I, like many, am not happy about how Nintendo has decided to price Switch 2 games, nor am I happy about its decision to charge for things like that Switch 2 tour and performance upgrades for Switch 1 games.

The latter was cruddy whenever developers did it on PlayStation (though most didn’t) and it’s cruddy of Nintendo to be doing it now. And no, I don’t consider including them with NSO to be the same as a “free” upgrade since, you know, you still gotta pay money for that. It seems, though, that some games at least will get upgraded free of charge.

Nintendo announced a couple of days ago that a certain selection of games will be getting free upgrades for Switch 2. These include:

• Arms
• Big Brain Academy: Brain vs Brain
• Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics
• Game Builder Garage
• Pokemon Scarlet
• Pokemon Violet
• The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
• New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
• Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury
• Super Mario Odyssey

While one cannot exactly complain about free games, I cannot help but notice some in- teresting things about this list. For starters, most of these games either won’t benefit all that much from an upgrade or are game’s nobody would ever buy an upgrade for in the first place. Seriously, who in their right mind would buy an upgrade for Clubhouse games? And, how much better really can you make the recent top-down Zelda games look.

We’ve also got two Wii U ports here (gee, thanks for not charging me for these yet again, Nintendo) and two Pokemon games. The Pokemon games at least might benefit if for no other reason than they still don’t run great on base Switch, I suppose. As for Super Mario Odyssey, a graphical upscale would definitely look nice, but the game already runs beau- tifully so, again, not actually that much of a deal.

You’d think Nintendo would be willing to do something* to sweeten the deal with all the backlash it’s been getting for Switch 2. But, I guess not. Guess they figure everyone will just buy it anyway. Maybe they’re wrong and we’ll have another 3DS or Wii U situation come 2026. Or, maybe they’re right and everyone will, in fact, just eat it up regardless. Guess we’ll see.

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How are you feeling about Nintendo and th Switch 2 situation?

Image from the Nintendo website