Nintendo on claim that Switch isn’t an innovation, says Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza couldn’t be realized on Switch 1

Nintendo Switch 2 offers plenty of power and has new features like mouse controls and GameChat, but it’s building off the foundations of its predecessor. Partially because of that, some have the belief that it’s not much of an innovation.

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa responded to that claim during a financial results briefing Q&A this week. The big takeaway is that developers have needed “higher hardware processing power in order to realize one of Nintendo’s most important values, ‘proposing new ways to play.'” Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza were cited as two examples “that could not be realized on the Nintendo Switch.” Mario Kart World features an open world with more racers on the track than ever before while Donkey Kong Bananza contains destructible environments. 

Furukawa said the following:

“The development of the Nintendo Switch 2 began as an official internal project around 2019, but we are always conducting research and development of new hardware, including basic technical research.

The Nintendo Switch has been blessed with many good fortunes, and even in its ninth year, many customers are playing it. On the other hand, over the past eight years, software developers have come to need higher hardware processing power in order to realize one of Nintendo’s most important values, ‘proposing new ways to play.’ Therefore, this time we aimed to design hardware with a large capacity in terms of processing power. We believe that Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza have proposed new ways of playing that could not be realized on the Nintendo Switch.

Regarding your question about the innovation of the hardware, the Nintendo Switch 2 may not look like it has changed much. However, in reality, both the hardware and peripherals have been redesigned from scratch, and we feel that it is a very Nintendo-like product, filled with various ingenuity and the attention to detail of Nintendo’s development team, who develop hardware and software together.

Going forward, we will develop various titles centered around the Nintendo Switch 2 and provide new play experiences. We aim to make the Nintendo Switch 2 the new standard for Nintendo Switch by creating hardware that continues to give consumers fresh surprises.”

We were also able to hear from Furukawa today about Nintendo’s approach to pricing on Switch 2. Read those comments here.