The SuperDQP Weekly - April 7, 2025

I’m going to be blunt; I have been playing a lot of DOOM lately and this week’s Switch 2 news is, pragmatically speaking, giving me a great opportunity to take a break from the franchise for this week. There’s a lot to discuss, and a lot that has been discussed. Let’s dive into it.

A quick Nintendo game recommendation first

It’s kind of gotten lost amongst the noise lately, but there’s a new port of Xenoblade Chronicles X out now!

This is the Wii U game that almost got away. Though the Wii U was one of Nintendo’s biggest hardware disasters, it did have a lot of very good exclusives, and Nintendo has spent much of the past decade porting most of those exclusives over to the much less disastrous Switch. Xenoblade Chronicles X is one of the last ones.

And thank goodness, because Xenoblade fans have been quietly singing its praises as the numbered titles continued to expand on the first game’s world.

X is a spin-off with a greater focus on exploration, and though I didn’t end up finishing it back in the day – it’s a very dense game, and the writing is far from Monolith Soft’s best – it did utterly capture my attention for a long time.

Also, not for nothing, you get a giant mech some hours in. Exploring a giant map in a mech is, needless to say, very fun.

Also also, not for nothing, the soundtrack absolutely rips.

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is now available on Nintendo Switch. A “Switch 2 Edition” is rumored, but not confirmed.

A Bad Day to Switch Hard

Nintendo formally announced the upcoming Switch 2 console’s release window, launch game lineup, and other enhancements and features in a Nintendo Direct early last Wednesday morning.

How early? 5 AM Alaska time. “Nintendo really said ‘Screw them Alaskans,’” I joked before the Direct.

As you probably know by now, Alaskans aren’t the only ones feeling screwed by the Direct.

The console’s price – and more importantly, the prices of individual Switch 2 games and upgrades – were conspicuously absent from the Direct itself, but were confirmed later by Nintendo, and it’s… not pretty.

In case you need a refresher, the console itself is $449; $500 if you want it bundled with the latest Mario Kart. Said Mario Kart costs $79.99 a la carte, and other launch window games like the new Donkey Kong game will launch at the $70 standard being set by other big-budget games in the 2020s. Switch 2 enhancements to existing Switch games are mostly locked by either a small payment, or an Expansion Pack NSO subscription.

But hey, I guess those subscribers are also getting Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness eventually, so… there’s that?

People have not been taking this news well. It’s not a good look for Nintendo, and knowing how pragmatic other big game publishers are, it’s not going to be a good look for them either. One looks at Mario Kart World’s price and can easily imagine executives at Take Two thinking “Oh yeah. We can definitely get away with charging $100 for Grand Theft Auto VI now.”

A common refrain on the internet has been that this isn’t entirely Nintendo’s fault; video game retail prices, even at $80, have yet to really catch up with inflation. Development budgets have been skyrocketing, and with a more capable console on their hands, we’re really going to start seeing that on Nintendo’s end.

But then there’s the other elephant in the room. The one in the Oval Office, specifically.

(I’m sorry, that elephant joke was tired even before I first made it in 2016.)

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have, at time of posting, been all over the news. They’re the reason my parents rushed to buy the latest iPhone as soon as they could. Prices for everything are about to blow up, but especially products in the tech sector like phones, computers, peripherals, and especially video game consoles that are all largely manufactured in China, Vietnam, and Taiwan.

Stock markets are currently plunging fast, and Nintendo has even delayed pre-orders for the Switch 2 to plan for a post-tariff world.

It’s in this world that Nintendo is in the unenviable position of needing to release a new game console.

And don’t misunderstand me, they do need to release a new game console. The original Switch is over eight years old. It is woefully ill-equipped to run the biggest hits of today’s gaming market. Hell, it’s woefully ill-equipped to run the modest hits of today’s gaming market.

The Switch, as it exists right now, is competing with the PlayStation 5, gaming PCs, and especially Valve’s portable Steam Deck, which allows for beefier and more interesting games on the go even before you start sideloading emulators and weird itch.io games onto it.

(And yes, I know I didn't mention the Xbox Series consoles in that last paragraph. Did I really need to?)

The original Switch cannot exist in this market; or at least, it can’t without some damn good exclusives. And those exclusives are getting harder and harder to produce for what is, ultimately, a tablet computer that was underpowered when it came out. Tears of the Kingdom could barely run on the thing, and that was almost two years ago.

So Nintendo badly needs a Switch 2. But at the same time, by sheer unfortunate coincidence, we are entering a socioeconomic era where many consumers are reckoning with the idea that they may not need a Switch 2.

After all, if the American economy goes straight into the toilet – which it will, if President Trump’s tariffs stand as they are – a new Mario Kart for $80 suddenly looks a lot less important, let alone a brand new game console.

Because while, yes, $80 (if not more) is about what big-budget games should cost today given rising inflation and consumer spending power, that spending power is about to drop off a cliff.

It’ll be hard enough for me to cram DOOM: The Dark Ages into my budget at $70. I need to center the better part of May’s non-essentials budget around it. Buying a new game console for $500? Forget about it.

Speaking pragmatically, as a consumer, looking at my most-wanted games of 2025, I can play them all on devices I already own. My current computer will be more than enough to play Dark Ages and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Hollow Knight: Silksong – assuming the clown makeup I regularly put on for it isn’t in vain – will likely work effortlessly on Steam Deck, as will the next Deltarune chapters. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, to my eyes, looks good enough on the original Switch, and I won’t need mouse controls that badly for it. And of course, my poor underused PlayStation 5 will briefly awaken once more after Death Stranding 2: On the Beach hits, and it will likely be a solid way to play upcoming big-budget games should my computer prove infeasible.

There is nothing in the current Switch 2 lineup that makes me yearn, in this socioeconomic climate, to spend $500 (or likely more) on one. The new Mario Kart looks cool, but not “new game console purchase” cool. The Duskbloods looks like an interesting multiplayer experience, especially since Hidetaka Miyazaki expounded on its design, but again, is it $500 interesting? Because that’s what it needs to be right now.

I get it. Games are expensive to make. Developers are rapidly losing their jobs. The video game bubble is poised to burst, and if the Switch 2 and Grand Theft Auto VI aren’t the massive successes that Nintendo and Take Two need them to be, they will likely be load-bearing failures that will likely take the industry as we know it down with them.

It’s… deflating to think about. And given the recent tariffs imposed worldwide, there’s a common feeling that inevitable collapse is on the horizon.

So here’s how I’m gonna get through it. Because I love this medium, and I want to see it continue and survive. And I think it will, ultimately.

(And this will take the place of my usual wishlist recommendation.)

Many of my favorite games over the past few years have been small-budget experimental titles that did not require massive budgets to produce. Titles like Signalis, Disco Elysium, Ultrakill, Lethal Company, and Hades have been revolutionizing video games as an art form. Small creators – many of which are queer and/or otherwise marginalized – have been producing interactive experiences that rival, if not surpass what the AAA space has to offer.

And that’s not to say that smaller development teams are inherently more stable than their AAA counterparts – Disco Elysium’s team fractured pretty spectacularly – but that isn’t necessarily my point.

My point is that big-budget games – the ones most likely to be impacted by upcoming price surges – are made for the common denominator. They are made to appeal to as many people as possible. And there’s nothing wrong with finding that appealing, but the games that have stuck with me in recent years have been the games made by smaller creators who are passionately pursuing the personal stories they want to parley.

(That alliteration was only semi-accidental. I will not apologize.)

Smaller games are cultivating tastes right now. Many of them exist, and while they aren’t all selling earth-shattering numbers like the above examples, they are finding diverse audiences. They don’t need to be big to find their people.

These games are still going to be coming out. And on the multiplayer front, live services may disappear, but communities will always persist in fan servers in games like Team Fortress 2 Classic, Titanfall 2 via Northstar, or Super Smash Bros. Melee via Slippi.

And that’s not to mention local multiplayer scenes that surround Street Fighter 6 or Guilty Gear. After all, fighting games have historically flourished in communities that are economically worse off (read: communities of color who are historically screwed over by systemic, economic, and environmental racism) than those who can afford more disposable single-player games.

If you can’t afford a Switch 2, it won’t be the end of the world. Focus your money on living. I won’t say something as glib as “stop spending your money on video games, they’re a luxury item” because everyone deserves to pursue their artistic hobbies no matter how poor they are. But spend smarter and not harder.

I’ve always joked that I wish the video game industry could just “pause” so that I could spend a year or several just hacking down my Steam backlog. Perhaps, with the economic winds ahead, that year or several is here.

I don’t know how well you will survive the economic hardships ahead, let alone the political hardships. I’m not an economist and I don’t know your financial situation. But if you are balking at the prices that Nintendo’s been listing this week, don’t feel obligated to pay them. That is money that will likely need to go towards necessities as tariffs bust our economy.

No matter where you end up, it’s more than likely that you will still have video games, somehow, some way. They may not be the most expensive or popular, but you may be surprised at what grabs you, and at what cost.

We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled DOOM 64 programming next week. (And side note, that game is incredible and is also like $5. Spend smarter and not harder!)