Nintendo Switch 2’s GameChat feature isn’t so bad
For the longest time, fans wondered what that unknown “C” button would do on Nintendo Switch 2. After months of speculation, it turned out to be for GameChat, which is the system’s 2’s headlining social feature. GameChat lets you connect with up to twelve users at the same time, and up to four players can share their screens together all at once. At first, players were unimpressed with GameChat’s poor frame rate – indeed, in the final version of the service, screen share feeds run rather poorly. Many have since written off GameChat, and that’s understandable to an extent. You can always just use something like Discord for voice chat instead. But that doesn’t mean GameChat is useless, in our opinion – we’ve spent several hours with it and actually feel like it’s a solid addition to the Nintendo Switch 2’s lineup of features.
As you might expect, Nintendo Switch 2’s microphone quality isn’t particularly great. That being said, you can at least hear the people you’re chatting with clearly enough – even if they’re playing in docked mode and are sitting far away from their TV. It’s absolutely usable, in other words, but the slightly poor quality could definitely be improved. And as we mentioned before, your friends can share their screens while you play your own game. There are three views to choose from: standard view, expand main screen, and full screen. I personally prefer expand main screen or full screen while playing alongside friends – in the case of the latter, you can use the GameChat button to quickly look at your friends’ screens. From there, you can actually open and watch their game full screen. The frame rate doesn’t improve, but in our experience the audio at least comes through perfectly. Of course, it’d be nice if you could see your friends’ screen shares at regular quality, but for what it is it works out well enough.
It’s also important to note that in the games we’ve tested, having GameChat active has not caused any kind of slowdown. One complaint with Nintendo Switch 2 is that Switch 1 games that have not received an upgrade look a little blurry in handheld mode. If you play one of these Nintendo Switch 1 games while using GameChat, it will actually render in its original resolution within the standard screen size option. Of course, you can’t play Nintendo Switch 1 games using this method unless you’re chatting with another player, but it’s still a neat tidbit nonetheless. In my experience, the best way to use GameChat isn’t to chat at all – I like using Discord for the actual voice call so I can listen to audio from my computer, but then using GameChat to play my own game while my friends play theirs. From there, it’s easy to check in and see what everyone’s up to without having to deal with Nintendo Switch 2’s less-than-desirable microphone quality.
For what it is, GameChat isn’t too bad. One of the Switch 2’s biggest criticisms has been its price, and if its components were upgraded further to facilitate better GameChat (a better microphone or more memory to allow for better frame rate), the console would only become more expensive.
Have you tried GameChat at all yourself, or has it gone mostly unused? Let us know in the comments down below. You can learn more about it over at Nintendo’s official website.
