The Nintendo Switch has two major problems that won’t go away

Nintendo’s big announcements yesterday were enough to get any avid gamer excited. There is a new one zelda Game will be released in 2023. Pikmin 4 it happens. Fire Emblem: Get involved means more delightful tactical fantasy combat is in the works. And another pack Mario Kart 8 Tracks mean we can all spend more time playing one of the best kart racers ever released.

And yet . . . I remain a bit glum about the Nintendo Switch itself. It’s been hugely successful for Nintendo and I’ve enjoyed a lot of Switch games, but I’ve also found that it’s the gaming system I play the least. Even my kids rarely play it, preferring to stick with the PS5, Xbox Series X | S and (in my son’s case) the gaming PC.

There are two big reasons for that – two big issues that are keeping the Switch from being great and taking up a bigger chunk of our playtime. (To be fair, if we were big mobile gamers we might play our Switches more, and they’re used more when we travel. That being said, these issues exist regardless of our personal gaming habits).

Problem #1: Joy-Con drift

I actually have two issues — let’s call them sub-issues — with the Switch’s Joy-Con controllers. My first problem is rather subjective:

I don’t like how small they are, and that goes double when they’re used individually like you do in games Mario Kart 8 when playing in local multiplayer (unless you have enough to use them in pairs or have the vastly superior Nintendo Pro gamepad).

Well whatever, I have bigger hands than many so naturally these will seem small to me. At least when the Switch is docked I can only ever use the Pro controller, which is perfectly fine in every way – a superior and much more traditional gamepad.

The second problem is objective and much worse: Joy-Con drift is what happens when the joysticks wiggle and start “moving” without moving. So you turn on the console and when you try to select a game the drift moves the “cursor” down (or right or left or whichever direction it’s drifting) so you can’t select what you want.

This also affects the gameplay. You’re going in one direction, but let go of the joystick and suddenly start moving in the other direction – off the road or a cliff or against a wall. It’s annoying, but more than just an irritation. It’s a lot less fun to play games. It ruins the experience, frankly, and even if you get new Joy-Cons or have yours repaired, the drift is often there or comes back. That alone is enough to piss me off about the entire Switch gaming experience.

Problem #2: The horsepower

One thing that really lasted The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Back was the fact that Nintendo both developed and released it for the Nintendo Switch and the less powerful Wii U. If more time had been put into the Switch release, the game would have played better, looked better, and so on. That’s why it’s great that its sequel Tears of the Kingdomonly comes out on the switch.

But here’s my problem with that: the Nintendo Switch itself is pathetically underpowered. I realize Nintendo has never prioritized PS, speed and graphics like Xbox and PlayStation, but still: there are some games I’ve played on Switch that just don’t play well even when docked and a Use Pro Controller. Frame rates in games like Fourteen days are lower than on competing machines, which is an immediate disadvantage in multiplayer.

That’s why it’s so disappointing that there’s not a word about a Nintendo Switch Pro or a dedicated console version of the Switch with much beefier parts that allows non-mobile gamers to just plug it into their TV and never dock and undock it. As well as Tears of the Kingdom see, I would definitely love to see this game played on a system as powerful as the PS5, Xbox Series X|S or my gaming computer.

It’s not just because I like nice graphics. I also like smooth frame rates and fast load times, and the Switch didn’t offer either.

These are issues that just aren’t going anywhere until we get a new console, and as popular as the Switch is, it probably won’t stay that way for long. Which is a shame.