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The Switch 2 celebrated its first anniversary during Summer Game Fest week, which made the annual showcase fiesta a natural referendum on how it’s going for Nintendo’s newest console. In summary: It’s going pretty well. Everybody seems into it. Here are some data points from the week of reveals:
- The marquee bookends for the Summer Game Fest stream (and two of 2027’s biggest games), Resident Evil Veronica and Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, will both launch on the Switch 2 on day one alongside other platforms. Now, Capcom and Square Enix are both staunch supporters of Nintendo, but this still represents a major marker of the platform’s relevance and developers’ confidence in its ability to keep up — something the original Switch never quite managed.
- Square Enix chose the Nintendo Direct to show Kingdom Hearts 4, another day-one Switch 2 title — and one in a series historically associated with PlayStation. Onimusha: Way of the Sword and Lords of the Fallen 2 are day-one Switch 2 games, too. Parity with Xbox and PlayStation on AAA releases is creeping closer.
- Now we have a complete picture of Nintendo’s own lineup for the Switch 2 in 2026, and it’s pretty impressive. By the end of the year, Nintendo will have released eight Switch 2 originals: Mario Tennis Fever, PokĂ©mon Pokopia, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, Star Fox, Slaptoon Raiders, Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, and the Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. Add six Switch 2 Editions, and Nintendo has kept up a more-than-monthly publishing cadence on the new console.
- Nintendo is also not hedging its bets. After the dual swansong of Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream and Rhythm Heaven Groove, Nintendo seems done with the Switch, and is focused on pushing its fans to upgrade. The clear sign of this is Nintendo Switch Sports Resort, a mass-market casual game which could easily have been made for the Switch’s gigantic install base, but instead is a Switch 2 exclusive.
- By my reckoning, 70 Switch 2 games were shown across all the major showcases, versus 88 for PS5 and 80 for Xbox Series X. (I’m not counting all the PC games, I’ll be here all day.)
- The stream of ports is turning into a flood. This happened with Switch, too, but not so quickly and not on this scale. The Nintendo Direct featured 10 major Switch 2 ports, including Dragon’s Dogma 2, Lies of P, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and, for some bizarre reason, DayZ.
So: After Rhythm Heaven next month, Nintendo is all in. Capcom and Square Enix are all in. Others are catching on fast, particularly big independent studios like CI Games, Jagex, and Shift Up. For the rest of this year and into 2027, the Switch 2 is getting a lot of Nintendo games, and a lot of games period.
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