this question so far. So all we can say for the moment is that . . .
Those are the most pressing unanswered questions on our minds at the moment, but stay tuned here, as more questions will arise in the days, weeks and months to come – and we'll also provide updates when any of these unanswered questions get, well, answered.
Do you have questions about the Nintendo Switch that we didn't address? Let us know in the Comments below and we may add them above!
Lucas M. Thomas began covering Nintendo news for IGN over 10 years ago, back before the Wii was released and we weren't even sure what features that console would launch with. He now has several more grey hairs, but still loves speculating about everything new from Nintendo. You can follow him on Twitter, @NintendoForce.
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