The Nintendo Switch will cost $300 (£280) when it hits store shelves (of the digital and physical variety) on March 3rd. Nintendo revealed the price and release date — we only had a release month previously — during its Switch live stream on the evening of Thursday, January 12th.
The Switch is Nintendo’s latest console, and it’s designed for both the living room and portable play. The Switch itself is a tablet-like device that has detachable controllers on either side; players can either set the screen up on a TV-connected dock for the living room, or take it out and use the gamepads as mobile controllers.
The controllers, called Joy-Cons, connect to a main grip to become a traditional gamepad for living room play. Or, they can be used as individual motion controllers.
The Joy-Con’s motion-sensing system is able to differentiate among rock, paper and scissors hand motions. They also have an HD Rumble system that Nintendo says allows players to feel individual ice cubes falling into a glass, or water filling up a vessel.
The Switch features a 720p capacitive touchscreen, as opposed to Nintendo’s previous consoles (the DS, 3DS and Wii U), which have resistive touchscreens. Inside, it has 32GB of storage, but that’s expandable with Micro SD.
Also revealed today, the Switch won’t be region-locked, allowing players to load up games from any territory without issue. Additionally, the system will offer online multiplayer, but it won’t be free.
Nintendo showed off a handful of games heading to the Switch, including Splatoon 2, Super Mario Odyssey, Minecraft: Story Mode, Skylanders Imaginators, Rayman Legends, Skyrim, Minecraft, NBA 2K18, Arms and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is officially a launch title due out on March 3rd.
