What do prospective players think of Switch 2?
The State of Switch survey tells us. Also: lots of news & this week's Steam hits...
[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & company founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]
As we round out the week here at GameDiscoverCo, we’re back - both to hype our upcoming ‘baseball mascot’ game jam (obviously - duh?), and also talk about what committed Switch players think about the Switch 2, both price and features-wise.
Before we start, we can’t believe that Limited Run’s remaster of the ‘90s mascot platformer Gex Trilogy not only comes with a $200 bundle including a 36” inflatable doll of Gex (!), but also a “Collector's Box featuring art by Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano.” (You can also buy the art as a poster, if you have ‘goth gecko’-y enough taste.)
Game discovery news: GTA VI ascends hype, huh?
Let’s take a look at the game discovery & platform news that happened since our last email hit ‘send’, shall we? Huzzah:
The latest Footprints.gg ‘trad media’ coverage charts (above) have Grand Theft Auto VI at #1 due to the new trailer & May 2026 release date, followed by the Switch 2 (orly?), the much-buzzed about Clair Obscur, the Oblivion remaster, Fortnite’s Star Wars season, and the upcoming Borderlands 4.
Nintendo’s fiscal results just hit, and the company’s forecasting 15 million Switch 2 consoles & 45 million games sold by March 2026. This - similar #s to Switch 1 launch year - seems like a ‘finger in the air’, given some analysts believe 20 million is possible if (non-massively tariffed) supply is there.
Elsewhere in Nintendo’s results, the original Switch console “reached 152.12M units lifetime, up 1.26M in the quarter ending March. It ended its last [fiscal year] as the main console at 10.8M units sold, down from 15.7M.” The company did miss projections, with sales down 30% YoY to $7.6b and profit -47% to $1.85b.
Former Nexon global CEO Owen Mahoney has written a saucy piece, ‘How empires die’, noting big Western publisher problems like ‘The $300M No-Fun Problem’ (expensive & innovative = dangerous!), ‘The End of Distribution as a Moat’ (no retail channel leverage), and ‘Graphics Over Gameplay’ (we talk about this!)
Is the new trend in companies to go ‘feral as a moat’, so to speak? Avi Bhuiyan looks at Gamer Supps breaking out in the beverage space, and suggests slightly unhinged ‘takes’ are the thing: “Pocketpair isn’t the first developer to try making a Pokémon-inspired game, but they are by far– BY FAR – the most feral.”
Prompted by a U.S. FTC settlement back in January, gacha game hit Genshin Impact “now tells U.S. players how many pulls you’re getting with each [IAP] purchase… and how much you need to spend to guarantee pulling a character, which varies between $1.98 to $475.20.” (We doubt the current U.S. admin will be as concerned?)
Tom’s Hardware analyzes a new Consumer Technology Association report (free reg. req.) that says of U.S. console game hardware tariffs: “Average tariffs [will be] climbing from 0% to 130%. Because 87% of these devices come from China… prices could rise by as much as 69%.” (Switch 2 has manufacturing in Vietnam - less so PS5?)
Here’s a robust defence of paid DLC from Paul Kilduff-Taylor, following Larian’s (largely fine, given their $) rejection of it. He thinks it’s very workable if: “The base game reaches a sizeable audience, such that 10% - 20% revenue uplift would be significant… players will love it and give it good reviews.”
While we reckon video games aren’t in the same crosshairs, it’s worth reading Jon Voight’s proposal to ‘revitalize the U.S. film industry’ with a mix of “midsize Federal tax credits, increased write-offs & harsh tariffs on overseas incentives”, as well as the return of fin-syn (a big deal for streaming platforms) and local ‘cultural tests’.
Thomas Brush, whose game dev-centric YouTube channel is a) big and b) excellent, chatted to Inscryption creator Daniel Mullins. Lots of interesting discovery takeaways: particularly that after Pony Island, Daniel felt people had stereotyped him as a ‘subversive’ game maker, so felt pressure to continue that vibe.
Microlinks: Epic’s Tim Sweeney made an ‘epic’ podcast appearance talking about UE6, ‘publish a Fortnite island game standalone’ plans & more; April 2025’s top PlayStation downloads saw Xbox’s Oblivion and Forza 5 topping Sony’s charts; a shareholder-centric deconstruction of sim supremo PlayWay’s latest financials.
HEADS UP: Scrappy Game Jam: win GDCo subs, $!
GameDiscoverCo and the Oakland Ballers baseball team are proud to present the Scrappy Game Jam! Your task, should you choose to accept it? Make a fun, short video game - in any genre and game engine you like - starring the Ballers mascot Scrappy the Rally Possum for this 10-day game jam, starting on Itch.io on May 16th.
Prizes? 1st place - $500 USD and a lifetime subscription to the GameDiscoverCo Plus newsletter & data service. 2nd-5th place: Lifetime subscriptions to GDCo Plus. (Top games/devs will be featured prominently in the GDCo newsletter and shown on the big screen at our co-sponsored Scrappy's Birthday Ballers game on June 1st.)
But why? The Oakland Ballers are an independent minor league baseball team based in Northern California, where we live. We thought the B's mascot Scrappy The Rally Possum - created by Pixar & TMNT Adventures artist Ken Mitchroney and inspired by the Oakland A’s on-field interloper in 2014 - is perfect ‘game jam’ fodder. This is meant to be a lighthearted mini-jam, so go wild, and let's see what you come up with.
What do prospective players think of Switch 2?
We’re indebted to Chris Brandrick and Switch Weekly for, once again, surveying thousands of Nintendo Switch players on the state of Nintendo’s console - something he’s been doing since 2018. While this data comes with a ‘surveyees are self-selected fans’ caveat, we find it super helpful for gauging vibes.
So yes, you get some great data pulls like the above ‘here’s what we’re most excited about for Switch 2’ word cloud. And you also get these takeaways from the survey, which had 1,500 respondents and was fielded just after the Nintendo Switch 2 Direct in early April:
Switch 2 launch pricing was fine enough for the fans: the console starts at $450 in the U.S.. And while 52.5% of respondents said it was priced higher than they expected, only 6.3% said it was “significantly overpriced.” (Remember these are fans, though. But it looks like Nintendo hit the early adopter mark here.)
Purchase intent among this group is extremely high: specifically, 81.1% intend to buy a Switch 2, broken down as follows: “36.4% plan to buy at launch… 35.0% plan to buy, but not immediately at launch… 9.7% indicated they had already pre-ordered.” 14% were undecided, and 4.9% don’t currently intend to buy. Some great numbers..
Mouse mode is the most appealing Switch 2 feature - really? To be fair, ‘mouse mode’ is better than it sounds if you look at hands-on videos, but it’s fascinating that’s the biggest shift, huh? Other highlights of changes fans called out: “The improved performance, magnetic Joy-Con, Game Chat, 4K docked support, and more.”
The State Of Switch survey also asked an interesting question - will you keep your OG Switch after getting a Switch 2? According to respondents: “75% said they plan to keep their current Switch… 13% said they do not plan to keep the original, with the remainder either undecided or one of those without a Switch.” Plenty of old models around, then.
After the initial reveal, respondents were asked about their most anticipated Switch 2 games (above). It’s all about first-party games, with the open-world Mario Kart World dominated, and >40% of respondents making it their top choice, and >20% favoring the fun-looking Donkey Kong: Bananza*. (Also: The Duskbloods beat Silksong?)
(*Luckily, nobody was surveyed about previous-model Donkey Kong icon erasure, and yes, people actually get mad about stuff like this.)
Just rattling through a few other survey highlights, based around the OG Switch:
The median # of games owned by these Switch players is 50, and the average 71.
48% of the library of these Switch owners is digital, and 52% (high!) is physical.
Most-played Switch games in 2024 were Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom & Echoes Of Wisdom, followed by Splatoon 3, Mario Kart 8, and Paper Mario.
The only third-party games in the Top 10 most-played were Balatro (#8) and Unicorn Overlord (#10). (In 2024, the Top 10 was 100% first-party games.)
78% of these players have a Switch Online subscription, and 60% of those subscribers have the more expensive Expansion Pack tier.
Finally, we talk a lot of about the ‘no-reset console/PC generation’, where game library just builds over time, and you don’t have to throw your games away when you buy a new device. (It’ll happen with Switch 2, due to its backwards compatibility.)
Because of its multi-year history, the State of Switch report has a great visualization of this, starting from the near-beginning of the console generation back in 2018:
It’s easy to see why games coming out in 2018 and 2019 had strong sales #s - players were filling out their catalog amidst little competition! Also notable: hardcore players or bargain-hunters creating an interesting bulge in the ownership graph at the ‘100 games owned’ stage.
And so, yes, players moving on to the Switch 2 will still have all of these games in their library, and the vast majority will be backwards compatible. Doesn’t mean they won’t buy new games, especially standout ones, but good to know context, right?
Steam debuts this week: multiple games take off!
It’s been an intense week for new Steam releases. So let’s buckle down - for our GameDiscoverCo Plus & Pro subscribers - and take a look at who broke out, and why. Avast, ye landlubbers…